Native American Ecology

Final Exam

Sample Questions






1.      Which of the following was NOT a significant factor contributing to the decline of the bison population during the 19th century?


a.       Plains Indians preferred to hunt female buffalo because they preferred the hides and meat from cows.

b.       Plains Indians killed and ate bison fetuses.

c.       Cattle ranchers slaughtered large numbers of bison in order to make room for their large herds of cattle.

d.       By grazing large herds of horses on the plains, Plains Indians caused lethal diseases to spread among the Bison population.

e.       Euroamericans killed large numbers of bison due to the demand for bison hides to be used to manufacture conveyor belts for industrial production.



2.       The principal bison habitat was

a.       tall grass prairie
b.      short grass high plains
c.      woodland community
d.      taiga vegetative community



3.       Which of the following LEAST represents Indian attitudes towards game animals, according to Shepard Krech (The Ecological Indian).

a.       Indians viewed these animals with awe and respect, only killing what they needed and performing rituals which recognized the loss to the ecosystem that their death represented.

b.      Many Indians believed that if they did not perform certain rituals when killing an animal that the animal in question might retaliate by causing the hunter to become sick.

c.       Indian rituals performed in relation to the killing of animals were largely done in order to make the animals willing to be killed.

d.       Indian rituals performed in relation to the killing of animals were done primarily to enhance the success of the hunt rather than to show reverence for the animal being killed.


4.       Which of the following types of bison hunting was the least labor intensive and required the least community cooperation?


a.      driving bison into a surround

b.      driving bison over a cliff

c.      hunting bison using guns and horses

d.      all of the above were about equal in the intensity of labor invested in the hunt and in the level of cooperation required.


5.     Which of the following statements is NOT correct?

a.      The Comanche pushed the Apache out of eastern New Mexico. Comanche-Apache conflict was based on the fact that both groups exploited the same resource (buffalo) and that the Comanche had a military advantage because, unlike the Apache, they were fully nomadic.

b.      Spanish expansion onto Pueblo land resulted in a decrease in both the number of Pueblo communities and the size of the Pueblo population. This occurred in part through the process of incorporation --the intermarriage of Spanish men and Pueblo women, with the subsequent children becoming members of the father's ethnic group.

c.      After the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the various Pueblo villages developed a unified political organization that effectively kept the Spanish out of New Mexico for nearly 50 years.

d.      The Apache and the Pueblo were in direct competition because they lived in the same habitat and exploited the same resources.

6.      The prehistoric peoples who inhabited Chaco Canyon are known as the


a.       Hohokam

b.       Anasazi

c.       Mogollon

d.       Athapascans

e.       Havasu


7.      Which of the following reasons would explain why ancient peoples in the Southwest were concerned with marking solstices and equinoxes?


a.       The movement of the sun marked seasonal changes directly related to performing agricultural activities.

b.       Marking the movements of the sun enabled people to both anticipate and schedule their agricultural activities.

c.       Anticipating specific dates was important because many activities required lengthy preparation and presupposed previous activities having already been done.

d.       It is highly likely that prehistoric peoples in the Southwest saw the seasons and other natural phenomenon as being regulated by supernatural beings. Being able to anticipate specific dates likely gave them time to prepare the rituals associated with agricultural activities.

e.      all of the above.



8.      Which of the following is true regarding both the Great Plains and Northeast Woodland peoples?


a.       They both depended upon resources that were concentrated and that developed external market value as a result of Euroamerican contact.

b.       They were both able to live in permanent villages as a result of their dependence upon abundant, localized resources.

c.       They were both able to successfully adapt to Euroamerican colonization as a result of their dependence upon resources that developed external market value.

d.      all of the above.



