August 1, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, before settlers arrived, and before maps labeled native nations, indigenous communities had already shaped the land we now call America. Their history reaches back thousands of years, far beyond the record books. Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson, a Harvard-trained biologist and author of They Had Names: Tracing the History of the North American Indigenous People, explores how genetics and archaeology are helping fill in the early chapters of indigenous history in North America. His work adds new insight into the deep roots of the Native American story and the origins of the people who shaped the continent long before colonization.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories.
The show where America is the Star and the American
People coming to you from the city where the West
beginns Fort Worth, Texas. The pre Columbian history of the
Americas has remained one of the most mysterious eras of
the human story, or so we've been taught. Here to
(00:30):
tell the story is doctor Nathaniel Jeanson, who holds a
PhD in cell and developmental biology from Harvard. He is
also the author of They Had Names, Tracing the History
of the North American Indigenous People. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I grew up knowing next to nothing about pre European
North America. Because I was homeschooled. We spent plenty of
time supplementing the curriculum with books from the local Racine,
Wisconsin Public library and with activities to learn about Native
American cultures at the time of European contact. As a youth,
I reveled in teepees and wigwams and longhouses, but especially
(01:13):
in weapons and warpaint, buckskins and moccasins, and all the
other clever ways that the indigenous people came up with
to survive and thrive in North America. Yet lingering in
the background was an empty void for the time period
preceding the arrival of the Pilgrims. Who was here, what
(01:34):
were they doing?
Speaker 1 (01:35):
What happened?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I went off to a small Christian high school in
tiny Union Grove, Wisconsin, where history class made the void
even bigger and put tangible categories on the darkness that
I could not grasp. For Europe, we were awash in
maps of Greeks, Romans, Germans, and Franks. We watched the
maps change as one kingdom rose and fell after another.
(02:00):
We learned the names of the kings and conquerors, Alexander
the Great, Caesar, Augustus, Charlemagne. We were bored with dates
and facts, specific signposts of a larger narrative that unfolded
over thousands of years. Yet in North America I had
no maps, no visuals of the rise and fall of kingdoms,
(02:23):
no names of rulers and heroes, no chronological list of
dates and facts. It wasn't boring, it was a mystery.
My family heritage made this mystery even more vexing. My
mother's relatives lived in Germany. We'd visit them about once
a year. In Germany, Old castles and old cathedrals were everywhere.
(02:45):
It was like a gong that kept ringing each time
I turned my head, reminding me that Europe had an
old history. Back in the States, I'd turned my head
and there was silence. Yes, I could visit Plymouth Plantation
and other posts contact sites, but where were the pre
contact ruins? Where were the reminders of thousands of years
(03:06):
of Native American history? I lived with this void for
most of my life. About ten years ago, the void
began to be illuminated. I moved to smalltown Burlington, Kentucky,
visited our local library and wandered through the history section
when Charles Mann's book fourteen ninety one just happened to
(03:27):
catch my eye. The subtitle promised something I had been
looking for much of my life, new revelations of the
Americas before Columbus. From Man, I learned that there were
a lot more people here in the Americas than originally thought,
and then after Europeans arrived, eighty percent to ninety percent
(03:48):
of them disappeared. I also learned that these masses of
people transformed their environments in ways no one had realized before.
Even and the Amazon was not the pristine wilderness we
were once led to believe it was cultivated like a garden.
Is interesting professionally, I'm a biologist and geneticist. About seven
(04:12):
years ago, I was trying to work out the details
for the family tree of humanity, a family tree based
on DNA. Where to put the start for the tree
and how was the generation by generation history of humanity
embedded in the branches? The answers emerged thanks to a
lesson I had learned from Charles Mann's book. I knew
(04:33):
the Native American population had collapsed after Columbus. Where was
the genetic smoking gun of this event? I eventually discovered it,
and then the answers to my other questions fell into place.
But the genetics of Native Americans weren't just a useful
tool to a bigger scientific pursuit. Native American DNA itself
(04:55):
held secrets, shocking ones that I would soon learn to
the pre European past of this continent. Over the last
several years, I've dug deep into the genetics of the
indigenous peoples of the Americas, as well as into their
linguistic relationships, archaeological ruins, and even their own histories of migration.
(05:17):
I've visited sites across the country. I've even been invited
to speak on these new discoveries to a gathering of
one of the more famous tribes of the Great Plains,
the Lakota Soup. The narrative that you're about to hear
represents the results of this thrilling, frustrating, and sometimes terrifying
quest for answers. The earliest North American civilization arose of
(05:39):
all places in northeastern Louisiana. You can still visit Poverty
Point and its mounds and concentric half circles of earthworks.
It might not seem as impressive today, but three thousand
years ago it was part of an economic network stretching
six hundred and twenty miles. Just for prospective, if you
(06:00):
go six hundred and twenty miles due north of Poverty Point,
you end up almost in Wisconsin. Six hundred and twenty
miles to the northeast takes you into Virginia. Going six
hundred and twenty miles due east puts you on the Atlantic.
The builders of Poverty Point knew the sky. They knew
it so well that they align their earthwork constructions to it,
(06:23):
specifically to the equinoxes by the seven hundred's BC, poverty
point was fading into the annals of history. A few
centuries later, another group of builders, equally conscious of the heavens,
erected another network of mounds. The epicenter of the Hopewell
culture was Ohio. Several sites, Newark to the east of Columbus,
(06:47):
Chilicothe to the south of Columbus, and Fort Ancient to
the northeast of Cincinnati are now recognized UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Hopewell builders constructed geometric mounds, circles, octagons, and squares. One
of the new Work earthworks is aligned to the eighteen
(07:08):
point six year cycles of the Moon. I didn't even
know that the moon had eighteen point six year cycles,
but these guys did, and they moved large amounts of
earth to permanently record these phenomena.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
When we come back more of the story here on
our American Stories. Plea habib here, and I'd like to
encourage you to subscribe to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts,
the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get our podcasts.
(07:44):
Any story you missed or want to hear again can
be found there daily again. Please subscribe to the our
American Stories podcast anywhere you get your podcasts. It helps
us keep these great American stories coming. And we continue
(08:10):
with our American stories and with doctor Nathaniel Jeanson. Let's
pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
By the eighty four hundreds, Hopewell was gone. And this
is where the story gets interesting, because this is where
genetics enters the picture and we get answers to the
question of who is here. For the past eight years,
I have been using male inherited Y chromosome DNA to
study Native American history. In other words, I have been
(08:39):
following paternal genealogies with genetics. Today, in North America, all
the Native American Y chromosome lineages are younger than the
fall of Hopewell. When Poverty Point and Hopewell were flourishing,
none of the contemporary genetic lineages existed in the Americas.
In other words, genetics reveals the existence of invaders. The
(09:04):
eighty four hundreds mark a crucial turning point in the Americas.
Whoever lived before, whoever rose and fell, their origins, their
genealogical relationships have all disappeared from the Y chromosome genetic record.
