Front of an Indian of ancient Peru. Hopi - ancient American Indians

Indian myths telling about the Kachin, gods and teachers.

The Hopi Indians are a people living on a 12.5-kilometer reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi culture, a tribe of Indians, traditionally belongs to a group of peoples called the Pueblos. According to the All-American Census, held at the turn of the millennium, in 2000, the population of the reservation, now creating Hopi tobacco, and previously responsible for making predictions, is 7 thousand people. The largest known Hopi community, the Hopi Reservation, once lived in First Mesa, Arizona.

The ancestors of the ancient Indian peoples are the Hopi Indians.
The Hopi supposedly descend from one of the oldest Indian cultures that once built their empires in the states of Nevada and New Mexico. The Hopi Indians are descendants of the legendary Mayans, Aztecs and Incas, whose civilizations developed from the 2nd to the 15th millennium. The Hopi language belongs to the Hopi Shoshone sub-branch of the Aztec language group. Modern residents of the settlement in Arizona, the Hopi continue to call themselves descendants of ancient tribes and custodians of their heritage. According to ancient traditions belonging to the Hopi Indians, this people were originally a mixture of representatives of tribes from all over the Americas, who later identified themselves as an independent people.

The Hopi country took many centuries to form. The first contact of the ancestors of modern Hopi Indians with Europeans took place back in 1540. During periods of harsh conquest, a significant part of the Hopi tribe was subjected to forced Christianization. However, this is only part of the tribe. As the elders assure: “The Hopi Indians fought to the end, which allowed them to preserve the faith of their ancestors.” In 1860, a Pueblo uprising occurred, which resulted in the formation of Spanish punitive groups. Fortunately for the local population, the Hopi Indians successfully repelled attacks from the Spanish invaders. As a result, the then Spanish government almost completely lost control over the Hopi and their friendly tribes.

Cooperation of cultures, although not voluntary, had a somewhat beneficial effect on the Hopi Indians. At the end of the 17th century, they borrowed skills in handling domestic animals: donkeys, horses and sheep. And later, the Hopi Indians mastered cattle breeding, and learned how to work with iron and gardening. In addition, unlike the Mayan and Aztec heritage, the Hopi language and their cultural and mythological heritage were not plundered and burned.

However, not everything was so rosy for the ancient tribe. For many years, the Hopi Indians were in conflict not only with Europeans, but also with the neighboring Navajo tribe. Under the influence of the Ataba migrations, the Hopi were forced to move to more sheltered mountainous areas. The settlements built by the Hopi tobacco-growing Indians were named First Mesa, Second Mesa, and Third Mesa. First Mesa was for many years the oldest active Indian settlement on the American continent. In fact, the Hopi Indians lived for decades in villages completely surrounded by the huge Navajo reservation. The warlike tribes were separated only by the Hopi River and mountain ranges, which served as a barrier for settlements. Today, the once warring tribes are at peace and even cooperate on environmental issues.

Hopi tobacco is a true treasure of the Indian world.
Nowadays, the Hopi are not even a tribe famous for their culture or history, but the ancient Indians, who were glorified by Hopi tobacco, grown all over the world, by people of different cultures and peoples. This variety of tobacco, Hopi tobacco, as the name implies, was developed by the Hopi tribe in the distant past, and its smoking preceded rituals aimed at pacification and communication with the ancestors. Thus, the famous ritual dance of the Kachin Hopi was certainly accompanied by the calm and relaxed smoking of a pipe of tobacco. It is believed that Hopi tobacco is capable of revealing a person’s soul; it gives a person the opportunity to fully understand the events and phenomena of the surrounding reality. The variety of tobacco, called Hopi Mapacho, has not spread as well around the world as its cheaper analogues, however, even in the CIS countries it is difficult to find amateurs and professionals involved in the cultivation, production and sale of the true heritage of the ancient Indians.

Hopi culture is the heritage of Mesoamerica.
The name of the tribe - “Hopi” is translated as “peaceful people” or “peaceful Indians”. The concept of peace, order and mutual assistance is deeply rooted in the religion, rituals and culture of the ancient people. The Hopi culture, the religion of this people, is radically different from the beliefs of the Aztecs, Incas or Mayans. Unlike their ancestors, who promoted sacrifice, the Hopi religion, which implies respect for things and the surrounding world, is permeated with pacifist sentiments. The labyrinths of the Hopi, their settlements and reservations, were originally built not for protection, but for conducting pacifying rituals in them. In the words of the Hopi themselves: “War is never the answer.”

