September 22, 2025 • 47 mins
Unearth the wisdom of ancient civilizations and witness the transformative power of unity and peace that shaped societies long before Columbus set foot in the Americas. Our journey begins with the historic Haudenosaunee Confederacy, one of the oldest representative democracies, where the profound vision of the Peacemaker brought harmony to the Iroquoian nations. Through tales of legendary figures like Ayanwatha and the fearsome serpent chief Taradaho, we recount the profound impact of women in Iroquoian politics, highlighting their indispensable role in forging alliances and sustaining peace.
Venture into the expansive realms of ancient empires as we explore the might and ingenuity of the Inca civilization. From the strategic foundations laid in the Andean highlands to the colossal empire ruled from Cusco, we examine how the Incas employed marriage, loyalty, and military strength to unite a diverse populace. Learn about the enduring influence of their revered mummified emperors who, even in death, continued to guide their people. This segment offers a fascinating glimpse into the intricacies of governance and societal structures that have left an indelible mark on history.
Travel through time to bustling trade networks and ceremonial exchanges that connected distant lands and cultures. We visit Cahokia, a vibrant trade hub that linked vast regions across North America, and explore the cultural interactions sparked by its ceremonial artifacts. Reflect on the sacred role of tobacco in indigenous societies, where it served as a spiritual bond, sealing promises and fostering peace. From the Greeks to the Aztecs, discover how ancient trade practices laid the groundwork for cultural dialogue and technological advancement across civilizations. Join us as we reveal the resilience and legacy of these remarkable cultures, whose stories continue to inspire and enlighten.
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This channel is part of the History Hit Network.
We are the first peoples of the Americas.
We have been here from the beginning.
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Our ancestors navigated by the wind and stars, crossing vast
oceans and mountain ranges, searching for new lands.
Over thousands of years, our ancestors became astronomers and
architects, philosophers and scientists, artists and
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inventors. We created distinct societies
and built a vast trade systems that cover 2 continents.
In 1492, our world was changed forever, but we did not
disappear. Today, the languages and
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teachings of our ancestors remain.
And these are the untold storiesof the Americas before Columbus.
The Americas before 1491. We're home to thousands of
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societies, each with its own distinct social, cultural, and
political structure. Throughout the two continents,
Indigenous people formed clans, confederacies, alliances, and
even empires. Indigenous people interacted
between these communities through a complex network of
trade that connected every region of the Americas.
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The Hoduna Shoni Confederacy wasformed nearly 900 years ago,
making it one of the oldest representative democracies in
the world. Before the five founding
Iroquois nations came together in peace, they were locked in an
endless cycle of retribution andintertribal war.
You had five warring nations andthe descriptions in the oral
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histories is very, very explicitand talking about how there was
fratricide, there was cannibalism, basically human
relations had totally broken down in that part of the world
amongst their own people has allto do with this cycle of
revenge. Every Iroquoian chief engaged in
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retaliation, but it was Tadadaho, the serpent chief, who
was known throughout the territory for his ruthlessness.
This guy was terrifying. He put live snakes in his.
Hair, you know. 5 and writhing snakes.
He's a very powerful spiritual person whose mind was twisted.
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So the imagery they have in the stories is his fingers are all
twisted and his body's all gnarled and so forth.
And he was able to control the wind and the waters and he was
causing a lot of harm. As internal wars continued to
tear the Five Nations apart, an outsider known as the Peacemaker
arrived in a stone canoe and began to share his vision of a
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society based on harmony and peace.
He travelled to every corner of Iroquoisan territory promoting
the great Law of peace. And the founding of Confederacy
really is the story of the Peacemaker, a person from a
related nation who came into ourterritory and connected with a
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leader in our nation, Hiawatha. Once part of his nation's
warrior society, Ayanwatha had changed his way of thinking and
started to promote his own vision of peace.
Tara Daho saw this as a betrayaland had each of Ayanwatha's
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daughters killed 1 by 1. The pain of his loss LED
Ayanwata to leave his community and isolate himself in the
forest. Ayawata's story is not just
Ayawata, it's the story of him and his daughters and how the
loss of his daughters affected him and what drove him to do
what he did was the loss of his daughters.
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Your daughters. Are your posterity because?
When you draw. Was a female.
Why? After they met, the peacemaker
convinced Ayanwatha that they should become allies in seeking
peace among the nations. Even though he was overcome with
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grief, Ayaanwatha chose to work with the Peacemaker to promote
his idea of an intertribal alliance between the five
warring nations. Because of the revered role of
women in Iroquoian nations, Ayaanwatha and the Peacemaker
travelled to the Fire of Jigensasse to seek her advice on
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how to bring the great law of peace to the Iroquoian people.
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I giggle. In the Iroquois way of thinking,
women were on par with men in terms of the authority they
wield. In the political realm.
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See. What star works near?
The chiefs of. The four Iroquois nations
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supported the peacemaker's vision of the Great Law of
Peace. It's important to consider the
objective. The objective wasn't to enhance
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the power of these nations or toincrease the territory or the
wealth. It was to create peaceful,
honest coexistence. But Tara Daho continued to
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resist joining the alliance. Not Paul.
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How? Is he going to?
Agree with this peace because he'll lose all power.
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Then something extraordinary happened.
Based on astronomical records, asolar eclipse covered the
northeast region of North America for 4 minutes on the
afternoon of August 31st, 1142. After this historic event, Tada
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Daho agreed to join the Confederacy.
The Onondaga became the keepers of the central fire, a role that
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they hold to this day. 1142 would be the founding of the
great Peace. And so, yeah, Tara Daho then is
named the main chief of the Confederacy.
He's actually taken as the symbol of the meaning of this
message, which is that even the worst person, even the most
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powerful evil force can be turned around and made into
good. If you think back into terms of
what was the first message that was brought by the peacemaker to
our people is that you should treat each other kindly and you
should think of each other as one family.
That's the central power of thisteaching, is that you should be
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treating everyone like your brother and sister.
The power of it is extremely long lasting.
It's shown. It's been how many years now?
How many generations of people have been bound together by
that? This ancient indigenous
government continues to be part of Iroquoian society nearly 900
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years after its founding. The development of large urban
centers evolved from small farming villages as mass
production of food supported thegrowth of populations and
cities. For centuries, the Marowitic
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Kingdom thrived as it was too distant for foreign nations to
conquer it. This Nubian Kingdom was
surrounded by fertile land and supported a large urban
population. For two centuries, the Assyrian
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Empire was a formidable society.Rulers displayed their power by
constructing impressive palaces and temples.
Before the empire fell, they hadextended their influence over
most of the Middle East and Egypt.
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The Inca Empire was the largest civilization in the Americas in
the early 16th century. In its short existence, the Sapa
Incas ruled a Society of millions of people from Ecuador
to Chile. Over the past 5000 years, large
city states with dynamic political and religious rulers
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emerged and held power in every part of the world.
