Native American Tribes From Western North America

The Native American tribes populated different regions of America, causing them to adapt to different ways of life while nonetheless still sharing some similar practices. The Chinook tribe from Western North America, the Comanche tribe from the Great Plains, and the Cherokee tribe from Eastern North America had some differences and similarities in economic development, social diversification, and lifestyle. The Chinook, Comanche, and Cherokee tribes each had different ways of acquiring food. The Chinooks were a fishing people whose staple food was salmon, the Comanche people hunted buffalo, and the Cherokees farmed crops. Nonetheless, they all hunted small game and gathered edible plants to supplement their diet. Also, they all traded with†¦show more content†¦The Chinook tribe had several social classes: a class of chiefs, shamans, warriors, and traders, a class of commoners, and a slave class. The flat-headed Chinooks had a higher social status than the round-headed Chinooks. The Comanche and the Cherokee tribes lacked strong social divisions and usually depended on gender for division of labor. The Chinooks and the Cherokees lived a sedentary life while the Comanche people lived as nomadic hunters. The Chinooks lived in Plank Houses and the Cherokees lived in log cabins but the Comanche people lived in teepees, which were designed to set up and break down quickly for travel. Men and women in all of the tribes dressed differently. Men in the Chinook and the Cherokee tribe wore breechcloths, though male Chinooks could wear no clothes. Men in the Comanche tribe, on the other hand, wore more: buckskin war shirts and breechcloths with leather leggings. Women in the Comanche and the Cherokee were fully clothed while the Chinook women s clothes only covered from the waist down. The Comanche women wore long deerskin dresses and the Cherokee women wore skirts and blouse but Chinook women wore short skirts. Part B: European Contact 1. Epidemics: One of the major negative effects of the Columbian Exchange on both Native Americans and Europeans was the influx of disease that occurred as the two clashed together. Native Americans stood no chance against these contagious Europeans