Aboriginal Americans: cultures, histories, and issues of the First Nations of the New World

While watching the following little clip on the myth and reality of Pocahontas and the Powhattans, I found myself regretting that I didn't know more about the native cultures and civilizations of America, North, Central, South, and Caribbean. And let's include the Inuit too. The only other fragments I've got are the series Extra History gave on theIroquoisConfederation, the plot of The Last Of The Mohicans, some bits about Navajo code talkers and a couple of episodes of Crash Course US History. So I'd be interested in more sources and media on the topic, and not just US Centric. Especially since in the modern day Native Americans are horrifically discriminated against. Which is also something I wish to better understand.

edited 27th Mar '18 11:07:28 AM by TheHandle

What do you want more information on? If there's a specific subject that interests you I can likely recommend something to read, and if it's in my specific wheelhouse might be able to provide a quick summary, but it depends on the topic. Native American history's a big subject.

I guess that South Americans are still included here, or not?

More anecdotes of Pizarro madness would be interesting, I just need more of them to start a coherent case to avoid all idealization of him on pop culture.

There interestings things as such how pretty much several Incas deserve more historical attention as persons and how Non Inka cultures get forgotten and ignored, complete with using Inca as a shorthand to saying "andean".

edited 27th Mar '18 12:08:10 PM by KazuyaProta

I said "Americans" not "Usonians". The whole landmass is included, plus islands and ice caps.

The poor Inca were subjugated by the Incapaces. I'm shocked that people still idealize Mr. Francis Blackboard, piece of shit that he was. What kind of willful ignorance does that take? But yeah, I'd like to know more about Andean cultures. The Andes are mind-bogglingly sublime geography, and I'm very curious about the kind of people it shaped. Also I have a soft spot for Lamas, Alpacas, and the like, so I'm curious about their cultural impact as the only available livestock.

First Nations' history (is it only Canada that calls them that? Don't tell me Spanish speaking countries still call them Indians?!) is indeed a huge subject, so how about we start with the lead-up to right before the Europeans arrive in each region, in terms of the national identities that existed before Colombian contact, and the interplay between them. I know for instance that while Extra History paints a very rose-tinted take of the foundation of the Iroquois Confederation, they formed a power block that bullied and oppressed a sphere of influence of neighboring tribes. Who were these peoples? What was their economy built upon?

edited 27th Mar '18 12:24:49 PM by TheHandle

Francis Blackboard? You mean Pizarro?

About Llamas and Alpacas?

Oh yeah, they were amazingly influential and beloved animals. Albeit, the average andean farmer is probably using cows and sheeps (they are consideres national symbols, so they are only available to either people living in the most remote zones of the country, to companies that cultivate them for their wool or to natural reserves).

Yeah. Our natural fauna is pretty much unavailable for the natural native population. Is something that actually keep me thinking (I mean, they seem to be pretty OK with that, my dad loved his rural farm of cows).

In the subject of pre-conquest National identities, well, they are pretty much destroyed except in lands that were isolated (such as the amazonian tribes) and revival groups. There also a issue between how we should treat them, it ranks from a wish to be the Mighty Whitey to a ideal of "protecting" them from outside influence (AKA. Mighty Whitey but not as openly).

The closer to it is a sort of Pan Andean identity that we like to call "Inca", given that by that point, the most likely is that everyone have the DNA of the members of said culture.

In my own case, Peru. The country is divided socially in three regions, Costa, Sierra and Selva.

La Costa is the most urbanized place, is basically the giant beach of the country. I am there. Is mostly a desert with important rivers. It had received a LOT of andean inmigration, to the level that there several families with genetically andean members that had lived generations in the Costa.

La Sierra is pretty much the Andes. Poor compared to the coast (albeit, the appareance of cities like Huancayo are changing that), most of its people inmigrates to the Coast to get better jobs. The landscape looks nice, but that is hardly a comfort when you realize that you have no internet or cellphone signal.

The Selva is the Jungle. The largest region yet the less populated. Is filled with a lot of plants, there cities there and Cusco had the weird honor of being both Sierra and Selva (the clime of that region is Weeeeeeeird).

edited 27th Mar '18 12:52:05 PM by KazuyaProta

There also a issue between how we should treat them, it ranks from a wish to be the Mighty Whitey to a ideal of "protecting" them from outside influence (AKA. Mighty Whitey but not as openly).

Basically a choice between Darkseid and Brainiac?

edited 27th Mar '18 12:52:02 PM by TheHandle

Comparing the "we need to protect them from the ourside world" crowd to Brainiac is pretty much the perfect analogia. It got so bad that a regional municipality actually did try to take away all the cellphones of the youngest members of a tribe in order to "protect their traditions". I am sure that there must be some Politicians that actually does see them as mere objects to be studied.