The ancestors of the ambitious Inca rulers had humble
beginnings as farmers in the Andean Highlands about 900 years
ago. The descendants of those farmers
founded the largest indigenous society in the Americas 600
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years ago. And like other great
civilizations, the Inca Empire began with a vision.
The Incas are going to claim that after the creation of the
world in Titicaca, some of them took this passage, this tunnel
from the lake and they are goingto emerge in Pakaritambo the the
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the the place of their origin. According to oral histories, the
first Inca family left their birthplace in Pakaritambo in
search of the perfect location to establish a homeland.
They were carrying a golden staff and they were basically
testing the soils, and the idea was that they were going to find
a place where that Bolton Rd. was going to be able to be
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sunken into the ground. And that happened in Cusco in
one specific spot, and that's going to be the USHNO.
And the USHNO is the center where all the vital force of the
universe radiates. When the Inca arrived in Cusco,
it had been the home of the Kilke people for hundreds of
years. The land is already inhabited by
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those people who have always been there, and they have to
come with an idea of this possess the local inhabitants
and then they becoming the the masters of.
The place in the first of many conquests, the early Inca rulers
either ousted or absorbed the Kilke people, maintaining Kusko
as the logistical, political andspiritual heart of their new
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society. 600 years ago, the IncaEmpire extended over much of
what is today Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and
Argentina and was home to 20 million people.
You are going to have four primary lines, which are going
to be the roads of the Tawantin Suiyu.
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Cusco was organized into 4 quadrants, and leaders from
cities and villages throughout the empire were required to
build a house and live in Cusco part of the year in the quadrant
that corresponded to their region.
And then based on that, you are going to have all these close to
80 provinces in an area that basically went all the way from
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northern Chile to Ecuador. All along the Andes you had
these systems that the Inca built upon.
Their empire extended in length some 2000 miles from north to
South. This grew in tandem with
conquest and population growth. To control such a massive
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territory and diverse population, the empire's leaders
convinced regional chiefs to join the society with promises
of material riches and special status.
But mandatory allegiance had a cost.
Most of the leaders of these small nations accepted the new
government peacefully. But for those who resisted, the
Incas well trained army forced compliance.
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The Sapa Inca was the emperor, aposition passed down from father
to son. The Sapa Inca's wife, known as
the Koya, was typically his sister.
We can think about the Incas as a oligarchy of of 10 royal
families. Those are the ones who are
intermarrying among themselves. Just remember that according to
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their own traditions, they have to maintain the the this
dynastic line pure. So they are allowed to marry
with their first cousins and of course the sisters and and
brothers. In addition to the importance of
blood purity, the Incan Royals also believe their emperors were
blessed with immortality. The Emperor never dies.
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Your body continues to have vital powers that are use for
political purposes because the people who are going to be in
charge of, of keeping the bodiesof the Incas, the mummified
bodies of the Incas are called the Panicas.
They are going to operate as a small Congress that are going
to, they're going to put checks and balance on the Inca.
So they are going to be able to decide and and and advise and
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sometimes direct the ideas of the Inca towards specific
purposes only because the mommy of the deceased emperor, at
least some of the relatives can talk with that mommy.
And then it's like your grandfather says that you are
doing wrong, that you should better think do this.
The Inca hierarchy placed the royal family at the top,
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followed by the nobility, including the priests, governors
and tax collectors. Rounding out the social
structure were the farmers, herders, servants and slaves.
Much of the population consists of a peasantry, agricultural,
rural, and then you have the cities and the cities kind of
wield all power and they extracttax in labor from each of those
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communities. In the case of the Incas, they
want tributing labor, but they want you to go and work in the
land of the Incas, produce the crops.
And then an Inca officer is going to show up and say, like,
guys, it's time for us to put all these in the storehouses
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because we are going to live outof these food if it doesn't rain
next year. So often tributaries would pay
into the Inca state and the Incas would then through their
meet that tax system would basically warehouse foods,
typically potatoes, maize and other crops and they had an
incredible abundance of different crops that would be
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stored. But these allowed armies to be
maintained and fed while on campaign, but also for the
communities that work these areas to be able to maintain
themselves during periods of drought, for instance.
So it was a system that was a give and take, but virtually
everything in the Income Empire belonged to the Inca himself.
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Maya society was made-up of citystates that dotted the landscape
in Mesoamerica. Moving goods and services to a
population in the millions was done through a highly evolved
system of trade and commerce. They were bringing in shell from
the Gulf Coast, they were bringing in shell from the West
Coast, They were bringing uniqueand and prized green obsidians
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from the Pachuca sources in Highland Mexico, a basalt,
ceramics, even turquoise coming out of the American Southwest.
This was traveling over some of the most circuitous and
mountainous regions and even Gulf lowland regions all the way
to the Maya area. These are people that they
didn't have draft animals. They did not have horses, they
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did not have cattle, oxen, they didn't have any of these things.
So everything had to be ported on foot on the backs of human
burden bearers. In turn, what the Maya were
giving back was access to the Matagua River Jade source.
True jade occurs only in a few places on the planet, and the
Maya had access to it, so jade was being moved throughout
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Mesoamerica. And of course, elites who
identified with jade as related to the Earth and to the
ancestors wanted to be a part ofthat.
They began using ritual objects and belief to draw on the
interests of outsiders who beginto trade or to pilgrimage to
these sites. So you get some of the earliest
pilgrimage centers in these regions.
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Maya trade went well beyond the valuable jade market.
Various other commodities were transported in their raw or
manufactured state from the Mayaregion on foot and by boat.
When the Spanish first arrived, they had encounters with Maya
boats, or ships if you will, andthese were multiple canoes
lashed together in the platforms.
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And they were essentially sailing ships that were
traveling up the coast with large quantities of ceramics as
well as rubber, copal, chocolate, vanilla, and
virtually all of those other things that we as Westerners so
much enjoy, which all originatedin ancient Mesoamerica.
One of the most important trade items in Maya society was maize.
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This crop was at the center of the Maya diet and culture and
was in high demand in the urban centers.
Eventually, maize moved into North and South America through
trade with other indigenous communities.
Considering the importance of corn for people's diet and.
All that went with cornets was avaluable.
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Food to trade. Societies throughout the world
have traded, bartered, and sold food for thousands of years.
This exchange fostered importantbusiness and social
relationships and contributed tothe development of cuisines that
were unique to regions and nations.
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Salt was an essential mineral for African diets and an
important trade item with other nations.
Salt cakes were transported by camel caravans and traded for
gold, ivory, and kola nuts across the continent.
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Spices have been a major trade item for thousands of years.
