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87-635: The Pastia people (also Pastias , Paxti ; Spanish: " chamuscados ") were a hunter-gatherer tribe of the Coahuiltecan . The Pastias inhabited the area south of San Antonio , largely between the Medina and San Antonio Rivers and the southward bend of the Nueces River running through modern day La Salle and McMullen counties. They were first contacted by Spanish explorers in the early eighteenth century, and were extinct as an ethnic group by

174-688: A corrupted form of the local chief Nementou. "Plaquemine," as in Bayou Plaquemine Brûlée and Plaquemines Parish , is derived from the Atakapa word pikamin , meaning ' persimmon '. Bayou Nezpiqué was named for an Atakapan who had a tattooed nose. Bayou Queue de Tortue was believed to have been named for Chief Celestine La Tortue of the Atakapas nation. The name Calcasieu comes through French from an Atakapa name, Katkōsh Yōk ('Crying Eagle'). The city of Lafayette, Louisiana ,

261-518: A day, whereas people in agricultural and industrial societies work on average 8.8 hours a day. Sahlins' theory has been criticized for only including time spent hunting and gathering while omitting time spent on collecting firewood, food preparation, etc. Other scholars also assert that hunter-gatherer societies were not "affluent" but suffered from extremely high infant mortality, frequent disease, and perennial warfare. Researchers Gurven and Kaplan have estimated that around 57% of hunter-gatherers reach

348-559: A diet high in protein and low in other macronutrients results in the body using the protein as energy, possibly leading to protein deficiency. Lean meat especially becomes a problem when animals go through a lean season that requires them to metabolize fat deposits. In areas where plant and fish resources are scarce, hunter-gatherers may trade meat with horticulturalists for carbohydrates . For example, tropical hunter-gatherers may have an excess of protein but be deficient in carbohydrates, and conversely tropical horticulturalists may have

435-402: A farm; consequently, we are very careful never to frighten them. When they stay on a prairie or in a forest, we camp near them in order to accustom them to seeing us, and we follow all their wanderings so that they cannot get away from us. We use their meat for food and their skins for clothing. I have been living with these people for about eleven years; I am happy and satisfied here, and have not

522-796: A group who called themselves the Han, who may have been the Akokisa . Among the survivors was Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca who later wrote an account of several years living among the Indians of the Texas coast. In 1703, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne , the French governor of La Louisiane , sent three men to explore the Gulf Coast west of the Mississippi River . The seventh nation they encountered were

609-538: A large part to their diet. The Pastia, as well as the other tribes of the southeastern Texas tidal plain , reportedly subsisted in the lean months on roots; raw insects, lizards, and worms; and the undigested nuts picked from deer dung. Records from the time tell of the Pastias and other Indian tribes of the area having encampments in the vicinity of the Spanish missions of San Antonio during their early construction,

696-781: A more constant supply of sustenance. In 2018, 9000-year-old remains of a female hunter along with a toolkit of projectile points and animal processing implements were discovered at the Andean site of Wilamaya Patjxa, Puno District in Peru . A 2020 study inspired by this discovery found that of 27 identified burials with hunter gatherers of a known sex who were also buried with hunting tools, 11 were female hunter gatherers, while 16 were male hunter gatherers. Combined with uncertainties, these findings suggest that anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of big game hunters were female. A 2023 study that looked at studies of contemporary hunter gatherer societies from

783-511: A paper entitled, " Notes on the Original Affluent Society ", in which he challenged the popular view of hunter-gatherers lives as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", as Thomas Hobbes had put it in 1651. According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well. Their "affluence" came from

870-551: A people. Due to a high rate of deaths from infectious epidemics of the late 18th century, they ceased to function as a people. Survivors generally joined the Caddo , Koasati , and other neighboring peoples, although they kept some traditions. Some culturally distinct Atakapan descendants survived into the early 20th century. The Atakapa called themselves the Ishak / iː ˈ ʃ æ k / , which translates as "the people." Their name

957-482: A period spanning 1707 through 1737. Many were employed as laborers in the building of the San Antonio mission network. The Pastia were one of the three groups present at the 1720 foundation of Mission San José y San Miguel . The tribes of southeastern Tejas suffered a severe decline in population following repeated epidemics of diseases to which they had no immunity, starting about the time of, or shortly before,

