Mathematics Used by Indians North of Mexico

The mathematics used by American Indians was not systematic, was not structured, was not symbolic, or any of the other attributes of modern mathematics. Yet as we will see, there was a cognizance of geometrical form and an appreciation of numbers in a wholly intuitive way.

If one considers just the aspect of creating a square in nature, particularly a square of great precision, one is led to wonder how this might be done, if there are no standard mathematical tools available. For example, builders in the West have laid foundations of rectangular building using the Pythagorean theorem. How can this be accomplished without this tool? Some tribes knew but left no trace of how.

	Goals
	Readings
	Problems

In most cases the readings will be presented in the form of Acrobat (PDF) documents. To read and print them you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader.

The Goals and Problems will be given as HTML documents.