9.      Which of the following statements is the most correct?


a.       Most American Indians died of diseases intentionally introduced by Euroamericans.

b.       The principal cause of death among the Indians was genocide

c.       Many Indians died of diseases that they contracted before actually coming into contact with whites.

d.       Indian-Indian warfare resulted in more Indian deaths than Indian-white warfare.

e.       c & d



10.     Which of the following statements is least correct?

a.      Only the easternmost pueblos, such as Taos and Pecos, were able to obtain much meat and buffalo hides from the trade with the Plains Indians.

b.      There are numerous accounts by the early Spanish settlers of an extensive trade between the Pueblo and the Apache, many of which describe the Apache leading caravans of several hundred dogs laden with goods to trade with the Pueblo.

c.      The Spanish largely left the Pueblo-Plains trade alone, seeing it to their advantage to let the Indians trade.

d.      Archaeological evidence indicates that the Pueblo-Plains trade was more elaborate before the arrival of the Apache (Athabascans) than after they arrived. They apparently disrupted a flourishing trade that had existed between the Pueblo Indians and the existing inhabitants of the plains.


11.     Which of the following statements is least correct?


a.       The Pueblo-Plains trading system was essentially a trade of the agricultural products of river valleys for the products of hunting in the open plains.

b.       During drought years, neither the Pueblo nor the Apache were as likely to produce a sufficient surplus to trade to the other. However, the Apache were in a better position than the Pueblo because of their ability to store and maintain surpluses from previous years.

c.       The Pueblo-Plains trade was based on the fact that much of New Mexico contains a coarse-grained distribution of resources.

d.       In ecological terms a kind of mutualism or symbiosis existed between the Pueblo and Plains Indians. Each group could survive better by producing a surplus of what they normally produce and trading that surplus with the other group that is producing a surplus of what it normally produces.



12.     Which of the following Indian groups is correctly linked with a culture area?

a.       Lakota -- Northwest Coast
b.       Hopi -- Great Plains
c.       Iroquois -- Northeast Woodland
d.       Apache -- Great Plains
e.       Navajo -- Great Basin



13.     Which of the following would be considered an energy subsidy increasing the energy flow within an ecological system?

a.       rifles among the Inuit
b.       rifles among the Plains Indians
c.       snowmobiles among the Inuit
d.       horses among the Plains Indians
e.       all of the above



14.     Which of the following statements is most correct regarding Iroquois warfare?


a.       Iroquois warfare was directed primarily at the Algonquian because their region possessed large herds of bison.

b.       Iroquois warfare was directed primarily at the Huron, because the Huron had an overabundance of deer.

c.       Iroquois warfare was directed initially at the Huron in order to gain control of the beaver pelt trade.

d.      The league of the Iroquois was formed in order to better enable the Iroquois to defend themselves from the expanding Euroamemrican population that was encroaching on their land.



15.     In both the Eastern Woodlands and the Great Plains, the Indians were taken advantage of because they were pressured to exchange what they considered a valuable resource (beaver pelts and bison hides respectively) for the less valued items offered by European traders.

a.       true
b.       false


16.    Which of the following statements is most correct, according to Jablow (The Cheyenne in Plains Indian Trade Relations)?

a.       The major Plains Indian groups, such as the Sioux and the Cheyenne, were native to the great plains by the time that Europeans made contact with them and likely existed there for several hundred years before Europeans arrived.

b.      There is archeological evidence that the Sioux, Cheyenne and other Plains Indians inhabited the great plains since before Columbus arrived in the New World.

c.      The origins of the Sioux and the Cheyenne can be traced to upper Mississippi Valley, where they were contacted by explorers, traders and missionaries as late as the 17th and 18th centuries.

d.      a and b.


17.     According to Hunt (The War of the Iroquois), the principal cause of the Iroquois-Huron War was over control over trade with the Europeans, and that the initiation of that war was sparked by the Huron violating a treaty in which they had agreed  not to trade directly with the Europeans but only to trade with Europeans through the Iroquois.

a.      true

b.      false


18.     The Pueblo-Plains trading system in the Southwest succeeded because New Mexico contains a fine-grained distribution of resources.

a.      true

b.      false




Native American Ecology






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