American Millennial History

Author: Nick Yapjiniao Translated by
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: The relentless wave of immigration ultimately shaped America's confident national character and brought a wealth of talent. No civilization can be as inclusive as American civilization, embracing such a broad and splendid culture and thought, blending courage and clumsiness in an exciting way into the American Dream. This millennium of history is just an overture; America will continue to perform "the greatest drama on Earth." This book covers the nearly thousand-year historical and cultural development process and background of the United States, providing a comprehensive introduction to American history through rich and detailed visual materials. Excerpt: Historical Period 1000–1500 No one knows the exact time when the earliest inhabitants of North America arrived. Estimates suggest it was between 10,000 to 70,000 years ago. Regardless of when they arrived, the first settlers came from Asia. At that time, North America and Asia were connected, with the land bridge spanning about 1,000 miles. Based on this, the earliest inhabitants of North America may not have migrated from Siberia to Alaska, but rather from much further south. Almost certainly, their migration was driven by the search for food, following herds of birds and animals and fish in rivers to the Americas. Over the next 10,000 years, these new immigrants crossed the vast areas of today's Canada and the United States at an astonishingly rapid pace, moving south along the western coast, then splitting into multiple routes and spreading fan-shaped across the central plains, finally reaching the eastern coast and the south. At that time, they all gathered together to hunt, eating nuts, berries, roots, wild fruits, and any fish or other animals they could catch. These people had no horses, but they had dogs as companions. They used darts, bows and arrows, and spears to hunt smaller animals; hunting larger ones, especially bison, required setting traps or driving them off cliffs. The earliest inhabitants of the Americas had their own calendar. Without a doubt, it was completely different from the European calendar, although the Creeks in the southeastern United States also divided the year roughly into 12 months, with winter and summer. In the Creek calendar, the corn-harvesting season "Big Hot Month" (around August) marked the beginning of the year, followed by "Little Chestnut Month," "Big Chestnut Month," "Frost Month," "Big Winter Month" (around December), "Little Winter Month," "Wind Month," "Little Spring Month," "Big Spring Month," "Mulberry Month," "Blackberry Month," and "Little Hot Month" (around July). By the year 1000 CE, the inhabitants had spread across almost the entire North American continent; the diversity of their civilizations was no less than that of Europe at the time, although their lifestyles were generally categorized into only three to four basic types. In the south, north, and central plains, the Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, and Crow almost entirely relied on hunting for a living. Huge herds of bison provided them with housing, clothing, and food, and dried bison dung could even be used as fuel to cook and stay warm. Other primitive tribes, such as the Sioux, Shoshone, and Delaware, combined hunting with agriculture. Coastal tribes primarily relied on fishing, catching salmon and cod, gathering shellfish, and occasionally daring to hunt whales. Tribes in the southwest and the Mississippi Basin were almost entirely agricultural, though they also ate small rabbits and mice from the surrounding shrubs, which tasted rather unpleasant.