title: Native Americans in the United States

text: To counteract a shift to English, some Native American tribes have initiated language immersion schools for children, where an Indigenous American language is the medium of instruction. For example, the Cherokee Nation initiated a 10-year language preservation plan that involved raising new fluent speakers of the Cherokee language from childhood on up through school immersion programs as well as a collaborative community effort to continue to use the language at home. This plan was part of an ambitious goal that, in 50 years, will result in 80% or more of the Cherokee people being fluent in the language. The Cherokee Preservation Foundation has invested $3 million in opening schools, training teachers, and developing curricula for language education, as well as initiating community gatherings where the language can be actively used. Formed in 2006, the Kituwah Preservation & Education Program (KPEP) on the Qualla Boundary focuses on language immersion programs for children from birth to fifth grade, developing cultural resources for the general public and community language programs to foster the Cherokee language among adults.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: There is also a Cherokee language immersion school in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, that educates students from pre-school through eighth grade. Because Oklahoma's official language is English, Cherokee immersion students are hindered when taking state-mandated tests because they have little competence in English. The Department of Education of Oklahoma said that in 2012 state tests: 11% of the school's sixth-graders showed proficiency in math, and 25% showed proficiency in reading; 31% of the seventh-graders showed proficiency in math, and 87% showed proficiency in reading; 50% of the eighth-graders showed proficiency in math, and 78% showed proficiency in reading. The Oklahoma Department of Education listed the charter school as a Targeted Intervention school, meaning the school was identified as a low-performing school but has not so that it was a Priority School. Ultimately, the school made a C, or a 2.33 grade point average on the state's A-F report card system. The report card shows the school getting an F in mathematics achievement and mathematics growth, a C in social studies achievement, a D in reading achievement, and an A in reading growth and student attendance. "The C we made is tremendous", said school principal Holly Davis, "[t]here is no English instruction in our school's younger grades, and we gave them this test in English." She said she had anticipated the low grade because it was the school's first year as a state-funded charter school, and many students had difficulty with English. Eighth graders who graduate from the Tahlequah immersion school are fluent speakers of the language, and they usually go on to attend Sequoyah High School where classes are taught in both English and Cherokee.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Historical diets of Native Americans differed dramatically from region to region. Different peoples might have relied more heavily on agriculture, horticulture, hunting, fishing, or gathering wild plants and fungi. Tribes developed diets best suited to their environments.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Iñupiat, Yupiit, Unangan, and fellow Alaska Natives fished, hunted, and harvested wild plants, but did not rely on agriculture. Coastal peoples relied more heavily on sea mammals, fish, and fish eggs, while inland peoples hunted caribou and moose. Alaskan Natives prepared and preserved dried and smoked meat and fish.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: In the Eastern Woodlands, early peoples independently invented agricultural and by 1800 BCE developed the crops of the Eastern Agricultural Complex, which include squash ("Cucurbita pepo ssp. ovifera"), sunflower ("Helianthus annuus var. macrocarpus"), goosefoot ("Chenopodium berlandieri"), and marsh elder ("Iva annua var. macrocarpa").


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: The Sonoran desert region including parts of Arizona and California, part of a region known as Aridoamerica, relied heavily on the tepary bean ("Phaseolus acutifolius") as a staple crop. This and other desert crops, mesquite bead pods, "tunas" (prickly pear fruit), cholla buds, saguaro cactus fruit, and acorns are being actively promoted today by Tohono O'odham Community Action. In the Southwest, some communities developed irrigation techniques while others, such as the Hopi dry-farmed. They filled storehouses with grain as protection against the area's frequent droughts.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Maize or corn, first cultivated in what is now Mexico was traded north into Aridoamerica and Oasisamerica, southwest. From there, maize cultivation spread throughout the Great Plains and Eastern Woodlands by 200 CE. Native farmers practiced polycropping maize, beans, and squash; these crops are known as the Three Sisters. The beans would replace the nitrogen, which the maize leached from the ground, as well as using corn stalks for support for climbing.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: The agriculture gender roles of the Native Americans varied from region to region. In the Southwest area, men prepared the soil with hoes. The women were in charge of planting, weeding, and harvesting the crops. In most other regions, the women were in charge of most agriculture, including clearing the land. Clearing the land was an immense chore since the Native Americans rotated fields.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Europeans in the eastern part of the continent observed that Native Americans cleared large areas for cropland. Their fields in New England sometimes covered hundreds of acres. Colonists in Virginia noted thousands of acres under cultivation by Native Americans.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Early farmers commonly used tools such as the hoe, maul, and dibber. The hoe was the main tool used to till the land and prepare it for planting; then it was used for weeding. The first versions were made out of wood and stone. When the settlers brought iron, Native Americans switched to iron hoes and hatchets. The dibber was a digging stick, used to plant the seed. Once the plants were harvested, women prepared the produce for eating. They used the maul to grind the corn into a mash. It was cooked and eaten that way or baked as cornbread.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Native American religious practices, beliefs, and philosophies differ widely across tribes. These spiritualities, practices, beliefs, and philosophies may accompany adherence to another faith or can represent a person's primary religious, faith, spiritual or philosophical identity. Much Native American spirituality exists in a tribal-cultural continuum, and as such cannot be easily separated from tribal identity itself.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Cultural spiritual, philosophical, and faith ways differ from tribe to tribe and person to person. Some tribes include the use of sacred leaves and herbs such as tobacco, sweetgrass or sage. Many Plains tribes have sweatlodge ceremonies, though the specifics of the ceremony vary among tribes. Fasting, singing and prayer in the ancient languages of their people, and sometimes drumming are also common.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: The Midewiwin Lodge is a medicine society inspired by the oral history and prophesies of the Ojibwa (Chippewa) and related tribes.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Another significant religious body among Native peoples is known as the Native American Church. It is a syncretistic church incorporating elements of Native spiritual practice from a number of different tribes as well as symbolic elements from Christianity. Its main rite is the peyote ceremony. Prior to 1890, traditional religious beliefs included Wakan Tanka. In the American Southwest, especially New Mexico, a syncretism between the Catholicism brought by Spanish missionaries and the native religion is common; the religious drums, chants, and dances of the Pueblo people are regularly part of Masses at Santa Fe's Saint Francis Cathedral. Native American-Catholic syncretism is also found elsewhere in the United States. (e.g., the National Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine in Fonda, New York, and the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, New York). Some Native American tribes who practice Christianity, including the Lumbee, organized denominations, such as the Lumber River Conference of the Holiness Methodist Church.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: The eagle feather law (Title 50 Part 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations) stipulates that only individuals of certifiable Native American ancestry enrolled in a federally recognized tribe are legally authorized to obtain eagle feathers for religious or spiritual use. The law does not allow Native Americans to give eagle feathers to non-Native Americans.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Gender roles are differentiated in many Native American tribes. Many Natives have retained traditional expectations of sexuality and gender, and continue to do so in contemporary life despite continued and on-going colonial pressures.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Whether a particular tribe is predominantly matrilineal or patrilineal, often both sexes have some degree of decision-making power within the tribe. Many Nations, such as the Haudenosaunee Five Nations and the Southeast Muskogean tribes, have matrilineal or Clan Mother systems, in which property and hereditary leadership are controlled by and passed through the maternal lines. In these Nations, the children are considered to belong to the mother's clan. In Cherokee culture, women own the family property. When traditional young women marry, their husbands may join them in their mother's household.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Matrilineal structures enable young women to have assistance in childbirth and rearing and protect them in case of conflicts between the couple. If a couple separates or the man dies, the woman has her family to assist her. In matrilineal cultures the mother's brothers are usually the leading male figures in her children's lives; fathers have no standing in their wife and children's clan, as they still belong to their own mother's clan. Hereditary clan chief positions pass through the mother's line and chiefs have historically been selected on the recommendations of women elders, who could also disapprove of a chief.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: In the patrilineal tribes, such as the Omaha, Osage, Ponca, and Lakota, hereditary leadership passes through the male line, and children are considered to belong to the father and his clan. In patrilineal tribes, if a woman marries a non-Native, she is no longer considered part of the tribe, and her children are considered to share the ethnicity and culture of their father.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: In patriarchal tribes, gender roles tend to be rigid. Men have historically hunted, traded and made war while, as life-givers, women have primary responsibility for the survival and welfare of the families (and future of the tribe). Women usually gather and cultivate plants, use plants and herbs to treat illnesses, care for the young and the elderly, make all the clothing and instruments, and process and cure meat and skins from the game. Some mothers use cradleboards to carry an infant while working or traveling. In matriarchal and egalitarian nations, the gender roles are usually not so clear-cut and are even less so in the modern era.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota girls are encouraged to learn to ride, hunt and fight. Though fighting in war has mostly been left to the boys and men, occasionally women have fought as well – both in battles and in defense of the home – especially if the tribe was severely threatened.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: 90% of Native American school-aged children attend public schools operated by school districts. Tribally-operated schools under contracts/grants with the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) and direct BIE-operated schools take about 8% of Native American students, including students who live in very rural remote areas.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: In 1978, 215,000 (78%) of Native Americans attended school district-operated public schools, 47,000 (17%) attended schools directly operated by the BIA, 2,500 (1%) attended tribal schools and/or other schools that contracted with the BIA, and the remaining 9,000 (3%) attended missionary schools for Native American children and/or other private schools.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Native American leisure time led to competitive individual and team sports. Jim Thorpe, Lewis Tewanima, Joe Hipp, Notah Begay III, Chris Wondolowski, Jacoby Ellsbury, Joba Chamberlain, Kyle Lohse, Sam Bradford, Jack Brisco, Tommy Morrison, Billy Mills, Angel Goodrich, Shoni Schimmel, and Kyrie Irving are well known professional athletes.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Native American ball sports, sometimes referred to as lacrosse, stickball, or baggataway, were often used to settle disputes, rather than going to war, as a civil way to settle potential conflict. The Choctaw called it "isitoboli" ("Little Brother of War"); the Onondaga name was "dehuntshigwa'es" ("men hit a rounded object"). There are three basic versions, classified as Great Lakes, Iroquoian, and Southern.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: The game is played with one or two rackets or sticks and one ball. The object of the game is to land the ball in the opposing team's goal (either a single post or net) to score and to prevent the opposing team from scoring on your goal. The game involves as few as 20 or as many as 300 players with no height or weight restrictions and no protective gear. The goals could be from around apart to about ; in lacrosse the field is .


