Indian Ingenuity
by Brief Introduction to Native Woodland Indian Technology of the past compared to that of the modern era and also to a lesser degree, to that of the Euro-American cultures of the colonial era. This study is being done to help eliminate, if not eradicate Native stereotypes and to explore the past as a relevant counterpart to our high tech computer age.
Stereotypes
There are numerous visions of Native Americans, many offer up age old stereotypes of “primitive people” running around half naked carrying huge spears hunting down the vicious buffalo and living in teepees. This “artistic” vision limits the truth and has been recast over and over in movies, cartoons, popular culture and even in places of education, such as museums and our classrooms in textbooks. It demeans an entire race of humans that populated North and South American for thousands of years during which time many controversial events occurred, changes and even changes in modern thought about who these first “Americans” really were.
This portrait was painted in 1838 by George Winter when he visited the Miami and Potawatomi of the Wabash Region. This is how “real” Native women of the period dressed — not in buckskins and braids.
The thought that we can dismiss these people strictly as part of our collective American history, must be changed. These people first of all, have descendants living today. No, they don’t live with ancient traditions in the way that we think of Native people. In most cases, not all, but in many instances, the native people are just part of the general population and have no particular land base or tribal headquarters other than an office or a meeting grounds. The Shawnee of Ohio, The Miami of Indiana, the Potawatomi of Indiana, the Piankeshaw, Wea, Wyandot, and others of the Midwest and Ohio Valley have different organizations that connect them to the past but which are still very much a part of the larger, everyday world that we all live in. Larger tribal organizations such as the League of the Iroquois, the Cherokee, the Navajo, Ute, Pawnee, Sioux and Cheyenne have had more success remaining visual with the public and with the Federal Government as well as retaining some of their ancient lands.
The Miami have a Federally recognized group that has its prime base in Oklahoma, as does the Shawnee. These two groups have state recognized groups that are not recognized by the Federal government nor the Federally recognized group of the same name, officially. Others such as the Wea, Piankeshaw, Peipikokia, Illini, Mingo, and Kickapoo have either been absorbed by larger groups or known by other names in Federallly recognized groups. The political ties are as complex as any issue that has ever been dealt with. Strictly speaking, the modern political groups are not the priority of this article. Their ancestral technology is.
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