Similarities between native american and west african culture in the 1400s

Three Worlds, Three Views: Yet all residents of the region shared two important traits. First, they lived and worked in a natural environment unlike any other in the American colonies. Second, like humans everywhere, their presence on the landscape had profound implications for the natural world.

Three Worlds, Three Views: Yet all residents of the region shared two important traits. First, they lived and worked in a natural environment unlike any other in the American colonies. Second, like humans everywhere, their presence on the landscape had profound implications for the natural world.

Exploring the ecological transformation of the colonial South offers an opportunity to examine the ways in which three distinct cultures—Native American, European, and African—influenced and shaped the environment in a fascinating part of North America.

The Native American World Like natives elsewhere in North America, those in the South practiced shifting seasonal subsistence, altering their diets and food gathering techniques to conform to the changing seasons. In spring, a season which brought massive runs of shad, alewives, herring, and mullet from the ocean into the rivers, Indians in Florida and elsewhere along the Atlantic coastal plain relied on fish taken with nets, spears, or hooks and lines.

In autumn and winter—especially in the piedmont and uplands—the natives turned more to deer, bear, and other game animals for sustenance. Because they required game animals in quantity, Indians often set light ground fires to create brushy edge habitats and open areas in southern forests that attracted deer and other animals to well-defined hunting grounds.

The natives also used fire to drive deer and other game into areas where the animals might be easily dispatched. To clear farmland, the natives used fire and stone axes to remove smaller brush and timber. They then stripped the bark a process known as girdling from larger trees so that they sprouted no leaves and eventually died.

Native farmers primarily women then planted corn, beans, and squash together in hills beneath the dead and dying trees. Farming seems to have allowed native populations to increase in the millennium before European contact.

Some of the larger native cultures probably numbered in the tens of thousands. Old fields then had to lie fallow until they recovered some fertility and could be planted again. In addition, the natives had to store seeds, manage harvests, and distribute surplus crops, all of which required complex social and political organization.

And, as several southeastern cultures seem to have discovered, a diet too rich in corn led to nutritional deficiencies and poor health. Thus, agriculture had to be blended proper proportion with hunting, fishing, and gathering wild foods in order to ensure survival.

Lean times were inevitable. However, they did not regard land as property that could be transferred in perpetuity to another individual or group.

Native culture also did not encourage the unrestricted accumulation of land or other material goods.

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For most southern Indians, an ideal chieftain or leader was one who regularly distributed great stores of food, animal skins, or other valuable items within the community. Generosity—not individual wealth—conferred status, fostered allegiances, and helped maintain the communal good.

Long before the arrival of Europeans, native people traded items between themselves and with more distant cultures. Trade, however, was more than simply an economic enterprise.

Before any items changed hands, traders often ate together, smoked tobacco, or practiced other rituals designed to indicate friendship. In such an atmosphere of hospitality the exchange of goods became a means for expressing good will, a vehicle for negotiation, and a way to engage in diplomacy. Native people believed that everything in nature—plants and animals as well as inanimate objects such as rocks and shells—possessed spiritual power.

Consequently, those who hunted animals, farmed, or gathered wild foods had to observe certain guidelines and practice particular rituals designed to demonstrate respect for the spiritual world.

One of the most prominent rituals was the Green Corn Ceremony, which coincided with the ripening of maize. Modern Americans sometimes regard such rituals as evidence that Indians practiced conservation or had an innate understanding of ecology.

Though such practices might indeed promote sound environmental practices, they could also have the opposite effect.

In all likelihood, their native belief system served a more subtle and practical function. In the South—as elsewhere in North America—Indians had to rely on and therefore destroy plants and animals that they regarded as spiritual kin.

The various rituals allowed them to do so without violating a sacred relationship between people and the natural world. The native world was not a place of ecological perfection.

When bad weather led to poor crops, natives had to rely more on game and wild plants. In regions of intensive agriculture, such as along the river floodplains of the piedmont and mountains, Indian farmers sometimes depleted soils and had to move their villages to more suitable lands.

By the time Europeans arrived in the South, old fields, open forests subjected to periodic burns, and local fluctuations in game animal populations all attested to the native presence.

Within the context of their culture and belief system, southern Indians simply did what was necessary to subsist and survive.Conduct research on West African and Native American religious beliefs, economies, and societies up to Note any similiarities and initiativeblog.comn how the environment in which these people lived contributed to their cultural development.

The Americas, West Africa, and Europe •nomadic •Aztec •Anasazi •Pueblo •Iroquois •Benin •Kongo •Islam •Christianity •Reformation •Renaissance On the eve of their interaction, Native American, West African, and European peoples lived in complex societies.

The interaction of these forming American history and culture. Similarities and Differences between Western Africans and Native Americans Cultural Development Native Americans Economy Western Africa Societies Native Americans and West Africans both had a lot of spiritual gods and nature had a lot of parts in religion and belief Similarities Native Americans West African followed simple Islamic cultures in .

Similarities and Differences between Western Africans and Native Americans Cultural Development Native Americans Economy Western Africa Societies Native Americans and West Africans both had a lot of spiritual gods and nature had a lot of parts in religion and belief Similarities Native Americans.

Diversity of Native American Groups. Every Native American tribe has their own history, culture, and art. Different Strokes for Different Folks. Lifestyles varied greatly. Most tribes were domestic, Native American tribes built homes and shelter according to the climate, agriculture, and materials of their environment.

There are many Native American Cultures. The Seneca, Choctaw, Algonquin and Cherokee are from the Eastern states. Pueblo, Navajo and Hopi are in the Southwest.

The Mandan, Sio ux, Assiniboine.