Indelible Connections

I am welcome back to episode two of the Maple History Podcast. I'm Christina Austin, your host, and today I have my sister-in-law, Vanessa Austin as my guest. Hello, nice to be here. So today we'll explore some of the ways that the Indigenous world was connected by taking a look at some of the shared creation stories, trade networks, and languages. Last time we left off with an understanding of when people came to North America. So today we will talk about what happened once they were here and how small groups of people started building what became some pretty powerful nations by the time the Europeans came over. These bonds of religious beliefs, stories, trade, and shared language helped keep strong kinship networks alive, which kept the balance of power on the continent tipping heavily to the Indigenous nations well into the 18th and in some places into the 19th century. That's getting way ahead of ourselves though. So let's start with the ancient groups of these connections. I'm excited to hear about it. So we're going to start off in the States actually, and it's remarkable just how much ancient people traveled in North America and different groups definitely had their respective territories. But these trade networks covered vast amounts of territory. We're going to look at a specific example of the Hopewell culture, which is centered in the Ohio Valley. Some of the scholars use the term Hopewell Exchange, and I think that gives a really good base note of their influence from as far south as Florida to as far north as Ontario between Lake Superior and Manitoba. And they even go west into the prairies. The whole group was Hopewell Exchange. So they had an influence. Okay. Yeah. So they were centered in Ohio. So they were centered in Ohio, and then they like up into New York and down into almost down to Texas. And it's huge. It's huge. Yeah. And all the way and into the prairies and like the sub-arctic part of the prairies is where they were. So when I hear exchange, I hear it is it infers that there's some trading involved. Exactly. Okay. All right. So they weren't like colonizing, if that makes sense. No, they were elaborating. Exactly. Okay. Let's keep going. I'm excited to hear more. So the timeframe for this Hopewell culture is it can't quite be pinned down to an exact year because again, it's archaeology. It's all these you have to carbon-date stuff. So the timelines are about 100 to 200 BC, and they lasted up until 400 to 500 AD or CE, depending on which term you want to use. So to put that in the context of a Western mindset or if you're the type of person that thinks about the Roman Empire too much, the start of Hopewell was when the Romans were fighting Hannibal in Carthage, and the end was when the barbarians were at the gates and Rome fell. So that's where they that's around the same time. That's really interesting because usually when we think about indigenous history, we only think it about it in terms of when the Europeans came over. Not before that because I don't think I'd ever thought beyond that. So it's really interesting to hear. Especially up in North America. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So interesting to know. Because you think about the Incas and things because you know when they had the cities and they had an empire, but not don't think of it in the same way up here. No we don't. I know I have it. So the Hopewell people were traveling up and down North America trading with all different early nations that were around. And they were acquiring things like seashells from the Gulf of Mexico, silver from Ontario, obsidian from Yellowstone. And it's really difficult to know what the Hopewell people were really like. But what archeologists can say with some confidence is that they were hierarchical. And they know this because of burial mounds. And that is the key. So the top people possibly achieve for a high priest, they can't know where the people that were buried in the burial mounds. And then the rest of the people were cremated. They had these ceramic cremation pits in there as well. So that's always all this. So just so unclear. With the hierarchy, you mentioned that depending on where you were on that hierarchy, you'd be buried. And if you were lower in the hierarchy, you'd be cremated. Yeah. Okay. And so what they would do, so you would, they would be buried. I'm going to get into it just a little bit. Sorry. I'll let them out. No, it's okay. No, it's a fair question. Because the mounds are the key for how we know about this cultural exchange that was happening. Okay. All over. All right. The east and central areas. So the mounds were full of grave goods. And in one short article I read, some workmen were using a bulldozer in an area that had an undiscovered mound in Indiana and basically cracked it open like a hill egg. Yeah. And so they cracked open and then I said, I quote, a treasure trove of silver and copper poured from the ground. And a side note, the workmen grabbed a bunch of the items and got arrested for looting. I say, should be. So that so they would excavate that and they had so archaeologists have not found evidence of major warfare happening during this time. I'm sure there was fighting because of humans, but the major influence of Hopel was cultural rather than conquering. So hence the term the Hopel exchange rather than an empire. And another term they use is the Hopel interaction sphere, which I think is also really illustrative of what was happening. They traded luxury goods like awesome little carved panthers, silver hand and even food items. Food items are harder to have an archaeological record of because of how they decay. But there weren't panthers in Ohio. I don't think there were any ways. They're panthers in Ohio. I don't think so. Now I'm like, wait a second. So does this mean that those are people that came up from South America because there are panthers in the