In their beliefs, the Hopi worship great spirits, the kachina. For several centuries now, Indians have been praying to them for rain or harvest. Hopi culture is based and informed by the belief in Kaichna. They make kachina dolls, give them to their children and sell them to tourists interested in the history of #Mesoamerica. The Hopi still practice ancient religious rites and ceremonies, which are celebrated according to the lunar calendar. However, even this people with a rich mythological basis did not escape the influence of mass American culture. Photos of the Hopi, modern Indians, confirm this fact. The American dream has encroached on the foundations of the ancient people more than once or twice.

Traditionally for Indian tribes, the Hopi have developed farming at a high level, with products produced both for sale and for their own consumption. Today, the Hopi are fully involved in monetary and economic relations. The Hopi culture has not lost its uniqueness and independence; it has simply become accustomed to the surrounding realities. Many members of the tribe have formal jobs and a stable income to support their families. Others are engaged in the production and sale of multiple works of art, the most notable of which are the drawings of the Hopi Indians, paintings painted in the same ways as hundreds of years ago. The Hopi people live, and their way of life and culture are developing.

The Hopi Indians are the prophets of the modern world.
Speaking about Indian art and culture. For many years, the attention of researchers from all over the world was focused on stone tablets describing the history of the Hopi. Some of them contain frightening prophecies of the future. The Hopi are a peace-loving tribe. But even in their religion there was room for terrifying omens and events. The elders of the Hopi Indians and the ancient stone tablets kept by them are responsible for predictions foretelling the death of the world and the decline of human civilization. The most famous prophecy created by the Hopi is one published in 1959.

According to him, the fourth world, the world in which you and I live, will soon come to an end. As the Hopi say: “a white brother will appear on earth, not the white brother who fights, who is evil and greedy, but the one who will return the lost text of the ancient scriptures and will mark the beginning of the end with his return.”

The apocalypse in Hopi predictions will be preceded by events, so-called signs. There are nine of them in total. The first sign speaks of evil people who will take the land from its rightful owners. The second sign is wooden wheels that will replace horses. The third sign is the invasion of strange animals. The fourth sign is the earth shrouded in iron serpents. The fifth sign is a giant web that will envelop the earth. The sixth sign says that the earth will be recolored by evil people. In the seventh sign of the Hopi Indians, the sea will turn black and life will begin to fade. The Eighth Sign heralds the merging of cultures. And the last, ninth sign speaks of dwellings high in the sky falling to the earth. The apogee of these events will be the end of the world and the disappearance of human civilization from the face of the Earth. This is how terrible the future seems to be for the residents of the Hopi tribe, a people with a thousand-year history. http://vk.cc/4q4XMl

MOSCOW, March 24 - RIA Novosti. Paleontologists have found the first clear evidence that representatives of the ancient American Clovis culture actively hunted horses and camels and may have caused their extinction about 13 thousand years ago, when the last glaciation ended, according to a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Most archaeologists believe that the ancestors of modern Indians entered North America approximately 15-14 thousand years ago, moving along a narrow strip of ice and land between Alaska and Chukotka. The first culture, whose remains have survived to this day, arose on the territory of the modern United States 13-13.5 thousand years ago. It is called Clovis, from the name of the town of Clovis in New Mexico, where an ancient Aboriginal site was discovered in the late 1930s.

A group of archaeologists led by Michael Waters from the University of Texas at Houston (USA) has been studying traces of the Clovis culture and other groups of the first aborigines of the New World for a long time. For example, in 2013, they were able to find out that Indians entered America 800 years earlier than thought by studying a spear tip stuck in the rib of a mastodon.

In their new work, the authors of the article analyzed the remains of ancient horses and camels that were found quite a long time ago on the territory of the St. Mary's Reservoir in Alberta, not far from the reservation of the Kaina Indian tribe.

Primary dating showed that they, along with several dozen tools, belong to several different generations of the Clovis culture, whose representatives lived in Canada approximately 13 thousand years ago. The temporal fragmentation of the remains - the range between the oldest and youngest was more than 500 years - and their relative paucity led their discoverers to conclude that horses and camels were rarely on the menu of the first inhabitants of North America.

Waters and his colleagues questioned the accuracy of these dates and conducted a reanalysis in which they calculated the age of the animal remains from protein samples extracted from their bones. When dating the bones, scientists took special care to clean the remains of contaminants and impurities, believing that their predecessors did not do this.

