["Pomp and Circumstance"]
Before Europeans came to this country,
this land and all of its beauty was home to just one people,
my people, the Native Americans.
My people believe that the Great Spirit, creator of all,
gave us and all living creatures this land,
which we call Turtle Island, to care for and respect.
We believe that all things in this world are connected,
the sky with the earth, the earth with the water,
the water with the sky,
and that the two-legged people are brothers to the four-legged,
to those with wings, to those who swim and crawl.
All of nature is our family.
Scientists believe that thousands of years ago,
people traveled from Asia to North America
and settled all over the land.
These people were the first Native Americans.
Native Americans were here for such a long time
before anyone else.
They believe this has been their home forever.
All of the Native Americans shared a common belief.
They believed that the earth was a gift from the Great Spirit
and that Mother Nature would tend to all of the earth's needs.
For them, the earth was a treasure to respect and share
with the animals, trees, and each other.
This is why Native Americans become angry
when they hear people say that Columbus discovered the Americas.
What he discovered were people already living here.
Sadly, most American settlers believed that the Native Americans
were like savage animals without language or religion,
and this gave them the right to take away Indian homeland.
The Native Americans were advanced in many ways.
In fact, they considered the settlers the primitive ones.
The white Americans did not respect the land or the animals,
and they simply took whatever they wanted,
much more than they needed, without asking or sharing.
Still, the white Americans had the advantage of guns and armies,
and they used them.
Native Americans have always been a very spiritual people.
They have many ceremonies for different events,
like a good fall harvest or the birth of a baby,
or to help a family member recover from illness.
But missionaries who came to the United States
wanted the Indians to honor their God and their religion.
For these reasons and many others,
the history between the United States and the Native Americans
has been a sad one.
But Native Americans today are holding on to their proud heritage,
their languages and their ways,
and other Americans now realize that the Indians were here first,
and that the growth of our country
cost many Native Americans their lives.
What have we learned?
Native Americans lived in North America
thousands of years before Europeans arrived.
Native Americans believe that the earth is a gift from the great spirit,
and that Mother Nature tends to all of the earth's needs.
Today we recognize that the Native American people were here first,
and that we should respect their traditions.
Why do you think the Native Americans treat our environment
with such great respect?
The Legend of Pocahontas
A legend has developed around a young Powhatan girl named Pocahontas.
She was the daughter of Chief Powhatan,
a powerful leader of 200 Indian villages in the area around Virginia.
That part of the story at least is true.
According to the story, Pocahontas had a special dream or a vision
given to her by the great spirit
that white men would one day come to her village,
and that it would be her job to make peace between them and her people.
My name is Pocahontas.
It means playful child, and that's true,
because as a child I loved to play games in the woods
with the other children of my tribe.
We pretended to be panthers and bears
sneaking up on the deer and surprising them.
But one day, as I sat alone gazing at the dark waters,
I saw them, just as in my vision,
great cloud ships slowly approaching our shore.
Somehow I knew that life would change forever.
We watched them quietly for several days,
and the elders decided that we should make ourselves known to them.
I was chosen to go among them,
learn their ways, and teach them our own.
And so I did.
At first, it went well.
The captain, John Smith, and his men were interested in our language and our food,
our medicine and our pipe.
But they asked constantly about a stone they called gold,
and they looked far and wide for signs of it.
Finally, my saddest dream came true.
Fighting broke out between my people and these Englishmen.
They wanted to take our land away and make some of us slaves.
I came of age and assumed my rightful place as a leader of my people.
Even though I tried to make peace,
I was taken prisoner in one of the battles.
I learned to read and write their language,
learned many things about them, their history and their beliefs.
I wore their clothes.
As the settlement called Jamestown grew around us,
it became my new home.
In time, I married John Roth.
He was a kind man, very interested in our ways.
He gathered wild tobacco from the woods and planted it carefully in row upon row.
It was much more tobacco than we would ever need.
But soon after he harvested it and dried it,
the governor came and asked if I would like to travel across the great water to England.
John packed up his tobacco to take with us.
I felt sad and excited at the same time.
I sailed away from my people and carried my message of peace
to the Queen of England herself, woman to woman,
knowing I had done my duty to fulfill the vision given to me by the Great Spirit.
Many Faces, One Heart
Different tribes have their own ways of life,
their own leaders and governments, rituals and ceremonies.
Many of these differences were gifts from Mother Nature.
Some parts of the land are warm, other parts are freezing.
In some places the land is a desert, and in others it is lush and green.
But we did not feel that one place was better or worse than another.
We made good lives on the land wherever we lived.
Woodland people lived in the forest, where they hunted, gathered, fished and farmed.
Indian farmers did not plow up the land, but planted crops among the trees of the forest.
They produced hundreds of varieties of crops, including corn, beans and squash,
but never picked more than they needed to eat.
Hundreds of Indian tribes, like the Sioux, lived in and along the Great Plains.
They moved from place to place, following and hunting buffalo.
Special prayers were said before the hunt,
thanking the buffalo for all the wonderful things it provided,
food, clothing, moccasins and teepees.
A teepee is a waterproof shelter made from the hide, or skin, of the buffalo.
The Great Plains Indians were careful not to waste any part of the buffalo that could be used.
East of the plains, the soil and weather were better for farming.
Some tribes, like the Mandan, traded with the Sioux.
The Mandan would give corn and beans in exchange for buffalo meat and skins.
The southwestern part of the United States was home to more than ten major tribes.
Here, as elsewhere, they made a good life for themselves.
They did not consider the desert-like land harsh, rugged or difficult to live in.
The Rio Grande was home to the Anasazis.
They built huge houses with many hundreds of rooms into the steep cliff face of the canyon.
The Spanish named these people the Pueblo, which means village.