I don't know who built Poverty Point. I don't know
who built Hope well, but I do know who invaded.
(09:25):
Just a few centuries after Christ, in the eighty four hundreds,
in Europe, the Roman Empire was beginning to crumble. Germanic
tribes were invading from the east, an obscure but fierce
Central Asian people, The Huns also rampaged through Europe and
(09:45):
accelerated the fall of the Romans. It was relatives of
the Huns who also want the opposite direction eastward, away
from Europe, away from Central Asia, away from China, across
the Bearing Strait into the Americas. And just like the Huns,
they left destruction in their wake, but their descendants also
(10:06):
left construction and creation in their wake. On the Iowa
side of the Mississippi River, just across from Prairie Dushine, Wisconsin,
sits Effigy Mounds National Monument. These mounds aren't geometric. Instead,
they are shaped like animals or people. They don't seem
to be aligned to the heavens, but they do seem
(10:28):
to carry a message. When I visited Effigy Mounds National Monument,
I discovered that the park contains several types of mounds,
not just effigy mounds. Effigy Mounds date from the eighty
seven hundreds or later. The other mounds date earlier, even
into the BC era. The older mounds tend to be
(10:49):
found right on the cliffs overlooking the Mississippi, the positions
of prominence the Effigy Mounds are found farther back. It
was obvious to me that the Effigy Mounds could have
been built in many places along the Mississippi, but they
seemed to favor hugging sites already in existence. It made
(11:09):
me think that relatives of the Huns came in, overthrew
whoever was here before, and then tried to stake claims
of legitimacy by taking the mantle of earlier people groups.
I know at least one Contact era Indian tribe who
can trace their ancestry back to the times of the
Effigy Mounds. The Siouan Cataban language grouping includes some of
(11:33):
the more famous tribes of the Great Plains and surrounding
regions Lakota, Dakota, Osage, Crow, Manden, Hidatsa, Asiniboine, and Winnebago.
Their ancestors have a history going back to at least
the eighty eight hundreds, but they weren't the builders of
the effigy mounds in the eighty eight hundreds. The Siouan
(11:55):
Catabins weren't in Wisconsin, but on the Atlantic, near where
modern Washington, d c. Now sits. The eighty four hundreds
invasion of North America wasn't the last. No, I'm not
talking about the arrival of Europeans one thousand years later.
Just a few centuries after the Hunnic invasion, in the
AD nine hundreds, another invasion happened, one of the most
(12:19):
significant because it brought to North America a group of
record keepers whose skills would shine a spotlight on the
formerly dark centuries of the pre European past. In European history,
the eighty nine hundreds aren't as well known as the
eighty four hundreds. The eighty nine hundreds are near the
end of the Viking Era, not the Roman Era, but
(12:41):
there are parallels. During the Middle Ages, migrants from the
East entered the European continent. Magyars, the ancestors of modern Hungarians,
as well as lesser known Turkic groups like the Ogus
and Kipchaks, moved westward from Central Asia. At the same time,
another group of Central Asians moved eastward. The ancestors of
(13:04):
modern Native American groups like the Cheyenne, Blackfeet, Ojibwe, pre
a Nominee, Miami, Potawatamie, Shawnee, Delaware, Narragansett, and others, all
members of the Algic language family. They first landed in
the frigid Alaskan Arctic. They were met by people who
(13:26):
had preceded them At Contact. Members of the Esquimo Aliute
language family resided along the Alaskan coast. Their relatives reached
all the way to Greenland. Genetics plants the Eskimaux Alute
in the New World before the Aljiks arrived. Archaeology suggests
that a group of Eskimo Aliute left Alaska and went
(13:48):
eastward right around the time that the Algic landed. The
Algic's own records speak of a military victory at Contact.
The interior of Alaska was dominated by members of the
aak Athabaskan language family. The ancestors of the Navajo and Apache,
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both of whom belonged to the aak Athabaskan language family,
were likely up north at this time. Genetics indicates that
this cluster of tribes preceded the arrival of the Algics
in North America. They may also have been the losers
in the Algics early clashes. The band of Algic ancestors
didn't migrate across the North American continent as a unified
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group with regular frequency. Splinter groups formed, giving rise to
pockets of tribes encountered at Contact. One of the earliest
splits spawned the lesser known Uruk and Wiok people at Contact.
These tribes were on the northwestern California coast. When they
first broke away, they left the remainder of the tribe
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known as Algonquians, near the Alaska Canada border. In terms
of calendar dates were still in the mid eight eight
nine hundreds. Over the next seventy to one hundred years,
the Algonquin records are troubled. Much evil their words took place. Geographically,
they were likely in what is now British Columbia in
(15:13):
western Canada at Contact. Part of this region was the
domains of members of the Salish language family. Growing up,
I never learned much about the tribes in the Pacific Northwest.
Salish would have been unfamiliar to me. Apparently, the Salish
came to the Northwest from somewhere else their own migration
histories suggest an origin much farther east, perhaps in modern Minnesota,
(15:37):
but by the time the Algonquins arrived, the Salish were
likely in place. Eventually, the much evil subsided, the Algonquins
enjoyed peace, and another splinter group arose. The time frame
is the eighty one thousands. The place the Rocky Mountain
region of modern Idaho and Montana. The people the ancestors
(15:58):
of the Blackfeet. Around the time that the Blackfeet and
Algonquians parted ways, the latter took up farming. In the
first part of the eighty eleven hundreds, the Algonquian farmers
hit a setback, drought and a common reaction to it
internal conflict and separation. At this point, the ancestors of
(16:20):
the Arapaho, Grovon, and Cree left the main body of Algonquians.
I guess this split got rid of the troublemakers, or
at least its separated factions, because the latter half of
the eighty eleven hundreds describe a renewal of the piece.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
And what a rich and complicated tapestry it is. Indeed,
and my goodness, this is not history. You're going to
get anywhere else folks on any dial. And this gives
much more richness, complexity, and wealth to the story of
this country and how it started, and how far back
(17:05):
the very first people who traveled across this country were alive.
The idea of these early settlements in Louisiana seven hundred BC,
Poverty Point, and then Hopewell, Ohio. These are stories I'd
never heard of before. When we come back, more of
the story here on our American stories, and we continue
(18:19):
with our American stories. And you've been listening to doctor
Nathaniel Jeanson. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
By the early eighty twelve hundreds, though the Algonquins were
on the Great Plains where they ran into new enemies, well,
some may have been old enemies. One foe they described
as the North Walkers. I suspect these were the Athabaskans,
originally from up in Alaska and northern Canada, now migrating south,
(18:48):
likely the ancestors of the Navajo and Apache. The Algonquins
used several terms for their enemies, strong stone, snakes, and invaders.
These may have been Shoshone, their linguistic relatives, the Aztecs
of Mexico, arrived with the relatives of the Huns in
(19:08):
the eighty four hundreds. Regardless of who exactly the Algonquins fought.
By the mid eighty twelve hundreds, they tired of war
and went east to the Mississippi. Well, most of them did.