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1044-504: A reference to the tattooing, body painting, and body ornamentation favored by the Pastia. They seem to have spoken a Coahuiltecan dialect, though little of their language is known. A 1707 document noted that name and meaning, but other contemporaneous records do not mention skin alterations. The Pastia survived by harvesting and storing the area's abundance of pecans and other nuts and seeds. Prickly pear cacti ( nopal ) also contributed

1131-599: A size of a few dozen people. It remained the only mode of subsistence until the end of the Mesolithic period some 10,000 years ago, and after this was replaced only gradually with the spread of the Neolithic Revolution . The Late Pleistocene witnessed the spread of modern humans outside of Africa as well as the extinction of all other human species. Humans spread to the Australian continent and

1218-405: A smaller selection of (often larger) game and gathering a smaller selection of food. This specialization of work also involved creating specialized tools such as fishing nets , hooks, and bone harpoons . The transition into the subsequent Neolithic period is chiefly defined by the unprecedented development of nascent agricultural practices. Agriculture originated as early as 12,000 years ago in

1305-432: A surplus of carbohydrates but inadequate protein. Trading may thus be the most cost-effective means of acquiring carbohydrate resources. Hunter-gatherer societies manifest significant variability, depending on climate zone / life zone , available technology, and societal structure. Archaeologists examine hunter-gatherer tool kits to measure variability across different groups. Collard et al. (2005) found temperature to be

1392-502: A sustainable manner for centuries. California Indians view the idea of wilderness in a negative light. They believe that wilderness is the result of humans losing their knowledge of the natural world and how to care for it. When the earth turns back to wilderness after the connection with humans is lost then the plants and animals will retreat and hide from the humans. Patiri The Atakapa / ə ˈ t æ k ə p ə , - p ɑː / or Atacapa were an Indigenous people of

1479-497: A wide geographical area, thus there were regional variations in lifestyles. However, all the individual groups shared a common style of stone tool production, making knapping styles and progress identifiable. This early Paleo-Indian period lithic reduction tool adaptations have been found across the Americas, utilized by highly mobile bands consisting of approximately 25 to 50 members of an extended family. The Archaic period in

1566-406: Is believed that most Western Atakapa tribes or subdivisions were decimated by the 1850s, mainly from infectious disease and poverty. In 1908, nine known Atakapa descendants were identified. Armojean Reon (ca. 1873–1925) of Lake Charles, Louisiana , was noted as a fluent Atakapa speaker. In the 1920s, ethnologists Albert Gatshet and John Swanton studied the language and published A Dictionary of

1653-685: Is inhospitable to large scale economic exploitation and maintain their subsistence based on hunting and gathering, as well as incorporating a small amount of manioc horticulture that supplements, but is not replacing, reliance on foraged foods. Evidence suggests big-game hunter-gatherers crossed the Bering Strait from Asia (Eurasia) into North America over a land bridge ( Beringia ), that existed between 47,000 and 14,000 years ago. Around 18,500–15,500 years ago, these hunter-gatherers are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between

1740-409: Is never total but is striking when viewed in an evolutionary context. One of humanity's two closest primate relatives, chimpanzees , are anything but egalitarian, forming themselves into hierarchies that are often dominated by an alpha male . So great is the contrast with human hunter-gatherers that it is widely argued by paleoanthropologists that resistance to being dominated was a key factor driving

1827-456: Is not necessarily a one-way process. It has been argued that hunting and gathering represents an adaptive strategy , which may still be exploited, if necessary, when environmental change causes extreme food stress for agriculturalists. In fact, it is sometimes difficult to draw a clear line between agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies, especially since the widespread adoption of agriculture and resulting cultural diffusion that has occurred in

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1914-405: Is the field of study whereby food plants of various peoples and tribes worldwide are documented. Most hunter-gatherers are nomadic or semi-nomadic and live in temporary settlements. Mobile communities typically construct shelters using impermanent building materials, or they may use natural rock shelters, where they are available. Some hunter-gatherer cultures, such as the indigenous peoples of

2001-683: The Atakapa Ishak Tribe of Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana , also called the Atakapa Ishak Nation, based in Lake Charles, Louisiana obtained nonprofit status in 2008 as an "ethnic awareness" organization. They also refer to themselves as the Atakapa-Ishak Nation and met en masse on October 28, 2006. The Atakapas Ishak Nation of Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana unsuccessfully petitioned

