Native American Indian Contributions

Abstract: This paper is a report on collected material relating to the influence of mathematics, particularly geometry, on Native American Indians, as well as their contributions in several related areas within mathematics. Research findings lead to the understanding that Indian contributions are great, and their culture is heavily influenced by geometrical designs which have remained over the centuries. Aside from geometrical contributions, it is noteworthy that American Indians had an affinity to particular numbers; in this way, numbers were also an important part of their daily lives. Finally, Mayan tribes also contributed to the development of mathematics through their creation of the base twenty number system. All of this further adds

Most Indian tribes, for instance, counted “beginning with the left hand” and through the right to reach the number ten and counted their toes or fingers a second time in order to reach the number twenty, while other tribes, such as the Zuni, “counted the second ten on their knuckles” (Mathematics Used by American Indians North of Mexico, n.d.). Aside from the use of hands and feet, tally marks were also a widespread method of counting, although, once again, certain tribes had their particular ways of tallying; the Dakota Indians, for example, only used a “vertical stroke” as a tally, while Creek Indians adapted a tenth tally for a cross representing the number ten (Mathematics Used by American Indians North of Mexico, n.d.). In addition to counting and tallying, Indian tribes also used forms of subtraction; the number sixteen, for instance, was understood to be “one man less four” while twenty-six was “one man and two hands less four” (Mathematics Used by American Indians North of Mexico, n.d.). Even multiplication was used in the Zuni tribe, as ten was represented by “all the fingers” and twenty by “two times all the fingers;” these forms of multiplication are known to have existed up to the number 1000, known as “the fingers all the fingers times all the fingers” (Mathematics Used by American Indians North of Mexico, n.d.). The fact that

Generally, these mounds were in the shape of a “truncated quadrilateral pyramid,” although a particular group of mounds discovered in Ohio had “bases in the shapes of circles, squares, and octagons” (Mathematics Used by American Indians North of Mexico, n.d.). Perhaps the most astonishing fact about this particular group of mounds is that one had angles measuring nearly perfect right angles, only off from the ninety degrees by a single degree (Mathematics Used by American Indians North of Mexico, n.d.). Today, such accurate measurements seem to have been impossible for such past cultures, considering the lack of technology and even basic understanding of mathematical, particularly geometric, concepts. In addition to the precision of their bases, a great deal of these mounds, such as the Adena Serpent mound, contained shapes such as “spirals and semicircles” in their designs (Mathematics Used by American Indians North of Mexico, n.d.). The inclusion of patterns including such shapes, considering the acuity with which they were created, further shows the deep influence of mathematics on Native American