Here again, another subgroup was of a different mind, and
they split off. The ancestors of the Menominee in Cheyenne
(19:29):
formed here in the early to mid twelve hundreds. Later
migrations at the Cheyenne would take them onto the Great Plains.
The poor remaining Algonquins all they sought was relief along
the Mississippi, and all they got was a massacre. The
American Bottom would have been an inviting place to settle.
(19:49):
The climate near modern Saint Louis's temperate and well watered.
Here the Missouri and Mississippi rippers come together, soil was fertile,
game was abundant. But someone else had gotten there first,
somewhat powerful. The Algonquians' own records describe the rulers, but
not with modern tribal names that we would recognize that
(20:11):
Telegas were the ones who, according to the Algonquians, possessed
the east. Today near modern Saint Louis. The ruins at
Kahokia can still be visited by the public. I did
so myself on a balmy spring day last year. Monks Mound,
the largest earthwork in the entire America's, contains twenty two
(20:31):
million cubic feet of dirt. The top of the mound
is one hundred feet in the air. You can see
downtown Saint Louis and the Gateway Arch from its summit.
In terms of population size, Kahokia once boasted a population
of ten thousand to fifteen thousand people. This is small
by modern standards, but by the standards of the eighty
(20:52):
twelve hundreds, when Kahokia was at its peak, it was
as big as London. Kahokia commanded an empire. It was
part of the Mississippian culture, whose reach extended well to
much of the east, from Saint Louis down to the
Gulf coast of Louisiana. From the western Arkansas border to
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the Atlantic coast of South Carolina, the Mississippian peoples ruled
all of what is now considered the Southeast Cohochian influences
were even felt as far north as Astalin, a small
site which sits between modern Madison and Milwaukee. Just off
I ninety four. Monks Mound is a flat topped mound.
(21:37):
The mounds at Asdalin are also flat topped, not geometric
or in the shape of animals. Flat topped mounds can
be found throughout the southeast. Many are still accessible to
the public. I've visited Moundville in Alabama, about one hour
southwest of Birmingham and just south of Tuscaloosa. Moundville hosts
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at least twenty nine mound, many of which are flat topped.
Who built Cohochio? Who were the Mississippians who possessed the
east and massacred the Algonquians when they first arrived at
the American bottom. In seventeen seventy four, a Frenchman by
the name of Lapage Duprats recorded a Native American nation's history,
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a history that resonated with much of what we've just observed.
When Duprats spoke to them, they were north of the
Rio Grande in what is now Louisiana, but according to
one of the tribe's temple keepers, their original homes were
farther south. With respect to the Mississippians, early Europeans noticed
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the eerie resemblance between their mounds and the flat topped
pyramids of Mesoamerica, the temples and crypts of the Aztecs
and Maya Asdalin. The flat topped mound site in Wisconsin
was named as such to recall the Aztec homeland. Dupratz's
(23:02):
interviewee was explicit his people had come from Mexico. They
were not the dominant rulers of meso America, but neighbours
of the Mexican ruling class. When they tired of the
belligerents of the Mexican elite, they sent colonists of their
own to the north. Here in Louisiana and in what
is now the Southeast. This tribe flourished, eventually presiding over
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a region that stretched from the Louisiana Gulf coast to
the Wabash River in Indiana, and from the headwaters of
the Ohio to west of the Mississippi. In other words,
the Natchez, the tribe of Dupratz's interviewee, ruled an area
that sounded very much like the area archaeologists called the
Mississippian culture. The Natches were the people that the Algonquins
(23:50):
called the Telega, the Natches possessed the east. The Natches
also massacred the Algonquians when the Algonquins had asked for, say,
passage across the Mississippi. Do you recall the Siouan Catabans,
the ancestors of people like the Lakota, Osage and a Sinaboine.
Do you remember that they were on the Atlantic in
(24:12):
the eighty eight hundreds. Obviously they didn't stay there if
some of their descendants were famous tribes of the wild West.
By the late eighty thirteen hundreds, the Omaha, Ponkaw, Osage, Kansas,
and Koppaw weren't quite to the rolling prairies of Kansas
and Oklahoma. Instead, they were at the mouth of the Ohio.
(24:34):
In other words, they must have passed through Natchez territory
at some point between the eighty eight hundreds and late
thirteen hundreds. The Mississippian Empire wasn't permanent. Long before Europeans
reached the area around Saint Louis, Kahokia had faded into
the sunset. The first signs of Mississippian collapse were in
(24:55):
the north, Asdalin was burned in the early eighty twelve hundreds.
Kahokia fell by the early thirteen hundreds, along with Moundville
and Alabama. Over the next two centuries before contact, archaeology
paints a chaotic picture of the former Mississippian domains in
the southeast, with one archaeologist describing societies appearing and disappearing
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in a pattern comparable to the blinking lights on a
Christmas tree. What happened? The Algonquian records hold the critical clues.
After the initial massacre of the Algonquins at the hand
of the Natchez, the Algonquins found allies who came from
the north, from the very area where Astalin had just
(25:41):
been burned. The Algonquin records are somewhat ambiguous as to
who these allies were. Some have speculated that they were
members of the Iroquoian language family. I suspect that they
were Sue and Catobins, ancestors of the Omaha ponca Osage
Kansas and Paul, who joined the Algonquians and together defeated
(26:03):
the Natchez at Kahokia and then continued south to the
mouth of the Ohio. In other words, the Siu and
Catobins started at the Atlantic in the late eighty eight hundreds,
and then over the next few centuries they migrated westward,
likely just south of the Great Lakes in order to
avoid the advancing Natchez Empire. Then in the late eighty
(26:26):
twelve hundreds, a group joined the Algonquians and headed south,
leaving others like the Winnebago in Wisconsin and the ancestors
of the Lakota and Dakota in what is now Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
And my goodness, it's a constant story of struggle, of migration,
of battle, of conquest and reconquest. Just hearing the story
of what the Natchez tribe did to the Algonquins, I
love that line. The societies at this time were peering
and disappeared in a manner that resembled lights on a
(27:03):
Christmas tree. When we come back more of the complicated,
the rich, beautiful story here on our American stories. And
(27:37):
we continue with our American stories and with doctor Nathaniel Jeanson,
who holds a PhD in sell and developmental biology from Harvard.
He's also the author of They Had Names, Tracing the
history of the North American Indigenous people. Let's pick up
where he last left off.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Because of the Algonquian records. We even have the names
of the rulers who were responsible for the Allied victory
over the Natchez, the greatest battle and victory in all
of pre European North America. Their names followed the typical
descriptive Native American naming practice, recalled some of the Contact
era names like sitting bull, crazy horse, and man afraid
(28:20):
of his horses. The Algonquin Naming Convention was no different.
In nineteen ninety three, David McCutcheon made an English translation
of the Red Record or walam Oldham of the Delaware,
one of the Algonquian nations. The relevant section reads as follows,
with Sechem being the word for ruler in that culture.