Cinnamon, ginger and turmeric were exchanged between Africa,
Europe, the Middle East and Asia, making spices one of the
most important economic and cultural enterprises in the
world. Societies throughout the world
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have been producing wine for thousands of years as both the
religious and social beverage. The earliest wine production was
in Armenia 7000 years ago. After 1492, fruits and
vegetables cultivated in North and South America were exported
to Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of the world's most widely
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used ingredients had their origins among indigenous
societies in the Americas. Around the same time that the
Maya were the dominant trading center in Mesoamerica,
indigenous people in North America were transporting
materials by boat and foot alonga trade network known as the
Hopewell Exchange. We had a a great deal of trade
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and we think a lot of it followsriver valleys.
In my area in the Southeast, people were trading with one
another, so there was a lot of contact between different groups
and trade was people were trading as far up as the Great
Lakes, down down the MississippiRiver into the, you know,
Louisiana area. It wasn't a bunch of tiny little
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groups just living alone and notknowing what someone else is
doing, just down the street, so to speak.
The people who traveled from distant territories into the
Ohio River Valley area were bringing valuable raw materials
from their region to trade with residents who were turning them
into finished products. We had these networks already
and it was a familiar way of interacting with another group.
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In the Hopewell interaction sphere, we have this huge trade
network and we can see where materials are coming from.
We know that at least by 700 AD,there are groups that were
bringing Obsidian from Wyoming, they were bringing iron ore from
Oklahoma up, they were bringing shells from the Gulf Coast, they
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were bringing Micah Sheets from North Carolina, and it was all
coming up to help basically the Ohio River Valley.
Catalinite, which is the pipestone, a red pipestone that
people really prized and that was traded all over the place,
sometimes as nodules but sometimes as finished products.
You know, somebody might carve anice pipe and then trade that if
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that gets into the trade route. The Hopewell Exchange region was
populated by agriculture based communities.
The artisans in these communities created intricate
art pieces, pottery items, pipesand tools.
And it's surprising that many ofthem are coming from 1000 miles
away. It was there we recognize that
people were interacting on a continental scale.
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The reason for the decline of the Hopewell trading system
around 1500 years ago is a mystery, but what is known is
that this highway system of rivers and lakes connected the
peoples and cultures of the northern continent for over 500
years and was one of the most extensive trade networks in the
world. 1000 years ago, indigenous people built the
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largest urban center north of Mexico, near what is now the
city of Saint Louis. Over several 100 years, Cahokia
became one of the most influential trading centers in
North America. There were a whole series of
cultures on the Mississippi and the apex of that was, of course,
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Cahokia at the confluence of theMissouri and Mississippi rivers.
So this was a major hub for all people travelling North and
South and North America. When people got up on those
mounds, that would be the thing that they saw was the the river
in the distance and another river coming in from the West.
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Maize was introduced into North America from Mexico about 2000
years ago and eventually moved into the eastern regions of the
continent about 1000 years ago. Archaeological research has.
Currently shown that the development of agriculture in
that region occurred a lot earlier than previously believed
and so this further developed over time where we see the
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development of large towns and even cities like places like
Cahokia and many others all across the region and only now
we are. Coming to.
Understand those complex sites. In more detail.
Indigenous people in central andeastern North America have
constructed mounds for burials and ceremonial use for thousands
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of years. The city of Cahokia has one of
the greatest concentrations of mounds in North America.
We can follow the evolution, if you will, of of mound
construction. From 300 AD on up, we get small
mounds, we a little bit larger. We get Mortuary mounds, we get
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mounds that have houses on top. A lot of these large mound
structures seem to be places where a large grouping of people
came together. Because of its central location
along traditional trade routes, Cahokia proved the ideal place
to exchange resources. Excavations of Cahokia have
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revealed a range of treasures, mother of Pearl from the Gulf of
Mexico, silver from Ontario and copper from Lake Superior.
At its peak, Cahokia reached a population of at least 20,000
people, with many more thousandsof people living in the farmland
nearby. The centerpiece of the city was
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a massive 30m high dirt pyramid with a base covering 5 1/2
hectares. Found beneath this and many
other mounds in Cahokia are objects made from materials that
originated hundreds and even thousands of miles away.
There's such a wide variety of materials that we know it's of
importance. We don't know what started it.
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We don't know what the importance is.
But, and it wasn't just an economic thing, very important
people, the people with status were using it to identify the
fact that, you know, I'm not having to to use just local
stone for my projectile points. I have material that comes all
the way from 1000 miles away or 20 days travel.
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However they used to measure it.So it was both a status symbol,
it was an economic relationship,and it did become ceremonial.
It became a point in time where there were materials that are of
such beauty that they are not really being used for hunting.
They're being used to demonstrate that I don't need to
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use this for hunting. It, it's, it's so ceremonially
important that I don't have to waste it.
Cahokey itself is sort of seen as one of the mother locations,
if you will, of, of a large number of groups.
During the, the, the little Ice Age in 12/13 hundreds people
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started realizing that they could no longer exist within one
large area that they had to, to pull apart again.
And then for the end of the twelve, 13th, 14th century,
these people start pulling apartand they become separate groups,
the the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the the Okmulgee or the Creek
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peoples. The origin of the people of
Cahokia remains a mystery. Like the Hopewell Exchange
before it, this once bustling city was an essential hub for
trade, connecting every corner of North America.
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Since ancient times, people havetraded food, tools and raw
materials that could not be found in their own territories.
This was the earliest form of commerce and LED the way to the
development of trade routes thatstill exist today as the Greek
civilization began to expand into new territories.
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Food, raw materials and manufactured goods spread the
Greek culture throughout the nation's bordering the Asian and
Mediterranean seas. The.
Vikings were a seafaring people who traded timber, furs and food
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with societies throughout Europeand the Middle East.
They established a bullion economy, trading silver in the
form of coins, ingots and jewelry for goods.
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The Maya established extensive trade routes with other
societies in Mesoamerica. Maize, jade, fabric, and raw
materials were some of the itemsthat form the basis of the Maya
economy over several thousand years.
Ancient trade networks were morethan a means of exchanging
goods. They were central to cultural
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interaction and the sharing of ideas and technologies between
nations. The Aztec Empire was founded 600
years ago in Mesoamerica and soon became one of the largest
societies in the Americas. The Aztec had complex spiritual
beliefs that played a role in every part of their culture and
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day-to-day. Life, they Aztecs in their own
words. They are not from Mesoamerica.
In their own works, they came from somewhere in the North.
The founders of the Aztec Empirearrived in a region already
settled by major societies. To survive, they had to master
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the art of conquest. The Aztecs were people, having
come into the Valley of Mexico and establishing themselves in
the 13th century, very quickly found themselves under the
auspices of a a brutal warlord by the name of Desos Amok.
Eventually, the Aztecs formed a triple alliance with the cities
of Tlacopan and Teshkoco and Tenochtitlan, and that that
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formation in the 1440s basicallyallowed the Aztecs to go up
against this Kingdom at Oskaputsalco and they literally
annihilated it. Having done that, they then
stood up against some 40 other major kingdoms and they wiped
them out as as part of that juggernaut of development and
expansion. Resolved to maintain its status
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as Mesoamerica's dominant force,the Aztec rulers demanded
commitments of military support and resources from each city in
its domain. You would be assigned the
equivalent of an emissary and that emissary would be assigned
to that site and there would be a companion emissary in the
capital to receive the tribute. And as long as you paid tribute,
you were allowed the autonomy necessary.