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Chunkey was a game that consisted of a stone-shaped disk that was about 1–2 inches in diameter. The disk was thrown down a corridor so that it could roll past the players at great speed. The disk would roll down the corridor, and players would throw wooden shafts at the moving disk. The object of the game was to strike the disk or prevent your opponents from hitting it.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Jim Thorpe, a Sauk and Fox Native American, was an all-around athlete playing football and baseball in the early 20th century. Future President Dwight Eisenhower injured his knee while trying to tackle the young Thorpe. In a 1961 speech, Eisenhower recalled Thorpe: "Here and there, there are some people who are supremely endowed. My memory goes back to Jim Thorpe. He never practiced in his life, and he could do anything better than any other football player I ever saw."


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: In the 1912 Olympics, Thorpe could run the 100-yard dash in 10 seconds flat, the 220 in 21.8 seconds, the 440 in 51.8 seconds, the 880 in 1:57, the mile in 4:35, the 120-yard high hurdles in 15 seconds, and the 220-yard low hurdles in 24 seconds. He could long jump 23 ft 6 in and high-jump 6 ft 5 in. He could pole vault , put the shot , throw the javelin , and throw the discus . Thorpe entered the U.S. Olympic trials for the pentathlon and the decathlon.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Louis Tewanima, Hopi people, was an American two-time Olympic distance runner and silver medalist in the 10,000-meter run in 1912. He ran for the Carlisle Indian School where he was a teammate of Jim Thorpe. His silver medal in 1912 remained the best U.S. achievement in this event until another Indian, Billy Mills, won the gold medal in 1964. Tewanima also competed at the 1908 Olympics, where he finished in ninth place in the marathon.[1]


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Ellison Brown, of the Narragansett people from Rhode Island, better known as "Tarzan" Brown, won two Boston Marathons (1936, 1939) and competed on the United States Olympic team in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, but did not finish due to injury. He qualified for the 1940 Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland, but the games were canceled due to the outbreak of World War II.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Billy Mills, a Lakota and USMC officer, won the gold medal in the 10,000-meter run at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. He was the only American ever to win the Olympic gold in this event. An unknown before the Olympics, Mills finished second in the U.S. Olympic trials.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Billy Kidd, part Abenaki from Vermont, became the first American male to medal in alpine skiing in the Olympics, taking silver at age 20 in the slalom in the 1964 Winter Olympics at Innsbruck, Austria. Six years later at the 1970 World Championships, Kidd won the gold medal in the combined event and took the bronze medal in the slalom.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Ashton Locklear (Lumbee), an uneven bars specialist was an alternate for the 2016 Summer Olympics U.S. gymnastics team, the Final Five. In 2016, Kyrie Irving (Sioux) also helped Team USA win the gold medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics. With the win, he became just the fourth member of Team USA to capture the NBA championship and an Olympic gold medal in the same year, joining LeBron James, Michael Jordan, and Scottie Pippen.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Traditional Native American music is almost entirely monophonic, but there are notable exceptions. Native American music often includes drumming or the playing of rattles or other percussion instruments but little other instrumentation. Flutes and whistles made of wood, cane, or bone are also played, generally by individuals, but in former times also by large ensembles (as noted by Spanish conquistador de Soto). The tuning of modern flutes is typically pentatonic.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Performers with Native American parentage have occasionally appeared in American popular music such as Rita Coolidge, Wayne Newton, Gene Clark, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Blackfoot, and Redbone (members are also of Mexican descent). Some, such as John Trudell, have used music to comment on life in Native America. Other musicians such as R. Carlos Nakai, Joanne Shenandoah and Robert "Tree" Cody integrate traditional sounds with modern sounds in instrumental recordings, whereas the music by artist Charles Littleleaf is derived from ancestral heritage as well as nature. A variety of small and medium-sized recording companies offer an abundance of recent music by Native American performers young and old, ranging from pow-wow drum music to hard-driving rock-and-roll and rap. In the International world of ballet dancing Maria Tallchief was considered America's first major prima ballerina, and was the first person of Native American descent to hold the rank. along with her sister Marjorie Tallchief both became star ballerinas.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: The most widely practiced public musical form among Native Americans in the United States is that of the pow-wow. At pow-wows, such as the annual Gathering of Nations in Albuquerque, New Mexico, members of drum groups sit in a circle around a large drum. Drum groups play in unison while they sing in a native language and dancers in colorful regalia dance clockwise around the drum groups in the center. Familiar pow-wow songs include honor songs, intertribal songs, crow-hops, sneak-up songs, grass-dances, two-steps, welcome songs, going-home songs, and war songs. Most Indigenous communities in the United States also maintain traditional songs and ceremonies, some of which are shared and practiced exclusively within the community.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: The Iroquois, living around the Great Lakes and extending east and north, used strings or belts called "wampum" that served a dual function: the knots and beaded designs mnemonically chronicled tribal stories and legends, and further served as a medium of exchange and a unit of measure. The keepers of the articles were seen as tribal dignitaries.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Pueblo peoples crafted impressive items associated with their religious ceremonies. "Kachina" dancers wore elaborately painted and decorated masks as they ritually impersonated various ancestral spirits.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Pueblo people are particularly noted for their traditional high-quality pottery, often with geometric designs and floral, animal and bird motifs. Sculpture was not highly developed, but carved stone and wood fetishes were made for religious use. Superior weaving, embroidered decorations, and rich dyes characterized the textile arts. Both turquoise and shell jewelry were created, as were formalized pictorial arts.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Navajo spirituality focused on the maintenance of a harmonious relationship with the spirit world, often achieved by ceremonial acts, usually incorporating sandpainting. For the Navajo, the sand painting is not merely a representational object, but a dynamic spiritual entity with a life of its own, which helped the patient at the center of the ceremony re-establish a connection with the life force. These vivid, intricate, and colorful sand creations were erased at the end of the healing ceremony.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Native American art comprises a major category in the world art collection. Native American contributions include pottery, paintings, jewellery, weavings, sculpture, basketry, and carvings. Franklin Gritts was a Cherokee artist who taught students from many tribes at Haskell Institute (now Haskell Indian Nations University) in the 1940s, the "Golden Age" of Native American painters. The integrity of certain Native American artworks is protected by the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990, which prohibits the representation of art as Native American when it is not the product of an enrolled Native American artist. Attorney Gail Sheffield and others claim that this law has had "the unintended consequence of sanctioning discrimination against Native Americans whose tribal affiliation was not officially recognized". Native artists such as Jeanne Rorex Bridges (Echota Cherokee) who was not enrolled ran the risk of fines or imprisonment if they continued to sell their art while affirming their Indian heritage.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Interracial relations between Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans is a complex issue that has been mostly neglected with "few in-depth studies on interracial relationships".


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: European impact was immediate, widespread, and profound already during the early years of colonization and the creation of the countries which currently exist in the Americas. Europeans living among Native Americans were often called "white indians". They "lived in native communities for years, learned native languages fluently, attended native councils, and often fought alongside their native companions".