The Native Americans who lived in the Pacific Northwest had an abundance of so many good things around them
that every year the chief invited another tribe for a special ceremony called a potlatch.
The two tribes exchanged gifts, food and stories and competed to be the most generous.
Native Americans living in the cold northernmost territories led a different kind of life.
They learned to make shelters from snow and ice, hunted walrus, whales and seals to get meat and oil,
and made waterproof clothing out of animal hides that kept them warm in temperatures that could fall 40 degrees below zero.
So while all Native Americans depended on and respected nature,
nature offered many different ways of life for the Native Americans.
What have we learned about Native Americans?
Woodland Native Americans lived in the forest where they hunted, gathered, fished and farmed.
The Indians of the Great Plains moved from place to place as needed, following and hunting buffalo.
At a special ceremony called a potlatch, two tribes exchanged gifts, food and stories and competed to be the most generous.
Before contact with the settlers, how was Native American life different from most of our lives today?
Tecumseh and the Trail of Tears
It was clear to the Native American people that the white man made many promises to us, but he kept only one.
He promised to take our land, and he did.
Many treaties and promises between the Native Americans and the white Americans were broken.
Native Americans across the country were forced to fight to defend our homes, our families and our land.
Men such as Tecumseh and his brother Tanskwatawa of the Shawnee Indian Nation rose up to protect their people.
As American settlers moved west, they asked their government to make the Indians move off their homeland.
The government used treaties or written agreements to do this.
Many promises made in the treaties were not kept by the United States government.
If the Indians did not agree to the treaties, soldiers were sent in to kill them.
A Shawnee chief, Tecumseh, and his brother Tanskwatawa knew that the only way they could survive was to bring many tribes together.
Tecumseh, whose name means shooting star, worked to form a league of tribes from Florida to Canada that would stand together to defend their land from invasion.
Tecumseh believed that the U.S. government would have to listen to the united tribes and that war could be avoided.
But while he was away from his village, soldiers came.
In the famous Battle of Tippecanoe, Tecumseh's brother, thought by many to be a holy man or prophet, was defeated.
Sad and angry, Tecumseh joined the British army against the United States.
But in a battle two years later, he was killed.
Without Tecumseh, all hope of a united nation of Indian tribes vanished.
In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act.
This law said that Native Americans had to go and live on areas of land west of the Mississippi River in Indian territory or reservations.
A reservation was land that had been reserved or set aside for the Native Americans.
A Cherokee named Sequoia had invented a system for writing the Cherokee language.
The Cherokee wrote their own constitution in which they declared their independence.
They took their battle to court.
The Supreme Court agreed with the Cherokee's argument.
But President Jackson ignored the court's decision and said the Cherokee had to give up their land anyway.
Forced by soldiers, the Cherokee traveled 1,700 miles from their homeland in Georgia to Oklahoma.
They were allowed to bring only what they could carry.
The sick traveled in wagons and some rode horses, but everyone else walked.
The Cherokee walked through snow and freezing rain.
At night, they slept on the ground with little to keep them warm.
Thousands fell ill and died on this terrible journey which the Cherokee called the Trail of Tears.
Many other tribes suffered their own Trail of Tears as they were forced to move from their homelands to reservations.
By 1890, Congress had forced most of the Native Americans in the United States to move to reservations.
Any who refused were eventually defeated in battle.
The expansion of the United States westward caused great suffering for the Native Americans.
Let's review.
Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief, worked to form a league of tribes that would stand together to defend their land from invasion.
The Indian Removal Act said that Native Americans had to go and live in Indian territory or on reservations west of the Mississippi.
The Cherokee were forced to travel 1,700 miles through snow and freezing rain.
Thousands died on this terrible journey called the Trail of Tears.
What are some ways that the pioneers and Native Americans might have cooperated and shared?
Who are the Native Americans?
Native Americans continue to care for Mother Earth just as the Great Spirit told us to so many moons ago.
Across Turtle Island, Native people are reaching back to their old ways with great pride and hope,
for we know that as long as we continue to honor our past and ourselves, the shadows of our ancestors will fall sweetly upon this land.
Today, there are over 600 Indian tribes and communities both off and on Indian reservations in 37 states.
They represent almost all of the tribes that lived at the time the Europeans began settling in North America.
Throughout the late 1960s, Native Americans organized many protests to attract the attention of both the United States government and its people.
In 1968, the Indian Civil Rights Act was passed.
This finally gave all Native Americans full rights as citizens.
In 1976, the Indian Self-Determination Act gave Native Americans more control over their reservations.
It is important to Native Americans that they do not forget their traditional ways of life.
For many years at reservation schools, Native American children were taught only in English, not in their native languages.
Today, Native Americans are working to make sure that their children learn the language, religion, and history of their tribe in school.
They have also fought hard for the right to teach their traditional beliefs and to participate in traditional ceremonies.
Native Americans hold parades and celebrations where they perform ancient dances and ceremonies dressed in traditional costume.
This is a way for the tribes to remember and celebrate their sacred ways of life while sharing with others.
Native Americans are also very concerned about the impact of the modern world on the environment.
They have much to teach about living and adapting to the environment without destroying it.
As lawyers, activists, performers, farmers, teachers, in every walk of life,
they are committed to honoring Native American history and preserving the Indian way of life.
Let's review what we've learned about today's Native Americans.
Today, there are over 600 Indian tribes and communities in the United States, both off and on Indian reservations in 37 states.
In 1968, the Indian Civil Rights Act was passed.
This finally gave all Native Americans full rights as citizens.
Native Americans have fought hard for the right to teach their traditional beliefs and to participate in traditional ceremonies.
Find out more about a particular Indian tribe, their history, customs, and way of life.
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