Horicultural peoples

Essay by curls858University, Bachelor'sA+, March 2005

download word file, 11 pages 5.0

Today in this world of fast food restaurants, car side-to-go, and shopping malls it is really hard to think of someone living off the land. However, it is not just one person but an entire tribe. Clans and families working together in order to survive in their remote parts of the world. Examining the Hopi tribe of the southwest United States and the Yanomami of Southern Venezuela and Northern Brazil it is obvious to see that they are completely different from each other. This shows that environment has a huge effect on cultures.

The Hopi, which means good, peaceful, or wise, live in northeast Arizona at the southern end of the Black Mesa. A mesa is a small isolated flat-topped hill. Which is a perfect view over their land to see visitors or their crops. Hopis live in pueblos on the mesas that are made of stone and mud and stand several stories high.

The Kivas are an underground chamber in the pueblo home that they used to talk and have religious ceremonies in. The Kivas have been used for hundreds of years, ancestor after ancestor. The flat roof consists of beams resting on the tops of the walls, pole battens, rod and grass thatching, a layer of gumbo plaster, and a covering of dry earth. Most of the houses are more than single story and some are four stories. The upper apartments are reached by outside ladders.

The very first southwest peoples hunted mammoths until they became extinct. Then people began to hunt buffalo, also known as bison, as well as collect wild plants for food. Then they mastered the art of growing maize, or corn, in such an arid climate. Suddenly the Hopi adapted to the farming and care of mother corn. Corn is the central food of...