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Early contact was often charged with tension and emotion, but also had moments of friendship, cooperation, and intimacy. Marriages took place in English, Spanish, French, and Russian colonies between Native Americans and Europeans though Native American women were also the victims of rape.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: There was fear on both sides, as the different peoples realized how different their societies were. Many whites regarded Native people as "savages" because the Native people were not Protestant or Roman Catholic and therefore the Native people were not considered to be human beings. Orthodox Christians never viewed Native people as savages or sub-human. The Native American author, Andrew J. Blackbird, wrote in his "History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan" (1897), that white settlers introduced some immoralities into Native American tribes. Many Native Americans suffered because the Europeans introduced alcohol. Many Native people do not break down alcohol in the same way as people of Eurasian background. Many Native people were learning what their body could tolerate of this new substance and died as a result of imbibing too much.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: The U.S. government had two purposes when making land agreements with Native Americans: to open up more land for white settlement, and to "ease tensions" (in other words assimilate Native people to Eurasian social ways) between whites and Native Americans by forcing the Native Americans to use the land in the same way as did the whites—for subsistence farms. The government used a variety of strategies to achieve these goals; many treaties required Native Americans to become farmers in order to keep their land. Government officials often did not translate the documents which Native Americans were forced to sign, and native chiefs often had little or no idea what they were signing.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: For a Native American man to marry a white woman, he had to get consent of her parents, as long as "he can prove to support her as a white woman in a good home". In the early 19th century, the Shawnee Tecumseh and blonde hair, blue-eyed Rebbecca Galloway had an interracial affair. In the late 19th century, three European-American middle-class women teachers at Hampton Institute married Native American men whom they had met as students.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: As European-American women started working independently at missions and Indian schools in the western states, there were more opportunities for their meeting and developing relationships with Native American men. For instance, Charles Eastman, a man of European and Lakota origin whose father sent both his sons to Dartmouth College, got his medical degree at Boston University and returned to the West to practice. He married Elaine Goodale, whom he met in South Dakota. He was the grandson of Seth Eastman, a military officer from Maine, and a chief's daughter. Goodale was a young European-American teacher from Massachusetts and a reformer, who was appointed as the U.S. superintendent of Native American education for the reservations in the Dakota Territory. They had six children together.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: The majority of Native American tribes did practice some form of slavery before the European introduction of African slavery into North America, but none exploited slave labor on a large scale. Most Native American tribes did not barter captives in the pre-colonial era, although they sometimes exchanged enslaved individuals with other tribes in peace gestures or in exchange for their own members. When Europeans arrived as colonists in North America, Native Americans changed their practice of slavery dramatically. Native Americans began selling war captives to Europeans rather than integrating them into their own societies as they had done before. As the demand for labor in the West Indies grew with the cultivation of sugar cane, Europeans enslaved Native Americans for the Thirteen Colonies, and some were exported to the "sugar islands". The British settlers, especially those in the southern colonies, purchased or captured Native Americans to use as forced labor in cultivating tobacco, rice, and indigo. Accurate records of the numbers enslaved do not exist because vital statistics and census reports were at best infrequent. Scholars estimate tens to hundreds of thousands of Native Americans may have been enslaved by the Europeans, being sold by Native Americans themselves or Europeans.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: In Colonial America, slavery soon became racialized, with those enslaved by the institution consisting of ethnic groups (non-Christian Native Americans and Africans) who were foreign to the Christian, European colonists. The House of Burgesses define the terms of slavery in Virginia in 1705:


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: The slave trade of Native Americans lasted only until around 1750. It gave rise to a series of devastating wars among the tribes, including the Yamasee War. The Indian Wars of the early 18th century, combined with the increasing importation of African slaves, effectively ended the Native American slave trade by 1750. Colonists found that Native American slaves could easily escape, as they knew the country. The wars cost the lives of numerous colonial slave traders and disrupted their early societies. The remaining Native American groups banded together to face the Europeans from a position of strength. Many surviving Native American peoples of the southeast strengthened their loose coalitions of language groups and joined confederacies such as the Choctaw, the Creek, and the Catawba for protection. Even after the Indian Slave Trade ended in 1750, the enslavement of Native Americans continued (mostly through kidnappings) in the west and in the Southern states. Both Native American and African enslaved women suffered rape and sexual harassment by male slaveholders and other white men.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: African and Native Americans have interacted for centuries. The earliest record of Native American and African contact occurred in April 1502, when Spanish colonists transported the first Africans to Hispaniola to serve as slaves.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Sometimes Native Americans resented the presence of African Americans. The "Catawaba tribe in 1752 showed great anger and bitter resentment when an African American came among them as a trader". To gain favor with Europeans, the Cherokee exhibited the strongest color prejudice of all Native Americans. Because of European fears of a unified revolt of Native Americans and African Americans, the colonists tried to encourage hostility between the ethnic groups: "Whites sought to convince Native Americans that African Americans worked against their best interests." In 1751, South Carolina law stated:


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Europeans considered both races inferior and made efforts to make both Native Americans and Africans enemies. Native Americans were rewarded if they returned escaped slaves, and African Americans were rewarded for fighting in the late 19th-century Indian Wars.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: According to the National Park Service, "Native Americans, during the transitional period of Africans becoming the primary race enslaved, were enslaved at the same time and shared a common experience of enslavement. They worked together, lived together in communal quarters, produced collective recipes for food, shared herbal remedies, myths and legends, and in the end they intermarried." Because of a shortage of men due to warfare, many tribes encouraged marriage between the two groups, to create stronger, healthier children from the unions.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: In the 18th century, many Native American women married freed or runaway African men due to a decrease in the population of men in Native American villages. Records show that many Native American women bought African men but, unknown to the European sellers, the women freed and married the men into their tribe. When African men married or had children by a Native American woman, their children were born free, because the mother was free (according to the principle of "partus sequitur ventrem", which the colonists incorporated into law).


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: While numerous tribes used captive enemies as servants and slaves, they also often adopted younger captives into their tribes to replace members who had died. In the Southeast, a few Native American tribes began to adopt a slavery system similar to that of the American colonists, buying African American slaves, especially the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek. Though less than 3% of Native Americans owned slaves, divisions grew among the Native Americans over slavery. Among the Cherokee, records show that slaveholders in the tribe were largely the children of European men who had shown their children the economics of slavery. As European colonists took slaves into frontier areas, there were more opportunities for relationships between African and Native American peoples.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: In the 2010 Census, nearly 3 million people indicated that their race was Native American (including Alaska Native). Of these, more than 27% specifically indicated "Cherokee" as their ethnic origin. Many of the First Families of Virginia claim descent from Pocahontas or some other "Indian princess". This phenomenon has been dubbed the "Cherokee Syndrome". Across the US, numerous individuals cultivate an opportunistic ethnic identity as Native American, sometimes through Cherokee heritage groups or Indian Wedding Blessings.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Some tribes (particularly some in the Eastern United States) are primarily made up of individuals with an unambiguous Native American identity, despite having a large number of mixed-race citizens with prominent non-Native ancestry. More than 75% of those enrolled in the Cherokee Nation have less than one-quarter Cherokee blood, and the former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, Bill John Baker, is 1/32 Cherokee, amounting to about 3%.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Historically, numerous Native Americans assimilated into colonial and later American society, e.g. through adopting English and converting to Christianity. In many cases, this process occurred through forced assimilation of children sent off to special boarding schools far from their families. Those who could pass for white had the advantage of white privilege. With the enforcement of blood quantum laws, Indian blood could be diluted over generations through interbreeding with non-Native populations, as well as intermarrying with tribes that were not recognized by the United States government. "Kill the Indian, save the man" was a mantra of nineteenth-century U.S. assimilation policies.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Native Americans are more likely than any other racial group to practice interracial marriage, resulting in an ever-declining proportion of Indigenous blood among those who claim a Native American identity. Some tribes will even resort to disenrollment of tribal members unable to provide scientific "proof" of Native ancestry, usually through a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood. Disenrollment has become a contentious issue in Native American reservation politics.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Intertribal mixing was common among many Native American tribes prior to European contact, as they would adopt captives taken in warfare. Individuals often had ancestry from more than one tribe, particularly after tribes lost so many members from disease in the colonial era and after. Bands or entire tribes occasionally split or merged to form more viable groups in reaction to the pressures of climate, disease and warfare.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: A number of tribes traditionally adopted captives into their group to replace members who had been captured or killed in battle. Such captives were from rival tribes and later were taken from raids on European settlements. Some tribes also sheltered or adopted white traders and runaway slaves, and others owned slaves of their own. Tribes with long trading histories with Europeans show a higher rate of European admixture, reflecting years of intermarriage between Native American women and European men, often seen as advantageous to both sides. A number of paths to genetic and ethnic diversity among Native Americans have occurred.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: In recent years, genetic genealogists have been able to determine the proportion of Native American ancestry carried by the African-American population. The literary and history scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., had experts on his TV programs who discussed African-American ancestry. They stated that 5% of African Americans have at least 12.5% Native American ancestry, or the equivalent to one great-grandparent, which may represent more than one distant ancestor. A greater percentage could have a smaller proportion of Indian ancestry, but their conclusions show that popular estimates of Native American admixture may have been too high. Genetic testing research in 2015 found varied ancestries which show different tendencies by region and sex of ancestors. Though DNA testing is limited, these studies found that, on average, African Americans have 73.2–82.1% West African, 16.7%–29% European, and 0.8–2% Native American genetic ancestry, with large variation between individuals.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: DNA testing is not sufficient to qualify a person for specific tribal membership, as it cannot distinguish among Native American tribes; however, some tribes, such as the Meskwaki Nation, require a DNA test in order to enroll in the tribe.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: In "Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science", Kim Tallbear states that a person, "… could have up to two Native American grandparents and show no sign of Native American ancestry. For example, a genetic male could have a maternal grandfather (from whom he did not inherit his Y chromosome) and a paternal grandmother (from whom he did not inherit his mtDNA) who were descended from Native American founders, but mtDNA and Y-chromosome analyses would not detect them."