2088-477: The Fertile Crescent , Ancient India , Ancient China , Olmec , Sub-Saharan Africa and Norte Chico . As a result of the now near-universal human reliance upon agriculture, the few contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures usually live in areas unsuitable for agricultural use. Archaeologists can use evidence such as stone tool use to track hunter-gatherer activities, including mobility. Ethnobotany

2175-570: The Ju'/hoansi people of Namibia, women help men track down quarry. In the Australian Martu, both women and men participate in hunting but with a different style of gendered division; while men are willing to take more risks to hunt bigger animals such as kangaroo for political gain as a form of "competitive magnanimity", women target smaller game such as lizards to feed their children and promote working relationships with other women, preferring

2262-838: The Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats , they migrated down the Pacific coast to South America. Hunter-gatherers would eventually flourish all over the Americas, primarily based in the Great Plains of the United States and Canada, with offshoots as far east as the Gaspé Peninsula on the Atlantic coast , and as far south as Chile , Monte Verde . American hunter-gatherers were spread over

2349-595: The Middle East , and also independently originated in many other areas including Southeast Asia , parts of Africa , Mesoamerica , and the Andes . Forest gardening was also being used as a food production system in various parts of the world over this period. Many groups continued their hunter-gatherer ways of life, although their numbers have continually declined, partly as a result of pressure from growing agricultural and pastoral communities. Many of them reside in

2436-655: The Mississippian . Atakapa-speaking peoples are called Atakapan, while Atakapa refers to a specific tribe. Atakapa-speaking peoples were divided into bands which were represented by totems , such as snake, alligator, and other natural life. The Eastern Atakapa (Hiyekiti Ishak, "Sunrise People") groups lived in present-day Acadiana parishes in southwestern Louisiana and are organized as three major regional bands: The Western Atakapa (Hikike Ishak, "Sunset People") resided in southeastern Texas. They were organized as follows. Different groups claiming to be descendants of

2523-514: The Southwest , Arctic , Poverty Point , Dalton and Plano traditions. These regional adaptations would become the norm, with reliance less on hunting and gathering, with a more mixed economy of small game, fish , seasonally wild vegetables and harvested plant foods. Scholars like Kat Anderson have suggested that the term Hunter-gatherer is reductive because it implies that Native Americans never stayed in one place long enough to affect

2610-594: The Spanish explorers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The area under their influence was centered along the lower Frio River 's confluence with the Nueces (in an area later called Nueva Extremadura in New Spain ). The Pastia lands overlapped largely with the Pampopa tribal lands. Their homeland was well removed from the usual northern Spanish trade routes and trails leading into Tejas . For that reason,

2697-444: The invention of agriculture , hunter-gatherers who did not change were displaced or conquered by farming or pastoralist groups in most parts of the world. Across Western Eurasia, it was not until approximately 4,000 BC that farming and metallurgical societies completely replaced hunter-gatherers. These technologically advanced societies expanded faster in areas with less forest, pushing hunter-gatherers into denser woodlands. Only

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2784-552: The 1800s to the present day found that women hunted in 79 percent of hunter gatherer societies. However, an attempted verification of this study found "that multiple methodological failures all bias their results in the same direction...their analysis does not contradict the wide body of empirical evidence for gendered divisions of labor in foraging societies". At the 1966 " Man the Hunter " conference, anthropologists Richard Borshay Lee and Irven DeVore suggested that egalitarianism

2871-818: The Americas began when Paleolithic hunter-gatherers entered North America from the North Asian mammoth steppe via the Beringia land bridge. During the 1970s, Lewis Binford suggested that early humans obtained food via scavenging , not hunting . Early humans in the Lower Paleolithic lived in forests and woodlands , which allowed them to collect seafood, eggs, nuts, and fruits besides scavenging. Rather than killing large animals for meat, according to this view, they used carcasses of such animals that had either been killed by predators or that had died of natural causes. Scientists have demonstrated that

2958-401: The Americas saw a changing environment featuring a warmer more arid climate and the disappearance of the last megafauna. The majority of population groups at this time were still highly mobile hunter-gatherers. Individual groups started to focus on resources available to them locally, however, and thus archaeologists have identified a pattern of increasing regional generalization, as seen with