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What the Aztecs are actually promoting in their empire is
what we can call an imperial boxor an imperial piece, which
means that while that tribute ismoving, is moving through safe
roads, whoever dares to still the tribute is going to be
punished. And what it allowed was for a
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mobilization of resources acrossvast areas while allowing
Indigenous autonomy in every community.
So long as you pay tribute to the Cabecera or the head, in
this case Tenochtitlan and the Aztecs, you could maintain your
system of deities, gods, your system of agriculture, your
polity, your kings, etcetera. So now.
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I can walk not only to the next town, but I can walk hundreds of
kilometers inside the ASIC empire with whatever thing I
want to sail and trade. The debut that is being
perceived by the Aztecs is also being returned to the
mesomerican economy and is goingto create growth.
The capital of the Aztec Empire,Tenochtitlan was a sprawling
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city of canals, pyramids, markets, residential
neighborhoods and artificial islands on what is now the
present day site of Mexico City.The Aztecs have the the belief
that nothing comes out of nothing.
In order to create life, something needs to die, and the
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most precious life they could give was the life of humans.
The energy of the individuals isin the blood, in the fluid, this
sacred liquid. Let's put it this way.
They created a religious economyin which basically lives have to
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be given to the divinities. So were the Aztecs violent?
Yes. But it's organized violence.
Violence without purpose. The Aztec rulers built a society
that in many ways was unparalleled in the world.
In the Pacific Northwest region of North America, indigenous
people developed a complex society that was governed by the
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ownership and passing down of songs, dances, titles, and
names. These laws and privileges were
embedded in a ceremony known as the Potlatch.
During the Potlatch, people fromneighboring villages were
invited to witness a ceremony and gifts were distributed as a
sign of wealth and power by the host chief and his family.
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Gatherings of families and communities often took place
during the winter months. During the winter time is when
we held our most important ceremonies, when we would
invite. Other villages to come to our
communities. And we would host them and and
feed, feed them the whole time that they were there.
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So they might be there for two weeks or or a month.
Our people were very giving of everything.
That we had. And that's how you connected
with your other villages. That's how alliances, loyalties
and trust was created through those connections.
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And that didn't just happen amongst the Quoc, Quoc Quoc.
We were very interactive. And that's a misconception too,
that the Haidas, the Gympcians, the trinkets, the Salish, the
West Coast people were separate.No one people, one family.
Of course, we spoke different languages, but we shared the
same customs, we shared the sameblood.
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When I think of potlatching, I think of marriage, which is a
sacred union between two people,between two houses.
What's really important is the dowry, what the female brings to
her husband's family, validated through potlatching.
Marriage leads to the birth of children, naming our children,
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honoring the children when they come of age, lifting them up
into adulthood with dignity, with the teachings of their
responsibilities. Those sort of things were are
entrenched into the potlatch system and that's again that
connectedness with the other villages and how we interacted
(39:07):
on the coast. Alliances were formed for trade,
which was our survival depended on it.
You had to get along and governance systems, protocols,
these things have to come into play in order to have harmony.
(39:28):
Throughout the ancient world, ceremonies were created to
honour birth, marriage, death and other important social and
human transitions. The tea ceremony emerged in
Japan as a way to honour different types of teas and to
(39:50):
acknowledge the beauty of the items used in their preparation.
Incense was a common trade item in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
(40:13):
Stone altars were used to hold these aromatic resins as they
burned in household and temple rituals.
(40:37):
Tobacco and pipes are sacred to the nations living in the
Central Plains of North America.Sharing a pipe was often used to
initiate peace talks between warring nations.
Ceremonies are part of every society, and many of these
(40:58):
rituals still take place in traditional cultures today.
From societies as large as the Inca Empire in South America to
the smallest hunting communitieson the Great Plains of North
America, rituals were created toheal and protect the people, to
bring the rains, and to resolve conflicts.
(41:21):
For thousands of years, the people of the Central Plains in
North America smoked tobacco, konikonik and other leaves in
ceremonial pipes. This was their link between the
earth and the sky, a sacred ritual for connecting the
physical and spiritual worlds. We generally think of life of
people as bison hunters, huntingand gathering cultures, and
(41:44):
that's definitely true. But they did take one plant
under cultivation and that was tobacco.
And they learned a very, very intricate rituals and ceremonies
around tobacco. Before tobacco came into
Blackfoot culture, they used to have local plants that they
(42:05):
would smoke. They would take the leaves of
the bear Berry and mix them withthe inner bark of red ozier
Dogwood. Then when tobacco came along,
they just added tobacco to the blend.
People were smoking before they got tobacco.
(42:27):
The earliest pipes we find on the northern plains actually
come from the era around 5000 years ago.
So smoking and tobacco were not synonymous.
Tobacco moved out the Missouri River how the beginning about
the 8th century AD and it probably got into the Blackfoot
(42:48):
culture by about 900 AD. And we know that at that period
there was a warm spell in globalclimates and this warm spell
that lasted for about 5 or 600 years.
And that probably created the conditions where it was easier
to plant the crops and, and to harvest them.
(43:12):
When they're ready to plant their tobacco crops, they would
leave it there. After they prepared their
gardens and put the seeds in, they would leave there.
And they in their mythology, they said there were these
little people who lived in the woods.
They lived in little caves. So they were the ones who looked
after the tobacco plants while Blackfoot people were out
(43:34):
Buffalo hunting. And they had to go off and do
their Berry picking or their collecting of other foods so
they can't come back and forth. The Tobacco Society of the
Blackfoot was a Horticultural Society and what they curated
was the traditional knowledge for how to plant tobacco and how
(43:57):
to bring in a crop. They said the little people were
very shy and that they could cause you harm if you saw them.
And then in the fall time, when they were getting ready to
harvest the crops and they'd go by there, they always sent a
couple of people ahead to make lots of noise and to let the
(44:18):
little people know that they were coming, coming back.
And then it gives them time to get away.
They would leave gifts of like food and little clothing, all
these things. They would treat them well.
(44:41):
The tobacco smoke is is also considered very sacred because
it's it's a visual manifestationof your breath.
(45:18):
When people wanted to make an oath, they usually captive by
taking a puff of smoke. Or else if you wanted to
solidify a trade deal, you smokethe pipe.
If you want to end war between your peoples, you smoke the
pipe. So there's this very close
connection between the spirit ofbreath and tobacco.
(45:59):
Blackfoot, Quakawak, Aztec, Incaand Maya are just a few of the
thousands of indigenous nations that develop sophisticated
political systems and vast tradenetworks throughout the
Americas. Before 1491, these nations were
(46:25):
not only formidable societies oftheir time, in many ways, their
laws, rituals and beliefs continue to influence our world
today.