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Native American identity has historically been based on culture, not just biology, as many American Indian peoples adopted captives from their enemies and assimilated them into their tribes. The Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (IPCB) notes that:


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: "Native American markers" are not found solely among Native Americans. While they occur more frequently among Native Americans, they are also found in people in other parts of the world.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Not all Native Americans have been tested; especially with the large number of deaths due to disease such as smallpox, it is unlikely that Native Americans only have the genetic markers they have identified [so far], even when their maternal or paternal bloodline does not include a [known] non-Native American.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: To receive tribal services, a Native American must be a certified (or enrolled) member of a federally recognized tribal organization. Each tribal government makes its own rules for the eligibility of citizens or tribal members. Among tribes, qualification for enrollment may be based upon a required percentage of Native American "blood" (or the "blood quantum") of an individual seeking recognition, or documented descent from an ancestor on the Dawes Rolls or other registers. But, the federal government has its own standards related to who qualifies for services available to certified Native Americans. For instance, federal scholarships for Native Americans require the student both to be enrolled in a federally recognized tribe "and" to be of at least one-quarter Native American descent (equivalent to one grandparent), attested to by a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB) card issued by the federal government.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Some tribes have begun requiring genealogical DNA testing of individuals' applying for membership, but this is usually related to an individual's proving parentage or direct descent from a certified member. Requirements for tribal membership vary widely by tribe. The Cherokee require documented direct genealogical descent from a Native American listed in the early 1906 Dawes Rolls. Tribal rules regarding the recognition of members who have heritage from multiple tribes are equally diverse and complex. Federally recognized tribes do not accept genetic-ancestry results as appropriate documentation for enrollment and do not advise applicants to submit such documentation.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Tribal membership conflicts have led to a number of legal disputes, court cases, and the formation of activist groups. One example of this is the Cherokee Freedmen. Today, they include descendants of African Americans once enslaved by the Cherokees, who were granted, by federal treaty, citizenship in the historic Cherokee Nation as freedmen after the Civil War. The modern Cherokee Nation, in the early 1980s, passed a law to require that all members must prove descent from a Cherokee Native American (not Cherokee Freedmen) listed on the Dawes Rolls, resulting in the exclusion of some individuals and families who had been active in Cherokee culture for years.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Since the 2000 United States Census, people may identify as being of more than one race. Since the 1960s, the number of people claiming Native American ancestry has grown significantly and, by the 2000 census, the number had more than doubled. Sociologists attribute this dramatic change to "ethnic shifting" or "ethnic shopping"; they believe that it reflects a willingness of people to question their birth identities and adopt new ethnicities which they find more compatible.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: The journalist Mary Annette Pember notes that identifying with Native American culture may be a result of a person's increased interest in genealogy, the romanticization of the lifestyle, and a family tradition of Native American ancestors in the distant past. There are different issues if a person wants to pursue enrollment as a member of a tribe. Different tribes have different requirements for tribal membership; in some cases persons are reluctant to enroll, seeing it as a method of control initiated by the federal government; and there are individuals who are 100% Native American but, because of their mixed tribal heritage, do not qualify to belong to any individual tribe. Pember concludes:


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: The genetic history of Indigenous peoples of the Americas primarily focuses on human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups and human mitochondrial DNA haplogroups. "Y-DNA" is passed solely along the patrilineal line, from father to son, while "mtDNA" is passed down the matrilineal line, from mother to offspring of both sexes. Neither recombines, and thus Y-DNA and mtDNA change only by chance mutation at each generation with no intermixture between parents' genetic material. Autosomal "atDNA" markers are also used, but differ from mtDNA or Y-DNA in that they overlap significantly. Autosomal DNA is generally used to measure the average continent-of-ancestry genetic admixture in the entire human genome and related isolated populations. Within mtDNA, genetic scientists have found specific nucleotide sequences classified as "Native American markers" because the sequences are understood to have been inherited through the generations of genetic females within populations that first settled the "New World". There are five primary Native American mtDNA haplogroups in which there are clusters of closely linked markers inherited together. All five haplogroups have been identified by researchers as "prehistoric Native North American samples", and it is commonly asserted that the majority of living Native Americans possess one of the common five mtDNA haplogroup markers.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: The genetic pattern indicates Indigenous Americans experienced two very distinctive genetic episodes; first with the initial-peopling of the Americas, and secondly with European colonization of the Americas. The former is the determinant factor for the number of gene lineages, zygosity mutations and founding haplotypes present in today's Indigenous American populations.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Human settlement of the New World occurred in stages from the Bering sea coast line, with an initial 15,000 to 20,000-year layover on Beringia for the small founding population. The micro-satellite diversity and distributions of the Y lineage specific to South America indicates that certain Amerindian populations have been isolated since the initial colonization of the region. The Na-Dené, Inuit and Indigenous Alaskan populations exhibit haplogroup Q-M242 (Y-DNA) mutations, however, that are distinct from other Indigenous Amerindians, and that have various mtDNA and atDNA mutations. This suggests that the paleo-Indian migrants into the northern extremes of North America and Greenland were descended from a later, independent migrant population.


title: Native Americans in the United States

text: Genetic analyses of HLA I and HLA II genes as well as HLA-A, -B, and -DRB1 gene frequencies links the Ainu people of northern Japan and southeastern Russia to some Indigenous peoples of the Americas, especially to populations on the Pacific Northwest Coast such as Tlingit. Scientists suggest that the main ancestor of the Ainu and of some Native American groups can be traced back to Paleolithic groups in Southern Siberia.


