Script for video 3

When the Spanish reached the mainland of the Ameri-cas, after having explored the Caribbean islands, the Aztec Empire was still intact. The Spanish explored the Panama region in Central America and the Yucatán Peninsula in the early 1500s. During these expeditions, they heard of the powerful Aztec Empire to the north, with a great city of towering pyramids, filled with gold and other riches, rising out of Lake Texcoco. In 1519, Hernán Cortés landed with about 400 soldiers and marched toward the city of Tenochtitlán.

Even with such a small army, Cortés managed to con-quer the huge armies of the Aztec for a number of reasons.

First of all, he managed to gain as allies other Mesoameri-can peoples who wanted to be free of Aztec rule—peoples such as the Totonac, Tlaxcalan, and Cholulan (from the ancient city of Cholula, site of the largest structure in the Americas, the Great Pyramid, 180 feet high and covering 25 acres). In order to accomplish these alliances, Cortés played various factions against one another. He also had the help of a talented Maya woman, originally a slave, named Malintzín (Malinche), called Lady Marina by the Spanish, who served as a translator and arbitrator among the different peoples. Moreover, the conquistadores were armed with guns, which frightened the Indians. Nor had the Aztec ever seen horses.

Still another factor played an important part in the Spanish conquest of the Aztec. Aztec legend told of the return of the god Quetzalcoatl. The Aztec thought that the white-skinned Cortés might be this god. The Aztec emperor Montezuma (also spelled Moctezuma) was indecisive in his actions when faced with this possibility.

He lost his life during the period of political maneuver-ing, at the hands of either the Spanish or some Aztec who resented his indecisiveness. By the time the Aztec mounted a sizable defense against the invaders, the Span-ish had thousands of Indian allies. The SpanSpan-ish con-quest, after fierce fighting in the streets of Tenochtitlán, was complete by 1521.

The Spanish worked to eradicate all traces of Aztec civilization. They destroyed temples and pyramids; they melted down sculptured objects into basic metals to be shipped back to Spain; they burned Aztec books. They also forced the Aztec to work for them as slaves. New Spain (Mexico) became the base from which the Spanish

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Aztec rhythm instrument made from a human bone

sent conquistadores northward to explore what is now the American Southwest and California, as well as south-ward into South America.

Many of the large population of Aztec descendants—

referred to generally as Nahua—live in small villages around Mexico City; some 1.7 million people speak Nahuatl.

The Bannock (pronounced BAN-uck) are considered an offshoot of the northern branch of the PAIUTE. Both peoples are part of the Uto-Aztecan language family, as are the UTEand SHOSHONE. Scholars classify these tribes as GREAT BASIN INDIANS. Great Basin Indians foraged and dug for anything edible—wild plants, rodents, rep-tiles, insects—in their harsh mountain and desert envi-ronment. They also had a staple food in common with the PLATEAU INDIANS to their north—the roots of the camas plant.

The nomadic Bannock occupied ancestral territory that has since become southeastern Idaho and western Wyoming. After they had acquired horses in the early 1700s, they ranged over a wider area into parts of Col-orado, Utah, Montana, and Oregon. Their way of life came to resemble that of the PLAINS INDIANS, including buffalo-hunting and the use of tipis.

A mountain man by the name of Jim Bridger opened up trade relations with the Bannock in 1829. Yet in the following years, Bannock warriors preyed on migrants and miners traveling through their territory on the Ore-gon Trail. In 1869, after the Civil War, when more fed-eral troops could be sent west to build new forts and to pacify militant bands, the government established the Fort Hall Reservation in present-day Idaho for the Ban-nock and northern branch of Shoshone.

The Bannock resisted reservation life. Their food rations on the reservation were meager, and tribal mem-bers continued to wander over a wide expanse of terri-tory in search of the foods they had hunted and gathered for generations. As more and more whites settled in the region, they disrupted these traditional food staples of the Bannock; non-Indian hunters were killing the buf-falo wholesale on the plains to the east. In addition, hogs belonging to white ranchers were destroying the camas plants near Fort Boise, Idaho. The Bannock, along with their neighbors, the Northern Paiute, revolted.

The Bannock War occurred in 1878. A Bannock war-rior wounded two whites, who reported the incident to the army. Meanwhile, about 200 Bannock and Northern Paiute warriors gathered under a Bannock chief named Buffalo Horn. This war party clashed with a volunteer

patrol in June. When Buffalo Horn was killed, his fol-lowers headed westward into Oregon to regroup at Steens Mountain with Paiute from the Malheur Reserva-tion. Two Paiute became the new leaders: a chief named Egan and a medicine man named Oytes.

Regular army troops rode out of Fort Boise in pursuit.

They were under the command of General Oliver O.

Howard, who had tracked down the NEZ PERCE during their uprising the year before. The soldiers caught up with the insurgents at Birch Creek on July 8 and dis-lodged them from steep bluffs. Warriors under Chief Egan tried to hide out on the Umatilla reservation. The Umatilla sided with the whites, however. They killed Egan and led soldiers to his men. Oytes managed to elude capture until August, but eventually turned him-self in. A party of Bannock escaped eastward to Wyoming, but they were captured in September.