This channel is part of the History Hit Network.
We are the first peoples of the Americas.
We have been here from the beginning.
(00:21):
Our ancestors navigated by the wind and stars, crossing vast
oceans and mountain ranges, searching for new lands.
Over thousands of years, our ancestors became astronomers and
architects, philosophers and scientists, artists and
(00:45):
inventors. We created distinct societies
and built a vast trade systems that cover 2 continents.
In 1492, our world was changed forever, but we did not
disappear. Today, the languages and
(01:07):
teachings of our ancestors remain.
And these are the untold storiesof the Americas before Columbus.
The Americas before 1491. We're home to thousands of
(01:30):
societies, each with its own distinct social, cultural, and
political structure. Throughout the two continents,
Indigenous people formed clans, confederacies, alliances, and
even empires. Indigenous people interacted
between these communities through a complex network of
trade that connected every region of the Americas.
(01:55):
The Hoduna Shoni Confederacy wasformed nearly 900 years ago,
making it one of the oldest representative democracies in
the world. Before the five founding
Iroquois nations came together in peace, they were locked in an
endless cycle of retribution andintertribal war.
You had five warring nations andthe descriptions in the oral
(02:19):
histories is very, very explicitand talking about how there was
fratricide, there was cannibalism, basically human
relations had totally broken down in that part of the world
amongst their own people has allto do with this cycle of
revenge. Every Iroquoian chief engaged in
(02:39):
retaliation, but it was Tadadaho, the serpent chief, who
was known throughout the territory for his ruthlessness.
This guy was terrifying. He put live snakes in his.
Hair, you know. 5 and writhing snakes.
He's a very powerful spiritual person whose mind was twisted.
(03:00):
So the imagery they have in the stories is his fingers are all
twisted and his body's all gnarled and so forth.
And he was able to control the wind and the waters and he was
causing a lot of harm. As internal wars continued to
tear the Five Nations apart, an outsider known as the Peacemaker
arrived in a stone canoe and began to share his vision of a
(03:23):
society based on harmony and peace.
He travelled to every corner of Iroquoisan territory promoting
the great Law of peace. And the founding of Confederacy
really is the story of the Peacemaker, a person from a
related nation who came into ourterritory and connected with a
(03:45):
leader in our nation, Hiawatha. Once part of his nation's
warrior society, Ayanwatha had changed his way of thinking and
started to promote his own vision of peace.
Tara Daho saw this as a betrayaland had each of Ayanwatha's
(04:06):
daughters killed 1 by 1. The pain of his loss LED
Ayanwata to leave his community and isolate himself in the
forest. Ayawata's story is not just
Ayawata, it's the story of him and his daughters and how the
loss of his daughters affected him and what drove him to do
what he did was the loss of his daughters.
(04:27):
Your daughters. Are your posterity because?
When you draw. Was a female.
Why? After they met, the peacemaker
convinced Ayanwatha that they should become allies in seeking
peace among the nations. Even though he was overcome with
(05:01):
grief, Ayaanwatha chose to work with the Peacemaker to promote
his idea of an intertribal alliance between the five
warring nations. Because of the revered role of
women in Iroquoian nations, Ayaanwatha and the Peacemaker
travelled to the Fire of Jigensasse to seek her advice on
(05:21):
how to bring the great law of peace to the Iroquoian people.
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(05:41):
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(06:09):
I giggle. In the Iroquois way of thinking,
women were on par with men in terms of the authority they
wield. In the political realm.
(07:30):
See. What star works near?
The chiefs of. The four Iroquois nations
(07:59):
supported the peacemaker's vision of the Great Law of
Peace. It's important to consider the
objective. The objective wasn't to enhance
(08:21):
the power of these nations or toincrease the territory or the
wealth. It was to create peaceful,
honest coexistence. But Tara Daho continued to
(08:44):
resist joining the alliance. Not Paul.
(09:09):
How? Is he going to?
Agree with this peace because he'll lose all power.
(09:53):
Then something extraordinary happened.
Based on astronomical records, asolar eclipse covered the
northeast region of North America for 4 minutes on the
afternoon of August 31st, 1142. After this historic event, Tada
(10:19):
Daho agreed to join the Confederacy.
The Onondaga became the keepers of the central fire, a role that
(10:42):
they hold to this day. 1142 would be the founding of the
great Peace. And so, yeah, Tara Daho then is
named the main chief of the Confederacy.
He's actually taken as the symbol of the meaning of this
message, which is that even the worst person, even the most
(11:03):
powerful evil force can be turned around and made into
good. If you think back into terms of
what was the first message that was brought by the peacemaker to
our people is that you should treat each other kindly and you
should think of each other as one family.
That's the central power of thisteaching, is that you should be
(11:25):
treating everyone like your brother and sister.
The power of it is extremely long lasting.
It's shown. It's been how many years now?
How many generations of people have been bound together by
that? This ancient indigenous
government continues to be part of Iroquoian society nearly 900
(11:47):
years after its founding. The development of large urban
centers evolved from small farming villages as mass
production of food supported thegrowth of populations and
cities. For centuries, the Marowitic
(12:17):
Kingdom thrived as it was too distant for foreign nations to
conquer it. This Nubian Kingdom was
surrounded by fertile land and supported a large urban
population. For two centuries, the Assyrian
(12:41):
Empire was a formidable society.Rulers displayed their power by
constructing impressive palaces and temples.
Before the empire fell, they hadextended their influence over
most of the Middle East and Egypt.
(13:05):
The Inca Empire was the largest civilization in the Americas in
the early 16th century. In its short existence, the Sapa
Incas ruled a Society of millions of people from Ecuador
to Chile. Over the past 5000 years, large
city states with dynamic political and religious rulers
(13:28):
emerged and held power in every part of the world.
The ancestors of the ambitious Inca rulers had humble
beginnings as farmers in the Andean Highlands about 900 years
ago. The descendants of those farmers
founded the largest indigenous society in the Americas 600
(13:49):
years ago. And like other great
civilizations, the Inca Empire began with a vision.
The Incas are going to claim that after the creation of the
world in Titicaca, some of them took this passage, this tunnel
from the lake and they are goingto emerge in Pakaritambo the the
(14:10):
the the place of their origin. According to oral histories, the
first Inca family left their birthplace in Pakaritambo in
search of the perfect location to establish a homeland.
They were carrying a golden staff and they were basically
testing the soils, and the idea was that they were going to find
a place where that Bolton Rd. was going to be able to be
(14:36):
sunken into the ground. And that happened in Cusco in
one specific spot, and that's going to be the USHNO.
And the USHNO is the center where all the vital force of the
universe radiates. When the Inca arrived in Cusco,
it had been the home of the Kilke people for hundreds of
years. The land is already inhabited by
(14:58):
those people who have always been there, and they have to
come with an idea of this possess the local inhabitants
and then they becoming the the masters of.
