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It's not the "native" part that they object to; it's the "American" part
"Americans" implies the identification of values brought over from England and Europe. Ownership of land, permanent homes, the English language, lies, hypocrisy, broken promises, etc. They didn't / don't identify with those concepts.
If a group of people that you disliked took over this land and named it "Mulia", you wouldn't call yourself a "Native Mulian". That would be absurd.
It's typical of American arrogance to put our stamp everywhere, including where it doesn't belong, and then feel good about that. No wonder why so many elsewhere consider us to be slime.
Maybe if they had had a written language before the Europeans showed up, or an actual written Constitution of their own making (not some revisionist lie how they stole the "Iroquois Confederacy"), or an actual military, they would have had more control of their situation.
Maybe if they had had a written language before the Europeans showed up, or an actual written Constitution of their own making (not some revisionist lie how they stole the "Iroquois Confederacy"), or an actual military, they would have had more control of their situation.
Many tribes had their own legal and justice systems, just not memorialized in the written way we do. Like many other aspects of their cultures, it was oral. Simply writing something down doesn't not make it inherently better. Our system is no more just than theirs, and on the scale they used it - oral worked. The British do not have a written Constitution. Many people would put the British legal system above us in fairness and in wisdom. Tribes did have standing armies - in fact in some tribes all men were part of that army. In other tribes, who had basically no contact with the outside world, they had none.
There are a lot of baseless assumptions in your post on top of a silly smear of superciliousness.
Many tribes had their own legal and justice systems, just not memorialized in the written way we do. Like many other aspects of their cultures, it was oral. Simply writing something down doesn't not make it inherently better. Our system is no more just than theirs, and on the scale they used it - oral worked. The British do not have a written Constitution. Many people would put the British legal system above us in fairness and in wisdom. Tribes did have standing armies - in fact in some tribes all men were part of that army. In other tribes, who had basically no contact with the outside world, they had none.
There are a lot of baseless assumptions in your post on top of a silly smear of superciliousness.
"Tribes" indeed, they were.
Since we're in the habit of giving history lessons here, let's be clear about the way "Indians" treated their fellow "Indians" before the alleged horrific and brutal "white man" showed up:
Quote:
Each tribe pushed other tribes off the land it wanted and in turn was frequently forced out by other later more powerful tribes. Individual status in each tribal band was based on bravery in battle, coups and scalps taken, slaves and horses stolen, enemies tortured, “foreign” women raped and (last) the ability to persuade others. “Chiefs” were the noncombatant elders who administered camps; but they had no voice in war matters. War leaders (what Europeans thought were Chiefs) were simply prominent warriors who could inspire enough followers for a raiding party.
Far more Amerindians died at the hands of rival tribes than from US Army troops, who generally could never find them or catch them. Mind you, they fought differently, frequently fleeing as soon as one of their band was injured, because then they believed their leader lost his magic. Most tribal wars were short demonstrations with lots of coup-taking and show-boating, with few seriously injured because strong warriors were in short supply and life expectancies were short.
The Comanche, for example, were pushed South by other tribes before they stole horses from Spanish/Mexicans and became the dominant Plains horse warriors. While they controlled “Comancheria”, they blocked the Westward Expansion for about fifty years. Comanches drove the Apache out of the Southwest and virtually exterminated all but a few bands that hid in the mountains around the Mexican border. The Quakers charged with pacifying them on their reservation became disgusted and horrified by the way they would ride off a few hundred miles to raid and kill, returning with fresh scalps and booty to the safety of the military-protected rez. The US Army was prohibited from entering the Amerindian reservation, but the natives could continue to “play at war.”
It's not the "native" part that they object to; it's the "American" part
"Americans" implies the identification of values brought over from England and Europe. Ownership of land, permanent homes, the English language, lies, hypocrisy, broken promises, etc. They didn't / don't identify with those concepts.
You couldn't be more wrong.
They did own land.
Tribal groups in the northeast, the New England and Mid-Atlantic States, and many in the Midwest, plus tribal groups in the southwest owned land.
Tribal groups in the northeast marked their land the same way Europeans did, using hedgerows or rock walls.
Tribal boundaries were marked in the same way Mesopotamian and early European tribal groups marked their boundaries, with piles of rocks, or stone stelae.
The also had permanent housing.
Tribal groups in the New England States used rocks to form a base about 3' feet high, and then finished the structure with wood. Tribal groups in the Mid-Atlantic States and Midwest tended to favor wood, probably because it was plentiful, with great variety, and easier to get than rocks. Tribal groups in the southwest used mud-baked bricks to build their houses, which are indistinguishable from the housing built of mud-baked bricks in Mesopotamia.