The analysis showed that all the animal remains were almost the same age - 13,270-13,310 years old. This suggests that they were killed and butchered almost simultaneously, within the lifetime of one generation of Indians, or perhaps, Waters and his colleagues suggest, even one hunting season. All this is the first reliable evidence that the first inhabitants of the Americas may have hastened or even caused the extinction of horses, camels and many other species of megafauna.

As scientists note, these aboriginals did not necessarily belong to the Clovis culture, since even the minimum age of the remains of ancient megafauna is almost 300 years older than the estimated date of penetration of its carriers into western Canada. In any case, no matter what culture these Indians belonged to, the authors of the article believe that they were directly related to the extinction of megafauna, although the extent of their “contribution” to this process remains unknown.

There are two main points of view. According to the first (the so-called “short chronology”), people came to America about 14-16 thousand years ago At that time, the sea level was 130 meters lower than today, and in winter it was not difficult to cross the ice on foot.. According to the second, people settled the New World much earlier, from 50 to 20 thousand years ago (“long chronology”). The answer to the question “How?” much more definite: the ancient ancestors of the Indians came from Siberia through the Bering Strait, and then went south - either along the west coast of America, or along the central part of the continent through the ice-free space between the Laurentian ice sheet and glaciers Coast Ranges in Canada. However, regardless of how exactly the first inhabitants of America moved, traces of their early presence either ended up deep under water due to rising sea levels (if they walked along the Pacific coast), or were destroyed by the actions of glaciers (if people walked along the central part of the continent). Therefore, the earliest archaeological finds are not found in Beringia Beringia- a biogeographic region connecting Northeast Asia and northwestern North America., and much further south - for example, in Texas, northern Mexico, southern Chile.

2. Were the Indians in the eastern United States different from the Indians in the west?

There are about ten cultural types of North American Indians Arctic (Eskimos, Aleuts), Subarctic, California (Chumash, Washo), northeastern US (Woodland), Great Basin, Plateau, northwest coast, Great Plains, southeastern US, southwestern US.. Thus, the Indians who inhabited California (for example, the Miwoks or Klamaths) were hunters, fishermen and gatherers. The inhabitants of the southwestern United States - the Shoshone, Zuni and Hopi - belong to the so-called Pueblo cultures: they were farmers and grew corn, beans and squash. Much less is known about the Indians of the eastern United States, and especially the southeast, since most Indian tribes died out with the arrival of Europeans. For example, until the 18th century, the Timucua people lived in Florida, distinguished by their wealth of tattoos. The life of these people is recorded in the drawings of Jacques Le Moine, who visited Florida in 1564-1565 and became the first European artist to depict Native Americans.

3. Where and how the Indians lived

Apache wigwam. Photo by Noah Hamilton Rose. Arizona, 1880Denver Public Library/Wikimedia Commons

Adobe houses in Taos Pueblo, New Mexico. Around 1900 Library of Congress

Woodland Indians in the north and northeast of America lived in wigwams - permanent dome-shaped dwellings made of branches and animal skins - while the Pueblo Indians traditionally built adobe houses. The word "wigwam" comes from one of the Algonquian languages. Algonquian languages- a group of Algian languages, one of the largest language families. Algonquian languages ​​are spoken by about 190 thousand people in eastern and central Canada, as well as on the northeast coast of the United States, in particular the Cree and Ojibwe Indians. and translated means something like “house”. Wigs were built from branches that were tied together to form a structure, which was covered with bark or skins on top. An interesting variant of this Indian dwelling are the so-called long houses in which the Iroquois lived. Iroquois- a group of tribes with a total number of about 120 thousand people living in the USA and Canada.. They were made of wood, and their length could exceed 20 meters: in one such house lived several families, whose members were relatives to each other.

Many Indian tribes, such as the Ojibwe, had a special steam bath - the so-called “sweating wigwam”. It was a separate building, as you might guess, for washing. However, the Indians did not wash themselves too often - as a rule, several times a month - and used the steam bath not so much to become cleaner, but as a therapeutic agent. It was believed that the bathhouse helps with illnesses, but if you feel well, you can do without washing.