The place in the first of many conquests, the early Inca rulers
either ousted or absorbed the Kilke people, maintaining Kusko
as the logistical, political andspiritual heart of their new
(15:21):
society. 600 years ago, the IncaEmpire extended over much of
what is today Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and
Argentina and was home to 20 million people.
You are going to have four primary lines, which are going
to be the roads of the Tawantin Suiyu.
(15:42):
Cusco was organized into 4 quadrants, and leaders from
cities and villages throughout the empire were required to
build a house and live in Cusco part of the year in the quadrant
that corresponded to their region.
And then based on that, you are going to have all these close to
80 provinces in an area that basically went all the way from
(16:04):
northern Chile to Ecuador. All along the Andes you had
these systems that the Inca built upon.
Their empire extended in length some 2000 miles from north to
South. This grew in tandem with
conquest and population growth. To control such a massive
(16:24):
territory and diverse population, the empire's leaders
convinced regional chiefs to join the society with promises
of material riches and special status.
But mandatory allegiance had a cost.
Most of the leaders of these small nations accepted the new
government peacefully. But for those who resisted, the
Incas well trained army forced compliance.
(16:48):
The Sapa Inca was the emperor, aposition passed down from father
to son. The Sapa Inca's wife, known as
the Koya, was typically his sister.
We can think about the Incas as a oligarchy of of 10 royal
families. Those are the ones who are
intermarrying among themselves. Just remember that according to
(17:10):
their own traditions, they have to maintain the the this
dynastic line pure. So they are allowed to marry
with their first cousins and of course the sisters and and
brothers. In addition to the importance of
blood purity, the Incan Royals also believe their emperors were
blessed with immortality. The Emperor never dies.
(17:32):
Your body continues to have vital powers that are use for
political purposes because the people who are going to be in
charge of, of keeping the bodiesof the Incas, the mummified
bodies of the Incas are called the Panicas.
They are going to operate as a small Congress that are going
to, they're going to put checks and balance on the Inca.
So they are going to be able to decide and and and advise and
(17:57):
sometimes direct the ideas of the Inca towards specific
purposes only because the mommy of the deceased emperor, at
least some of the relatives can talk with that mommy.
And then it's like your grandfather says that you are
doing wrong, that you should better think do this.
The Inca hierarchy placed the royal family at the top,
(18:19):
followed by the nobility, including the priests, governors
and tax collectors. Rounding out the social
structure were the farmers, herders, servants and slaves.
Much of the population consists of a peasantry, agricultural,
rural, and then you have the cities and the cities kind of
wield all power and they extracttax in labor from each of those
(18:41):
communities. In the case of the Incas, they
want tributing labor, but they want you to go and work in the
land of the Incas, produce the crops.
And then an Inca officer is going to show up and say, like,
guys, it's time for us to put all these in the storehouses
(19:02):
because we are going to live outof these food if it doesn't rain
next year. So often tributaries would pay
into the Inca state and the Incas would then through their
meet that tax system would basically warehouse foods,
typically potatoes, maize and other crops and they had an
incredible abundance of different crops that would be
(19:24):
stored. But these allowed armies to be
maintained and fed while on campaign, but also for the
communities that work these areas to be able to maintain
themselves during periods of drought, for instance.
So it was a system that was a give and take, but virtually
everything in the Income Empire belonged to the Inca himself.
(19:45):
Maya society was made-up of citystates that dotted the landscape
in Mesoamerica. Moving goods and services to a
population in the millions was done through a highly evolved
system of trade and commerce. They were bringing in shell from
the Gulf Coast, they were bringing in shell from the West
Coast, They were bringing uniqueand and prized green obsidians
(20:07):
from the Pachuca sources in Highland Mexico, a basalt,
ceramics, even turquoise coming out of the American Southwest.
This was traveling over some of the most circuitous and
mountainous regions and even Gulf lowland regions all the way
to the Maya area. These are people that they
didn't have draft animals. They did not have horses, they
(20:28):
did not have cattle, oxen, they didn't have any of these things.
So everything had to be ported on foot on the backs of human
burden bearers. In turn, what the Maya were
giving back was access to the Matagua River Jade source.
True jade occurs only in a few places on the planet, and the
Maya had access to it, so jade was being moved throughout
(20:49):
Mesoamerica. And of course, elites who
identified with jade as related to the Earth and to the
ancestors wanted to be a part ofthat.
They began using ritual objects and belief to draw on the
interests of outsiders who beginto trade or to pilgrimage to
these sites. So you get some of the earliest
pilgrimage centers in these regions.
(21:10):
Maya trade went well beyond the valuable jade market.
Various other commodities were transported in their raw or
manufactured state from the Mayaregion on foot and by boat.
When the Spanish first arrived, they had encounters with Maya
boats, or ships if you will, andthese were multiple canoes
lashed together in the platforms.
(21:32):
And they were essentially sailing ships that were
traveling up the coast with large quantities of ceramics as
well as rubber, copal, chocolate, vanilla, and
virtually all of those other things that we as Westerners so
much enjoy, which all originatedin ancient Mesoamerica.
One of the most important trade items in Maya society was maize.
(21:53):
This crop was at the center of the Maya diet and culture and
was in high demand in the urban centers.
Eventually, maize moved into North and South America through
trade with other indigenous communities.
Considering the importance of corn for people's diet and.
All that went with cornets was avaluable.
(22:13):
Food to trade. Societies throughout the world
have traded, bartered, and sold food for thousands of years.
This exchange fostered importantbusiness and social
relationships and contributed tothe development of cuisines that
were unique to regions and nations.
(22:37):
Salt was an essential mineral for African diets and an
important trade item with other nations.
Salt cakes were transported by camel caravans and traded for
gold, ivory, and kola nuts across the continent.
(23:01):
Spices have been a major trade item for thousands of years.
Cinnamon, ginger and turmeric were exchanged between Africa,
Europe, the Middle East and Asia, making spices one of the
most important economic and cultural enterprises in the
world. Societies throughout the world
(23:25):
have been producing wine for thousands of years as both the
religious and social beverage. The earliest wine production was
in Armenia 7000 years ago. After 1492, fruits and
vegetables cultivated in North and South America were exported
to Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of the world's most widely
(23:49):
used ingredients had their origins among indigenous
societies in the Americas. Around the same time that the
Maya were the dominant trading center in Mesoamerica,
indigenous people in North America were transporting
materials by boat and foot alonga trade network known as the
Hopewell Exchange. We had a a great deal of trade
(24:12):
and we think a lot of it followsriver valleys.
In my area in the Southeast, people were trading with one
another, so there was a lot of contact between different groups
and trade was people were trading as far up as the Great
Lakes, down down the MississippiRiver into the, you know,
Louisiana area. It wasn't a bunch of tiny little
(24:35):
groups just living alone and notknowing what someone else is
doing, just down the street, so to speak.