Because the Midwest had settled tribes along with semi-nomadic and nomadic tribes constantly raiding and engaging in war, many of the settled tribes built earthen field fortifications to protect their villages.
I used to play on those earthen field fortifications, in this instance built by the Shawnee, long before the county bought the land turned it into a county park. I had a nice collection of arrowheads and stone hatchet heads before I was 12 years old.
Many tribal groups did nothing but lie and break promises.
The Shawnee would conclude a peace treaty with a nomadic tribe, and then the tribe would break the treaty and attack the Shawnee.
That is why so many tribal groups fought with the British, and later the Americans, against other tribal groups, in order to punish those tribal groups for their lies and broken promises.
In the area around what is now Detroit, Michigan, the slave trade was so bad it interfered with the ability of the French to engage in the fur trade. Tribal groups constantly raided other tribal groups for slaves.
The French spent years negotiating peace treaties between the tribal groups, but those tribal groups repeatedly broke their promise and raided other tribes for slaves.
Finally, the French and a couple of tribal groups went to war against those tribal groups to put an end to slavery once and for all.
The French and British recognized and upheld the Customary Law of Land. Under the Customary Law of Land, any land that is developed is considered owned, even if there is no written recorded deed or record, and that's why they did not push tribal groups off of their land in the New England and Mid-Atlantic States. Permanent housing, wells, roads, other permanent structures, boundary markers for individual property and for tribal property is all evidence of development under the Customary Law of Land.
The Spanish even recognized it, yet they often fought with tribal groups. That's because the tribal groups were "pagans" who refused to convert, not because the Spanish violated customary law.
When the Colonies seceded from Britain, the new American government did not recognize or uphold the Customary Law of Land, and it took actions to remove many settled tribal groups from their lands.
Today, the federal government recognizes 567 tribal groups. There were many more, but genocidal actions by Native Americans against other Native Americans exterminated many tribal groups from the face of the Earth.
I hope you enjoyed spending all of that time with your typing. I didn't read one bit of it. If you summed it up in a nice paragraph or two, I would have though.
I hope you enjoyed spending all of that time with your typing. I didn't read one bit of it. If you summed it up in a nice paragraph or two, I would have though.
I type over 100 wpm, so it's not like it's a problem, but, please, continue to live in ignorance.
Okay, so politics aside, I want to get some info on Native Americans. More so anything that will touch on the more savagery of Native Americans. I'm always hearing how Native Americans are such peaceful, harmonious, "innocent" creatures of Earth. Native Americans are always getting such praise and are touted as the people who "raped" of their culture. While their might be some truth to the eradication of the Native American culture, I know not all Native Americans were such "angels". Many indigenous tribes went to war with each other, some owned Black slaves and were so fierce in battle that the U.S. Military named their choppers after certain infamous Native American men and tribes.
This is not a thread to try and "debunk" Native American are bash them but I just simply want to know more about Native American culture since it's a shame that I'm not too well educated on it. I know more about the European conquest of the Americans than of the natives. I want to know about the good, the bad and the ugly of Native Americans from Canada down to South America.
If there's any books, articles, videos, museums (I live in NYC but travel) anyone can recommend please do direct me to it. Thank you so much.
The native American cultures varied so widely that it's next to impossible to generalize them in very much of anything. That would be like trying to generalize the culture of Europe from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean.
In very general terms, the easier the living was in nature, the more peaceful the people were who lived in it. Where an area was abundant in life's necessities, life was peaceful.
But events like natural calamities, prolonged drought, and prolonged periods of wildfires always disrupted the tribes, as well as the introduction of the Europeans into the new world. When one culture is forced to move into another culture's territory, there's always going to be trouble.
But war was different then than it is now. A smaller tribe that is forced out of it's homeland into new territory is naturally going to be more protective of itself than a large tribe that has settled a lot of territory.
A large tribe was usually broken into smaller groups who inhabited the best spots within the overall territory, but disputes among family are different than disputes between strangers.
When there's little in common and a great need for common occupation of small areas of good land, a war is always going to be a lot fiercer than a war for leadership among distant relatives.
So some tribes, like the Sioux, who were once pretty peaceful but smaller than their neighbors, became a fighting tribe on the great plains because they were always intruders, strangers, and un-expert in living new, unfamiliar surroundings.
But even among the fighting tribes, a war to them was nothing but a skirmish to us. Most were very brief, and and since most were over an individual's ability to protect himself and his family, and in extension his tribe, many wars were more symbolic than deadly.