title: Lists of One Piece episodes

text: "One Piece" is a Japanese animated television series based on the successful manga of the same name and has 1,045 episodes.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Newcastle United Football Club is an English professional football club, based in Newcastle upon Tyne, that plays in the Premier League – the top flight of English football. The club was founded in 1892 by the merger of Newcastle East End and Newcastle West End. The team play their home matches at St James' Park in the centre of Newcastle. Following the Taylor Report's requirement that all Premier League clubs have all-seater stadiums, the ground was modified in the mid-1990s and currently has a capacity of 52,305.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: The club has been a member of the Premier League for all but three years of the competition's history, spending 90 seasons in the top flight as of May 2022, and has never dropped below English football's second tier since joining the Football League in 1893. Newcastle have won four League titles, six FA Cups and a FA Charity Shield, as well as the 1968–69 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup and the 2006 UEFA Intertoto Cup, the ninth-highest total of trophies won by an English club. The club's most successful period was between 1904 and 1910, when they won an FA Cup and three of their League titles. Their last major domestic trophy was in 1955 (though their last major trophy was in 1969) and more recently the club have been League or FA Cup runners-up on four occasions in the 1990s. Newcastle was relegated in 2009, and again in 2016. The club won promotion at the first time of asking each time, returning to the Premier League, as Championship winners, in 2010 and 2017.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Newcastle has a long-standing rivalry with nearby Sunderland, with which it contests the Tyne–Wear derby since 1898. The team's traditional kit colours are black-and-white striped shirts, black shorts and black socks. Their crest has elements of the city coat of arms, which features two grey hippocamps. Before each home game, the team enters the field to "Local Hero", and "Blaydon Races" is also sung during games. The 2005 film "Goal!" featured Newcastle United, and many credit the film with raising the club's popularity among players and fans.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: The club was owned by Mike Ashley from 2007 until 2021, who succeeded long-term chairman Sir John Hall. The club is the 17th-highest revenue producing club in the world in terms of annual revenue, generating €169.3 million in 2015. Newcastle's highest placing was in 1999, when they were the fifth-highest revenue producing football club in the world, and second in England only behind Manchester United. On 7 October 2021, the club was bought for £300 million by a consortium led by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: The first record of football being played on Tyneside dates from 3 March 1877 at Elswick Rugby Club. Later that year, Newcastle's first football club, Tyne Association, was formed. The origins of Newcastle United Football Club itself can be traced back to the formation of a football club by the Stanley Cricket Club of Byker in November 1881. This team was renamed Newcastle East End F.C. in October 1882, to avoid confusion with the cricket club in Stanley, County Durham. Rosewood F.C. of Byker merged with Newcastle East End a short time later. In 1886, Newcastle East End moved from Byker to Heaton. In August 1882, Newcastle West End F.C. formed from West End Cricket Club, and in May 1886 moved into St James' Park. The two clubs became rivals in the Northern League. In 1889, Newcastle East End became a professional team, before becoming a limited company the following March. Newcastle West End, on the other hand, was in serious financial trouble and approached East End with a view to a takeover. Newcastle West End was eventually dissolved, and a number of its players and backroom staff joined Newcastle East End, effectively merging the two clubs, with Newcastle East End taking over the lease on St James' Park in May 1892.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: With only one senior club in the city for fans to support, development of the club was much more rapid. Despite being refused entry to the Football League's First Division at the start of the 1892–93 season, they were invited to play in their new Second Division. However, with no big names playing in the Second Division, they turned down the offer and remained in the Northern League, stating "gates would not meet the heavy expenses incurred for travelling". In a bid to start drawing larger crowds, Newcastle East End decided to adopt a new name in recognition of the merger. Suggested names included 1892 Newcastle, Newcastle Rangers, Newcastle City and City of Newcastle, but Newcastle United was decided upon on 9 December 1892, to signify the unification of the two teams. The name change was accepted by the Football Association on 22 December, but the club was not legally constituted as Newcastle United Football Club Co. Ltd. until 6 September 1895. At the start of the 1893–94 season, Newcastle United were once again refused entry to the First Division and so joined the Second Division, along with Liverpool and Woolwich Arsenal. They played their first competitive match in the division that September against Woolwich Arsenal, with a score of 2–2.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Turnstile numbers were still low, and the incensed club published a statement stating, "The Newcastle public do not deserve to be catered for as far as professional football is concerned". However, eventually figures picked up by 1895–96, when 14,000 fans watched the team play Bury. That season Frank Watt became secretary of the club, and he was instrumental in promotion to the First Division for the 1898–99 season. However, they lost their first game 4–2 at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers and finished their first season in 13th place.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: In 1903–04, the club built up a promising squad of players, and went on to dominate English football for almost a decade, the team known for their "artistic play, combining team-work and quick, short passing". Long after his retirement, Peter McWilliam, the team's defender at the time, said, "The Newcastle team of the 1900s would give any modern side a two goal start and beat them, and further more, beat them at a trot." Newcastle United went on to win the League on three occasions during the 1900s; 1904–05, 1906–07 and 1908–09. In 1904–05, they nearly did the double, losing to Aston Villa in the 1905 FA Cup Final. They were beaten again the following year by Everton in the 1906 FA Cup Final. They reached the final again in 1908 where they lost to Wolverhampton Wanderers. They finally won the FA Cup in 1910 when they beat Barnsley in the final. They lost again the following year in the final against Bradford City.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: The team returned to the FA Cup final in 1924, in the second final held at the then new Wembley Stadium. They defeated Aston Villa, winning the club's second FA Cup. Three years later, they won the First Division championship a fourth time in 1926–27, with Hughie Gallacher, one of the most prolific goal scorers in the club's history, captaining the team. Other key players in this period were Neil Harris, Stan Seymour and Frank Hudspeth. In 1930, Newcastle United came close to relegation, and at the end of the season Gallacher left the club for Chelsea, and at the same time Andy Cunningham became the club's first team manager. In 1931–32, the club won the FA Cup a third time. However, a couple of years later, at the end of the 1933–34 season, the team were relegated to the Second Division after 35 seasons in the top. Cunningham left as manager and Tom Mather took over.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: The club found it difficult to adjust to the Second Division and were nearly further relegated in the 1937–38 season, when they were spared on goal average. However, when World War II broke out in 1939, Newcastle had a chance to regroup, and in the War period, they brought in Jackie Milburn, Tommy Walker and Bobby Cowell. They were finally promoted back to the First Division at the end of the 1947–48 season. During the 1950s, Newcastle won the FA Cup three times in five years, beating Blackpool in 1951, Arsenal in 1952 and Manchester City in 1955. However, after this last FA Cup victory the club fell back into decline and were relegated to the Second Division once again at the end of the 1960–61 season under the management of Charlie Mitten. Mitten left after one season in the Second Division and was replaced by former player Joe Harvey. Newcastle returned to the First Division at the end of the 1964–65 season after winning the Second Division title. Under Harvey, the club qualified for European competition for the first time after a good run in the 1967–68 season and the following year won the 1969 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup Final, triumphing 6–2 over two legs against Hungary's Újpest in the final.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Harvey bought striker Malcolm Macdonald in the summer of 1971, for a club record transfer fee of £180,000 (equivalent to £2,265,000 in 2021). He was an impressive goal scorer, who led United's attack to Wembley in their 1974 FA Cup Final defeat at the hands of Liverpool. The club also had back to back triumphs in the Texaco Cup in 1974 and 1975. Harvey left the club in 1975, with Gordon Lee brought in to replace him. Lee took the team to the 1976 Football League Cup Final against Manchester City, but failed to bring the trophy back to Tyneside. However, he sold Macdonald to Arsenal at the end of the season, a decision of which Macdonald later said "I loved Newcastle, until Gordon Lee took over". Lee left for Everton in 1977, and was replaced by Richard Dinnis.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: United dropped once again to the Second Division at the end of the 1977–78 season. Dinnis was replaced by Bill McGarry, and then he was replaced by Arthur Cox. Cox steered Newcastle back to the First Division at the end of the 1983–84 season, with players such as Peter Beardsley, Chris Waddle and ex-England captain Kevin Keegan the fulcrum of the team. However, with a lack of funds, Cox left for Derby County and Keegan retired. With managers such as Jack Charlton and then Willie McFaul, Newcastle remained in the top-flight, until key players such as Waddle, Beardsley and Paul Gascoigne were sold, and the team was relegated once more in 1989. McFaul left the managerial post, and was replaced by Jim Smith. Smith left at the start of the 1991–92 season and the board appointed Osvaldo Ardiles his replacement.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: John Hall became the club's chairman in 1992, and replaced Ardiles with Keegan, who managed to save the team from relegation to the Third Division. Keegan was given more money for players, buying Rob Lee, Paul Bracewell and Barry Venison. The club won the First Division championship at the end of the 1992–93 season, earning promotion to the then new Premier League.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: At the end of their first year, 1993–94 season, back in the top flight they finished in third, their highest league finish since 1927. The attacking philosophy of Keegan led to the team being labelled "The Entertainers" by Sky Sports.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Keegan took Newcastle to two consecutive runners-up finishes in the league in 1995–96 and 1996–97, coming very close to winning the title in the former season which included a 4–3 game against Liverpool at Anfield – often considered the greatest game in Premier League history – which ended with a defining image of the Premier League with Keegan slumped over the advertising hoarding. The success of the team was in part due to the attacking talent of players like David Ginola, Les Ferdinand and Alan Shearer, who was signed on 30 July 1996 for a then world record fee of £15 million.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Keegan left Newcastle in January 1997 and was replaced by Kenny Dalglish, however the club endured a largely unsuccessful season with a 13th-place finish in the 1997–98 FA Premier League, failure to progress beyond the group stages of the 1997–98 UEFA Champions League despite beating Barcelona and group winners Dynamo Kyiv at St James' Park as well as coming from 2–0 down to draw 2–2 with Valery Lobanovsky's team in Ukraine and defeat in the 1998 FA Cup Final. Dalglish was replaced as manager early in the following season by Ruud Gullit. The club once again finished 13th in the league and lost the 1999 FA Cup Final. Gullit fell into disagreements with the squad and chairman Freddy Shepherd, and quit the club four games into the 1999–2000 season with the team bottom of the table to be replaced by Bobby Robson.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: A title challenge emerged during the 2001–02 season, and Newcastle's fourth-place finish saw them qualify for the UEFA Champions League. The following season, Robson guided the team to another title challenge and finished third in the League, and the second group stage of the Champions League, after being the first team to have progressed past the first group stage after losing their first three games. Newcastle finished fifth in the league at the end of the 2003–04 season, and exited the Champions League in the qualifying rounds, but despite this Robson was sacked in August 2004 following a series of disagreements with the club.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Graeme Souness was brought in to manage by the start of the 2004–05 season. In his time at the helm, he broke the club's transfer record by signing Michael Owen for £16.8 million. Souness also took Newcastle to the quarter-finals of the 2004–05 UEFA Cup with Alan Shearer winning the tournament's golden boot as well. However, he was sacked in February 2006 after a bad start to the club's 2005–06 season. Glenn Roeder took over, initially on a temporary basis, before being appointed full-time manager at the end of the season. Shearer retired at the end of the 2005–06 season as the club's all-time record goal scorer, with 206 goals.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Despite finishing the 2005–06 season in seventh, Roeder's fortunes changed in the 2006–07 season, with a terrible injury run to the senior squad, and he left the club by mutual consent on 6 May 2007. After the 2006–07 season, and inside the Premier League era, Newcastle United were now the fifth most successful Premiership club in terms of points gained.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: On 7 June, Freddy Shepherd's final shares in the club were sold to Mike Ashley and Shepherd was replaced as chairman by Chris Mort on 25 July. Ashley then announced he would be delisting the club from the London Stock Exchange upon completion of the takeover. The club officially ceased trading on the Stock Exchange as of 8am on 18 July 2007 at 5p a share.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Allardyce departed the club on in January 2008 by mutual consent after a bad start to the 2007–08 season, and Kevin Keegan was reappointed as Newcastle manager. Mort stepped down as chairman in June and was replaced by Derek Llambias, a long-term associate of Ashley. Newcastle finished the 2007–08 season in 12th place, but as the season drew to a close, Keegan publicly criticised the board, stating they were not providing the team enough financial support.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: In September 2008, Keegan resigned as manager, stating: "It's my opinion that a manager must have the right to manage and that clubs should not impose upon any manager any player that he does not want". Former Wimbledon manager Joe Kinnear was appointed as his replacement, but in February 2009, due to his heart surgery, Alan Shearer was appointed interim manager in his absence. Under Shearer, the club were relegated to the Football League Championship at the end of the 2008–09 season, the first time the club had left the Premier League since joining it in 1993.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Following their relegation, the club was put up for sale in June 2009, with an asking price of £100 million. Chris Hughton was given the manager job on a caretaker basis before taking over full-time on 27 October 2009. On the same day, Ashley announced that the club was no longer for sale.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Hughton led Newcastle to win the 2009–10 Football League Championship, securing automatic promotion on 5 April 2010 with five games remaining, and securing the title on 19 April; Newcastle were promoted back to the Premier League after just one season away.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Under Hughton, Newcastle enjoyed a strong start to the 2010–11 season, but he was sacked on 6 December 2010. The club's board stated that they felt "an individual with more managerial experience [was] needed to take the club forward." Three days later, Alan Pardew was appointed as manager with a five-and-a-half-year contract. Despite some turbulence, Newcastle were able to finish 12th at the end of the season, with one particular highlight being a 4–4 home draw against Arsenal that saw Newcastle come back from four goals down to claim a point.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: The start of the 2011–12 season was very successful as they went on to enjoy one of their strongest openings to a season, playing 11 consecutive games unbeaten. Newcastle eventually secured a place in the 2012–13 Europa League with a fifth-place finish, their highest league position since the Bobby Robson days. Further honours were to come as Pardew won both the Premier League Manager of the Season and the LMA Manager of the Year awards.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: In the following season Newcastle made few acquisitions in the summer and suffered injuries over the season. As a result, the first half of the season was marred by a run of 10 losses in 13 games, which saw the club sink near the relegation zone. The Europa League campaign was largely successful with the team making the quarter-finals before bowing out to eventual finalists Benfica. Domestically, Newcastle struggled, and stayed up after a 2–1 victory over already-relegated Queens Park Rangers on the penultimate game of the season.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: The 2014–15 season saw Newcastle fail to win any of their first seven games, prompting fans to start a campaign to get Pardew sacked as manager before an upturn in form saw them climb to fifth in the table. Pardew left for Crystal Palace in December. On 26 January 2015, his assistant John Carver was put in charge for the remainder of the season but came close to relegation, staying up on the final day with a 2–0 home win against West Ham, with Jonás Gutiérrez, who beat testicular cancer earlier in the season, scoring the team's second goal.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: On 9 June 2015, Carver was sacked and replaced by Steve McClaren the following day. On 11 March 2016, McClaren was sacked after nine months as manager, with Newcastle in 19th place in the Premier League and the club having won just six of 28 Premier League games during his time at the club. He was replaced by Spaniard Rafael Benítez on the same day, who signed a three-year deal, but was not able to prevent the club from being relegated for the second time under Ashley's ownership.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Newcastle returned to the Premier League at the first attempt, winning the Championship title on 7 May 2017 with a 3–0 win against Barnsley. On 16 October 2017, Mike Ashley put Newcastle United up for sale for a second time. The team finished the season with a 3–0 win over the previous year's champions Chelsea, finishing tenth in the league, their highest finish in four years. The following season saw a 13th-place finish, despite being in the relegation zone in January. As such Ashley came under increased scrutiny for his lack of investment in the squad and apparent focus on other business ventures. Benitez left his position on 30 June 2019 after rejecting a new contract.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: On 17 July 2019, former Sunderland manager Steve Bruce was appointed as manager on a three-year contract. Bruce oversaw 13th and 12th-placed finishes during his first two seasons in charge, both of which being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: On 7 October 2021, after 14 years as owner, Ashley sold the club to a new consortium for a reported £305 million, making them the richest football club in the world. The consortium was made up of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, RB Sports & Media and PCP Capital Partners. On 20 October 2021, Bruce left his position by mutual consent, after receiving a reported £8 million payout. Eddie Howe was appointed as Bruce's replacement a few weeks later on 8 November 2021. Howe guided the club to an 11th place finish after a run of 12 wins in their final 18 games, and became the first team in Premier League history to avoid relegation after failing to win any of their first 14 games.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: On 30 May 2022, the club announced they had reached an agreement of a compensation fee with Brighton & Hove Albion to appoint Dan Ashworth as the new Sporting Director; the appointment was confirmed on 6 June 2022. On 15 July 2022, the club brought in Darren Eales, from MLS side Atlanta United, as the club's new Chief Executive Officer - acting as a "key member of the club's leadership structure".


