Native American Indians

As a child I spent numerous hours hiking with my family in the mountains of Southern Utah looking for Indian Petroglyphs, arrow heads and pottery. My Father had a deep love for the Indian culture which was manafested in his art. In the process of finding ideas to use in his art, he took numerous pictures of petroglyphs in southern Utah. A number of these rock drawings have since been destroyed due to new housing developments, vandelism, and weather erosion. This section of ScienceViews is dedicated to my father Max Hamilton.

Enjoy the experience of visiting these ancient and sacred places and reading the stories and legends of the Native American Indians.

Places to Visit

	Bandelier National Monument In this secion, discover Bandelier's Ancestral Inhabitants, the Frijoles Canyon Village, the Frijoles Canyon Petroglyphs, Tsankawi Village, Tsankawi Cave Dwellings, Tsankawi Petroglyphs, and the Painted Cave Petroglyphs.
	Cahokia Mounds Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, in Collinsville, Illinois, is located on the Mississippi River floodplain, across from St. Louis, Missouri. This site was first inhabited by Indians of the Late Woodland culture about AD 700.
	Chaco Culture National Historical Park For all the wild beauty of Chaco Canyon's high desert landscape, its long winters, short growing seasons, and marginal rainfall create an unlikely place for a major center of ancestral Puebloan culture to take root and flourish. Yet this valley was the center of a thriving culture a thousand years ago.
	Hopewell Culture Mounds and earthworks along the Scioto River, doubtless the work of many human hands, make us wonder. Who made them? How long have they stood? What role did they play in the lives of their builders?
	Hovenweep National Monument The towers of Hovenweep were built by ancestral Puebloans, a sedentary farming culture that occupied the Four Corners area from about A.D. 500 to A.D. 1300. Similarities in architecture, masonry and pottery styles indicate that the inhabitants of Hovenweep were closely associated with groups living at Mesa Verde and other nearby sites.
	Mesa Verde About 1,400 years ago, long before Europeans explored North America, a group of people living in the Four Corners region chose Mesa Verde for their home. For more than 700 years they and their descendants lived and flourished here, eventually building elaborate stone communities in the sheltered alcoves of the canyon walls.
	Moab Area Rock Art The Moab area has numerous examples of Indian rock art to enjoy.
	Newark Earthworks The Newark Earthworks were built by the Hopewell culture between 100 BC and 500 AD and was one of the architectural wonders of ancient America with the largest set of geometric earthen enclosures in the world.
	Parowan Gap Petroglyphs The Freemont Indians that lived close to the Parowan Gap were fascinated with numbers and calendar seasons. They are unique from other rock art drawings in the area. Explore the Parowan Gap Petroglyphs, with its Caves, and Lunar Calendar.
	Petroglyph National Monument As you walk the trails of Petroglyph National Monument, it seems as if voices, from the rocks, speak to tell the story of people who lived long ago, who walked the same ground, and left their legacy in images carved upon the black basaltic rocks.
	Puerco Pueblo, Petrified Forest, Arizona Not only is the Petrified Forest unique geologically, but it has a rich Native American culture manafested by the ruins at Puerco Pueblo. Numerous Petroglyphs cover the rocks with the greatest selection at Newspaper Rock. The Pueroc Puebloan Indians even had a Solar Calendar.
	Calf Creek Indians The beautiful Calf Creek canyons were once inhabited by ancient American Indians. Today their presence and influence still remain in the form of ancient dwellings, storage structures (graineries), and hugh life size pictographs.
	Sego Canyon Petroglyphs The sandstone cliffs of Sego Canyon are an outdoor art gallery and a holy place. Native Americans painted and chipped their religious visions, clan symbols, and records of events onto the cliffs.
	Serpent Mound This quarter mile long earthworks looks like a gigantic serpent in the act of uncoiling.
	Unusual Petroglyphs East of Cedar City These unusual petroglyphs are found east of Cedar City, Utah. They are unique from other petroglyphs in the area and may have had an early Spanish American influence.
	Lion's Mouth Cave, Utah The Lion's Mouth Cave is located west of Cedar City, Utah.

Stories and Legends of the Native American Indians

	Algonquin Indian Tales A collection of sacred indian tales collected by Egerton R. Young.
	American Fairy Tales American Indian fairy tales as told by Margaret Compton.
	American Indian Stories This book contains a number of American Indian stories by Zitkala-sa as Dakota Sioux Indian.
	The Daughter of the Chieftain This is a story of an Indian girl written by Edward S. Ellis.
	Indian Boyhood Ohiyesa (Charles A. Eastman) recounts his boyhood year among the Sioux Indians. "WHAT boy would not be an Indian for a while when he thinks of the freest life in the world? This life was mine." He also recounts the hardships faced after the Sioux massacre.
	Indian Games and Dances The American Indians thought of the cosmos as a unit that was throbbing with the same life-force of which they were conscious within themselves; a force that gave to the rocks and hills their stable, unchanging character. Their thoughts and feelings find expression in dances and games and may help to a better understanding of them and their relation to nature.
	Indian Heros and Great Chieftains The following stories were written by Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa): Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, Little Crow, Tamahay, Gall, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Rain-in-the-Face, Two Strike, American Horse, Dull Knife, Roman Nose, Chief Joseph, Little Wolf, and Hole-in-the-Day.
	Indian Legends of Vancouver Island "The unsophisticated aboriginal of British Columbia is almost a memory of the past", writes Alfred Carmichael. "He leaves no permanent monument, no ruins of former greatness." This book recounts some of the Legends of the Indians of Vancouver Island.
	Indian Why Stories Transmitted orally through countless generations, the folk-stories of our ancestors show many evidences of distortion and of change in material particulars; but the Indian seems to have been too fond of nature and too proud of tradition to have forgotten or changed the teachings of his forefathers. Childlike in simplicity, beginning with creation itself, and reaching to the whys and wherefores of nature's moods and eccentricities, these tales impress me as being well worth saving.
	Old Indian Days Old Indian Days is a collection of stories by Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa) of the Old Indian Life, and especially of the Courageous and Womanly Indian Woman.
	Old Indian Legends These Indian legends told by Zitkala-sa are about Iktomi, a spider fairy. Iktomi is a wily fellow and is always in mischief.
	The Rush Lake Legend Read about the legend of Oonuput and Tobatz, and how the Flicker and Magpie birds became sacred to the Native American Indians. A related legend is that of How The Terrapin Got His Shell.
	The Soul of the Indian In these pages Charles A. Eastman paints a picture of the religious life of the typical American Indian as it was before he knew the white man. Eastman states, "We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers, and has been handed down to us their children. It teaches us to be thankful, to be united, and to love one another! We never quarrel about religion."
	The Way of an Indian This is a fictional story by the great artist and story teller Frederic Remington.