(28:42):
Sharp one was the sechem, the pathmaker across the river.
They won many victories there. Driving away the Telegas, stirring
was the Sechem. Extremely strong were the Telegas. Breaking open
was the Sechem, capturing all the great towns. The crusher
was the Sachem. Southward fled all the Tollegas. East of
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the Mississippi. The Algonquins separated again. The time is now
the latter half of the eighty thirteen hundreds and the
location is the Indiana, Ohio Kentucky region. The Shawnee went
south and may have contributed to the blinking on and
off behavior of the remnants of the Mississippian Empire. At contact,
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the Shawnee were back north in the Ohio area. The
Ojibway left and went northeast to the Atlantic. Their own
history describes a migration back through the Great Lakes region
into the Lake Superior area, where they were residing at contact.
One of the last splits was the separation of the
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Algonquin groups on the eastern seaboard. When the Pilgrims arrived
in the sixteen twenties, they encountered Massachusetts and Narragansett tribes. Surprisingly,
these groups would have made it to New England just
a century and a half earlier. Thus, the coast to
coast migration of the Algic peoples spans more than five
(30:07):
centuries and covered more than four thousand miles. The core
population grew and splintered several times, so that at contact,
the Algics represented one of the most successful Native American communities,
ruling from Alberta to Maine, from the Hudson Bay in
the north to the Illinois Missouri border. In the South.
(30:29):
Their account touches on the histories of tribes all over
North America except for the dry and hot Southwest. The
one region I haven't told you about is the one
with the most dramatic ruins, the cliff dwellers. My most
terrifying visits to Native American sites in June of last
(30:50):
year were in the Four Corners region, the modern states
of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. Mesa Verde National
Park is tucked into the southwest corner of Colorado. Masverde
has the most famous and scenic cliff dweller ruins anywhere
in the Southwest. The drive up to Maseverde from the
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valley floor ascends more than two thousand feet. It produces
sweaty palms and tingling legs, at least it did for me.
Some of the road had guard rails in place. I
had booked a tour of Cliff Palace. It had a
gorgeous view of the chasms that separated the cliff walls.
The tour itself was less heart pounding than the drive.
(31:35):
Then again, I had deliberately screened my options beforehand, deliberately
avoiding the balcony house tour, which happily announced itself as
not for the faint of heart. I happily declined. Spruce
Treehouse has a trail that took me out along the
cliff edge and back again. The rock walls to my
left along the trail still bore the blackened scars of
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fires from centuries prior to European arrival. I had experienced
less manageable terror a few days prior in Walnut Canyon
in northern Arizona. You would think that the word canyon
would have alerted me to the fact of soaring heights
and plunging depths, but I didn't realize this fact until
after I had entered the visitor center and looked out
(32:20):
and down the big picture window into the canyon. It
took two attempts before I finally descended the one hundred
and eighty five feet to the island trail and the
cliff side ruins. It didn't take long for panicky feelings
to set in. There were virtually no guard rails between
me and the tree tops as I made my way
on the loop around a peninsula of rock jutting up
(32:42):
from the valley floor. Thankfully, the trail wasn't long but
it's an experience I won't quickly forget as the crow flies.
Walnut Canyon in Arizona and Mesa Verde in Colorado are
more than two hundred miles distant, Yet both cliff dwelling
sites clearly something or some one in this region had
(33:05):
caused great panic. Why else would parents raise their children
at death defying heights, Why else except to escape a
more pressing threat than death by tumbling. The southwest experienced
something of an empire, and it did so at almost
exactly the same time that the people in the east did.
(33:27):
The Kahokian Empire began near Saint Louis and spread south
in east. Chaco Canyon began in northwest New Mexico, and
its network of sites radiated outward, reaching one hundred and
fifty miles away. Chaco rose around the same time as
Cohokia did. The builders of Cahokia, the Natchez, claimed origins
(33:51):
in Mexico. The people of Chaco showed many links to
Mexico and may have also been built by Mexican immigrants.
Un Like Kahokia, Chaco fell in the early eighty eleven hundreds.
As Chaco's population was dwindling. The cliff dweller population was rising.
In fact, if we map out the cliff dwellers and
(34:12):
other defensively minded sites that rose at the same time,
all but southwestern Arizona is covered by this grouping, which
makes southwestern Arizona the place to look for the cause
of the cliff dweller phenomena. In the eighty eleven hundreds,
around the time that Chaco fell and cliff dwellings began,
(34:34):
a platform mound building culture appeared in southwestern Arizona. That's
a good start. But who built these platform mounds? We
can take some guesses by process of elimination. Among the
more famous Southwestern tribes are the Navajo and Apache. Some
of their relatives may have been in the Southwest as
(34:55):
early as the late twelve hundreds, just in time to
precipitate the collapse of the cliff dwelling phenomenon, but academic
discourse tends to put their arrival even later. The Navajo
and Apache were not the cause of the cliff dwelling phenomena.
The Aztecs of Mexico, their relatives included the pima Ute, Paiute, Shoshone, Comanche,
(35:19):
and Hopi Hopies, were likely allied with the cliff dwellers huts, Paiutes, Shoshone,
and Comanche were north of the southwest at contact, not
anywhere close to southwestern Arizona. Pueblo peoples are among the
best known Southwestern tribes Zuni, Tenoans, Kerisen, but these were
(35:41):
more likely to have been builders of the cliff dwellings,
not the attackers forcing people into cliff side homes. Our
list of Southwest candidates is almost exhausted except for one.
The Kochimi human family of languages includes people like the
Wallapai and have Asupi, residents of Arizona Contact. If anyone
(36:02):
was a good candidate for a martial people whose reputation
for military's success some people fleeing to the cliff sides.
I suspect that it's the Hohlken, but I could be wrong.
We're just beginning to scratch the surface. I just made
a discovery about female inherited DNA and the possible links
between Miyan bloodlines and indigenous people's north of the Rio Grande.
(36:26):
But that's another story for another day, and.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
A terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling by
our own Greg Hangler. And Greg was so excited about
this piece of storytelling that he was keeping me abreast
as he was editing and doing all the things he
does so well. Our team does so well to bring
this eclectic version of storytelling to our listeners, and we
(36:52):
try to surprise you, and sometimes we really surprise ourselves.
This one really startled me. And so much of this
is new territory, and it's thanks to the research of
folks like doctor Nathaniel Jeanson, who holds a PhD in
sell and developmental biology from Harvard. He is also the
author of They Had Names, Tracing the history of the
(37:15):
North American Indigenous people, and my goodness, what a piece
of storytelling. We learned that the most terrifying visits of
Jeanson were those in the Four Corners region of the
United States. And I don't know if any of you
have ever seen those spaces where the cliff dwellers chose
to live, but you knew it had to be ultra
(37:37):
terrifying times and dangerous folks they were trying to avoid
to live in such peril, And truly, to live up
in those cliffs was not a choice. It was actually
a survival mechanism. And this happened long before Columbus ever
came here, the story of the Americans before the Native Americans,
(38:01):
the rich, complex history here on our American stories,
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories.
