Desert Indians

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Desert Indians
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Where Did They Live?

• Desert Indians lived in the Southwest Utah,
  Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Texas
• The land varies, but includes mesas, deep
  canyons, mountains, and deserts.
• All of the land gets less than 5 inches of rain a
  year, and most of that rain happens in a 6 week
  period!

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The Southwest is a very dry area. What deserts
are located here???
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The Desert Tribes

• The earliest tribe were the Anasazi. They were
  the first basket makers and cliff dwellers.
• They were peaceful Indians.
• Others include..
• Pueblo
• Navajo
• Apache
• Zuni

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Everyday Life - Men

• Invented ways to irrigate their crops, mostly by
  digging canals from nearby rivers
• Hunting wasnt important to the Desert Indians,
  there werent any large animals to hunt only
  rabbits and prairie dogs.
• Crafts like pottery, bead making and weaving were
  the mans job.

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Everyday Life - Women

• Planted gardens at the bottom of hills to catch
  the run-off rain.
• Gathered berries, nuts, bulbs and seeds to grind
  into food.
• Corn was 80 of their diet.
• Women died the cotton for clothes, but didnt
  make them.

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Everyday Life - Kids

• Kids only grew to be about 5 feet tall because of
  their plant based diet.
• Boys and girls played with Kachina Dolls. These
  dolls were carved out of roots to look like
  spirits.
• Boys went on vision quests

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What Did They Live In?

• The Desert Indians lived in pueblos, which are
  made up of sandstone.
• Pueblos are like apartments and can have 800
  rooms joined together in one building!
• Had ladders getting from place to place, they
  could be pulled inside incase of an attack.

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What Did They Live In?

• Some Desert Indians lived in hogans.
• Hogans are built at the base of hills and are
  made of everything from nature (dirt, animal,
  wood)
• A village would spread out over a large piece of
  land, but families would cluster together.

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What about Travel?

• They didnt travel.
• The tribes were so isolated that they rarely ran
  into other tribes.

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Desert Fashion

• Clothes were mostly woven from threads of the
  yucca plant and cotton. They didnt have a lot of
  animal skins.
• Since it was hot all year, clothing was kept
  light and sparse.
• Men and women wore a lot of jewelry.

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The Snake Dance (ick!)

• The snake represented harmony between all things
  living.
• For 8 days live snakes (mostly rattlers) were
  colleted from the four corners of the village and
  placed in an underground room. They would
  normally collect 100-200 snakes.
• Priests would stroke them with eagle feathers to
  soothe them
• On the last day, priests would take each snake
  and hold it in their mouth then throw it in
  cornmeal before releasing it.

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• Geronimo fought against the white man because his
  tribe was made to be slaves in mines.