After all, if too many men die in battle, the tribe dies with them. Since all the indigenous people had nature to contend with, most wars settled who got to live in a spot and who had to move out was quickly settled without massive bloodshed.
The coup stick was invented as a way to display the willingness and ability to kill an opponent without actually killing him. This allowed the defeated contender to move away without killing him, which would also kill off his family who would become very vulnerable once the grown man died.
But when two or more tribes of roughly equal size and ability were forced into an area too small to contain them all well, wars became a series of more bloody skirmishes, which could occur when one bountiful area had to be occupied to survive.
Killing an opponent became more important then, as killing the man meant that small area had fewer mouths to feed on the limited resources available. It also made enemies stronger enemies, which tended to perpetuate the fighting, and in turn created the need to know how to fight.
Since the Sioux were both smaller and novices on life in the great plains, when they were forced to move westward, they were also forced to become a fighting tribe. The more pushed around the Sioux were, the better they became at fighting.
When any culture depends on the vagaries of nature for survival, there are always going to be great collapses of population. Any tribe that didn't die off completely had to have enough other humans around to live, so slavery occurred, but the word has a different meaning when it has nothing to do with economics.
If a person's only choice is starvation or submission to a stranger who can provide them with the essentials for living, even if that life is hard and the provisions are scanty, which is the best choice?
At the same time, if there are too many people living in a too-small area that can't provide for them all, what's the best choice for ensuring your children will survive? Often, it was giving them away to a tribe who could do better for them. And in return, the giver got something back that would help the remaining members of the family to survive with fewer mouths to feed.
Slavery was also a way of keeping the peace. A young girl may be given away as a slave to member of a different tribe, but once she grows up and becomes a mother, the girl was most often a slave no more. She became a member of her new tribe, and also became a person who could be a diplomatic go-between who could help keep two neighbors who spoke different languages and had different traditions co-existing peacefully in the same region.
Most slaves eventually soon became tribal members. Many slaves who remained slaves for their lifetime were grateful for their position in life, as even slavery was much better than facing a strange wilderness alone with no resources to use for survival.
Native Americans are just like any other humans; if a slave was intelligent, resourceful, or strong, or inventive, or spiritual, any slave could become a highly respected leader of any tribe. Any useful skill is good for everyone.
And like it is everywhere in the world, captives are always good for swapping.
A captured leader could be swapped and return to his job of leadership for people who were needed for the hard work of survival.
Tribes with too many young men in them could swap the boys for girls, which allowed both tribes to stabilize and prosper, and a few hostages could put an end to a long ongoing hostility between tribes of equal strength. The better the hostages were treated, the better the peace became.
In the west, where horses were vital for living and are animals that live long lives, what's more important? Too many children or too few horses? That was a common choice.
What is the purpose of war? It's not to kill people. It's to force one society to bend to the will of another. If that submission can be accomplished without bloodshed, it's often a good solution to a shared problem.
But if the shared problem is lopsided and favors one side over the other, then a war become bloody until either submission comes or a stalemate is reached.
If a society is fighting for its existence, then it becomes important to display how cruel they can be and how determined they are to survive when the opposing sides have equal strength.
When a tribe is outnumbered, technology advances as a way of equalization that allows survival, but if there's no new technology, a defeated tribe isn't usually wiped out into extinction- the losers just become new members of the winning tribe, and the differing cultures blend together peacefully.
So often, a fighting tribe that's too small doesn't remain a fighting tribe. They learn how to co-exist peacefully. But when a fighting tribe becomes very large, then fighting becomes a way for a large tribe to survive by means of force, as more territory needs to be occupied to remain alive.
It's no different now than it was then in all of this. It's the way nature works for most species.
Generally avoid books written by whites.
Google aboriginal authors.
People of any group can have bad or misplaced agendas. Just because a book is written by a Native American doesn't automatically mean the info is accurate. Even some Blacks have wrote books with questionable information like Ivan Van Sertima and George GM James. You really have to be open to fact checking anyone regardless of their race or ethnicity.
I thought Indians are the descendants of the Clovis people, who moved to America over a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska. They came here about 13,000 years ago. They moved from Alaska to settle the both continents. All today's Indian tribes and band are descended from them.
They were the original settlers of America.
That's what I think I understand.
Now, it looks like people were here a lot earlier.
"By about 13,500 years ago, Clovis people had settled various sites across North America. For years, scientists thought that these people were the first inhabitants of the continent. But researchers have found a growing number of pre-Clovis human sites in the Americas (SN: 8/4/18, p. 7)."
This means that today's Indians are not the original settlers of America. They took over from some other people.
So who were these earlier people and what happened to them?
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