3045-479: The Americas for the first time, coincident with the extinction of numerous predominantly megafaunal species. Major extinctions were incurred in Australia beginning approximately 50,000 years ago and in the Americas about 15,000 years ago. Ancient North Eurasians lived in extreme conditions of the mammoth steppes of Siberia and survived by hunting mammoths , bison and woolly rhinoceroses. The settlement of

3132-531: The Atacapas; and since the French have gone among them, they have raised in them so great a horror of that abominable practice of devouring creatures of their own species, that they have promised to leave it off: and, accordingly, for a long time past we have heard of no such barbarity among them. Louis LeClerc Milfort, a Frenchman who spent 20 years living with and traveling among the Muscogee (Creek), came upon

3219-905: The Atakapa Language in 1932. The Atakapan ate shellfish and fish. The women gathered bird eggs, the American lotus ( Nelumbo lutea ) for its roots and seeds, as well as other wild plants. The men hunted deer , bear , and bison , which provided meat, fat , and hides . The women cultivated varieties of maize . They processed the meats, bones and skins to prepare food for storage, as well as to make clothing, tent covers, tools, sewing materials, arrow cases, bridles and rigging for horses, and other necessary items for their survival. The men made their tools for hunting and fishing: bows and arrows, fish spears with bone-tipped points, and flint -tipped spears. They used poisons to catch fish, caught flounder by torchlight, and speared alligators in

3306-494: The Atakapa have created several organizations, and some have unsuccessfully petitioned Louisiana, Texas, and the United States for status as a recognized tribe. A member of the "Atakapa Indian de Creole Nation," claiming to be trustee, monarch, and deity, filed a number of lawsuits in federal court claiming, among other things, that the governments of Louisiana and the United States seek to "monopolize intergalactic foreign trade." The suits were dismissed as frivolous. Another group,

3393-767: The Atakapa in 1781 during his travels. He wrote: The forest we were then in was thick enough so that none of my men could be seen. I formed them into three detachments, and arranged them in such a way as to surround these savages, and to leave them no way of retreat except by the pond. I then made them all move forward, and I sent ahead a subordinate chief to ascertain what nation these savages belonged to, and what would be their intentions toward us. We were soon assured that they were Atakapas, who, as soon as they saw us, far from seeking to defend themselves, made us signs of peace and friendship. There were one hundred and eighty [180] of them of both sexes, busy, as we suspected, smoke-drying meat. As soon as my three detachments had emerged from

3480-516: The Atakapa to end this practice. The French historian Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz lived in Louisiana from 1718 to 1734. He wrote: Along the west coast, not far from the sea, inhabit the nation called Atacapas, that is, Man-Eaters, being so called by the other nations on account of their detestable custom of eating their enemies, or such as they believe to be their enemies. In the vast country there are no other cannibals to be met with besides

3567-625: The Atakapa, who captured, killed and cannibalized one member of their party. In 1714 this tribe was one of 14 that were recorded as coming to Jean-Michel de Lepinay , who was acting French governor of Louisiana between 1717 and 1718, while he was fortifying Dauphin Island, Alabama . The Choctaw told the French settlers about the "People of the West," who represented subdivisions or tribes. The French referred to them as les sauvages . The Choctaw used

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3654-850: The Atakapan as cannibals. He noted that they traditionally flattened their skulls frontally and not occipitally, a practice opposite to that of neighboring tribes, such as the Natchez Nation . The Atakapa traded with the Chitimacha tribe. In the early 18th century, some Atakapa married into the Houma tribe of Louisiana. Members of the Tunica-Biloxi tribe joined the Atakapa tribe in the late 18th century. John R. Swanton recorded that only 175 Atakapa lived in Louisiana in 1805. It

3741-623: The Atakapas Nation; the other half is farther on. We are in the habit of dividing ourselves into two or three groups in order to follow the buffalo , which in the spring go back into the west, and in autumn come down into these parts; there are herds of these buffalo, which go sometimes as far as the Missouri ; we kill them with arrows; our young hunters are very skilful at this hunting. You understand, moreover, that these animals are in very great numbers, and as tame as if they were raised on

