America
was founded by Europeans. From the first Viking explorers, to the Spanish
conquistadors, to the British settlers of Jamestown,
our culture has been permeated by the impact of the "Old
World". But what about the indigenous peoples that lived here
before? Did these so-called savages have a culture of their own? Or were they
the mindless savages portrayed by many of the European historians?
When the Vikings first discovered what was later known as North America, they were surprised to find the land
already populated, albeit to a lesser extent than they were used to. The Norse
recorded them in the Vinland Sagas as being a hostile people, born of a hostile
land, and kept their discovery mostly to themselves. But as stories and rumors
of a strange land spread throughout Scandinavia,
other Europeans began to become curious as to what lay to the West. When
Christopher Columbus finally secured financing for an expedition, landing far
south from where the Erik the Red first set foot on the soil of the "New
World", he too interacted with the peoples he called "Indians",
believing he had landed in the Indies, not a new continent. But, as Amerigo
Vespucci would later theorize, it was an entirely new land, peopled with
cultures and tribes such as had never been seen before in Europe.
But it was greed and a desire for fame that attracted more than just settlers
to this new land, and before long, much of the culture – and the people – of
these Indian nations was eradicated by the conquistadors and the power hungry. (South African History Online, 2012) (Weatherby, 2011)
These said cultures were incredibly complex and diverse,
beginning with the American Indians arrival roughly 7,000 to 10,000 years ago.
It is generally held that they came across the Bering Straits land bridge,
spreading throughout the continent via modern day Alaska
and British Columbia.
(History Central, 2013) By the time Columbus
arrived, it is estimated that there was anywhere from a 15 to 20 million
American Indian population, with over 1,000 spoken languages. The cultures of
the tribes were as diverse as the people, and their forms of government were
equally diverse: in the far south, near Columbus'
landing, there were the great, vast empires of the Incas and Aztecs, and the
Toltecs, Mayans, Olmecs and Anasazi before them. (Weatherby, 2011) These
wealthy empires were founded in worship of the gods, building great stone
monuments to those they sought to honor. Teotihuacan
was an entire city constructed by the Aztecs for this purpose, being called the
"City of the Gods". (Chambers, 2013) But
along the modern American Eastern Seaboard, nature worship was far more common,
with the people believing the gods were in – or in some cases, were – nature itself. It is here that the
Iroquois Confederacy was discovered, consisting of the Mohawk, Cayuga,
Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca, and Tuscarora tribes that had banded together under a
common law and council, drafting a constitution of sorts called the Gayanashagowa, or "Great Law of Peace", with
some speculating that it even influenced our on Constitution of the United
States. (New World Encyclopedia,
2011) In the Great Plains of the to-be United States, the tribes there
were mostly nomadic hunters, tracking the herds of bison that would provide
their sustenance as the seasons progressed. Farther to the west, the tribes of
the Pacific Northwest were also fishermen, in
addition to being hunters. The Chinook tribe, spanning what is modern day Washington and Oregon,
were one of the largest of these tribes, with their language uniting many of
their smaller neighbors: the Clatsop, Clackamas, Cathlamet, Shoalwater,
and Wahkiakum. They formed a sort of
loose government, almost akin to the Grecian city-state format seen in
antiquity, since these tribes often had similar cultural traits, besides a
common tongue, like art, nature worship akin to the Northeastern tribes, and
others, many of which can still be seen in the modern Pacific Northwest today. However,
they had no need to farm, as the forested peaks of the Cascade Pacific mountain
range provided game, and the Pacific Ocean, Columbia River
and other waterways yielded bountiful amounts of fish. It is interesting to
note that the tribes found here were one of the few non-farming communities
that would build permanent homes; it was still a necessity, however, and the
forests provided plentiful timber to protect the tribes against the often
unforgiving winters. (History Central, 2013) One of the innovations also
frequently credited to the Chinook was a sort of super-canoe, carved from a
redwood tree, that would supposedly hold up to 50 people.
Archaeologists also discovered evidence of trade routes
all throughout the continental United
States. Five branches of the route, reaching
to every major Indian group – Northwest, Southwest, Great Basins and Plateau,
Northeast and Southeast – would then consolidate into one main thoroughfare
leading into Mexico, passing through Tenochtitlán, the heart of the Aztec
Empire, and then splitting into three routes to span South America. (Chambers, 2013) These
trade routes in part lead to the vast wealth of the Aztec, and news ran quickly
along it, but sadly, was also their undoing, along with many of the tribes
along the way. European diseases, unseen in the Americas at that time, ran as
quickly along the trade routes as news of the strange, pale men did.
Unfortunately, many of these great cultures have been lost
to us, either by conquest, disease, or just the slow decay of time, and much of
what we know – or think we know – comes from assumptions based on the
archaeological record, or from oral traditions amongst the tribe themselves.
But we do know this: these heathens who lived here before the Spanish, and
later Portuguese, British and French came to settle this land, were not the
vicious, savage pagans they were recorded as being. Just as with the Vikings 500
years before them, they were demonized, and portrayed to be uncultured and
animalistic, when the simple reality was that they were cultured, just
differently so. And it proves that, once again, history truly is written by the
victor.
References
Chambers, D. W. (2013). How Indians Made America: History Before Columbus.
Retrieved from https://www.udemy.com/before-columbus-history-in-native-american-perspective/
History Central (2013, January 20). Native Americans
Before 1492. Retrieved from http://www.historycentral.com/Indians/Before.html
Martin, P. S., Quimby, G. I.,
Collier, D., & Chicago
Natural History
Museum (1947). Indians
before Columbus:
Twenty thousand years of North American history revealed by archeology. Chicago, Ill:
University of Chicago Press.
Native
Americans in the United States
- New World Encyclopedia. (2011, November 28). Retrieved from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States
South African History Online (2012). America, Spanish
conquest. Retrieved from http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/america-spanish-conquest
Weatherby, E. (2012, September 11). Native
American Culture prior to Columbus | Pipe N' Slippers. Retrieved from http://pipenslippers.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/179/
No comments:
Post a Comment