The people who traveled from distant territories into the
Ohio River Valley area were bringing valuable raw materials
from their region to trade with residents who were turning them
into finished products. We had these networks already
and it was a familiar way of interacting with another group.
(24:58):
In the Hopewell interaction sphere, we have this huge trade
network and we can see where materials are coming from.
We know that at least by 700 AD,there are groups that were
bringing Obsidian from Wyoming, they were bringing iron ore from
Oklahoma up, they were bringing shells from the Gulf Coast, they
(25:19):
were bringing Micah Sheets from North Carolina, and it was all
coming up to help basically the Ohio River Valley.
Catalinite, which is the pipestone, a red pipestone that
people really prized and that was traded all over the place,
sometimes as nodules but sometimes as finished products.
You know, somebody might carve anice pipe and then trade that if
(25:41):
that gets into the trade route. The Hopewell Exchange region was
populated by agriculture based communities.
The artisans in these communities created intricate
art pieces, pottery items, pipesand tools.
And it's surprising that many ofthem are coming from 1000 miles
away. It was there we recognize that
people were interacting on a continental scale.
(26:04):
The reason for the decline of the Hopewell trading system
around 1500 years ago is a mystery, but what is known is
that this highway system of rivers and lakes connected the
peoples and cultures of the northern continent for over 500
years and was one of the most extensive trade networks in the
world. 1000 years ago, indigenous people built the
(26:28):
largest urban center north of Mexico, near what is now the
city of Saint Louis. Over several 100 years, Cahokia
became one of the most influential trading centers in
North America. There were a whole series of
cultures on the Mississippi and the apex of that was, of course,
(26:48):
Cahokia at the confluence of theMissouri and Mississippi rivers.
So this was a major hub for all people travelling North and
South and North America. When people got up on those
mounds, that would be the thing that they saw was the the river
in the distance and another river coming in from the West.
(27:13):
Maize was introduced into North America from Mexico about 2000
years ago and eventually moved into the eastern regions of the
continent about 1000 years ago. Archaeological research has.
Currently shown that the development of agriculture in
that region occurred a lot earlier than previously believed
and so this further developed over time where we see the
(27:36):
development of large towns and even cities like places like
Cahokia and many others all across the region and only now
we are. Coming to.
Understand those complex sites. In more detail.
Indigenous people in central andeastern North America have
constructed mounds for burials and ceremonial use for thousands
(27:57):
of years. The city of Cahokia has one of
the greatest concentrations of mounds in North America.
We can follow the evolution, if you will, of of mound
construction. From 300 AD on up, we get small
mounds, we a little bit larger. We get Mortuary mounds, we get
(28:17):
mounds that have houses on top. A lot of these large mound
structures seem to be places where a large grouping of people
came together. Because of its central location
along traditional trade routes, Cahokia proved the ideal place
to exchange resources. Excavations of Cahokia have
(28:39):
revealed a range of treasures, mother of Pearl from the Gulf of
Mexico, silver from Ontario and copper from Lake Superior.
At its peak, Cahokia reached a population of at least 20,000
people, with many more thousandsof people living in the farmland
nearby. The centerpiece of the city was
(28:59):
a massive 30m high dirt pyramid with a base covering 5 1/2
hectares. Found beneath this and many
other mounds in Cahokia are objects made from materials that
originated hundreds and even thousands of miles away.
There's such a wide variety of materials that we know it's of
importance. We don't know what started it.
(29:22):
We don't know what the importance is.
But, and it wasn't just an economic thing, very important
people, the people with status were using it to identify the
fact that, you know, I'm not having to to use just local
stone for my projectile points. I have material that comes all
the way from 1000 miles away or 20 days travel.
(29:45):
However they used to measure it.So it was both a status symbol,
it was an economic relationship,and it did become ceremonial.
It became a point in time where there were materials that are of
such beauty that they are not really being used for hunting.
They're being used to demonstrate that I don't need to
(30:06):
use this for hunting. It, it's, it's so ceremonially
important that I don't have to waste it.
Cahokey itself is sort of seen as one of the mother locations,
if you will, of, of a large number of groups.
During the, the, the little Ice Age in 12/13 hundreds people
(30:31):
started realizing that they could no longer exist within one
large area that they had to, to pull apart again.
And then for the end of the twelve, 13th, 14th century,
these people start pulling apartand they become separate groups,
the the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the the Okmulgee or the Creek
(30:52):
peoples. The origin of the people of
Cahokia remains a mystery. Like the Hopewell Exchange
before it, this once bustling city was an essential hub for
trade, connecting every corner of North America.
(31:17):
Since ancient times, people havetraded food, tools and raw
materials that could not be found in their own territories.
This was the earliest form of commerce and LED the way to the
development of trade routes thatstill exist today as the Greek
civilization began to expand into new territories.
(31:39):
Food, raw materials and manufactured goods spread the
Greek culture throughout the nation's bordering the Asian and
Mediterranean seas. The.
Vikings were a seafaring people who traded timber, furs and food
(32:04):
with societies throughout Europeand the Middle East.
They established a bullion economy, trading silver in the
form of coins, ingots and jewelry for goods.
(32:25):
The Maya established extensive trade routes with other
societies in Mesoamerica. Maize, jade, fabric, and raw
materials were some of the itemsthat form the basis of the Maya
economy over several thousand years.
Ancient trade networks were morethan a means of exchanging
goods. They were central to cultural
(32:47):
interaction and the sharing of ideas and technologies between
nations. The Aztec Empire was founded 600
years ago in Mesoamerica and soon became one of the largest
societies in the Americas. The Aztec had complex spiritual
beliefs that played a role in every part of their culture and
(33:08):
day-to-day. Life, they Aztecs in their own
words. They are not from Mesoamerica.
In their own works, they came from somewhere in the North.
The founders of the Aztec Empirearrived in a region already
settled by major societies. To survive, they had to master
(33:28):
the art of conquest. The Aztecs were people, having
come into the Valley of Mexico and establishing themselves in
the 13th century, very quickly found themselves under the
auspices of a a brutal warlord by the name of Desos Amok.
Eventually, the Aztecs formed a triple alliance with the cities
of Tlacopan and Teshkoco and Tenochtitlan, and that that
(33:51):
formation in the 1440s basicallyallowed the Aztecs to go up
against this Kingdom at Oskaputsalco and they literally
annihilated it. Having done that, they then
stood up against some 40 other major kingdoms and they wiped
them out as as part of that juggernaut of development and
expansion. Resolved to maintain its status
(34:13):
as Mesoamerica's dominant force,the Aztec rulers demanded
commitments of military support and resources from each city in
its domain. You would be assigned the
equivalent of an emissary and that emissary would be assigned
to that site and there would be a companion emissary in the
capital to receive the tribute. And as long as you paid tribute,
you were allowed the autonomy necessary.