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: On 21 August 2022, Newcastle United Women moved to the club's ownership for the first time, after a formal restructuring.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: The club's home colours are a black and white striped shirt. Shorts and socks are usually black with white trim, though white socks are sometimes worn under some managers who consider them "lucky". Newcastle's colours at the outset was generally the home kit of Newcastle East End F.C., comprising plain red shirts with white shorts and red socks. In 1894, the club adopted the black and white striped shirts, which had been used as the reserve team's colours. These colours were chosen for the senior team because they were not associated with either of the two teams United were merged from. They played in grey shorts until 1897, and between 1897 and 1921, they played in blue shorts before adopting the black shorts they play in now.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: United's away colours have changed a number of times over the years. They played in white shirts and black shorts from 1914 until 1961, and then white shorts until 1966. They then played in yellow shirts and blue shorts for the 1967–68 season, but from 1969 to 1974 played in all red with an all blue third kit. In 1974, they returned to a yellow shirt, which they played with various coloured shorts until 1983. They played in all grey from 1983 to 1988, before once again returning to the yellow kit until 1993. Since 1995, the away kit has changed frequently and has not been the same for more than a single season.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Through former owner Mike Ashley, the club also had a relationship with the Sports Direct retail chain which he founded.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: On 4 January 2012, Virgin Money, which had just bought Northern Rock, signed a two-year deal to sponsor Newcastle United. In January 2010, Puma became the official supplier and licensee of replica merchandise for Newcastle. The deal meant Puma supplied the team kit, replica kit and training equipment for the 2010–11 and 2011–12 seasons.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: The current club crest was first used in the 1988–89 season. The crest includes elements from the coat of arms of the city of Newcastle upon Tynethe two sea horses representing Tyneside's strong connections with the sea, the castle representing the city's keep. The city's coat of arms were first embroidered on the team's shirts in 1969 and worn as standard until 1976. A scroll at the bottom featured the city's motto in Latin; "fortiter defendit triumphans" which translates into English as "triumphing by brave defence." From 1976 until 1983, the club wore a specific badge which was developed to wear in place of the city's coat of arms. The design was of a circular shape, which featured the club's name in full, it contained a magpie standing in front of the River Tyne with the historic keep of Newcastle in the background. A more simplistic design followed in 1983, featuring the initials of the club's name, NUFC with the small magpie used in the previous crest within the horizontally laid "C," this logo was relatively short lived and was discontinued after 1988.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: On 16 May 2013, Newcastle released the away shirt for the 2013–14 season which for the first time featured the Wonga.com logo, which attracted criticism from many Newcastle supporters; the shirt was navy blue with light blue bands. The shirt received mixed reviews from Newcastle supporters, who described the shirt as both "awesome" and "bland", as quoted in the Newcastle daily "Evening Chronicle". In July 2013, Newcastle striker and practising Muslim Papiss Cissé refused to wear any official kit or training wear with reference to Wonga.com, subsequently failing to travel to the team's 2013 pre-season tour of Portugal. The matter was later resolved. Wonga collapsed in administration in 2018.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: On 15 May 2017, the home shirt for the 2017–18 season was revealed, featuring the logo of new sponsors Fun88. The shirt was shown to include a gold and silver commemorative crest to mark the club's 125th football season, based on the city's coat of arms. It was also announced that the kit would feature red numbers for the first time since the 1992–93 season. Previous kit sponsors include Newcastle Breweries (1980–86), Greenall's Beers (1986–90), McEwan's Lager and Newcastle Brown Ale (1990–2000), NTL (2000–03), Northern Rock (2003–12), Virgin Money (2012–13) and Wonga.com (2013–17).


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Newcastle United's current kit manufacturers are Castore, in a deal that started in 2021. Previous kit manufacturers include Bukta (1974–75, 1976–80), Umbro (1975–76, 1980–93), Asics (1993–95), Adidas (1995–2010) and Puma (2010–21). Other current team sponsors include Fun888, Parimatch, Carling, Monster Energy, eToro, BoyleSports, Dr. Cinik Hair Hospital, TOMKET, Pulman, Cybit and Energy Impact Limited.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Newcastle United's current sleeve sponsor is noon.com, in a deal that started in 2022. Previous sleeve sponsors include MRF Tyres (2017–18), StormGain (2019–20), ICM.com (2020–21) and Kayak (2021–22).