4. What did they eat?

A man and a woman eating. Engraving by Theodore de Bry after a drawing by John White. 1590

Sowing maize or beans. Engraving by Theodore de Bry after a drawing by Jacques Le Moine. 1591Brevis narratio eorum quae in Florida Americae provincia Gallis acciderunt / book-graphics.blogspot.com

Smoking meat and fish. Engraving by Theodore de Bry after a drawing by Jacques Le Moine. 1591Brevis narratio eorum quae in Florida Americae provincia Gallis acciderunt / book-graphics.blogspot.com

The diet of the North American Indians was quite varied and varied greatly depending on the tribe. Thus, the Tlingits, who lived on the coast of the North Pacific Ocean, mainly ate fish and seal meat. Pueblo farmers ate both corn dishes and the meat of animals obtained by hunting. And the main food of the California Indians was acorn porridge. To prepare it, the acorns had to be collected, dried, peeled and crushed. Then the acorns were placed in a basket and boiled on hot stones. The resulting dish resembled something between soup and porridge. They ate it with spoons or just with their hands. The Navajo Indians made bread from corn, and its recipe has been preserved:

“To make bread, you will need twelve ears of corn with leaves. First you need to peel the cobs and grind the grains using a grain grater. Then wrap the resulting mass in corn leaves. Dig a hole in the ground large enough to accommodate the packages. Light a fire in the pit. When the ground has warmed up properly, remove the coals and place the bundles in the hole. Cover them and light a fire on top. The bread takes about an hour to bake.”

5. Could a non-Indian lead the tribe?

In 1885-1889, the Jew Solomon Bibo served as governor of the Acoma Pueblo Indians, with whom he had traded since the mid-1870s. Bibo was married to an Acoma woman. True, this is the only known case when a pueblo was led by a non-Indian.

6. Who is the Kennewick Man?

In 1996, the remains of one of the ancient inhabitants of North America were found near the small town of Kennewick in Washington state. That's what they called him - the Kennewick Man. Outwardly, he was very different from modern American Indians: he was very tall, had a beard and rather resembled modern Ainu Ainu- ancient inhabitants of the Japanese islands.. Researchers suggested that the skeleton belonged to a European who lived in these places in the 19th century. However, radiocarbon dating showed that the owner of the skeleton lived 9,300 years ago.

The skeleton is now kept at the Burke Museum of Natural History in Seattle, and modern-day Washington State Indians regularly demand that the remains be given to them for burial according to Indian traditions. However, there is no reason to believe that the Kennewick man during his lifetime belonged to any of these tribes or their ancestors.

7. What the Indians thought about the moon

Indian mythology is very diverse: its heroes are often animals, such as a coyote, beaver or raven, or celestial bodies - stars, sun and moon. For example, members of the Californian Wintu tribe believed that the moon owes its appearance to a bear who tried to bite it, and the Iroquois claimed that there was an old woman on the moon weaving linen (the unfortunate woman was sent there because she could not predict when the world will end).

8. When the Indians got bows and arrows

Today, Indians of various North American tribes are often depicted holding or shooting a bow. It wasn't always like this. Historians know nothing about the fact that the first inhabitants of North America hunted with a bow. But there is information that they used a variety of spears. The first finds of arrowheads date back to around the ninth millennium BC. They were made in the territory of modern Alaska - only then the technology gradually penetrated into other parts of the continent. By the middle of the third millennium BC, onions appeared in the territory of modern Canada, and at the beginning of our era they came to the territory of the Great Plains and California. In the southwestern United States, bows and arrows appeared even later - in the middle of the first millennium AD.

9. What languages ​​do the Indians speak?

Today, the Indians of North America speak approximately 270 different languages, which belong to 29 language families, and 27 isolate languages, that is, isolated languages ​​that do not belong to any larger family, but form their own. When the first Europeans came to America, there were many more Indian languages, but many tribes became extinct or lost their language. The largest number of Indian languages ​​have been preserved in California: 74 languages ​​belonging to 18 language families are spoken there. Among the most common North American languages ​​are Navajo (about 180 thousand Indians speak it), Cree (about 117 thousand) and Ojibwe (about 100 thousand). Most Native American languages ​​now use the Latin alphabet, although Cherokee uses an original syllabary developed in the early 19th century. Most Indian languages ​​are at risk of extinction - after all, less than 30% of ethnic Indians speak them.

10. How modern Indians live

Today, most descendants of Indians in the United States and Canada live almost the same as the descendants of Europeans. Only a third of them are occupied by reservations—autonomous Indian territories that make up about two percent of the U.S. area. Modern Indians enjoy a number of benefits, and in order to receive them, you need to prove your Indian origin. It is enough that your ancestor was mentioned in the census of the early 20th century or had a certain percentage of Indian blood.

Tribes have different ways of determining whether a person belongs to them. For example, the Isleta Pueblos consider as theirs only those who have at least one parent who was a member of the tribe and a purebred Indian. But the Oklahoma Iowa tribe is more liberal: to become a member, you need to have only 1/16 Indian blood. At the same time, neither knowledge of the language nor following Indian traditions has any significance.