3828-670: The Northwest Coast of North America and the Calusa in Florida ) are an exception to this rule. For example, the San people or "Bushmen" of southern Africa have social customs that strongly discourage hoarding and displays of authority, and encourage economic equality via sharing of food and material goods. Karl Marx defined this socio-economic system as primitive communism . The egalitarianism typical of human hunters and gatherers

3915-881: The Pacific Northwest Coast and the Yokuts , lived in particularly rich environments that allowed them to be sedentary or semi-sedentary. Amongst the earliest example of permanent settlements is the Osipovka culture (14–10.3 thousand years ago), which lived in a fish-rich environment that allowed them to be able to stay at the same place all year. One group, the Chumash , had the highest recorded population density of any known hunter and gatherer society with an estimated 21.6 persons per square mile. Hunter-gatherers tend to have an egalitarian social ethos, although settled hunter-gatherers (for example, those inhabiting

4002-670: The Pastia and Spanish had no contact until the early eighteenth century. When the Espinosa - Olivares - Aguirre expedition—Spain's initial excursion to explore the area of the San Antonio River valley—crossed the Medina on April 24, 1709, they encountered the Pastia tribe for the first time. The name, Pastias, is equivalent to "chamuscados" in Spanish, translated as the "scorched," "seared," or "singed" peoples. This name may be

4089-644: The Southeastern Woodlands , who spoke the Atakapa language and historically lived along the Gulf of Mexico in what is now Texas and Louisiana . They included several distinct bands. They spoke the Atakapa language , which was a linguistic isolate . After 1762, when Louisiana was transferred to Spain following French defeat in the Seven Years' War , little was written about the Atakapa as

4176-501: The US federal government for recognition on February 2, 2007. These organizations are not federally recognized or state-recognized as Native American tribes. The names of present-day towns in the region can be traced to the Ishak; they are derived both from their language and from French transliteration of the names of their prominent leaders and names of places. The town of Mermentau is

4263-412: The age of 15. Of those that reach 15 years of age, 64% continue to live to or past the age of 45. This places the life expectancy between 21 and 37 years. They further estimate that 70% of deaths are due to diseases of some kind, 20% of deaths come from violence or accidents and 10% are due to degenerative diseases. Mutual exchange and sharing of resources (i.e., meat gained from hunting) are important in

4350-565: The area were relocated from their traditional towns and moved onto the San Antonio mission lands. The few surviving Pastia reportedly gathered only at the Mission San José. Population figures for the refugees are not available, however, as the registration records of the early mission residents have been lost to history. As late as 1789, there were settlers in the settlement who identified as Pastia. The Pastias have been confused throughout history with several other tribes indigenous to

4437-477: The arguments put forward by Wilmsen. Doron Shultziner and others have argued that we can learn a lot about the life-styles of prehistoric hunter-gatherers from studies of contemporary hunter-gatherers—especially their impressive levels of egalitarianism. There are nevertheless a number of contemporary hunter-gatherer peoples who, after contact with other societies, continue their ways of life with very little external influence or with modifications that perpetuate

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4524-400: The country of Denmark in 2007. In addition, wealth transmission across generations was also a feature of hunter-gatherers, meaning that "wealthy" hunter-gatherers, within the context of their communities, were more likely to have children as wealthy as them than poorer members of their community and indeed hunter-gatherer societies demonstrate an understanding of social stratification. Thus while

4611-497: The decline of the Pastia and their neighboring tribes, the lands that were once their homes and the southeastern Texas coastal plains were eventually inhabited by the Apache . Today, there is no extant tribe of the Pastia people. Hunter-gatherer Hunting and gathering was humanity's original and most enduring successful competitive adaptation in the natural world, occupying at least 90 percent of human history . Following

4698-532: The developing world, either in arid regions or tropical forests. Areas that were formerly available to hunter-gatherers were—and continue to be—encroached upon by the settlements of agriculturalists. In the resulting competition for land use, hunter-gatherer societies either adopted these practices or moved to other areas. In addition, Jared Diamond has blamed a decline in the availability of wild foods, particularly animal resources. In North and South America , for example, most large mammal species had gone extinct by

4785-621: The diet until relatively recently, during the Late Stone Age in southern Africa and the Upper Paleolithic in Europe. Fat is important in assessing the quality of game among hunter-gatherers, to the point that lean animals are often considered secondary resources or even starvation food. Consuming too much lean meat leads to adverse health effects like protein poisoning , and can in extreme cases lead to death. Additionally,