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Throughout Newcastle United's history, their home venue has been St James' Park, the oldest and largest football stadium in North East England, as well as the sixth-largest football stadium in the United Kingdom. It has hosted 10 international football matches at senior level, the first in 1901 and the most recent in 2005. It was used as a venue for both the 2012 Summer Olympics and the 2015 Rugby World Cup.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Football had been played at St James' Park as early as 1880, the ground being occupied by Newcastle Rangers, before becoming the home of Newcastle West End F.C. in 1886. Its lease was then bought by Newcastle East End F.C. in 1892, before they changed their name to Newcastle United. At the turn of the 20th century, the ground's capacity was given as 30,000 before being redeveloped between 1900 and 1905, increasing the capacity to 60,000 and making it the biggest stadium in England for a time. For most of the 20th century, the stadium changed very little, despite various plans for development of the ground. The old West Stand was replaced with the Milburn Stand in 1987, the Sir John Hall Stand replacing the Leazes End in 1993, and the rest of the ground renovated making the ground a 37,000 capacity all-seater stadium. Between 1998 and 2000, double tiers were added to the Milburn and Sir John Hall stands to bring the venue up to its current capacity of 52,354. There were plans to build a new 90,000 seater stadium in Leazes park, just behind St James' with Newcastle Falcons taking over St James' Park, but due to protests the plans were dropped. St James' Park currently seats 52,354 people, but former club owner Mike Ashley had said he would consider taking the roof off The Gallowgate end and adding another 6,000 seats, taking the total capacity to 58,420, but only if the team managed to finish in the top six places of the Premier League.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: In October 2009, Ashley announced that he planned to lease the name of the ground in a bid to increase revenue, and in November the stadium was temporarily renamed sportsdirect.com @ St James' Park Stadium. This name was only supposed to be used until the end of the 2009–10 season, but lasted until November 2011. On 10 November 2011, the club officially changed the name of the stadium to the Sports Direct Arena, although this was an interim name to showcase the sponsorship capabilities of the stadium. The company, owned by Ashley, was not paying anything for the deal.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: On 9 October 2012, payday loan company Wonga.com became Newcastle United's main commercial sponsor and purchased the stadium naming rights but restored the St James' Park name.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Since 1982, the stadium is served by St James Metro station on the Tyne and Wear Metro. The station is decorated in a black and white colour scheme, with archive photographs of the club's players.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: The club's current training ground is located at Darsley Park, which is north of the city at Benton. The facility was opened in July 2003 and is also used by the Newcastle Falcons rugby team.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Newcastle United was set up as a private company limited by shares on 6 September 1895. The club traded in this way for much of the 20th century, dominated by McKeag, Westwood and Seymour family ownership, until April 1997, when John Hall, who bought 72.9% of the club for £3 million in 1991, floated the club on the stock exchange as a public limited company, with less than half the shares sold to the Hall family and the majority holding going to his business partner Freddy Shepherd. Later that year, Hall stepped down as chairman and was replaced by Shepherd, with the Hall family represented on the board by John's son Douglas. In December 1998, after buying a 6.3% stake in the club for £10 million, the media group NTL had considered a full takeover of the club. This was later dropped after the Competition Commission, established in April 1999, expressed concerns about football clubs being owned by media companies.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: In 2007, businessman Mike Ashley purchased the combined stakes of both Douglas and John Hall, 41% share in the club, through a holding company St James Holdings, with a view to buy the rest. Upon purchasing this share, he appointed Chris Mort as chairman, while gaining more shares, owning 93.19% of the club by 29 June 2007. This figure reached 95% on 11 July 2007, forcing the remaining shareholders to sell their shares.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: After completing the purchase of the club, Ashley had announced that he planned to sell the club on three occasions. The first occurred after fan protests over the resignation of Kevin Keegan on 14 September 2008, when Ashley stated, "I have listened to you. You want me out. That is what I am now trying to do." However, he took it off the market on 28 December 2008 after being unable to find a buyer. On 31 May 2009, it was reported that Ashley was attempting to sell the club again. On 8 June 2009, Ashley confirmed that the club was up for sale at an asking price of £100 million. By the end of August 2009, the club was back off the market. On 16 October 2017, Newcastle United announced that Ashley had once again put the club up for sale, reporting that he hoped that a deal could be concluded by Christmas 2017.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: In April 2020, it was widely reported that a consortium consisting of Public Investment Fund, PCP Capital Partners and RB Sports & Media, was finalising an offer to acquire Newcastle United. The proposed sale prompted concerns and criticism, such as arguments considering it sportwashing of Saudi Arabia's human rights record, as well as ongoing piracy of sports broadcasts in the region.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: In May 2020, two Conservative MPs called upon the government to scrutinise aspects of the deal, with Karl McCartney calling for the sale to be blocked, and Giles Watling calling upon the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to hold an oral evidence session regarding sports piracy in Saudi Arabia. In May 2020, "The Guardian" reported that the Premier League had obtained a report from the World Trade Organization (published publicly the following month), which contained evidence that Saudi nationals had backed beoutQ – a pirate broadcaster carrying the beIN Sports networks in the region since the Qatar diplomatic crisis. In June 2020, "The Guardian" reported that Richard Masters, who appeared in front of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, had hinted possible takeover of Newcastle United. However, the MPs warned it would be "humiliating" to allow a Saudi Arabian consortium to take charge given the country's record on piracy and human rights.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: In July 2020, "The Guardian" reported that Saudi Arabia's decision to ban beIN Sports broadcast from operating in the nation, had further complicated the takeover of Newcastle United. On 30 July 2020, Saudi Arabia announced its withdrawal from the Newcastle deal, stating "with a deep appreciation for the Newcastle community and the significance of its football club, we have come to the decision to withdraw our interest in acquiring Newcastle United Football Club". The group also stated that the "prolonged process" was a major factor in them pulling out. The collapse of the takeover was met with widespread criticism from Newcastle fans, with Newcastle MP Chi Onwurah accusing the Premier League of treating fans of the club with "contempt" and subsequently wrote to Masters for an explanation.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Despite the consortium's withdrawal, disputes over the takeover continued. On 9 September 2020, Newcastle United released a statement claiming that the Premier League had officially rejected the takeover by the consortium and accused Masters and the Premier League board of "[not] acting appropriately in relation to [the takeover]", while stating that the club would be considering any relevant legal action. The Premier League strongly denied this in a statement released the next day, expressing "surprise" and "disappointment" at Newcastle's statement.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: On 7 October 2021, the Public Investment Fund, PCP Capital Partners and RB Sports & Media confirmed that they had officially completed the acquisition of Newcastle United.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: An investigation in May 2022 by "The Guardian" claimed that the British government of Boris Johnson was involved in Saudi Arabia’s takeover of Newcastle United. In April 2021, it was revealed that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had warned Johnson in a text message, stating that the Premier League’s “wrong” decision would impact on UK-Saudi diplomatic relations. Following the warning, Johnson had appointed his special envoy for the Gulf, Edward Lister, to take up the case. It was later reported that Johnson’s extensive efforts also involved the Minister of Investment Lord Gerry Grimstone, who held discussions with the Premier League Chairman Gary Hoffman and Saudi representatives well-connected with MBS’ office. However, the UK government and Johnson said they were not involved in the Saudi takeover. After Premier League’s approval, Hoffman informed the 20 English Football clubs that there was extensive pressure from the government. However, he said the decision was not influenced by it. A separate report revealed that despite the US’ conclusion that Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination was ordered by Saudi’s Prince Mohammed, he was able to avert the owners’ and directors’ test of the Premier League. Human Rights Watch (HRW), a campaign group, has accused the Saudi government of using football, motor racing and golf for “sportswashing”, Josh Noble, a sports editor for the Financial Times, writes. HRW defines "sportswashing" as “an effort to distract from its serious human rights abuses by taking over events that celebrate human achievement”.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Newcastle United established the Newcastle United Foundation in summer 2008, which seeks to encourage learning and promote healthy living amongst disadvantaged children, young people and families in the North East region, as well as promoting equality and diversity. The Foundation's manager Kate Bradley told charity news website The Third Sector, "Children look up to players as their heroes, and anything they say is instantly taken on board. If Newcastle defender Steven Taylor tells them not to eat a Mars bar for breakfast, they'll listen." In 2010, the charity taught over 5,000 children about healthy living.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: The Foundation's commitment, along with a similar foundation run by West Bromwich Albion, the unique relationship that Aston Villa has with Acorns Children's Hospice and Tottenham Hotspur has with SOS Children's Villages UK, are some leading examples of commitment in the highest level of football to responsibility and change in the communities in which they work and who enrich them through their support and ticket sales. The work of these clubs, and others, is changing the way professional sport interacts with their communities and supporters.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: In December 2012, the club announced that it had become the world's first carbon positive football club.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: The Newcastle United Independent Supporters Association is the official supporter's group for the club. Through its chairman Frank Gilmore, a local pub manager, the group has been quoted in the press with regard to events at Newcastle United since 2002. Supporters of Newcastle United are drawn from all over the North East and beyond, with supporters' clubs in some countries across the world. The club's nickname is The Magpies, while the club's supporters are also known as the "Geordies" or the "Toon Army". The name "Toon" originates from the Geordie pronunciation of town. In a 2004 survey by Co-operative Financial Services, it was found that Newcastle United topped the league table for the cost incurred and distance travelled by Newcastle-based fans wishing to travel to every Premier League away game. The total distance travelled for a fan to attend every away game from Newcastle was found to be equivalent to a round-the-world trip. In the 2009–10 season, when the club were playing in English football's second tier, the Football League Championship, the average attendance at St James' Park was 43,388, the fourth-highest for an English club that season. At the end of the 2011–12 Premier league season, Newcastle United held the third-highest average attendance for the season, at 49,935. This figure was only surpassed by Arsenal and Manchester United, the only two clubs in the Premier League with larger stadiums at the time.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: The club's supporters publish a number of fanzines including "True Faith" and "The Mag", along with NUFC.com, which was established in 1996. They set up Newcastle United Supporters Trust in September 2008, aiming to "represent the broad church of Newcastle United's support." In addition to the usual English football chants, Newcastle's supporters sing the traditional Tyneside song "Blaydon Races." Prior to each home game the team enters the field to "Local Hero", written by Newcastle supporter Mark Knopfler, founder of Dire Straits. Traditionally, Newcastle's main rivals are Sunderland, against whom the Tyne–Wear derby is competed, along with Middlesbrough F.C, with whom they compete in the Tyne-Tees derby.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: In 1998, The Police founder and Newcastle fan Sting wrote a song in support of Newcastle, called “Black and White Army (Bringing The Pride Back Home)”. In 2015, some Newcastle fans boycotted games in protest of club management by Mike Ashley, and they were supported by famous club fans like Sting and Jimmy Nail.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: As of the 2019–20 season, Newcastle United have spent 88 seasons in the top-flight. They are eighth in the all-time Premier League table and have the ninth-highest total of major honours won by an English club with 11 wins. The holder of the record for the most appearances is Jimmy Lawrence, having made 496 first team appearances between 1904 and 1921. The club's top goal scorer is Alan Shearer, who scored 206 goals in all competitions between 1996 and 2006. Andy Cole holds the record for the most goals scored in a season: 41 in the 1993–94 season in the Premier League. Shay Given is the most capped international for the club, with 134 appearances for Republic of Ireland.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: The club's widest victory margin in the league was in the 13–0 win against Newport County in the Second Division in 1946. Their heaviest defeat in the league was 9–0 against Burton Wanderers in the Second Division in 1895. The club's longest number of consecutive seasons in the top flight of English football was 32 from 1898–99 until 1933–34.