See also materials about the Indians of Central and South America in the course "".

The ancestors of modern Indians moved to North America 800 years earlier than previously thought. Such conclusions are the result of an analysis of a spear tip stuck in the rib of an American mastodon.

The authors of the work, researchers from universities in the USA and Denmark led by Michael Waters from Texas A&M University, write that, according to most archaeologists, the ancestors of modern Indians entered North America approximately 15-14 thousand years ago back. At that time, the crossing between Alaska and Chukotka – the ice “bridge” – had not yet melted.

The first culture of the United States (Clovis, from the name of the city of Clovis in New Mexico) appeared 13,000-13,500 years ago. Here in Clovis, in the late 1930s, archaeologists discovered an ancient aboriginal site. There may have been more ancient ancestors of the American Indians. But their remains or sites have not survived.

American mastodon

Archaeologists led by Michael Waters have discovered traces of an older culture dating back 13,800 years. True, scientists did not find a site or burials of people, but a bone spear tip stuck in the rib of an American mastodon.

Mastodons ( Mammutidae) are extinct mammals from the order Proboscis, relatives of mammoths and elephants. Archaeologists write that the remains of the mammoth's overseas brother were discovered by farmer Emanuel Manis.

In 1977, Manis, while digging out a dried-up pond with an excavator, came across mastodon tusks. The farmer reported his discovery to archaeologists from the University of Washington. Within a couple of days, experts began further excavations and discovered a rib with a stuck bone tip.

The Manisa mastodon is considered the oldest human footprint in North America. True, the exact age and cultural affiliation of the archaeological find is constantly disputed.

In a study published in Science, Waters' team clarifies the age of the mastodon. Archaeologists believe that the mastodon was killed 13,800 years ago. This means that the first people appeared in North America 300-800 years earlier than previously thought.

Spear in the rib

During the study, scientists determined the proportion of the heavy carbon isotope (C 14) in the rib, tusks and other parts of the mastodon skeleton. The age of all the samples was the same, from which scientists concluded that all the bones belonged to the same mastodon.

The researchers isolated DNA fragments from the rib and bone tip. Having compared the DNA of the mastodon with modern and extinct representatives of elephants, geneticists came to the conclusion that the ribs and tusks belong specifically to the mastodon. Moreover, it turned out that the tip of the spear was carved from mastodon bone. Previously, scientists assumed that the tip was made from deer antler.

Our Universe is full of mysteries that do not fit into the established system of knowledge. The Epoch Times section “Beyond Science” presents articles about unusual phenomena that fuel our imagination and indicate previously unseen possibilities.

The hypothesis that the Indians were descendants of the ancient Hebrews, Egyptians or Greeks has existed for centuries, but is perceived as very controversial. James Adair, an 18th-century colonist who traded with the Indians for 40 years, wrote that their language, customs and social structure were very similar to those of the Jews.

He wrote in his book A History of the American Indians: “It is very difficult to get oneself, let alone others, to change their established views. I expect to be censored for contradicting generally accepted views or interfering in a debate that has concerned scientists since the discovery of America."

In recent years, Dr Donald Panther-Yates, who holds similar views, has faced backlash from other scientists.

There is a widely accepted scientific opinion that the Indians descended from the Mongols. A 2013 study published in the journal Nature suggests some ancient European roots. Human remains from Siberia dating back 24,000 years have been analyzed. Scientists have not identified any similarities with Asian peoples, only with European ones, while a clear connection with the American Indians has emerged. But the modern scientific community is skeptical of the idea that Indians could be descendants of ancient Near Easterners or ancient Greeks, as Yates and other scientists have suggested.

Yates is himself a Cherokee Indian. He holds a PhD in Classical Studies and is the founder of DNA Consultants, a genetic research institute. All this allowed him to develop unique theories about the history of the American Indians and their connections with ancient cultures. DNA tests may confirm these theories.

Genetic similarities

Native Americans fall into five genetic groups known as haplotypes, each identified by letters of the alphabet: A, B, C, D and X.

In the article "Cherokee DNA Anomalies," he points out an error common in many genetic tests. “Geneticists say that A, B, C, D and X are Indian haplotypes. Therefore, they are present in all Indians. But this is the same as saying: all people walk on two legs. Therefore, if the skeleton of a creature has two legs, then it is a person. But in fact, it could be a kangaroo."

Any discrepancy with haplotypes is usually attributed to mixing of races after the colonization of America by Europeans, and not to the original genes of the Indians.