The show where America is the Star and the American
People coming to you from the city where the West
beginns Fort Worth, Texas. The pre Columbian history of the
Americas has remained one of the most mysterious eras of
the human story, or so we've been taught. Here to
(00:30):
tell the story is doctor Nathaniel Jeanson, who holds a
PhD in cell and developmental biology from Harvard. He is
also the author of They Had Names, Tracing the History
of the North American Indigenous People. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I grew up knowing next to nothing about pre European
North America. Because I was homeschooled. We spent plenty of
time supplementing the curriculum with books from the local Racine,
Wisconsin Public library and with activities to learn about Native
American cultures at the time of European contact. As a youth,
I reveled in teepees and wigwams and longhouses, but especially
(01:13):
in weapons and warpaint, buckskins and moccasins, and all the
other clever ways that the indigenous people came up with
to survive and thrive in North America. Yet lingering in
the background was an empty void for the time period
preceding the arrival of the Pilgrims. Who was here, what
(01:34):
were they doing?
Speaker 1 (01:35):
What happened?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I went off to a small Christian high school in
tiny Union Grove, Wisconsin, where history class made the void
even bigger and put tangible categories on the darkness that
I could not grasp. For Europe, we were awash in
maps of Greeks, Romans, Germans, and Franks. We watched the
maps change as one kingdom rose and fell after another.
(02:00):
We learned the names of the kings and conquerors, Alexander
the Great, Caesar, Augustus, Charlemagne. We were bored with dates
and facts, specific signposts of a larger narrative that unfolded
over thousands of years. Yet in North America I had
no maps, no visuals of the rise and fall of kingdoms,
(02:23):
no names of rulers and heroes, no chronological list of
dates and facts. It wasn't boring, it was a mystery.
My family heritage made this mystery even more vexing. My
mother's relatives lived in Germany. We'd visit them about once
a year. In Germany, Old castles and old cathedrals were everywhere.
(02:45):
It was like a gong that kept ringing each time
I turned my head, reminding me that Europe had an
old history. Back in the States, I'd turned my head
and there was silence. Yes, I could visit Plymouth Plantation
and other posts contact sites, but where were the pre
contact ruins? Where were the reminders of thousands of years
(03:06):
of Native American history? I lived with this void for
most of my life. About ten years ago, the void
began to be illuminated. I moved to smalltown Burlington, Kentucky,
visited our local library and wandered through the history section
when Charles Mann's book fourteen ninety one just happened to
(03:27):
catch my eye. The subtitle promised something I had been
looking for much of my life, new revelations of the
Americas before Columbus. From Man, I learned that there were
a lot more people here in the Americas than originally thought,
and then after Europeans arrived, eighty percent to ninety percent
(03:48):
of them disappeared. I also learned that these masses of
people transformed their environments in ways no one had realized before.
Even and the Amazon was not the pristine wilderness we
were once led to believe it was cultivated like a garden.
Is interesting professionally, I'm a biologist and geneticist. About seven
(04:12):
years ago, I was trying to work out the details
for the family tree of humanity, a family tree based
on DNA. Where to put the start for the tree
and how was the generation by generation history of humanity
embedded in the branches? The answers emerged thanks to a
lesson I had learned from Charles Mann's book. I knew
(04:33):
the Native American population had collapsed after Columbus. Where was
the genetic smoking gun of this event? I eventually discovered it,
and then the answers to my other questions fell into place.
But the genetics of Native Americans weren't just a useful
tool to a bigger scientific pursuit. Native American DNA itself
(04:55):
held secrets, shocking ones that I would soon learn to
the pre European past of this continent. Over the last
several years, I've dug deep into the genetics of the
indigenous peoples of the Americas, as well as into their
linguistic relationships, archaeological ruins, and even their own histories of migration.
(05:17):
I've visited sites across the country. I've even been invited
to speak on these new discoveries to a gathering of
one of the more famous tribes of the Great Plains,
the Lakota Soup. The narrative that you're about to hear
represents the results of this thrilling, frustrating, and sometimes terrifying
quest for answers. The earliest North American civilization arose of
(05:39):
all places in northeastern Louisiana. You can still visit Poverty
Point and its mounds and concentric half circles of earthworks.
It might not seem as impressive today, but three thousand
years ago it was part of an economic network stretching
six hundred and twenty miles. Just for prospective, if you
(06:00):
go six hundred and twenty miles due north of Poverty Point,
you end up almost in Wisconsin. Six hundred and twenty
miles to the northeast takes you into Virginia. Going six
hundred and twenty miles due east puts you on the Atlantic.
The builders of Poverty Point knew the sky. They knew
it so well that they align their earthwork constructions to it,
(06:23):
specifically to the equinoxes by the seven hundred's BC, poverty
point was fading into the annals of history. A few
centuries later, another group of builders, equally conscious of the heavens,
erected another network of mounds. The epicenter of the Hopewell
culture was Ohio. Several sites, Newark to the east of Columbus,
(06:47):
Chilicothe to the south of Columbus, and Fort Ancient to
the northeast of Cincinnati are now recognized UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Hopewell builders constructed geometric mounds, circles, octagons, and squares. One
of the new Work earthworks is aligned to the eighteen
(07:08):
point six year cycles of the Moon. I didn't even
know that the moon had eighteen point six year cycles,
but these guys did, and they moved large amounts of
earth to permanently record these phenomena.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
When we come back more of the story here on
our American Stories. Plea habib here, and I'd like to
encourage you to subscribe to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts,
the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get our podcasts.
(07:44):
Any story you missed or want to hear again can
be found there daily again. Please subscribe to the our
American Stories podcast anywhere you get your podcasts. It helps
us keep these great American stories coming. And we continue
(08:10):
with our American stories and with doctor Nathaniel Jeanson. Let's
pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
By the eighty four hundreds, Hopewell was gone. And this
is where the story gets interesting, because this is where
genetics enters the picture and we get answers to the
question of who is here. For the past eight years,
I have been using male inherited Y chromosome DNA to
study Native American history. In other words, I have been
(08:39):
following paternal genealogies with genetics. Today, in North America, all
the Native American Y chromosome lineages are younger than the
fall of Hopewell. When Poverty Point and Hopewell were flourishing,
none of the contemporary genetic lineages existed in the Americas.
In other words, genetics reveals the existence of invaders. The
(09:04):
eighty four hundreds mark a crucial turning point in the Americas.
Whoever lived before, whoever rose and fell, their origins, their
genealogical relationships have all disappeared from the Y chromosome genetic record.
I don't know who built Poverty Point. I don't know
who built Hope well, but I do know who invaded.