Dunno if comparing the "lets bring them to Civilization!!" Mighty Whitey crowd to Darkseid is a good idea, that crowd is pretty racist (a lot of them are Spanish-Peruvians that want to do Colonization again, but this time without violence) but is far from the Galactic Conqueror that is Darkseid.

Oh and of course, the historial of Anti Native sponsored attempts to genocide. That is more comparable to our Evil Overlord.

edited 27th Mar '18 1:02:20 PM by KazuyaProta

I'm glad that we have this thread for discussing this sort of things.

Yeah, there is that problem between leaving the people of the jungle to live as they lived for centuries and them eventually making contact with the modern world, it's a thorny subject as the ideal is to preserve their cultures without any unilateral imposition and to help them achieve success as well.

It's difficult and complex, like a lot of things in life.

Also, I for one find it deeply ironic and tragic that the amerindians, as badly treated as they were under Spanish rule, still held more rights at the time of the Viceroyalties than at the Early Republic.

So, first thing's first, "Iroquois" is a language group. It's not the actual name of the people. They're the Haudenosaunee League or Five Nations (later the Haudenosaunee Confederacy or Six Nations). Their neighbours, at different points in time, include various Algonquin peoples, the Iroquois-speaking Wendat (popularly known as the Huron), the tribes of the Old Northwest and Ohio Valley (Shawnee, Miami,Delaware etc) and many others.

As for who those tribes/nations were, that again, varies. A lot of the Algonquin peoples were semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers, while the Wendat, like the Haudenosaunee themselves, were a farming society that built settled villages and erected stockades. Five Nations' territory was large, and its sphere of influence even larger, so there's not a lot of generalizations you can make about their enemies, tributaries, and neighbours.

Im also interested in this topic, thanks for opening this thread. The more specific you can frame the questions, the easier it will be to get answers.

Can anyone confirm or deny the claim that the Shawnee settled in lower Ohio at the invitation of the Delaware, largely to act as a buffer between them and the Five Nations?

Let's do them piecemeal then. Maybe a Useful Notes page will come out of it.

I've heard the term from a British writer as well. But it was being used in the context of Australia and that's not a term used in Australia. The preferred terminology is Indigenous Australians if you're including (or not being specific about) both Australian Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

Edit for typo.

edited 28th Mar '18 4:51:21 PM by KnightofLsama

Since we're on the topic of the East Coast natives, I always wondered why was it that the likes of the Five/Six Nations - despite being one of the most powerful Native American blocs in history - never actually tried to develop an urban society the same way that the natives of Central and South America did. One would think that since the natives of North and Central America conducted trade with each other (as evidenced by archaeological findings), at least one of the northern people's might have been inspired to build a Teotihuacan of their own.

edited 28th Mar '18 6:45:09 PM by FluffyMcChicken

They settled later. That's all it is. People don't start building cities until their agricultural base has been stable for a long, long time. Mesoamerica developed corn and other staple crops millennia before any of those same crops reached the Eastern USA.

As for being inspired by what they saw in Mesoamerica...they never went there. Trade was conducted through intermediaries. The only Mesoamerican products that reached the Eastern USA were those that had some value to the peoples living inbetween and that therefore left Mesoamerica in the first place. This, for the record, is one reason it takes so long for corn to make the trip—it has to pass through multiple areas, like northern Mexico, Texas, etc, that are not suited for growing crops, before it reaches the Eastern USA.

Going to recommend that if you haven't read Guns, Germs, and Steel you go read it. Jared Diamond took on the question of "why did some societies develop faster than others" and more or less settled it. Various writers have challenged parts of this thesis since, and refined others, but the general thrust of his argument has remained untouched.

edited 28th Mar '18 6:59:53 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Thanks. I've always wondered why I always keep seeing that book in bookstores everywhere.

I've read that the Five/Six Nations' settlement-based lifestyle played a key factor in crippling them when Washington unleashed the Continental Army upon them in retaliation for allied native participation on the British side at the height of the American Revolution in 1779. While a more nomadic people would likely have quickly relocated away from the advancing Patriot forces, the pro-British Iroqouis were determined to hold onto their land while hoping that Barry St. Leger's British army in Canada would intervene to assist them.

However, St. Leger withdrew his forces back to Canada shortly before the Patriot victory at Saratoga - which also destroyed the other British army based from Canada - due to realizing that his supply lines were being overextended. This doomed the pro-British natives, whose villages and food stocks were burned, and many died fleeing to Canada in the winters that followed, essentially destroying the Five/Six Nations in New York.

Since you're Canadian, this is all probably textbook history to you anyways.