Amazon? No, they weren't. They weren't. Okay. They didn't migrate from there. So they were. That's where my head went because then like how do they know about panthers? Yeah. They traveled down there. I'm almost imagining that they would send out emissaries. Probably. They were just always moving around. I can't quite figure out exactly how they did know because I'm guessing maybe through all the, I know that they typically settled along waterways. Exactly. So rivers. Okay. So a lot of these mounts are on rivers or near rivers. So those were the items that they brought back the little silver hand and carved panthers and luxury items like that. But they exported more bow and arrow technology, which is an absolute game changer, kiln fired pottery and most important of all, for our purposes and understanding is religion. So why I say religion is the most important factor in this exchange is because of how we are able to make these connections so clearly. The mortuary mounds that the Hopewell people built as part of their burial rituals are what makes these archaeological sites so interesting. In Ohio, there's a national park. You can walk around these huge mounds that had held these artifacts and human remains. And these mounds are all over the continent. There's one in Peterborough. You're kidding me. I'm not kidding. What? There's mounds in Saskatchewan that are all over the place. It sounds like we need a road trip. Yeah. They have like a, there's, I'm pretty sure they have a plaque. A mess. You know, those little roadside things. Yeah. So that what the mounds were, they were log tombs that were built. And they were buried either whole, sorry, this is going to get gross or they were left out on a scaffold later to be defleashed so that they could be buried in a bundle of bones. Sorry, it's gross. Oh, that's so because I know that, you know, I don't think it's gross. And I imagine that people listening would want to hear for about this discining because it sounds well, they, they let them because they're on the scaffold, they let them decay. Oh, okay. So they put them out to decay and then they're not buried until they've decayed down to bones. And also if they, if they did live in that area, so they would let the body decay and bring it back as like an ossuary bundle. Wow. To be put in a tomb with the grave goods to be like so that they can be properly honored. And that's so different from other cultures that we hear about, right? Like when we hear about the ancient Egyptians, so it's a lot of mummifying and wrapping them in linen, I think it is that they used and but this sounds way more efficient to me, frankly. Yeah. What nature do is absolutely. So like I said, the people in the mountains that were buried, they were important people and but regular people were cremated. And the mount centers were typically near rivers like we were saying, okay, because they were the highways of the world. There was, that was just the most efficient and safest way to travel. So what is believed that is that hope well people traveled far and wide from the Ohio River up north and all the way over pretty far west into the plains. And they left a massive cultural influence that continued on into the early modern era when one of the last beasts of souls was held by the Anishinaabe and newly dispersed Wendat people in 1670s. So in a later episode when I talk about the Wendat people, they're the Huron people. The Feast of Souls was an integral part of their culture, understanding of the dead. And that's how we can kind of, that's one of the ways that we can look back and use kind of the ethnography of understanding Wendat people to look back at what the hope well people did. Because you people spoke to and wrote down what the Wendat people were doing, whereas you can't, we don't have that cultural record from the people that lived in hope well, because they didn't have a written record. They didn't have a written. So for the listeners, can you tell me what ethnography means? It's kind of a combination of history, linguistics, anthropology, sociology. And so when they study a culture that didn't really have a written record. Okay. So it's kind of, it's kind of like a upgraded historian. I'm not an ethnographer. No, it's in tribe. I guess when I hear ethnography, I think ethnic and then I was trying to piece it together. So it's just, thank you for explaining that. Yeah, so it's the ethnohistory. Okay. And ethnographer would probably be more someone who has an archaeology background and an anthropology background, which would be great for this type of community because of all the pottery that you were talking about. Yeah, and the bones and yeah. Okay. So let's hear more about that. I'm not going to tell you more about ethnography, but I'll tell you more about other stuff. No, both the bones and the pottery. Sorry. This one doesn't have a ton of pottery. This, the, when I was reading about the hope, it was all about the burial mounds, which and the other great good. Okay. Pottery is often in, they're not called, they don't have trash heaps. You know, in archaeology, the term. There's like a waste area in villages. And that's where you find the pottery because they're broken. So it's your travies. Okay. There's, there's a special archaeology term, and I can't remember what it is, but that's where you often find pottery because it doesn't hold up. Okay. So archaeologist can't, archaeologists can't piece together exactly what the belief system was though. The Canadian archaeologist Bruce trigger said archaeologists can only, can study only what human beings made or used, not what they thought or did. So we can only speculate what these people believe based on our understanding of similar practices that indigenous cultures carry through them to the near modern era. So why does the hope well influence spirit, sphere matter? After all is to believe to have ended around 500 CE, possibly to warfare, climate