2. Pre-Columbian America and Indian Culture

American Indian Tribes and their languages. The relations with the white conquerors. Native American Art: jewelry, music, paintings, sand paintings, sculpture, poetry. Indian mythology.

1. Who lived in North America before the white people came?

2. What Indian tribes do you know?

3. What can you tell about Native-American’s Art?

4. What role did Indian Culture play in the development of USA Culture?

5. What inventions we use now were made by Indians?

The Sioux Creation

In 1933 a Sioux Chief named Luther Standing Bear wrote down some of the ancient legends of his people. This one tells how the Sioux people began:

"Our legends tell us that it was hundreds and perhaps thousands of years ago that the first man sprang from the soil in the great plains. The story says that one morning long ago a lone man awoke, face to the sun, emerging from the soil. Only his head was visible, the rest of his body not yet being shaped. The man looked about, but saw no mountains no rivers, no forests. There was nothing but soft and quaking mud, for the earth itself was still young. Up and up the man drew himself until he freed his body from the clinging soil. At last he stood upon the earth, but it was not solid, and his first few steps were slow and uncertain. Bur the sun shone and the man kept his face turned toward it. In time the rays of the sun hardened the face of the earth and strengthened the man and he ran and leaped about, a free and joyous creature. From this man sprang the Dakota nation and, so far as we know, our people have been born and have died upon this plain; and no people have shared it with us until the coming of the European. So this land of the great plains is claimed by the Dakotas as their very own."

3.The First explorers of America

The first Europeans in North America. Christopher Columbus and the explorers from Spain, Portugal, France, Holland, and Britain.

1. Tell about the voyages of Christopher Columbus.

2. Who were the first explorers of America?

3. Why were there no Portuguese colonies in North America?

4. Who found Florida?

5. What is called “The Father of Waters” and who found it?

6. Explain the origin of the name Louisiana?

The captain and the princess

Captain John Smith was the most able of the original Jamestown settlers. An energetic 27- year-old soldier and explorer, he had already had a life full of action when he landed there in 1607. It was he who organized the first Jamestown colonists and forced them to work. If he had not done that the infant settlement would probably have collapsed.

When food supplies ran out Smith set off into the forests to buy corn from the Amerindians. On one of these expeditions he was taken prisoner. According to a story that he told later (which not everyone believed), the Amerindians were going to beat his brains out when Pocahontas, the twelve-year-old daughter of the chief, Powhatan, saved his life by shielding his body with her own. Pocahontas went on to play an important part in Virginia's survival, bringing food to the starving settlers. “She, next under God, " wrote Smith, "was instrument to preserve this colony from death, famine and utter confusion."

In 1609 Smith was badly injured in a gunpowder explosion and was sent back to England. Five years later, in 1614, Pocahontas married the tobacco planter John Rolfe. In 1616 she travelled to England with him and was presented at court to King James I. It was there that her portrait was painted. Pocahontas died of smallpox in 1617 while waiting to board a ship to carry her back to Virginia with her newborn son. When the son grew up he returned to Virginia. Many Virginians today claim to be descended from him and so from Pocahontas.