Edit: To be more precise, the Saratoga campaign effectively removed the presence of regular British army formations based from Canada in the northern colonies. Burgoyne's surrender and St. Leger's withdrawal meant that the pro-British natives were left with largely only Loyalist formations as their white allies in the field, which put them at a decisive disadvantage against the Continental Army bolstered by local militias in engagements such as the Battle of Newton.

edited 28th Mar '18 7:40:17 PM by FluffyMcChicken

It did...though you might say as well that the CSA's "settlement-based lifestyle played a key factor in crippling them during the Civil War." It's one of those arguments that isn't inherently racist, but where you do have to question why it's brought up as an explanation when Native Americans are defeated in warfare, as opposed to when anyone else does; no one ever declares that Rome fell to the barbarians because they were settlement-based. There's almost an assumption built in that natives are "supposed" to be nomadic, and that settlements are therefore a bad idea for them.

I'd note here that the native tribes and nations of the Eastern Seaboard and the Old Northwest actually did a far better job of resisting American expansion than did those of the "Wild West." More American soldiers died in the course of the Northwest Indian War against the Shawnee, Miami, Delaware, et al, than died in almost the whole of the wars for the West. St Clair's Defeat in particular sent the whole of Washington's administration into a panic; there were (unrealistic) fears of natives marching on the capital after that one.

Much of civilization as we know it relied on people having access to a source of food that allowed them to actually stay in one place for a long period of time.

Yep. And different parts of the world have different numbers of easily domesticated flora and fauna. It's a lot easier to domesticate wheat than corn for instance.

All this talk really makes me wonder what a direct sequel to Assassins Creed III would look like. The Northwest Indian War would really test Connor's conscience.

And for the record, further south, they ''did''. They had towns and cities, the largest being Cahokia in modern Illinois. But their primary building materials were rammed earth and wood which don't preserve well. And when the Eurasian diseases tore through North American populations (often without any direct contact from Europeans), population densities dropped below the levels sustainable for large, urban settlements. So when European settlers started moving into the area, their cities weren't obvious any more.

edited 29th Mar '18 12:51:38 AM by KnightofLsama

I'm just gonna go back a few posts and point out that Usonians is a absolute disaster of an artificial word and that America as a continent is a plauge on every every system of continents.

North and South America are ave were physically and culturally much more separate than Africa, Asia, as Europe ever were and if you want to argue there's one American continent, the only logical conclusion is that Theres also an Afro-Eurasia.

And as [up.] Said there actually were a number of indigenous cities in modern America, they just collapsed badly due to disease. I They there are still a few mounds built by then that are the subject of quite a bit of study

edited 29th Mar '18 4:29:48 AM by Joesolo

The same is the case with Africa. Areas that didn't have easily accessible stone and hadn't worked bricks and tiles out (because not every place is Egypt with plenty of water and loads of different kinds of sand)... didn't build towns and cities that could last three decades of neglect when either the latest nightmare from the Congo ripped through, the Arabs brought something fun from Asia or the Protuguese arrived with a new strain of whatever. Not to mention populations regularly having to shift about and decimate each other over resources... because the Sahara be crazy like that.

But, they still built those towns and cities. Out of whatever grass, wood, earth, dung, bones and leather they did have.

Greater Zimbabwe, for example, didn't appear out of context: that was the architecture everybody else around was using, except put into stone rather than relying on bone-dung-and-clays-cement/adobe. Stone that was fairly easy to get right where the town grew into a city in a place that was easy to farm, even with Africa's somewhat less-bred crops (African climate cycles don't generally lend themselves to long term agricultural projects like getting the native sorghums —of which there are several varieties, not all of which like other parts of Africa, so good luck keeping your tribe's project of 800 years if you need to move— to become more maize-like or tef to get bigger). Like South America, Africa has loads of local food crops most people have never heard of (mainly because they generally prefer their localised conditions, the scamps — except sugar beet: that did better elsewhere). A surprising number of of which are actually close relatives of both South American and Australian ones (Gondwana, bitches!).

edited 29th Mar '18 7:35:26 AM by Euodiachloris

So far as I know, the abandonment of Cahokia and similar urban centers happened well before Europeans arrived, and had more to do with climate change than the spread of disease. Unless someone knows differently?

IIRC, the League of Six Nations broke apart during their wars with the Americans, at least one tribe allied with the colonists, others remaining neutral or allying with the British, and they even ended up fighting one another, but its been awhile since I read about that.

I dont notice that the more migratory lifestyles of tribes further West helped them much in their conflicts with Whites. All major tribes, so far as I am aware, depended upon geographically delimited territories for their survival.

It's generally difficult to quantify the effects of climatic change on cultures because climate is a background effect that often operates in a "statistical" manner and paleoclimate is an inexact science. I believe it is correct to say that Cahokia itself was abandoned because of floods.

Its not that hard. Average annual tempuratures are preserved in a variety of ways. The onset of a so called "mini ice age" occurred around that time, and Cahokia was not the only population center to disperse.