4872-409: The economic systems of hunter-gatherer societies. Therefore, these societies can be described as based on a " gift economy ". A 2010 paper argued that while hunter-gatherers may have lower levels of inequality than modern, industrialised societies, that does not mean inequality does not exist. The researchers estimated that the average Gini coefficient amongst hunter-gatherers was 0.25, equivalent to

4959-553: The end of the Pleistocene —according to Diamond, because of overexploitation by humans, one of several explanations offered for the Quaternary extinction event there. As the number and size of agricultural societies increased, they expanded into lands traditionally used by hunter-gatherers. This process of agriculture-driven expansion led to the development of the first forms of government in agricultural centers, such as

5046-466: The environment around them. However, many of the landscapes in the Americas today are due to the way the Natives of that area originally tended the land. Anderson specifically looks at California Natives and the practices they utilized to tame their land. Some of these practices included pruning, weeding, sowing, burning, and selective harvesting. These practices allowed them to take from the environment in

5133-399: The evidence for early human behaviors for hunting versus carcass scavenging vary based on the ecology, including the types of predators that existed and the environment. According to the endurance running hypothesis , long-distance running as in persistence hunting , a method still practiced by some hunter-gatherer groups in modern times, was likely the driving evolutionary force leading to

5220-460: The evolution of certain human characteristics. This hypothesis does not necessarily contradict the scavenging hypothesis: both subsistence strategies may have been in use sequentially, alternately or even simultaneously. Starting at the transition between the Middle to Upper Paleolithic period, some 80,000 to 70,000 years ago, some hunter-gatherer bands began to specialize, concentrating on hunting

5307-613: The evolutionary emergence of human consciousness , language , kinship and social organization . Most anthropologists believe that hunter-gatherers do not have permanent leaders; instead, the person taking the initiative at any one time depends on the task being performed. Within a particular tribe or people, hunter-gatherers are connected by both kinship and band (residence/domestic group) membership. Postmarital residence among hunter-gatherers tends to be matrilocal, at least initially. Young mothers can enjoy childcare support from their own mothers, who continue living nearby in

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5394-611: The eye. The people put alligator oil on exposed skin to repel mosquitoes . The Bidai snared game and trapped animals in cane pens. By 1719, the Atakapan had obtained horses and were hunting bison from horseback. They used dugout canoes to navigate the bayous and close to shore, but did not venture far into the ocean. In the summer, families moved to the coast. In winters, they moved inland and lived in villages of houses made of pole and thatch. The Bidai lived in bearskin tents. The homes of chiefs and medicine men were erected on earthwork mounds made by several previous cultures including

5481-445: The forest, I saw one of these savages coming straight toward me: at first sight, I recognized that he did not belong to the Atakapas nation; he addressed me politely and in an easy manner, unusual among these savages. He offered food and drink for my warriors which I accepted, while expressing to him my gratitude. Meat was served to my entire detachment; and during the time of about six hours that I remained with this man, I learned that he

5568-400: The idea that they were satisfied with very little in the material sense. Later, in 1996, Ross Sackett performed two distinct meta-analyses to empirically test Sahlin's view. The first of these studies looked at 102 time-allocation studies, and the second one analyzed 207 energy-expenditure studies. Sackett found that adults in foraging and horticultural societies work on average, about 6.5 hours

5655-689: The land between Vermilion River and Bayou Teche from the Eastern Atakapa Chief Kinemo. Shortly after that a rival Indian tribe, the Opelousa , coming from the area between the Atchafalaya and Sabine rivers, exterminated the Eastern Atakapa. They had occupied the area between Atchafalaya River and Bayou Nezpique (Attakapas Territory). William Byrd Powell (1799–1867), a medical doctor and physiologist , regarded

5742-655: The last 10,000 years. Nowadays, some scholars speak about the existence within cultural evolution of the so-called mixed-economies or dual economies which imply a combination of food procurement (gathering and hunting) and food production or when foragers have trade relations with farmers. Some of the theorists who advocate this "revisionist" critique imply that, because the "pure hunter-gatherer" disappeared not long after colonial (or even agricultural) contact began, nothing meaningful can be learned about prehistoric hunter-gatherers from studies of modern ones (Kelly, 24–29; see Wilmsen ) Lee and Guenther have rejected most of

