Short Essay On Native American Culture

The winter wind blows cold across my fur pelt yet I am warm surrounded by those I know and our nomadic settlement fire. Our small, traveling clan has settled in southwestern Ohio for the winter. We are happy for now though we experience many dangers as the days grow colder. We have prepared for the changing season, ensuring that our food stores were full and our shelters would stand against the harsh weather to come.
We have learned from the stories of winters before us. The clan elders speak of our peoples travels many seasons ago and the great beasts they hunted across the Beringia.
Following herds of mastodons, mammoths, camels and bison, they crossed the Beringia land bridge from Siberia to Alaska (Lepper). The glacial sheets that make
up this land, known as the
Laurentide and Cordilleran, have created a large divide, and has made winter life difficult across the Ohio Valley for all people who live here. We hunt and gather food until there is little left. By the end of the warm season, we ration what we can and wait out the winter. Though each cold season is hard, we still have each other, our kinship, and a future bright with new plants and animals as the next warm season lets us travel to lusher, greener lands (Lepper).
During the warmer days, I wander the Ohio countryside gathering fruits, nuts, roots, and berries. I, alongside the other women in our group, gather most of our daily food stock (Lepper).
The children stay and play at the settlement, protected from lurking predators by our canine companions (McCorriston 11). The men spend days away from camp wandering together, living in makeshift encampments across the divide, and hunting for small game, like deer, caribou, and rabbit. Most of them carry a simple spear, crafted from the abundant flint rock of Ohio and hafted with sinew cords to a wood shaft (Lepper). Those who possess great skill with the
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hammer stone craft points with a fluted scar, but risk breaking the point to do so! I’ve not learned the purpose of this technique, though the men are competitive in all aspects of the hunt, so it is likely just showmanship (Field 11). Some of the more experienced hunters have altered their spear­hunting with atlatls, a thin hollowed wooden shaft, which allow them to throw their spears much faster and farther (Lepper; Native­Languages.org).
Regardless of their skill, the men’s lives are at risk much of the day, whether from predators or other hunters, but they persist in the hunt because they must. We all support each other ­­ the hunters rely on us to fill their bellies for the hunt and we rely on them to fill our bellies for the winter.
This system of hunting and gathering during the warm season, stockpiling for the cold season and the few chances for trade with other nomads allow us to subsist here in Ohio.
Though our clan is small, we have the company of many other families. We welcome new families into our clan and see other families off when it is their time to go (Lepper). We create bonds, and sometimes new families, with others living the nomad’s life. As a whole, we as a people have been surviving this way for thousands of years.
When the food is abundant, we flourish. The opposite is true for the lean times, and there are lean times often. When times are rough, though, we have each other for companionship, letting the elders tell stories of the old times and listening to the hunters in our clan talk of great beasts across the land. But there's always tomorrow; once this part of the land is cleared of
edible fruits and animals to hunt, we'll move on to the next. This makes for an exciting and necessary experience for us all ­­ traveling for survival is something that we have grown accustomed to. It is what will allow our people to survive another lifetime