change, honestly, who knows? All the books basically list a few possibilities of what had happened for their demise to spursal. And then they shrug their shoulders with a scholarly, I don't know, but what I believe it shows is that there weren't just pockets of civilizations completely independent of one another, but these people traveled around, knew each other well enough to share deeply held spiritual beliefs that changed how other groups buried their dead. So the burial mounds all over North America, the eastern part of anyhow, are of how we know they had that influence amongst each other. So it would be quite intimate. And also because of the nature of the travel when visitors came, they would have to stay there a long time. It's not like a flying visit. It's not like a weekend. They would stay for a season. That's what I think anyways. I'm kind of guessing. Yeah. I mean, I think that would make sense because of the right, how difficult it was to travel and depending on when they left. And you mentioned that the rivers were the highways. Right. Right. And so I imagine if things were because of the location of where they were, things would freeze over. Right. These these water ways would freeze over. So I'm wondering if that's when they'd have to stay. Yeah. Especially if they especially ones that went North when they went South because the different rivers in Ohio meet up with the Mississippi, they would go and that that highway is there that highway that river is just enormous. And I don't think it freezes. Does it? It's too south. I wouldn't know. I'm going to say it doesn't. Okay. Let's go with it. So there's a lot of interactions between different indigenous nations carried on into the modern era while evolving to meet the needs of the people. So one of the most common creation stories that many nations hold as how the world started is the sky woman myth. So this is the one where we get the term Turtle Island from that many people call North America if they're continuing their own people's understanding of the continent. So for indigenous people or if other people are choosing to reject the colonial view. So this story is told over a large part of Canada including parts of the maritime's Quebec, Ontario, the prairies and the northern territories. The bare bones of the story is that sky woman named Atnatsic fell or was pushed depending on the story through a hole in the sky. She landed on a turtle's back that was swimming in a vast lake or sea. She was aided in her fall by some birds and then some several animals dove to the bottom of the lake to grab some earth to create a world. And the muskrat was a successful creature that grabbed the hand of love earth. And this bit of earth was used to create an island that is what we call North America. So there's a lot more of the story but I will expand on that in a later episode when I talk about the Wendat and Honnashone people because it deserves a lot of time because there's so many different versions and those versions are illustrative of how their culture evolved and how they used it in their way of being. Their life was a term they use a lot. They use the term life ways. Another term they often use is ways of knowing and I found that a really helpful term to kind of give kind of a perspective of how they incorporate things into their day to day life just like a Christian life way. We just kind of do it. We kind of live in a Christian world. So another figure in creation stories that's used among several nations is the character of Gluscap. Gluscap to the Mi'kma, Nana Bosch or Nana Boso to the Ojibwe in Wiskajak to the Cree. They all have different names but they're kind of thought of as the same being. This figure is who gave the earth and the animals their form and specifically to the Mi'kma people and other maritime nations down the coast into what is the United States. Gluscap was created by grandfather's son by lightenbolts which is pretty cool. And again I'm going to defer again because I'm going to go into more detail because each of these different nations deserve time especially these stories they deserve a lot more expansion. The last great connector of these indigenous nations that are in what is now Canada are the language families for the many many different indigenous languages. It is interesting that on the west coast there are a lot more individual languages rather than large language groups like on the east coast in more central areas. So for example the Chinatsa where's our heart? KT-UNA-XA. Yeah. KT-N-A-U-XA. Yeah. It's a tough one. Yeah. All I know is it ends with a shot. Europeans called them kutene but obviously that's not what they call themselves. It can't be right. And it's a language isolate so it's completely unique. They didn't have influence from all the other like they just lived there. It's like they were isolated and I found that odd. And some of the main language groups are enup to tuk algonquian at the basket slash denne eerikoyan and suen. And within each of these groupings there are sometimes over a dozen individual languages. So Cree falls under the algonquian category as does mikma. Haudenosaunee, known to us growing up as Iroquois. It's no surprise here they are under the Iroquois group. The Wendat, called Heroin by the Europeans, are also under that group. Athabascan language group includes the denne people of Northwest Territories in northern BC and Yukon. And here things get really interesting. The Apache and Navajo languages are also Athabascan language family. So how did the ancestors of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Geronimo come from the same language grouping as the sub-arctic regions of Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Yukon? Yeah. And that they're not like from Cree or something like more southern like the plains. So this gets into the scholarly deep water of linguists and archaeologists. So linguists called Edward Vada had a hypothesis