Native American History Research Paper

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Introduction

Native American history and culture has been generally misunderstood or misconstrued by outsiders. They were the first settlers of North America, yet why isn’t their history, culture, and feats been recorded in tomes of history books or taught to the average student in the elementary/secondary classroom? The ordinary person’s knowledge of Native Americans’ appearance, clothing, life-style, history, personality, and academic and artistic achievements most often comes from fictional stories and films, which paint a stereotypical, inaccurate image. This paper takes a look at why is there such a lack of accurate, ancient, and detailed information in regards to Native American history, and specifically in regards to the field of …show more content…
We pay special importance to specific numbers that various diverse cultures of Native Americans all hold as sacred and attempt to provide explanations of why. Furthermore, in order to encapsulate the Native Americans’ understanding, depth, and use of mathematics, this article explores various number base systems developed and used by various Native American tribes/civilizations across the continent, which makes evident that most of them used some form of base ten (decimal) system and base twenty (vigesimal) system. We review a variety of uses different societies had for using their counting system, ranging from basic and minimal to vast and sophisticated. By looking at their number systems and uses, we find some support for the idea that mathematics is intuitive and “comes naturally” to the Native American mind.

The Scarceness of Records on Native American Mathematics

When one considers the number of Native American tribes and civilizations that spanned …show more content…
Michael Closs from the University of Texas Austin, provides a detailed look at the number systems used by Native Americans in his essay “Native American Number Systems”. Some were positional and others were not. He discusses in detail and with examples the various counting terms and methods of at least twenty Native American cultures. We find that although most of these cultures used some form of the decimal (base ten) system (including the Inca and Quechua-speaking tribes), there were others who used a base 20 system or even systems using a mix of base 4, base 8, and base 16. The most notable and advanced base 20 or “vigesimal” system was used by the Maya. Their number system was positional and using just 6 Maya names (or the first 6 powers of 20); one could write a numeral up to 64,999,999. With such sophistication, they were easily able to record-keep, do computations, create large, superior constructions and irrigations, accurately complete astronomical measurements, and develop a precise calendar. Other California and Caddoan-speaking cultures also used base 20 systems, if less advanced. The Yuki from northern California used number system that was a mix of base 8 and base 16. They seem to have derived this system from using the spaces between their knuckles to count (eight spaces = one set of hands, 16 spaces = 2 sets of hands), with counting names up to 16. A tribe in southern California, the Chumash, used a mixture of base 4
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