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Native Americans
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Native Americans were the first people to settle in America. Christopher Columbus traveled to America in 1492. He traveled on a ship. In the 1600’s people from England came to live in America. They settled on the East Coast. These new settlers were called Pilgrims.
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The Native Americans were hunters, fishermen and farmers. They became excellent whale hunters and made boats called dugouts out of single tree trunks. These tree trunks were hollowed with tools and fire and these boats allowed them to fish in the local waters. The many deer on Long Island were important to the Native Americans. Deer skin was used to make moccasins, skirt-like coverings and warm leg coverings. Besides the meats (deer, duck, turkey) and fish (particularly shellfish like oysters and clams) they ate the corn, beans, squash and pumpkins they grew in their fields.
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Native Americans have long had an immediate relationship with their physical environments. At contact most lived in relatively small units close to the earth, cognizant of its rhythms and resources. They defined themselves by the land, by the sacred places that bounded and shaped their world. They recognized a unity in their physical and spiritual universes, the union of natural and supernatural. Their origin cycles, oral traditions, and cosmologies connected them with all animate and inanimate beings, past and present.
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European settlers brought infectious diseases against which the Native Americans had no natural immunity. Chicken pox and measles, though common and rarely fatal among Europeans, often proved deadly to Native Americans. Smallpox proved particularly deadly to Native American populations.[12] Epidemics often immediately followed European exploration, sometimes destroying entire villages. While precise figures are difficult to arrive at, some historians estimate that up to 80% of some Native populations died due to European diseases.[13]
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The annual enlistment for Native Americans jumped from 7,500 in the summer of 1942 to 22,000 at the beginning of 1945. According to the Selective Service in 1942, at least 99 percent of all eligible Indians, healthy males aged 21 to 44, had registered for the draft. War Department of ficials maintained that if the entire population had enlisted in the same proportion as Indians, the response would have rendered Selective Service unnecessary. The overwhelming majority of Indians welcomed the opportunity to serve. On Pearl Harbor Day, there were 5,000 Indians in the military. By the end of the war, 24,521 reservation Indians, exclusive of officers, and another 20,000 off-reservation Indians had served.
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Some of the tools the Native Americans had to use were the hoe, the maul, and the dibber. The hoe was the main tool used to till the land and prepare it for planting and then used for weeding. The first versions were made out of wood and stone. Then the settlers came and had iron so the Native Americans then used iron hoes and hatchets. The dibble was essentially a digging stick, and was used to plant the seed. Once the plants were harvested they were prepared by the women for eating.
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Native Americans