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The spirit of American Indians inhabits the plains, the mountains, and the links.

Native Lands

Nations of the Iroquois in northern New York built a vast trading empire, plying the lakes and rivers from the Atlantic Ocean to Chicago.

“Indians have a profound sense of place,” says Clara Sue Kidwell, director of the American Indian Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Choctaw/Chippewa. “But anyone who travels to significant spots in Indian Country can see them in the same way, learning history on an emotional level and experiencing spiritual forces in nature.”

Frances H. Kennedy will act as your guide to some of these destinations, starting on page 102. Her book, American Indian Places, due out this month from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, covers 366 locations across the United States. The excerpts from the book that follow, some written by Kennedy and others by experts in the field, complement the photos of these special sites. For even more must-sees.

Moving from the sacred to the sporting, on page 116 Bruce Selcraig reports on the nearly 60 Indian golf courses built on reservations across America, beginning in 1975 with the Inn of the Mountain Gods in New Mexico. There, the Mescaleros placed their course against a stunning backdrop of high desert mountains.

This special section covers only a fraction of native lands. “Indians roamed all over what would become the United States,” notes Kevin Gover, director of the National Museum of the American Indian and a Pawnee. “There is no non-American Indian place.”

PETROGLYPH NATIONAL MONUMENT
PETROGLYPH NATIONAL MONUMENT
Albuquerque, New Mexico

Within a landscape of volcanic cones are more than 20,000 petroglyphs, some 2,000 years old. The images reveal the worldviews, values, and cosmologies of the people who made them. The subjects include animals, shields, kachina masks, and a ubiquitous flute player named Kokopelli. The petroglyphs act as a repository of knowledge for Tiwa- and Keresan-speaking Rio Grande Pueblo people. As one tribal elder says, ‘The petroglyphs keep the traditions.’ —Polly Schaafsma

CAHOKIA MOUNDS
CAHOKIA MOUNDS
Collinsville, Illinois

Cahokia is the largest mound center of the Mississippian culture, a farming people who lived in the eastern United States from about A.D. 900 to about 1700. The mound center covers nearly six square miles and included 105 earthen monuments. The City of the Sun, the largest urban center north of Mexico, was the ritual, social, and political capital of the Mississippian culture for 200 years. As many as 50,000 people lived here in mound centers, and in hundreds of smaller communities up and down the central Mississippi River Valley. They were the largest and most powerful population along the Mississippi from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes, and they traded both raw materials and prized goods. The size and the number of mounds provide important insights into the organizational skills of its leaders and the human labor involved. Many Cahokian researchers now regard the Dhegihan- speaking people, such as the Osage, as the probable descendants of the people who once lived here. —John E. Kelly

Grand Canyon
Grand Canyon
Arizona

In about A.D. 1185, ancestors of Pueblo people known as the Kayenta built a small U-shaped Pueblo on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, today called Tusayan Ruin, where about 20 people lived and farmed on nearby land. They left about 1225. The Canyon is significant to the Hualapai (pictured), Havasupai, Hopi, Navajo, San Juan Southern Paiutes, and Zuni. —Frances H. Kennedy

Navajo National Monument
NAVAJO NATIONAL MONUMENT
Arizona

In the northeastern corner of Arizona, wind and water carved majestic canyons through the petrified sand dunes of the Shonto Plateau. Many shallow alcoves formed in the walls of the red sandstone cliffs. Ancestral Pueblo peoples in the 13th century constructed villages in many of these alcoves. Nestled in their protective shelters, three of the largest—Betatakin, Inscription House, and Keet Seel—are in the Navajo National Monument. Most of the homes look almost as they did 700 years ago. —Brian Culpepper and Curlinda Holiday