(09:25):
Just a few centuries after Christ, in the eighty four hundreds,
in Europe, the Roman Empire was beginning to crumble. Germanic
tribes were invading from the east, an obscure but fierce
Central Asian people, The Huns also rampaged through Europe and
(09:45):
accelerated the fall of the Romans. It was relatives of
the Huns who also want the opposite direction eastward, away
from Europe, away from Central Asia, away from China, across
the Bearing Strait into the Americas. And just like the Huns,
they left destruction in their wake, but their descendants also
(10:06):
left construction and creation in their wake. On the Iowa
side of the Mississippi River, just across from Prairie Dushine, Wisconsin,
sits Effigy Mounds National Monument. These mounds aren't geometric. Instead,
they are shaped like animals or people. They don't seem
to be aligned to the heavens, but they do seem
(10:28):
to carry a message. When I visited Effigy Mounds National Monument,
I discovered that the park contains several types of mounds,
not just effigy mounds. Effigy Mounds date from the eighty
seven hundreds or later. The other mounds date earlier, even
into the BC era. The older mounds tend to be
(10:49):
found right on the cliffs overlooking the Mississippi, the positions
of prominence the Effigy Mounds are found farther back. It
was obvious to me that the Effigy Mounds could have
been built in many places along the Mississippi, but they
seemed to favor hugging sites already in existence. It made
(11:09):
me think that relatives of the Huns came in, overthrew
whoever was here before, and then tried to stake claims
of legitimacy by taking the mantle of earlier people groups.
I know at least one Contact era Indian tribe who
can trace their ancestry back to the times of the
Effigy Mounds. The Siouan Cataban language grouping includes some of
(11:33):
the more famous tribes of the Great Plains and surrounding
regions Lakota, Dakota, Osage, Crow, Manden, Hidatsa, Asiniboine, and Winnebago.
Their ancestors have a history going back to at least
the eighty eight hundreds, but they weren't the builders of
the effigy mounds in the eighty eight hundreds. The Siouan
(11:55):
Catabins weren't in Wisconsin, but on the Atlantic, near where
modern Washington, d c. Now sits. The eighty four hundreds
invasion of North America wasn't the last. No, I'm not
talking about the arrival of Europeans one thousand years later.
Just a few centuries after the Hunnic invasion, in the
AD nine hundreds, another invasion happened, one of the most
(12:19):
significant because it brought to North America a group of
record keepers whose skills would shine a spotlight on the
formerly dark centuries of the pre European past. In European history,
the eighty nine hundreds aren't as well known as the
eighty four hundreds. The eighty nine hundreds are near the
end of the Viking Era, not the Roman Era, but
(12:41):
there are parallels. During the Middle Ages, migrants from the
East entered the European continent. Magyars, the ancestors of modern Hungarians,
as well as lesser known Turkic groups like the Ogus
and Kipchaks, moved westward from Central Asia. At the same time,
another group of Central Asians moved eastward. The ancestors of
(13:04):
modern Native American groups like the Cheyenne, Blackfeet, Ojibwe, pre
a Nominee, Miami, Potawatamie, Shawnee, Delaware, Narragansett, and others, all
members of the Algic language family. They first landed in
the frigid Alaskan Arctic. They were met by people who
(13:26):
had preceded them At Contact. Members of the Esquimo Aliute
language family resided along the Alaskan coast. Their relatives reached
all the way to Greenland. Genetics plants the Eskimaux Alute
in the New World before the Aljiks arrived. Archaeology suggests
that a group of Eskimo Aliute left Alaska and went
(13:48):
eastward right around the time that the Algic landed. The
Algic's own records speak of a military victory at Contact.
The interior of Alaska was dominated by members of the
aak Athabaskan language family. The ancestors of the Navajo and Apache,
(14:09):
both of whom belonged to the aak Athabaskan language family,
were likely up north at this time. Genetics indicates that
this cluster of tribes preceded the arrival of the Algics
in North America. They may also have been the losers
in the Algics early clashes. The band of Algic ancestors
didn't migrate across the North American continent as a unified
(14:31):
group with regular frequency. Splinter groups formed, giving rise to
pockets of tribes encountered at Contact. One of the earliest
splits spawned the lesser known Uruk and Wiok people at Contact.
These tribes were on the northwestern California coast. When they
first broke away, they left the remainder of the tribe
(14:53):
known as Algonquians, near the Alaska Canada border. In terms
of calendar dates were still in the mid eight eight
nine hundreds. Over the next seventy to one hundred years,
the Algonquin records are troubled. Much evil their words took place. Geographically,
they were likely in what is now British Columbia in
(15:13):
western Canada at Contact. Part of this region was the
domains of members of the Salish language family. Growing up,
I never learned much about the tribes in the Pacific Northwest.
Salish would have been unfamiliar to me. Apparently, the Salish
came to the Northwest from somewhere else their own migration
histories suggest an origin much farther east, perhaps in modern Minnesota,
(15:37):
but by the time the Algonquins arrived, the Salish were
likely in place. Eventually, the much evil subsided, the Algonquins
enjoyed peace, and another splinter group arose. The time frame
is the eighty one thousands. The place the Rocky Mountain
region of modern Idaho and Montana. The people the ancestors
(15:58):
of the Blackfeet. Around the time that the Blackfeet and
Algonquians parted ways, the latter took up farming. In the
first part of the eighty eleven hundreds, the Algonquian farmers
hit a setback, drought and a common reaction to it
internal conflict and separation. At this point, the ancestors of
(16:20):
the Arapaho, Grovon, and Cree left the main body of Algonquians.
I guess this split got rid of the troublemakers, or
at least its separated factions, because the latter half of
the eighty eleven hundreds describe a renewal of the piece.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
And what a rich and complicated tapestry it is. Indeed,
and my goodness, this is not history. You're going to
get anywhere else folks on any dial. And this gives
much more richness, complexity, and wealth to the story of
this country and how it started, and how far back
(17:05):
the very first people who traveled across this country were alive.
The idea of these early settlements in Louisiana seven hundred BC,
Poverty Point, and then Hopewell, Ohio. These are stories I'd
never heard of before. When we come back, more of
the story here on our American stories, and we continue
(18:19):
with our American stories. And you've been listening to doctor
Nathaniel Jeanson. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
By the early eighty twelve hundreds, though the Algonquins were
on the Great Plains where they ran into new enemies, well,
some may have been old enemies. One foe they described
as the North Walkers. I suspect these were the Athabaskans,
originally from up in Alaska and northern Canada, now migrating south,
(18:48):
likely the ancestors of the Navajo and Apache. The Algonquins
used several terms for their enemies, strong stone, snakes, and invaders.
These may have been Shoshone, their linguistic relatives, the Aztecs
of Mexico, arrived with the relatives of the Huns in
(19:08):
the eighty four hundreds. Regardless of who exactly the Algonquins fought.
By the mid eighty twelve hundreds, they tired of war
and went east to the Mississippi. Well, most of them did.
Here again, another subgroup was of a different mind, and
they split off. The ancestors of the Menominee in Cheyenne
(19:29):
formed here in the early to mid twelve hundreds. Later
migrations at the Cheyenne would take them onto the Great Plains.