5829-579: The least desire to return to Europe. I have six children whom I love a great deal, and with whom I want to end my days." When my warriors were rested and refreshed, I took leave of Joseph and of the Atakapas, while assuring them of my desire to be able to make some returns for their friendly welcome, and I resumed my Journey. In 1760, the French Gabriel Fuselier de la Claire came into the Attakapas Territory, and bought all

5916-492: The middle of the following century. Early Spanish explorers encountered a number of ethnically distinct bands of aboriginal peoples near the Medina River who spoke a common Coahuiltecan dialect . These tribes also shared similar societal values and traditions. This group included the Anxau, Pampopa, Pastia, Payaya , and others. The largest of these groups were the Payaya, known to the Spanish since 1690 and considered quite friendly. The Pastia (or Paxti) Indians were unknown to

6003-571: The middle-late Bronze Age and Iron Age societies were able to fully replace hunter-gatherers in their final stronghold located in the most densely forested areas. Unlike their Bronze and Iron Age counterparts, Neolithic societies could not establish themselves in dense forests, and Copper Age societies had only limited success. In addition to men, a single study found that women engage in hunting in 79% of modern hunter-gatherer societies. However, an attempted verification of this study found "that multiple methodological failures all bias their results in

6090-434: The mission network's construction. This was in large part due to the close proximity of their labor camps to the settlements of the European mission workers who carried Old World diseases (such as smallpox ) which were extremely deadly to the aboriginal inhabitants of the villages surrounding the missions. Following the establishment of the Mission San Antonio de Valero in 1718, many of the Native American peoples inhabiting

6177-462: The name Atakapa, meaning "people eater" ( hattak 'person', apa 'to eat'), for them. It referred to their practice of ritual cannibalism related to warfare. A French explorer, Francois Simars de Bellisle , lived among the Atakapa from 1719 to 1721. He described Atakapa feasts including consumption of human flesh, which he observed firsthand. The practice of cannibalism likely had a religious, ritualistic basis. French Jesuit missionaries urged

6264-423: The only statistically significant factor to impact hunter-gatherer tool kits. Using temperature as a proxy for risk, Collard et al.'s results suggest that environments with extreme temperatures pose a threat to hunter-gatherer systems significant enough to warrant increased variability of tools. These results support Torrence's (1989) theory that the risk of failure is indeed the most important factor in determining

6351-674: The researchers agreed that hunter-gatherers were more egalitarian than modern societies, prior characterisations of them living in a state of egalitarian primitive communism were inaccurate and misleading. This study, however, exclusively examined modern hunter-gatherer communities, offering limited insight into the exact nature of social structures that existed prior to the Neolithic Revolution. Alain Testart and others have said that anthropologists should be careful when using research on current hunter-gatherer societies to determine

6438-452: The same camp. The systems of kinship and descent among human hunter-gatherers were relatively flexible, although there is evidence that early human kinship in general tended to be matrilineal . The conventional assumption has been that women did most of the gathering, while men concentrated on big game hunting. An illustrative account is Megan Biesele's study of the southern African Ju/'hoan, 'Women Like Meat'. A recent study suggests that

6525-646: The same direction...their analysis does not contradict the wide body of empirical evidence for gendered divisions of labor in foraging societies". Only a few contemporary societies of uncontacted people are still classified as hunter-gatherers, and many supplement their foraging activity with horticulture or pastoralism . Hunting and gathering was presumably the subsistence strategy employed by human societies beginning some 1.8 million years ago, by Homo erectus , and from its appearance some 200,000 years ago by Homo sapiens . Prehistoric hunter-gatherers lived in groups that consisted of several families resulting in

6612-615: The sea. An ancestral prophet laid out the rules of conduct. The first European contact with the Atakapa may have been in 1528 by survivors of the Spanish Pánfilo de Narváez expedition. These men in Florida had made two barges, in an attempt to sail to Mexico, and these were blown ashore on the Gulf Coast. One group of survivors met the Karankawa , while the other probably landed on Galveston Island . The latter recorded meeting