that the denne language is also connected to ancient Siberian language and the Tlingit language which is spoken in northern BC. And that they all came via Alaska from Siberia about 4,800 years ago. The Tlingit eventually slid off and ended up in northern British Columbia in Alaska. And the group that left the Canadian sub-arctic that are the ancestor of the Apache and Navajo are believed to have left between 852 and 853, which is very specific date for archaeological history. So what happened was there was a huge volcano that spewed a huge amount of ash in that year that devastated the region. This volcano, they have evidence of it like in Ireland. That's how far the ash got. So it was in like Greenland and where was this volcano? The Yukon basically. Like white, they call it the White River region. So it was kind of northern, okay, northern Alberta, Yukon kind of in that zone. So it would have been raining like ash and covered everything. So like the famine would be devastating. So they moved south. So probably a small number of people, maybe a few hundred, made the long south and just carried on and they were the one who came to Navajo in Apache. And when I read about the origins of the Apache and Navajo, I had the same reaction I have when American TV shows mentioned Canada. It's like, oh, they're from here. Yay. Yeah. Yay. Well, when you said Apache immediately I went, yeah, wait a second. Those guys, what? Yeah. They're in the Western movie. Yeah, because it's familiar. Yeah. And it's so familiar. So, and so this is like the linguists can look at the words that they use. The Apache Navajo didn't have words for corn. So they use different, it's really complicated. They use a different word like something berries instead. Like they would, they would kind of negotiate it into their language rather than it being part of their just how they just how they look at the growth of the language. And then they, yeah, I can't get into the stuff that I don't understand. So I'm going to leave it there. Okay. Sounds good. So archaeologists are able to give us an understanding of vast trade networks and social networks that indigenous people maintain for generation after generation. In an article by Adrian Burke and Christian Gates, St. Pierre, they write, Canada's indigenous people were never isolated and could always establish, join, modify, leave or maintain various kinds of interaction networks that functioned at different participation levels in geographic scales. These long established social networks based on reciprocity were important to maintain good relationships with neighbors and keep things relatively peaceful. It is also these social networks that got used and abused by Europeans when they came over in the 15th and 16th centuries. As I move out of the time period where archaeology is the main source of information, I breathe aside relief. Something together, the past by archaeological artifacts and hard to access oral history is a challenge. I'm going to leave today's episode with a quote from my favorite archaeologist, my guy, Bruce Trigger. I spent a lot of time with him lately in a couple of his books. So I feel like I know him. At least I feel like I know his ghost since he passed away about 20 years ago. So this quote highlights the difficulties in understanding a people's ancestral history using archaeology, but also the importance of continuing the study. So that's the indigenous connections before I start getting into talking about the indigenous nations that we would recognize in history. It's really interesting. I really enjoyed it because when you first mentioned that this is what we were going to be talking about, I think I said to you, oh, bearing straight. And you said no before that. After that, after that. Yeah. When I started thinking about it more, I thought, oh, I don't think I've ever thought about the indigenous people's pre-contact because you said at contact and that was really to me, it got me thinking. So I think it's important for all of us to really understand how those cultures intertwine and influence because we can't really understand the more recent history until we fully comprehend where it all came from. Yeah. And their connection. So I'm glad that you started this way because it's important for us to know the full picture rather than just the surface. Yeah. And that we've always, even if you've studied or read about indigenous culture, you're always kind of looking at it through a contact, like a European conquest lens and how we changed who they were, which will be important, but it's also going to, but now we will also be able to see how they changed Europeans. Because it was, it was, it went both ways. And obviously we know how it ends up to this point. There's still growth. Yeah. There's still reconciliation. Absolutely. He still can learn a lot. So yeah. So I wanted to, I want to start with that foundation. And then the next episode, I'm going to be doing a, like, I'm calling it a flying tour of like all, I'm starting in the Arctic and I'm going west and then I'm going east. Perfect. I'm skipping the Haudenosaunee and Wendat, because they're getting their own long, big episodes. As they should. Because then I will be, after that, I will be getting into the European era, or sometimes they call it a global era, which it makes sense because that's when they started getting European goods. I didn't know that they called it a global era. And it was long before Champlain and Cartier. Yeah. And Terrace. Yeah. Sorry. I had to say things about Europeans and I like, oh, before Terrace. Oh, no, I really like that. Thank you. So Vanessa, thank you very much for coming. And I will probably have you on again. Because I don't know that many people. Thanks for having me. You know, plenty of people. It's just, you need to find people that are as nerdy as we are about history. That's what it is. I do know a lot of nerdy people. It's going to be okay.