The poor remaining Algonquins all they sought was relief along
the Mississippi, and all they got was a massacre. The
American Bottom would have been an inviting place to settle.
(19:49):
The climate near modern Saint Louis's temperate and well watered.
Here the Missouri and Mississippi rippers come together, soil was fertile,
game was abundant. But someone else had gotten there first,
somewhat powerful. The Algonquians' own records describe the rulers, but
not with modern tribal names that we would recognize that
(20:11):
Telegas were the ones who, according to the Algonquians, possessed
the east. Today near modern Saint Louis. The ruins at
Kahokia can still be visited by the public. I did
so myself on a balmy spring day last year. Monks Mound,
the largest earthwork in the entire America's, contains twenty two
(20:31):
million cubic feet of dirt. The top of the mound
is one hundred feet in the air. You can see
downtown Saint Louis and the Gateway Arch from its summit.
In terms of population size, Kahokia once boasted a population
of ten thousand to fifteen thousand people. This is small
by modern standards, but by the standards of the eighty
(20:52):
twelve hundreds, when Kahokia was at its peak, it was
as big as London. Kahokia commanded an empire. It was
part of the Mississippian culture, whose reach extended well to
much of the east, from Saint Louis down to the
Gulf coast of Louisiana. From the western Arkansas border to
(21:14):
the Atlantic coast of South Carolina, the Mississippian peoples ruled
all of what is now considered the Southeast Cohochian influences
were even felt as far north as Astalin, a small
site which sits between modern Madison and Milwaukee. Just off
I ninety four. Monks Mound is a flat topped mound.
(21:37):
The mounds at Asdalin are also flat topped, not geometric
or in the shape of animals. Flat topped mounds can
be found throughout the southeast. Many are still accessible to
the public. I've visited Moundville in Alabama, about one hour
southwest of Birmingham and just south of Tuscaloosa. Moundville hosts
(21:58):
at least twenty nine mound, many of which are flat topped.
Who built Cohochio? Who were the Mississippians who possessed the
east and massacred the Algonquians when they first arrived at
the American bottom. In seventeen seventy four, a Frenchman by
the name of Lapage Duprats recorded a Native American nation's history,
(22:21):
a history that resonated with much of what we've just observed.
When Duprats spoke to them, they were north of the
Rio Grande in what is now Louisiana, but according to
one of the tribe's temple keepers, their original homes were
farther south. With respect to the Mississippians, early Europeans noticed
(22:41):
the eerie resemblance between their mounds and the flat topped
pyramids of Mesoamerica, the temples and crypts of the Aztecs
and Maya Asdalin. The flat topped mound site in Wisconsin
was named as such to recall the Aztec homeland. Dupratz's
(23:02):
interviewee was explicit his people had come from Mexico. They
were not the dominant rulers of meso America, but neighbours
of the Mexican ruling class. When they tired of the
belligerents of the Mexican elite, they sent colonists of their
own to the north. Here in Louisiana and in what
is now the Southeast. This tribe flourished, eventually presiding over
(23:25):
a region that stretched from the Louisiana Gulf coast to
the Wabash River in Indiana, and from the headwaters of
the Ohio to west of the Mississippi. In other words,
the Natchez, the tribe of Dupratz's interviewee, ruled an area
that sounded very much like the area archaeologists called the
Mississippian culture. The Natches were the people that the Algonquins
(23:50):
called the Telega, the Natches possessed the east. The Natches
also massacred the Algonquians when the Algonquins had asked for, say,
passage across the Mississippi. Do you recall the Siouan Catabans,
the ancestors of people like the Lakota, Osage and a Sinaboine.
Do you remember that they were on the Atlantic in
(24:12):
the eighty eight hundreds. Obviously they didn't stay there if
some of their descendants were famous tribes of the wild West.
By the late eighty thirteen hundreds, the Omaha, Ponkaw, Osage, Kansas,
and Koppaw weren't quite to the rolling prairies of Kansas
and Oklahoma. Instead, they were at the mouth of the Ohio.
(24:34):
In other words, they must have passed through Natchez territory
at some point between the eighty eight hundreds and late
thirteen hundreds. The Mississippian Empire wasn't permanent. Long before Europeans
reached the area around Saint Louis, Kahokia had faded into
the sunset. The first signs of Mississippian collapse were in
(24:55):
the north, Asdalin was burned in the early eighty twelve hundreds.
Kahokia fell by the early thirteen hundreds, along with Moundville
and Alabama. Over the next two centuries before contact, archaeology
paints a chaotic picture of the former Mississippian domains in
the southeast, with one archaeologist describing societies appearing and disappearing
(25:19):
in a pattern comparable to the blinking lights on a
Christmas tree. What happened? The Algonquian records hold the critical clues.
After the initial massacre of the Algonquins at the hand
of the Natchez, the Algonquins found allies who came from
the north, from the very area where Astalin had just
(25:41):
been burned. The Algonquin records are somewhat ambiguous as to
who these allies were. Some have speculated that they were
members of the Iroquoian language family. I suspect that they
were Sue and Catobins, ancestors of the Omaha ponca Osage
Kansas and Paul, who joined the Algonquians and together defeated
(26:03):
the Natchez at Kahokia and then continued south to the
mouth of the Ohio. In other words, the Siu and
Catobins started at the Atlantic in the late eighty eight hundreds,
and then over the next few centuries they migrated westward,
likely just south of the Great Lakes in order to
avoid the advancing Natchez Empire. Then in the late eighty
(26:26):
twelve hundreds, a group joined the Algonquians and headed south,
leaving others like the Winnebago in Wisconsin and the ancestors
of the Lakota and Dakota in what is now Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
And my goodness, it's a constant story of struggle, of migration,
of battle, of conquest and reconquest. Just hearing the story
of what the Natchez tribe did to the Algonquins, I
love that line. The societies at this time were peering
and disappeared in a manner that resembled lights on a
(27:03):
Christmas tree. When we come back more of the complicated,
the rich, beautiful story here on our American stories. And
(27:37):
we continue with our American stories and with doctor Nathaniel Jeanson,
who holds a PhD in sell and developmental biology from Harvard.
He's also the author of They Had Names, Tracing the
history of the North American Indigenous people. Let's pick up
where he last left off.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Because of the Algonquian records. We even have the names
of the rulers who were responsible for the Allied victory
over the Natchez, the greatest battle and victory in all
of pre European North America. Their names followed the typical
descriptive Native American naming practice, recalled some of the Contact
era names like sitting bull, crazy horse, and man afraid
(28:20):
of his horses. The Algonquin Naming Convention was no different.
In nineteen ninety three, David McCutcheon made an English translation
of the Red Record or walam Oldham of the Delaware,
one of the Algonquian nations. The relevant section reads as follows,
with Sechem being the word for ruler in that culture.
(28:42):
Sharp one was the sechem, the pathmaker across the river.