(34:35):
What the Aztecs are actually promoting in their empire is
what we can call an imperial boxor an imperial piece, which
means that while that tribute ismoving, is moving through safe
roads, whoever dares to still the tribute is going to be
punished. And what it allowed was for a
(34:56):
mobilization of resources acrossvast areas while allowing
Indigenous autonomy in every community.
So long as you pay tribute to the Cabecera or the head, in
this case Tenochtitlan and the Aztecs, you could maintain your
system of deities, gods, your system of agriculture, your
polity, your kings, etcetera. So now.
(35:18):
I can walk not only to the next town, but I can walk hundreds of
kilometers inside the ASIC empire with whatever thing I
want to sail and trade. The debut that is being
perceived by the Aztecs is also being returned to the
mesomerican economy and is goingto create growth.
The capital of the Aztec Empire,Tenochtitlan was a sprawling
(35:41):
city of canals, pyramids, markets, residential
neighborhoods and artificial islands on what is now the
present day site of Mexico City.The Aztecs have the the belief
that nothing comes out of nothing.
In order to create life, something needs to die, and the
(36:04):
most precious life they could give was the life of humans.
The energy of the individuals isin the blood, in the fluid, this
sacred liquid. Let's put it this way.
They created a religious economyin which basically lives have to
(36:26):
be given to the divinities. So were the Aztecs violent?
Yes. But it's organized violence.
Violence without purpose. The Aztec rulers built a society
that in many ways was unparalleled in the world.
In the Pacific Northwest region of North America, indigenous
people developed a complex society that was governed by the
(36:49):
ownership and passing down of songs, dances, titles, and
names. These laws and privileges were
embedded in a ceremony known as the Potlatch.
During the Potlatch, people fromneighboring villages were
invited to witness a ceremony and gifts were distributed as a
sign of wealth and power by the host chief and his family.
(37:14):
Gatherings of families and communities often took place
during the winter months. During the winter time is when
we held our most important ceremonies, when we would
invite. Other villages to come to our
communities. And we would host them and and
feed, feed them the whole time that they were there.
(37:35):
So they might be there for two weeks or or a month.
Our people were very giving of everything.
That we had. And that's how you connected
with your other villages. That's how alliances, loyalties
and trust was created through those connections.
(37:56):
And that didn't just happen amongst the Quoc, Quoc Quoc.
We were very interactive. And that's a misconception too,
that the Haidas, the Gympcians, the trinkets, the Salish, the
West Coast people were separate.No one people, one family.
Of course, we spoke different languages, but we shared the
same customs, we shared the sameblood.
(38:20):
When I think of potlatching, I think of marriage, which is a
sacred union between two people,between two houses.
What's really important is the dowry, what the female brings to
her husband's family, validated through potlatching.
Marriage leads to the birth of children, naming our children,
(38:46):
honoring the children when they come of age, lifting them up
into adulthood with dignity, with the teachings of their
responsibilities. Those sort of things were are
entrenched into the potlatch system and that's again that
connectedness with the other villages and how we interacted
(39:07):
on the coast. Alliances were formed for trade,
which was our survival depended on it.
You had to get along and governance systems, protocols,
these things have to come into play in order to have harmony.
(39:28):
Throughout the ancient world, ceremonies were created to
honour birth, marriage, death and other important social and
human transitions. The tea ceremony emerged in
Japan as a way to honour different types of teas and to
(39:50):
acknowledge the beauty of the items used in their preparation.
Incense was a common trade item in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
(40:13):
Stone altars were used to hold these aromatic resins as they
burned in household and temple rituals.
(40:37):
Tobacco and pipes are sacred to the nations living in the
Central Plains of North America.Sharing a pipe was often used to
initiate peace talks between warring nations.
Ceremonies are part of every society, and many of these
(40:58):
rituals still take place in traditional cultures today.
From societies as large as the Inca Empire in South America to
the smallest hunting communitieson the Great Plains of North
America, rituals were created toheal and protect the people, to
bring the rains, and to resolve conflicts.
(41:21):
For thousands of years, the people of the Central Plains in
North America smoked tobacco, konikonik and other leaves in
ceremonial pipes. This was their link between the
earth and the sky, a sacred ritual for connecting the
physical and spiritual worlds. We generally think of life of
people as bison hunters, huntingand gathering cultures, and
(41:44):
that's definitely true. But they did take one plant
under cultivation and that was tobacco.
And they learned a very, very intricate rituals and ceremonies
around tobacco. Before tobacco came into
Blackfoot culture, they used to have local plants that they
(42:05):
would smoke. They would take the leaves of
the bear Berry and mix them withthe inner bark of red ozier
Dogwood. Then when tobacco came along,
they just added tobacco to the blend.
People were smoking before they got tobacco.
(42:27):
The earliest pipes we find on the northern plains actually
come from the era around 5000 years ago.
So smoking and tobacco were not synonymous.
Tobacco moved out the Missouri River how the beginning about
the 8th century AD and it probably got into the Blackfoot
(42:48):
culture by about 900 AD. And we know that at that period
there was a warm spell in globalclimates and this warm spell
that lasted for about 5 or 600 years.
And that probably created the conditions where it was easier
to plant the crops and, and to harvest them.
(43:12):
When they're ready to plant their tobacco crops, they would
leave it there. After they prepared their
gardens and put the seeds in, they would leave there.
And they in their mythology, they said there were these
little people who lived in the woods.
They lived in little caves. So they were the ones who looked
after the tobacco plants while Blackfoot people were out
(43:34):
Buffalo hunting. And they had to go off and do
their Berry picking or their collecting of other foods so
they can't come back and forth. The Tobacco Society of the
Blackfoot was a Horticultural Society and what they curated
was the traditional knowledge for how to plant tobacco and how
(43:57):
to bring in a crop. They said the little people were
very shy and that they could cause you harm if you saw them.
And then in the fall time, when they were getting ready to
harvest the crops and they'd go by there, they always sent a
couple of people ahead to make lots of noise and to let the
(44:18):
little people know that they were coming, coming back.
And then it gives them time to get away.
They would leave gifts of like food and little clothing, all
these things. They would treat them well.
(44:41):
The tobacco smoke is is also considered very sacred because
it's it's a visual manifestationof your breath.
(45:18):
When people wanted to make an oath, they usually captive by
taking a puff of smoke. Or else if you wanted to
solidify a trade deal, you smokethe pipe.
If you want to end war between your peoples, you smoke the
pipe. So there's this very close
connection between the spirit ofbreath and tobacco.
(45:59):
Blackfoot, Quakawak, Aztec, Incaand Maya are just a few of the
thousands of indigenous nations that develop sophisticated
political systems and vast tradenetworks throughout the
Americas. Before 1491, these nations were
(46:25):
not only formidable societies oftheir time, in many ways, their
laws, rituals and beliefs continue to influence our world
today.
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