But Yates, who analyzed Cherokee DNA, concluded that such mixing could not be explained by the admixture of European genes after 1492.

“Where then did the non-European and non-Indian genes come from? - he asks a question. - The level of haplogroup T among the Cherokees (26.9%) is comparable to the level of the Egyptians (25%). Egypt is the only country where T occupies a dominant position among other mitochondrial lineages."

Yates paid particular attention to haplotype X, which is “virtually absent from Mongolia and Siberia, but common in Lebanon and Israel.”

In 2009, Liran I. Slush of the Israel Institute of Technology published a study in the journal PLOS ONE claiming that the haplotype spread worldwide from the Galilee Hills in northern Israel and Lebanon. Yates writes: “The only people on Earth who have a high level of haplotype X, other than Indians of such tribes as the Ojibwe, are the Druze living in northern Israel and Lebanon.”

Cultural and linguistic similarities

Although much of the Cherokee culture has been lost, Yates notes in his book The Clans of the Cherokee that there are still legends about ancestors who sailed across the seas and spoke a language similar to ancient Greek. Some parallels can be traced between the languages ​​of the Indians, Egyptians and Hebrew.

The white-skinned Cherokee demigod Maui may be based on a Libyan fleet leader killed by Ptolemy III around 230 BC, Yates said. The word "maui" is similar to the Egyptian word meaning "seafarer" or "guide". According to legend, Maui taught the Indians all crafts and arts. He gave the name for the Cherokee chiefs "amatohi" or "moytoi," which can be translated as "sailor" or "admiral," Yates says.

He recalls a Cherokee legend about a Maui father named Tanoa. Yeats believes that Tanoa may have been of Greek origin. “Tanoa was the father of all fair-haired children, he came from a land called Atia,” he writes.

Atia may refer to Attica, the historical region surrounding the Greek capital Athens. "Atia" was a place where there are "many high temples of alabaster", one of which is very spacious, it was created as a meeting place for people and gods. Sports competitions, festivals in honor of the gods, meetings of great rulers took place there, and it was the source of wars that forced people to move overseas.

“It would be difficult to imagine a legend that more accurately reflects Greek culture,” writes Yeats. In the Hawaiian language there is a word “karoi” - entertainment, relaxation. In Greek they used almost the same word." He notes other similarities.

“According to the elders, the Cherokees, like the Hopi, in ancient times spoke a language of non-Native American origin. But then they switched to the Mohawk language in order to continue living with the Iroquois. Their old language appears to have included a large number of borrowings from Greek, the language of Ptolemaic Egypt, and Hebrew,” he says.

Adair noted the linguistic similarities between Hebrew and the languages ​​of the indigenous people of America.

Like Hebrew, nouns in Native American languages ​​do not have cases or inflections, Adair writes. Another similarity is the lack of comparative and superlative degrees. “In no other language, with the exception of Hebrew and the Indian languages, is there such a shortage of prepositions. Indians and Jews do not have functional parts of speech to separate words. Therefore, they must attach certain symbols to words to overcome this deficit,” he writes.

A look from the past

Adair is able to shed light on the culture of the Indians, which Yeats cannot do. Adair actively communicated with the Indians hundreds of years ago, when their traditions were still alive. Of course, it must be accepted that, as a foreigner, he might have misinterpreted some aspects of their culture.

“From my observations, I concluded that the American Indians are direct descendants of the Israelites. Perhaps this division occurred when ancient Israel was a maritime power, or after they fell into slavery. The latter version is the most likely,” says Adair.

They have a similar tribal structure and organization of priests, as well as the custom of establishing a sacred place, he believes.

He gives one example of the similarity of customs: “According to the laws of Moses, a woman must undergo purification after traveling. It is also a custom among Indian women to withdraw from their husbands and all public affairs for a period of time.”

Adair explains the absence of the custom of circumcision as follows: “The Israelites lived in the desert for 40 years and might not have returned to this painful custom if Joshua had not introduced it. The first settlers in America, faced with difficult living conditions, may have abandoned this custom and then completely forgotten it, especially if they were accompanied on their journey by representatives of eastern pagan peoples.”

The Cherokees themselves seem to have mixed feelings about Yeats's work. The Cherokee Central website published excerpts from Yates's research, but individual comments made by its readers indicate that the Cherokees are unwilling to support such theories.

Speaking of the Cherokee clan, Yates states: "Some of them professed Judaism, although the elders of the United Keetowa (a Cherokee organization) vehemently deny this."