Uh, yeah…
~Max
Well, you’re wrong. Just read up about the Nez Perce. Or the Ute. etc., etc.
Honestly, I didn’t know. I mean, I knew there were people on the continent but I had assumed all the tribes extant in the fifteenth century had since migrated, merged, splintered, etc. Possibly biased because the focus on extant tribes in school was the Seminole tribe, with the indigenous peoples of Florida being totally wiped out by the 1700s.
~Max
WTH?
Quite a lot of them do. I’ll start with the Haudenosaunee, because they’re on whose land I’m living (under the Canandaigua treaty, still recognized by both sides.)
But there are surviving, and in many cases resurging/recovering, tribes all over the country that existed before Columbus. And yet again, many of them are still on portions of their original land.
What you need to realize at this point is that your education on the subject has been both seriously lacking and seriously biased. Considering that this is a major part of both the history and the current events of the country that you’re living in, I’d strongly recommend studying up on the subject.
How, in God’s name any American can claim have never heard of reservation casinos is beyond me.
I was going to suggest them as an example, as well. I suspect that a lot of Americans wouldn’t recognize the name Haudenosaunee, but they probably recognize the names of some of the member nations of that group, which is also known as the Iroquois Confederacy: the Oneida, Mohawk, Onodaga, Cayuga, and Seneca.
There is quite a bit of material available now studying the topic of conditions in the Americas prior to Columbus.
This sobering article provides a very high-level overview:
This book goes into more details about culture, technology, and populations:
I think he’s implying that Native American tribes we know today came into existence after 1492, from the remnants of previously existing tribes that no longer remain. I don’t think he’s claiming that there are no Native American tribes in existence today, but that they can’t trace their heritage to back before Columbus while maintaining a consistent identity.
He’s wrong, wildly so, but it could come from ignorance rather than malice.
I don’t think he was malicious at all. I’m just gobsmacked that anyone would believe such a thing given typical American history/civics classes.
But you missed Wolfnoote!
Wolfnoote
I’m well aware of reservation casinos, it is as Telemark wrote, I didn’t realize any tribes from the fifteenth century have survived intact. What with the 95% of the indigenous population from that time dying out.
Precolumbian American history was mostly Central America. Olmec, Maya, Inka (Peru), Aztec (Mexico). These last two were lead-ins to Spanish conquest, of course. From what I remember, very little was said of North America - the Behring crossing and initial migration of peoples into the continent, and Cahokian mounds.
Of post-Columbian Native American history, it was all about interactions with Europeans and later Americans. Very little was said about what Native American tribes did in what is now the contiguous U.S., after Columbus but before local European contact (Jamestown, Pilgrims, etc). The only thing I can think of is the formation of the Iroquois Confederacy in the early sixteenth century, I think. And that was brought up as background when we were going over the French & Indian wars and other 17th century history.
~Max
They didn’t bother to tell you that the Confederacy is still here?
Maybe not, if they carefully – or ignorantly – didn’t bother to tell you anything else about what Native Americans did besides get killed off.
– no, discobot, I don’t want to PM Max instead. There may be others equally ignorant reading this thread. I agree that the degree of ignorance is astonishing, but unfortunately there are lots of people astonishingly ignorant in this area.
ETA: I don’t think I got taught any better than that in school myself; though that was back in the 1950’s and '60’s. I’ve kept reading, and talking to people, since then, though.
They did, and I had thought the Confederacy was just about the oldest extant nation, dating just after Columbus arrived in the Caribbean.
~Max
Should read 18th century
~Max
The individual tribes of the Confederacy existed long before then, in their current locations. The creation of the Confederacy was the creation of a specific type of alliance/representative democracy among them; it wasn’t the creation of new nations. (ETA: well, I suppose in the fashion that the USA created a new nation out of existing states, it was the creation of a new nation; but the pre-existing states of the USA hadn’t been independent nations on their own, and the members of the Confederacy had been for a long time.)
I suppose Max_S’s misunderstanding is understandable. The Seminole tribe in his area (Florida) is one of the few example of a tribe coming together in the 18th century. The Spanish had wiped out pretty much all the natives in Florida (mostly by disease) by then but didn’t settle most of the region. So that vacuum was filled by others: mostly Creek, but also remnants of other tribes plus escaped slaves.
There were some other tribes in other parts of the continent which were combinations of two tribes. Those were mostly where one tribe was almost wiped out and the remnants joined with another. The Sac and Fox for example. The French had gone to war on the Fox and largely wiped them out. The remaining members joined with the Sac (or Sauk), a closely related tribe.
As another example, I’m somewhat familiar with the Menominee nation, which still exists today in northeastern Wisconsin, and is believed to have been located in Wisconsin (and, previously, the upper peninsula of Michigan) for over a thousand years.
I can see possibly thinking that in ignorance, if the Seminoles are the only tribe whose existence you’re aware of. But to project from that one specific case to every Native American group is just such a textbook hasty generalization that it was a bit shocking.
Before Columbus, or possibly a long time before Columbus. Most scholarship says 1450s, some say 1100s.
In addition, to repeat: the Confederacy was formed out of pre-existing nations that had been there a long time before that.