1.4 - State Building in the Americas
The Mississippian Culture
- Timeline and Location: The Mississippian culture began around 800 CE in the eastern United States, particularly in the Mississippi River Valley.
- Architecture: Known for their large earthen mounds, like Cahokia in Illinois, which were up to 100 feet tall and covered 12 football fields.
- Cahokia: The largest Mississippian city, near modern St. Louis. Around 1100 it may have had 10,000 to 20,000 people, making it the largest city north of Mexico. It grew from maize farming in the rich Mississippi floodplain and from trade along the river, and its chiefs organized thousands of workers to build mounds topped by temples and chiefs' homes.
- Society:
- Government: Ruled by powerful chiefs who were also religious leaders. The best-known example is the Natchez (a later Mississippian people described by French visitors in the 1700s), whose chief was called the Great Sun. Below him were priests, nobles, farmers, hunters, and artisans. Enslaved people, usually war prisoners, were at the bottom.
- Social Structure: Matrilineal, meaning social status was inherited through the mother's side. For instance, the Great Sun's title passed to a sister's son, not his own son.
- Decline: Cahokia's population fell after about 1200, and the city was abandoned by about 1400; other cities declined by 1600. Theories for decline include flooding or weather extremes causing crop failures, or (for the later cities) diseases from Europeans.
Chaco and Mesa Verde
- Chaco Culture:
- Built large stone and clay housing structures with hundreds of rooms.
- Built by the Ancestral Puebloans in Chaco Canyon (New Mexico), which was at its height from about 850 to 1150. Its "great houses," like Pueblo Bonito, were linked by long, straight roads and served as centers of trade and ceremony. Traders brought in turquoise, and even macaws and cacao from Mesoamerica, so Chaco was part of a large trade network.
- Mesa Verde Culture:
- Constructed multi-story homes in cliff sides using sandstone bricks.
- Also built by Ancestral Puebloans, in southwestern Colorado. People moved into cliff dwellings like Cliff Palace in the late 1100s and 1200s, probably for defense and shelter.
- Decline: Chaco declined in the mid-1100s during a long drought, and Mesa Verde was abandoned by about 1300 after another severe drought in the late 1200s. Their people moved to other areas, like the Rio Grande valley, and became ancestors of today's Pueblo peoples, like the Hopi and Zuni.
The Maya City-States
- Timeline and Location: The Maya civilization thrived from 250 to 900 CE in southern Mexico, Belize, Honduras, and Guatemala.
- Cities: Dozens of cities, the largest (like Tikal) with tens of thousands of people; at its peak, the Maya region had millions of people.
- Government:
- City-States: Ruled by kings, who were considered descendants of gods. If a male heir wasn’t available, women could rule.
- Wars: Frequent wars between city-states aimed at gaining tribute and captives rather than territory.
- Royal Succession: Passed mainly from father to son but could be overthrown if kings lost support.
- Religion and Science:
- Calendar: Priests used astronomy to create a very accurate calendar.
- Technology: Developed zero in their number system, a complex writing system, and made rubber from plants.
- Sacrifices: Human sacrifices were made to appease gods, often during ceremonies.
- Maya City-States After 900: Many southern cities were abandoned around 900, probably because of drought, warfare, and overuse of the land. Maya city-states continued in the northern Yucatan Peninsula: first Chichen Itza, then Mayapan, which led an alliance of Yucatan cities from about 1200 until the mid-1400s. No single city ever united the Maya, so they stayed a group of competing city-states, unlike the Mexica and Inca empires.
The Aztecs
- Timeline and Location: The Aztecs, or Mexicas, migrated to central Mexico in the 1200s and founded Tenochtitlan (modern Mexico City) in 1325.
- Capital City: Tenochtitlan was on an island with a large population, aqueducts for water, and chinampas (floating gardens) for agriculture.
- Rise to Power: The Mexica were newcomers who at first fought for stronger neighbors. In 1428 they formed the Triple Alliance with the cities of Texcoco and Tlacopan, defeated the ruling Tepanec state, and began conquering central Mexico. By 1500 they ruled millions of people.
- Government and Society:
- Tribute System: Conquered peoples paid tribute, including goods and luxury items.
- Conquered city-states usually kept their own rulers and customs as long as they sent tribute (like cloth, food, feathers, and gold) to Tenochtitlan. This was cheap to run but left conquered peoples resentful and only loosely tied to the empire.
- Social Hierarchy: Emperor (Great Speaker) at the top, followed by nobles and priests, then merchants, artisans, and peasant farmers, with enslaved people at the bottom. Soldiers were not a separate class: commoner men served in the army, and a warrior who took captives in battle could rise in status.
- Religion: Polytheistic, with numerous gods and rituals, including human sacrifices.
- The Mexica believed the gods, especially the sun and war god Huitzilopochtli, needed human blood to keep the sun moving. This belief pushed them into constant warfare to take captives for sacrifice and helped justify expansion.
- Women: Important in textile production, some worked as priestesses or merchants.
- Decline: The empire was still expanding in the late 1400s, but heavy tribute demands made many conquered and rival peoples hate Mexica rule. When the Spanish arrived in 1519, enemies like the Tlaxcalans joined them, smallpox struck Tenochtitlan, and the city fell in 1521.
The Inca
- Timeline and Location: The Inca Empire was established in the 1430s in modern Peru and expanded to Ecuador and Chile.
- Its rise began under Pachacuti (ruled 1438-1471), who rebuilt the capital, Cusco, and launched rapid conquests. By the early 1500s the empire stretched about 2,500 miles along the Andes.
- Government:
- Administration: Divided into four provinces, each with its own governor. Conquered leaders were rewarded if loyal.
- The Inca ruled more directly than the Mexica. They spread their language (Quechua) and their religion, built storehouses to feed armies and people in hard times, and sometimes moved whole villages of conquered people to new areas to break up resistance. Sons of conquered leaders were often raised in Cusco to make them loyal.
- Mit'a System: Mandatory labor service for men aged 15-50, including agriculture and road construction.
- Instead of paying taxes in goods or money, Inca subjects paid in labor. Mit'a workers built the roads, terraces, and storehouses that held the empire together.
- Religion:
- Sun God: Inti, the sun god, was central; Inca rulers were seen as his earthly representatives.
- Ancestor Veneration: Dead rulers were mummified and thought to still rule.
- Priests: Conducted ceremonies and interpreted the gods’ will through rituals and signs.
- Achievements:
- Quipu: Knotted strings for record-keeping.
- Agriculture: Developed terrace farming and waru waru technique.
- Infrastructure: Built extensive roads and bridges.
- Decline: The empire was weakened by civil war and diseases, and fell to Spanish conquest in 1532. The ruins of Machu Picchu are a famous legacy.
Continuities and Diversity
- Olmec Influence: Many Mesoamerican cultures, including the Maya and Aztecs, adopted features from the earlier Olmec civilization, such as the feathered snake-god and pyramids.
- Independent Development: Some argue that cultures developed independently, despite shared features.
- Continuity: American states kept older traditions, like maize farming, temple pyramids, and rulers who claimed ties to the gods.
- Innovation: States found new ways to rule larger areas, like the Mexica tribute system and the Inca road network, storehouses, and empire-wide mit'a labor.
- Diversity: States took very different forms: a chiefdom built around a mound city (Cahokia), Pueblo communities (Chaco and Mesa Verde), competing city-states (the Maya), a tribute empire (the Mexica), and a centralized empire (the Inca).
- Expanded in Scope and Reach: In this period the Mexica and Inca built the largest states the Americas had ever seen, ruling millions of people over huge areas.