6699-509: The sexual division of labor was the fundamental organizational innovation that gave Homo sapiens the edge over the Neanderthals, allowing our ancestors to migrate from Africa and spread across the globe. A 1986 study found most hunter-gatherers have a symbolically structured sexual division of labor. However, it is true that in a small minority of cases, women hunted the same kind of quarry as men, sometimes doing so alongside men. Among

6786-403: The structure of hunter-gatherer toolkits. One way to divide hunter-gatherer groups is by their return systems. James Woodburn uses the categories "immediate return" hunter-gatherers for egalitarianism and "delayed return" for nonegalitarian. Immediate return foragers consume their food within a day or two after they procure it. Delayed return foragers store the surplus food. Hunting-gathering

6873-765: The structure of societies in the paleolithic era, emphasising cross-cultural influences, progress and development that such societies have undergone in the past 10,000 years. As one moves away from the equator , the importance of plant food decreases and the importance of aquatic food increases. In cold and heavily forested environments, edible plant foods and large game are less abundant and hunter-gatherers may turn to aquatic resources to compensate. Hunter-gatherers in cold climates also rely more on stored food than those in warm climates. However, aquatic resources tend to be costly, requiring boats and fishing technology, and this may have impeded their intensive use in prehistory. Marine food probably did not start becoming prominent in

6960-469: The torture that they made them endure when they had come to take possession of Mexico ; that if some Englishmen or Frenchmen happened to be lost in this bay region, the Atakapas welcomed them with kindness, would give them hospitality; and if they did not wish to remain with them they had them taken to the Akancas, from where they could easily go to New Orleans . He told me: "You see here about one-half of

7047-847: The viability of hunting and gathering in the 21st century. One such group is the Pila Nguru (Spinifex people) of Western Australia , whose land in the Great Victoria Desert has proved unsuitable for European agriculture (and even pastoralism). Another are the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean , who live on North Sentinel Island and to date have maintained their independent existence, repelling attempts to engage with and contact them. The Savanna Pumé of Venezuela also live in an area that

7134-578: The wider area. They have been mistaken for the Pasxa ( Patzau ) and Pachal ( Pacal , Pasteal ) peoples. The Patiri , an Indian tribe native to the woodlands of southeast Texas, were claimed as Pastia residents at the Mission San Ildefonso (in present-day Milam County ), an area the Pastias never inhabited or visited. The Mission Concepción de Acuña 's residents using Pastias as a surname are unproven members of that tribe. Following

7221-553: Was a language isolate , once spoken along the Louisiana and East Texas coast and believed extinct since the mid-20th century. John R. Swanton in 1919 proposed a Tunican language family that would include Atakapa, Tunica , and Chitimacha . Mary Haas later expanded this into the Gulf language family with the addition of the Muskogean languages . As of 2001, linguists generally do not consider these proposed families as proven. Atakapa oral history says that they originated from

7308-596: Was a European; that he had been a Jesuit ; and that having gone into Mexico, these people had chosen him as their chief. He spoke French rather well. He told me that his name was Joseph; but I did not learn from what part of Europe he came. He informed me that the name Atakapas, which means eaters of men, had been given to this nation by the Spaniards because every time they caught one of them, they would roast him alive, but that they did not eat them; that they acted in this way toward this nation to avenge their ancestors for

7395-579: Was also spelled Atacapaze , Atalapa , Attakapa , Attakapas , or Attacapa . Atakapa is either a Choctaw or Mobilian term meaning "eater of human flesh". The Choctaw used this term due to their practice of ritual cannibalism . Europeans encountered the Choctaw first during their exploration, and adopted their name for this people to the west. The peoples lived in river valleys, along lake shores, and coasts from present-day Vermilion Bay , Louisiana to Galveston Bay, Texas . The Atakapa language

7482-429: Was one of several central characteristics of nomadic hunting and gathering societies because mobility requires minimization of material possessions throughout a population. Therefore, no surplus of resources can be accumulated by any single member. Other characteristics Lee and DeVore proposed were flux in territorial boundaries as well as in demographic composition. At the same conference, Marshall Sahlins presented

7569-465: Was the common human mode of subsistence throughout the Paleolithic , but the observation of current-day hunters and gatherers does not necessarily reflect Paleolithic societies; the hunter-gatherer cultures examined today have had much contact with modern civilization and do not represent "pristine" conditions found in uncontacted peoples . The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture

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