They won many victories there. Driving away the Telegas, stirring
was the Sechem. Extremely strong were the Telegas. Breaking open
was the Sechem, capturing all the great towns. The crusher
was the Sachem. Southward fled all the Tollegas. East of
(29:05):
the Mississippi. The Algonquins separated again. The time is now
the latter half of the eighty thirteen hundreds and the
location is the Indiana, Ohio Kentucky region. The Shawnee went
south and may have contributed to the blinking on and
off behavior of the remnants of the Mississippian Empire. At contact,
(29:25):
the Shawnee were back north in the Ohio area. The
Ojibway left and went northeast to the Atlantic. Their own
history describes a migration back through the Great Lakes region
into the Lake Superior area, where they were residing at contact.
One of the last splits was the separation of the
(29:46):
Algonquin groups on the eastern seaboard. When the Pilgrims arrived
in the sixteen twenties, they encountered Massachusetts and Narragansett tribes. Surprisingly,
these groups would have made it to New England just
a century and a half earlier. Thus, the coast to
coast migration of the Algic peoples spans more than five
(30:07):
centuries and covered more than four thousand miles. The core
population grew and splintered several times, so that at contact,
the Algics represented one of the most successful Native American communities,
ruling from Alberta to Maine, from the Hudson Bay in
the north to the Illinois Missouri border. In the South.
(30:29):
Their account touches on the histories of tribes all over
North America except for the dry and hot Southwest. The
one region I haven't told you about is the one
with the most dramatic ruins, the cliff dwellers. My most
terrifying visits to Native American sites in June of last
(30:50):
year were in the Four Corners region, the modern states
of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. Mesa Verde National
Park is tucked into the southwest corner of Colorado. Masverde
has the most famous and scenic cliff dweller ruins anywhere
in the Southwest. The drive up to Maseverde from the
(31:13):
valley floor ascends more than two thousand feet. It produces
sweaty palms and tingling legs, at least it did for me.
Some of the road had guard rails in place. I
had booked a tour of Cliff Palace. It had a
gorgeous view of the chasms that separated the cliff walls.
The tour itself was less heart pounding than the drive.
(31:35):
Then again, I had deliberately screened my options beforehand, deliberately
avoiding the balcony house tour, which happily announced itself as
not for the faint of heart. I happily declined. Spruce
Treehouse has a trail that took me out along the
cliff edge and back again. The rock walls to my
left along the trail still bore the blackened scars of
(31:58):
fires from centuries prior to European arrival. I had experienced
less manageable terror a few days prior in Walnut Canyon
in northern Arizona. You would think that the word canyon
would have alerted me to the fact of soaring heights
and plunging depths, but I didn't realize this fact until
after I had entered the visitor center and looked out
(32:20):
and down the big picture window into the canyon. It
took two attempts before I finally descended the one hundred
and eighty five feet to the island trail and the
cliff side ruins. It didn't take long for panicky feelings
to set in. There were virtually no guard rails between
me and the tree tops as I made my way
on the loop around a peninsula of rock jutting up
(32:42):
from the valley floor. Thankfully, the trail wasn't long but
it's an experience I won't quickly forget as the crow flies.
Walnut Canyon in Arizona and Mesa Verde in Colorado are
more than two hundred miles distant, Yet both cliff dwelling
sites clearly something or some one in this region had
(33:05):
caused great panic. Why else would parents raise their children
at death defying heights, Why else except to escape a
more pressing threat than death by tumbling. The southwest experienced
something of an empire, and it did so at almost
exactly the same time that the people in the east did.
(33:27):
The Kahokian Empire began near Saint Louis and spread south
in east. Chaco Canyon began in northwest New Mexico, and
its network of sites radiated outward, reaching one hundred and
fifty miles away. Chaco rose around the same time as
Cohokia did. The builders of Cahokia, the Natchez, claimed origins
(33:51):
in Mexico. The people of Chaco showed many links to
Mexico and may have also been built by Mexican immigrants.
Un Like Kahokia, Chaco fell in the early eighty eleven hundreds.
As Chaco's population was dwindling. The cliff dweller population was rising.
In fact, if we map out the cliff dwellers and
(34:12):
other defensively minded sites that rose at the same time,
all but southwestern Arizona is covered by this grouping, which
makes southwestern Arizona the place to look for the cause
of the cliff dweller phenomena. In the eighty eleven hundreds,
around the time that Chaco fell and cliff dwellings began,
(34:34):
a platform mound building culture appeared in southwestern Arizona. That's
a good start. But who built these platform mounds? We
can take some guesses by process of elimination. Among the
more famous Southwestern tribes are the Navajo and Apache. Some
of their relatives may have been in the Southwest as
(34:55):
early as the late twelve hundreds, just in time to
precipitate the collapse of the cliff dwelling phenomenon, but academic
discourse tends to put their arrival even later. The Navajo
and Apache were not the cause of the cliff dwelling phenomena.
The Aztecs of Mexico, their relatives included the pima Ute, Paiute, Shoshone, Comanche,
(35:19):
and Hopi Hopies, were likely allied with the cliff dwellers huts, Paiutes, Shoshone,
and Comanche were north of the southwest at contact, not
anywhere close to southwestern Arizona. Pueblo peoples are among the
best known Southwestern tribes Zuni, Tenoans, Kerisen, but these were
(35:41):
more likely to have been builders of the cliff dwellings,
not the attackers forcing people into cliff side homes. Our
list of Southwest candidates is almost exhausted except for one.
The Kochimi human family of languages includes people like the
Wallapai and have Asupi, residents of Arizona Contact. If anyone
(36:02):
was a good candidate for a martial people whose reputation
for military's success some people fleeing to the cliff sides.
I suspect that it's the Hohlken, but I could be wrong.
We're just beginning to scratch the surface. I just made
a discovery about female inherited DNA and the possible links
between Miyan bloodlines and indigenous people's north of the Rio Grande.
(36:26):
But that's another story for another day, and.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
A terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling by
our own Greg Hangler. And Greg was so excited about
this piece of storytelling that he was keeping me abreast
as he was editing and doing all the things he
does so well. Our team does so well to bring
this eclectic version of storytelling to our listeners, and we
(36:52):
try to surprise you, and sometimes we really surprise ourselves.
This one really startled me. And so much of this
is new territory, and it's thanks to the research of
folks like doctor Nathaniel Jeanson, who holds a PhD in
sell and developmental biology from Harvard. He is also the
author of They Had Names, Tracing the history of the
(37:15):
North American Indigenous people, and my goodness, what a piece
of storytelling. We learned that the most terrifying visits of
Jeanson were those in the Four Corners region of the
United States. And I don't know if any of you
have ever seen those spaces where the cliff dwellers chose
to live, but you knew it had to be ultra
(37:37):
terrifying times and dangerous folks they were trying to avoid
to live in such peril, And truly, to live up
in those cliffs was not a choice. It was actually
a survival mechanism. And this happened long before Columbus ever
came here, the story of the Americans before the Native Americans,
(38:01):
the rich, complex history here on our American stories,
Host
Lee Habeeb
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