title: Newcastle United F.C.

text: Newcastle's record home attendance is 68,386 for a First Division match against Chelsea on 3 September 1930. The club's highest attendance in the Premier League is 52,389, in a match against Manchester City on 6 May 2012. Newcastle lost the game 2–0. The highest transfer fee received for a Newcastle player is £35 million, from Liverpool for Andy Carroll in January 2011, while the most spent by the club on a player is £63 million, for Alexander Isak from La Liga side Real Sociedad in August 2022.


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are figures in the Christian scriptures, first appearing in the Book of Revelation, a piece of apocalypse literature written by John of Patmos.


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: Revelation 6 tells of a book or scroll in God's right hand that is sealed with seven seals. The Lamb of God/Lion of Judah opens the first four of the seven seals, which summons four beings that ride out on white, red, black, and pale horses.


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: In John's revelation the first horseman rides a white horse, carries a bow, and is given a crown as a figure of conquest, perhaps invoking pestilence, Christ, or the Antichrist. The second carries a sword and rides a red horse as the creator of (civil) war, conflict, and strife. The third, a food merchant, rides a black horse symbolizing famine and carries the scales. The fourth and final horse is pale, upon it rides Death, accompanied by Hades. "They were given authority over a quarter of the earth, to kill with sword, famine and plague, and by means of the beasts of the earth."


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: Christianity sometimes interprets the Four Horsemen as a vision of harbingers of the Last Judgment, setting a divine end-time upon the world.


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: The above passage is a common English translation of the rider of the White Horse (sometimes referred to as the White Rider). He is thought to carry a bow (Greek τόξο, "toxo") and wear a victor's crown (Greek στέφανος, "stephanos").


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: Irenaeus, an influential Christian theologian of the 2nd century, was among the first to interpret this Horseman as Christ himself, his white horse representing the successful spread of the gospel. Various scholars have since supported this notion, citing the later appearance, in Revelation 19, of Christ mounted on a white horse, appearing as The Word of God. Furthermore, earlier in the New Testament, the Book of Mark indicates that the advance of the gospel may precede and foretell the apocalypse. The color white also tends to represent righteousness in the Bible, and Christ is portrayed as a conqueror in other instances.


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: Besides Christ, the Horseman could represent the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was understood to have come upon the Apostles at Pentecost after Jesus departed Earth. The appearance of the Lion in Revelation 5 shows the triumphant arrival of Jesus in Heaven, and the first Horseman may represent the sending of the Holy Spirit by Jesus and the advance of the gospel of Jesus Christ.


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: For nearly nineteen centuries, Christians thought that the first horseman was a positive figure representing Christ or the Gospel. Still, a completely different interpretation of this character emerged in 1866, when C.F. Zimpel defended the hypothesis that the first horseman was the Antichrist (and more precisely, according to him, Napoleon Bonaparte). The Antichrist interpretation later found champions in the United States, such as R. F. Franklin in 1898 and W. C. Stevens in 1928. It remains popular in evangelical circles today, for example with Pastor Billy Graham, for whom the horseman represented the Antichrist or false prophets in general.


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: In Edward Bishop Elliott's interpretation, the Four Horsemen represent a prophecy of the Roman Empire's subsequent history; the horse's white color signifies triumph, prosperity, and health in the Roman political body. For the next 80 or 90 years, succeeding the banishment of the prophet John to Patmos and covering the successive reigns of the emperors Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines (Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius), a golden age of prosperity, union, civil liberty and good government unstained with civil blood unfolded. The agents of this prosperity, personified by the rider of the white horse, are these five emperors wearing crowns, who reigned with absolute authority and power under the guidance of virtue and wisdom, the armies being restrained by their firm and gentle hands.


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: This interpretation points out that the bow was preeminently a weapon of the inhabitants of the island of Crete and not of the Roman Empire in general. The Cretans were renowned for their archery skills. The significance of the rider of the white horse holding a bow indicates the place of origin of the line of emperors ruling during this time. This group of emperors can be classed together under one and the same head and family whose origins were from Crete.


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: According to this interpretation, this period in Roman history, both at its commencement and close, illustrated the empire's glory where its limits were extended, though not without occasional wars, which were always uniformly triumphant on the frontiers. The triumphs of Emperor Trajan, a Roman Alexander, added to the empire Dacia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, and other provinces during the first 20 years of the period, which deepened the impression on the minds of the barbarians of the invincibility of the Roman Empire. The Roman war progressed triumphantly into the invader's territory, and the total overthrow of those people successfully ended the Parthian war. Roman conquest is demonstrated even in the most mighty of these wars: the Marcomannic Wars, a succession of victories under the second Antonine, unleashed on the German barbarians, who were driven into their forests and reduced to Roman submission.


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: In some commentaries, the white Horseman symbolizes war, which may be decently exercised on moral grounds, hence the white color. The red Horseman (see below) specifically symbolizes civil war.


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: Under another interpretation, the first Horseman is called Pestilence and is associated with infectious disease and plague. It appears at least as early as 1906 in the Jewish Encyclopedia. This particular interpretation is common in popular culture references to the Four Horsemen.


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: The origin of this interpretation is unclear. Some translations of the Bible mention "plague" (e.g. the New International Version) or "pestilence" (e.g. the Revised Standard Version) in connection with the riders in the passage following the introduction of the fourth rider; cf. "They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine, plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth." in the NASB. However, the original Greek does not use the word for "plague" or "pestilence" here, simply "death" (θάνατος). The use of "pestilence" was likely drawn from other parts of the Book of Revelation and included here as another form of death. Also, whether this passage refers to the fourth rider only or the four riders as a whole is a matter of debate.


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, in his 1916 novel "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" (filmed in 1921 and 1962), provides an early example of this interpretation, writing, "The horseman on the white horse was clad in a showy and barbarous attire... While his horse continued galloping, he was bending his bow in order to spread pestilence abroad. At his back swung the brass quiver filled with poisoned arrows, containing the germs of all diseases."


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: The rider of the second horse is often taken to represent War (he is often pictured holding a sword upwards as though ready for battle) or mass slaughter. His horse's color is red (πυρρός, "pyrrhos" from πῦρ, fire), and in some translations, the color is specifically a "fiery" red. The color red, as well as the rider's possession of a great sword (μάχαιρα, "machaira"), suggests blood that is to be spilled. As seen in heraldry, the sword held upward by the second Horseman may represent war or a declaration of war. In military symbolism, swords held upward, especially crossed swords held upward, signify war and entering into battle (see, for example, the historical and modern images and the coat of arms of Joan of Arc).


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: The second Horseman represents civil war as opposed to the war of conquest that the first Horseman is said to bring. Other commentators have suggested that it might also represent the persecution of Christians.


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: According to Edward Bishop Elliott's interpretation of the Four Horsemen as symbolic prophecy of the history of the Roman Empire, the second seal is opened and the Roman nation that experienced joy, prosperity and triumph is made subject to the red horse which depicts war and bloodshed—civil war. Peace left the Roman Earth, resulting in the killing of one another as insurrection crept into and permeated the Empire, beginning shortly into the reign of Emperor Commodus.


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: Elliott points out that Commodus, who had nothing to wish for and everything to enjoy, that beloved son of Marcus Aurelius who ascended the throne with neither competitor to remove nor enemies to punish, became the slave of his attendants who gradually corrupted his mind.


title: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

text: Elliott further recites that, after the death of Commodus, a most turbulent period lasting 92 years unfolded, during which time 32 emperors and 27 pretenders to the Empire hurled each other from the throne by incessant civil warfare. The sword was a natural universal badge, among the Romans, of the military profession. The apocalyptic figure armed with a great sword indicated an undue authority and unnatural use of it. Military men in power, whose vocation was war and weapon the sword, rose by it and also fell. The unrestrained military, no longer subject to the Senate, transformed the Empire into a system of pure military despotism.