After the short-lived Bannock War, the Malheur Reservation was closed. The Paiute were settled among the YAKAMAon their reservation in the state of Washing-ton. The Bannock were held prisoners at military posts for a time but were finally permitted to return to their reservation in Idaho.

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BANNOCK

Bannock parents with child

The Native name of the Beaver, Tsattine, means “those who live among the beavers,” given the former abun-dance of that mammal in their territory near the Peace River in present-day northwestern Alberta, Canada. The Native name for that river, in fact, was Tsades, or “river of beavers.” The Beaver, like other ATHAPASCANS in the region, are classified as SUBARTIC INDIANS. Based on dialectal similarities, it is assumed that the Beaver in pre-contact times were one people with the Sekani, who migrated westward into the Rocky Mountains, and the

SARCEE, who migrated southward onto the northern plains.

The Beaver, as was the case with other Subarctic peo-ples, were nomadic, following game seasonally. They fished the lakes and rivers but depended more on game for sustenance. They hunted moose, caribou, beavers, and rabbits, especially on the prairies south of the Peace River and east of the Rockies, but also across the moun-tains into present-day British Columbia. They some-times roamed far enough south to take buffalo. Hunting methods included bows and arrows, spears, and snares.

Cone-shaped calls made out of birch bark were used to attract animals. Unlike PLAINS INDIANS, who used buf-falo hides, the Beaver were more likely to use moose hide or caribou hide to cover their conical dwellings, which resembled small tipis, usually erected along a river or lake. They also were known to use sphagnum moss as an insulating covering. In addition, tribal members built temporary brush shelters, especially lean-tos. Their clothing was typically of moose skin. They cooked meat in vessels of spruce bark, woven spruce roots, and birch bark using heated stones. A number of families were

loosely organized into bands, each with a headman and each with specific hunting territory. Transportation tech-nology included canoes covered with spruce bark or birch bark, snowshoes, and toboggans.

Beaver religion included a belief in guardian spirits.

Tribal members slept with their heads pointing east, believing that dreams and visions came from the rising Sun. However, the band shaman, sometimes referred to as the “dreamer,” slept with his head pointing west toward the setting Sun. Youths would fast in preparation for discovering their particular guardian spirits. At a fes-tival held twice a year, food was sacrificed on a specially prepared fire to bring about future prosperity. The Beaver creation myth relates how humans crawled through a log to reach Earth. Regarding burial rites, the dead were placed in a roll of birch bark in trees or on platforms. Relatives would express grief by self-mutila-tion, with men lacerating their chests and piercing their arms and legs; women were known to sever a joint of a finger. Possessions were typically given away or destroyed. Following exposure to Christianity, the Beaver began a tradition of prophets, these individuals assuming what had been the role of the shaman in help-ing individuals or the band make decisions.

The original homeland of the Beaver extended as far east as Lake Athabaska and the Athabaska River valley.

By about 1760, however, the Beaver bands had been dri-ven westward by the Algonquian-speaking CREE who had been equipped with firearms by traders of the Hud-son’s Bay Company. The Beaver were among the first northern Athapascans to have contact with non-Indians.

Early representatives of the North West Company, such

BEAVER (Tsattine)

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That same year, 1878, another Indian war broke out in Idaho, known as the Sheepeater War. The Sheepeaters were Bannock and Shoshone who had migrated north-ward into the Salmon River Mountains of central Idaho and hunted mountain sheep as their main food. They too began raiding settlers crowding their homeland.

There were not many of them, perhaps only 50, but they proved a stubborn enemy for the army in the rugged highlands. They routed one army patrol and eluded another. But the army wore them down with continuous tracking, and the Sheepeaters surrendered in October.

They were placed on the Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho with their Bannock and Shoshone kin.

The Shoshone-Bannock Tribe of the Fort Hall Reservation, also referred to as the Sho-Bans, hold many traditional festivals every year, including a week-long celebration in August, several Sun Dances, and an all-Indian rodeo. They also maintain the Trading Post Complex, including a store known as the Clothes Horse, and offer high-stakes bingo. Starting in the 1990s, the Sho-Bans began a campaign to halt the air pollution emanating from an elemental phosphorous plant, which was a health hazard for the people of the Fort Hall Reservation. In 2001, the federal govern-ment forced the plant to spend $80 million in air improvement.

as Peter Pond in the 1770s and Alexander Mackenzie in the 1790s, developed the fur trade in the region. In 1799, Makenunatane (Swan Chief ) of the Beaver requested a fur-trading post among his people and expressed curiosity about Christianity.

In 1899, the Canadian government negotiated Treaty 8 with the Beaver, Cree, and CHIPEWYAN, in which the three tribes ceded huge tracts of land. A number of bands maintain tribal identity in Alberta and British Columbia.