SERPENT MOUND
SERPENT MOUND
Near Peebles, Ohio

This 1,348-footlong mound is in the shape of an uncoiling snake. Its head is aligned to the setting sun on the summer solstice, and other solar alignments have been suggested for the serpent’s coils. Radiocarbon dates for charcoal from two layers of the mound range from A. D. 1025 to 1215. If accurate, these dates indicate that the people of the Fort Ancient culture, farmers who lived in the area, built the mound. One of their villages is nearby. It is not known if there were cultural connections between these people and those who built the effigy mounds in the Upper Midwest. —Frances H. Kennedy

SERPENT MOUND
CAPE COD
Massachusetts

People have lived in the Nauset Harbor area, now in the Cape Cod National Seashore, since at least 4000 B.C. Radiocarbon dating and research on the shellfish and other faunal remains fron ancient shell middens suggest that by at least 1,000 years ago people lived near Nauset Marsh year-round. Concentrations of ancient sites around the marsh indicate past residences and activities in the Coast Guard Beach, Salt Pond, and Fort Hill areas. — Francis P. McManamon

Native Lands From Sea to Shining Sea

For more beautiful destinations under sacred skies, make plans to visit these spots, most of them drawn from Frances H. Kennedy’s new book, American Indian Places..

1) The Makah Reservation The homeland of the Makah, this area on the edge of the Olympic Peninsula includes a cultural center and a trail to the northernmost point of the contiguous United States. Neah Bay, Washington

2) Olympic National Park A butchered mastodon suggests that people lived in this area about 12,000 years ago. Port Angeles, Washington

3) Channel Islands National Park The Chumash view these islands as their original homeland. Channel Islands, California

4) Grand Canyon Arizona (see page 106).

5) Wupatki National Monument Several Hopi clans trace their ancestors to this mud, stone, and wood pueblo. Near Flagstaff, Arizona

6) Navajo National Monument Near Kayenta, Arizona (see page 108).

7) Chaco Culture National Historical Park The Chacoans built several major structures here between the 9th and the 12th centuries. Near Nageezi, New Mexico

8) Pueblo of Acoma This sandstone mesa ranks as the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in North America. Near Albuquerque, New Mexico

9) Petroglyph National Monument Albuquerque, New Mexico (see page 102).

10) Bandelier National Monument Ancestral Pueblo people cut stone houses here between A.D. 1150 and 1300. Near White Rock, New Mexico

11) Palo Duro Canyon State Park This deep, colorful canyon once sheltered Comanche camps and herds of buffalo. Near Canyon, Texas

12) San Antonio Missions National Historical Park The Coahuiltecan-speaking people of the region helped build these Spanish missions.

13) Chickasaw National Recreation Area Thirty freshwater and mineral springs dot this beautiful natural area. Near Sulphur, Oklahoma

14) Poverty Point State Historic Site People carried 1 million cubic yards of dirt to construct these archaic earthworks. Near Epps, Louisiana

15) Cahokia Mounds Collinsville, Illinois (see page 104).

16) Moundville Archae-ological Park The Mississippian people built 26 mounds between A.D. 1200 and 1300. Near Tuscaloosa, Alabama

17) Serpent Mound Near Peebles, Ohio (see page 110).

18) Mound Key Archaeological State Park Beginning about A.D. 100, people used discarded shells to build this island. Near Estero, Florida

19) Carlisle Indian Industrial School Boarding schools like this one separated Indian children from their families into the 1930s. Carlisle, Pennsylvania

20) Cape Cod Massachusetts (see page 112).

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIRK MASTIN/AURORA PHOTOS (PAGE 100), DANNY LEHMAN/CORBIS (PAGE 102), GEORGE H. H. HUEY/CORBIS (PAGE 103), DAVID MUENCH/CORBIS (PAGE 104), GETTY IMAGES (PAGE 106) GEORGE H. H. HUEY/CORBIS (PAGE 108), PETE SALOUTOS/CORBIS (PAGE 109), RICHARD A. COOKE/CORBIS (PAGE 110), WALTER BIBIKOW/CORBIS (PAGE 112), RALPH A. CLEVENGER/CORBIS (THIS PAGE)



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