North American Government
In the Paleo-Indian
period, everyone in North America lived in small bands,
usually just your family and maybe one or two other families - not more
than ten to fifteen people. Most of the time, those were the only people
you saw, and your mom, or your uncle or grandpa or grandma, made the decisions
for your band. Once in awhile you might get together with some other bands
for a religious ceremony and so you
could find someone to get married to.
By the Archaic period,
about 8000 BC, this was beginning to change.
Some people began to live in bigger villages, maybe with chiefs.
The chief would be a richer man, or less often a woman. People probably
chose their chief by having a meeting where they would try to agree on the
best person to be the chief. Often, the new chief would be the son or daughter
of the old chief.
Around 3000 BC, in the Late
Archaic period, people began to live in even bigger groups, known as
complex chiefdoms (This is about the time when the first states
show up in West Asia
and Egypt). In a complex
chiefdom, each village has a chief, but there is a super-chief who tells
all the other chiefs what to do. Usually this super-chief is a man, and
he inherits his power from his father. He and the other chiefs only marry
each other's sisters and daughters, and never marry ordinary people. This
arrangement probably lasted through the Woodland
period.
By the time of the Mississippian
culture in the center of North America, about 800 AD,
some people, like the Mississippians
and the Pueblo people, probably had
a state government. Other people,
like the Cherokee and the Iroquois,
continued to live under a complex
chiefdom, while others continued to live in bands,
like the Ute, the Navajo,
the Inuit, and the Blackfeet.
To find out more about North American government before 1500, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:
Later North
American Government
North American History
Main North America page
Main South America page
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