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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.
Always, huh?
Quote:
Originally Posted by madison999
I grew up in the 80's and 90's, we were only taught about how beautiful native Americans were and how bad the whites were. Seriously. "beautiful peoples" was the most common term used by teachers including high school.
Right. Sure.
Look, I get the Native Americans = peaceful and reverent of the Earth meme. I've heard it. But it's complete BS that anyone hears nothing but this, or even mostly this.
Ever see Dances With Wolves? Yes, fiction, but certainly an influential depiction of Native Americans. The Dakota are initially hostile to Kevin Costner's character. They raid and kill. They are engaged in continual battle with the Pawnee. Hardly any sort of depiction of them being peaceful and innocent. And it wasn't like the film was low-profile or shunned - it won the Oscar for Best freakin' Picture.
Hell, have you seen any westerns depicting Native Americans? 99% of them do not depict what you claim. The Searchers, for example, often considered the greatest western ever? Even more recent ones, shot after the golden era of westerns ended. The Last of the Mohicans? Black Robe? Plenty of aggression and violence by Native Americans depicted therein.
You might try reading 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (2005). One of the theses of the book is the amply-documented fact that pre-Columbian Americans altered and controlled their environment to much greater degrees than previously thought. No Gaia paradise before Columbus. This book was not shunned of ignored - it is a widely-acclaimed and award-winning publication. For a contemporary look at Native Americans, you could read Ian Frazier's On The Rez. There's plenty of bleakness in it, and it hardly absolves its subjects from their complicity in the situations in which they find themselves. Again, this book was widely acclaimed.
The irony is that you've approached a myth, which certainly exists, and you've claimed that no other side is offered. That this is as baseless as the myth you cite doesn't seem to bother you. You've chosen to counter a falsehood by presenting a falsehood of your own.
... I just simply want to know more about Native American culture...
The first thing you can learn is that there is no such thing as "Native American culture" so the question is, Which indigenous culture?
Culture consists of:
1] a common ancestry;
2] a common language;
3] common customs and mores;
4] worshiping the same god(s);
5] revering the same heroes;
6] cherishing the same history;
7] celebrating the same holidays; and
8] sharing the same music, poetry, drama and literature.
Each indigenous tribal group, and there are some 562 such groups recognized by the federal government, has its own ancestry, language, customs and mores, pantheon of gods, heroes, history, sacred days (holidays) and music and mythology.
To shorten the list, you could work using tribal language groups. There are 250 language groups spoken in the US & Canada (and about 350 in Mesoamerica & the Caribbean, plus another 1450 in South America).
At the time of European Colonization, indigenous tribal groups were in various states of civilization, ranging from settled tribal groups (who lived in houses) to semi-nomadic tribal groups to nomadic tribal groups. As you might expect, the semi-nomadic and nomadic tribal groups, being the most primitive, were involved in the greatest number of conflicts.
The cause is not difficult to surmise. Before the end, many Hopewell fled south to an area between Fort Smith and Hot Springs, Arkansas, where they made a final effort to save themselves at the Aikman Mounds, the last such earthworks ever raised. During the late 1920s, archaeologists from Washington University (St. Louis, Missouri) and the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville) excavated the mounds and their vicinity to unearth thousands upon thousands of human skeletons revealing blunt-force trauma. Many if most of the skulls had been crushed or staved in.
From Advanced Civilizations of Prehistoric America: The Lost Kingdoms of the Adena, Hopewell, Mississippians, and Anasazi; Frank Joseph
[emphasis mine]
More than 100,000 Hopewell Indians were exterminated in a genocidal rage circa 500 BCE, about 1,000 years before European contact. There is mounting evidence that the Adena Indians met the same fate: genocidal extinction by indigenous tribal groups.
If you want to study indigenous tribal groups, it might be best to start with the older cultures (the Adena, Hopewell, Mississippians, Anasazi et al) and then work your way toward successor groups -- the more modern cultures, at the time of European Colonization.
Or maybe you can start with one of the ten largest groups, the Navajo, Cherokee, Sioux, Chippewa, Choctaw, Apache, Pueblo, Iroquois, Creek or Blackfeet.
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.
No your right....your not too well educated at all...
Wouldn't it be easier if history were not so ambiguous? People don't like to accept that whenever two groups clash fault can be found on both sides. It's so much more comfortable to believe there are villains and heroes. But it is also this kind of thinking that causes problems in reaching a genuinely civilized society.
We haven't been served very well by our educational system in this so the study of history takes some personal honesty and reading from a wide variety of materials - both the damning and the praising. And somewhere in the middle of all that we may be able to find our own truth.
To that end I can support and understand the OP's question.
No your right....your not too well educated at all...
A well educated person knows the difference between "your" and "you're". So before you cast the first stone, perhaps you should consider that all of us can become better educated about something. At least the OP admitted his need.
If you're talking about savagery, many of the Europeans who settled in the Americas early on were capable of truly horrific savagery...not all, of course. There was some killing and cruelty on both sides. Efforts to coexist never lasted. Treaties were broken, because Europeans wanted it all...land, gold, everything! There were probably no true angels on either side. If angels exist on the earth, I'd like to meet them. As far as I know, I haven't met any so far, although I've met some really good (but flawed) people. Don't confuse bias and prejudice with facts. Right now we've got this racist hate thing popping up in this country. It's always existed, but there is no such thing as one race or ethnic group that is perfect or all good or all bad. Human beings deserve to be looked at as individuals, not herded into groups and judged by self-righteous people with an axe to grind or some racist political agenda. We're all descended from the same ancient species. If you believe in the bible I believe there's something about judge not, that ye be not judged. Just saying...don't go there.
If you're talking about savagery, many of the Europeans who settled in the Americas early on were capable of truly horrific savagery...not all, of course. There was some killing and cruelty on both sides. Efforts to coexist never lasted. Treaties were broken, because Europeans wanted it all...land, gold, everything! There were probably no true angels on either side. If angels exist on the earth, I'd like to meet them. As far as I know, I haven't met any so far, although I've met some really good (but flawed) people. Don't confuse bias and prejudice with facts. Right now we've got this racist hate thing popping up in this country. It's always existed, but there is no such thing as one race or ethnic group that is perfect or all good or all bad. Human beings deserve to be looked at as individuals, not herded into groups and judged by self-righteous people with an axe to grind or some racist political agenda. We're all descended from the same ancient species. If you believe in the bible I believe there's something about judge not, that ye be not judged. Just saying...don't go there.
I was thinking along similar lines. It is a rather sure bet that in threads about Native Americans
or colonialism or the voyages of Columbus it won't be long before the racial hatred surfaces and the ethnic bashing begins. Some of it has already been edited out by a moderator in this thread.
Sure, Native Americans got an extremely raw deal from European settlers - I've been aware of that since I was in the third grade over six decades ago. It is a tragic and disheartening thing. But why do we need to deny that Native American tribes were sometimes murderous toward other tribes? Why do we seem to forget that conquering other people has been the norm in human history and that Europeans are not unique in that regard even if they were remarkably successful at it starting a few centuries ago?
Extreme, even genocidal, practices naturally evoke extreme emotions of revulsion. But isn't it worth attempting to look objectively and rationally at the actual facts in order to avoid over-generalizing and demonizing one group? Running on pure emotion rarely sheds light, but only compounds the darkness which all decent people would condemn because it perpetuates hatred of other people in the present time frame.
A well educated person knows the difference between "your" and "you're". So before you cast the first stone, perhaps you should consider that all of us can become better educated about something. At least the OP admitted his need.
Last edited by dizzybint; 01-16-2017 at 01:54 AM..
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