4 ms·

It's amazing both: 1. How much about the Native American history we still don't know/understand. 2. How little of what we do know is taught in schools in the US

by neaden 10y ago

It's amazing both: 1. How much about the Native American history we still don't know/understand. 2. How little of what we do know is taught in schools in the USA. I don't think I any of my HS classes went into any detail about pre-contact North American history.

Swizec 10y ago
I wonder what the largest cause of this is. Two ideas come to mind: 1. We just don't have access to pre-contact North America. We weren't there to write about it, they didn't write about it, and we don't have a lore lineage because we're not part of the culture. 2. Considering what happened, it's more convenient to think that we didn't really destroy anything much and we "brought culture to the savages" and made things better. Afaik much of Africa suffers from the same sort of problem.
- neaden 10y ago
  I think it is largely the second, after all many of the different nations did have prolonged contact with America or the 13 colonies and have descendants around right now who can tell us stuff. In regards to Africa, let's face it, most of us (and I include myself here) are pretty bad with history. I would have a hard time writing more then a cursory paragraph about the 30 years war for instance even though it is an important part of European history and I can't really tell you anything about the Taiping Rebellion except that the guy on one side thoght he was Jesus' brother even though it happened at the same time as the civil war and killed many many more people. With Native American history though it is the history of where I live. I have spent my whole life living in areas that were previously controlled by the Anishinaabe people but never learned anything about them in class. To me that would be like a German student knowing as little as me about the 30 years war or a Chinese student who can't tell you the basics of the Taiping rebellion.
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    This is a global issue. History is written by winners. There are a lot of cultures within China or Russia or any other country that have been destroyed over time in the goal of national progress. History unfortunately does that to nations and peoples. The average European is as ignorant about the Sami as the average American is about the Tonkawa.
- dpc59 10y ago
  At least in Canada, a lot of the cultural lore was destroyed through systematically sending native children to religious schools where they weren't allowed to speak their language or practice their culture.
- grkvlt 10y ago
  However, point two is somewhat correct - we did make things better for the indigenous population. Imagine if Western Europe had been subjugated by the Native Americans somehow - our standard of living would have declined, we would have lost the chance of the scientific revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, let alone the 20th. I don't recall there being universities, or metalworking, sea travel, etc. before Europeans brought them to America. Cultural relativism can also be seen as abuse. Let's leave those stone age islanders alone, who are we to say that our culture is better than theirs? Of course it's better. It's abusive to deny them the hundreds of years of scientific and technical progress. We would see it as abuse if someone had a child and didn't send them to school, instead forcing them to learn how to hunt and fend for themselves... Well, that got off-topic quickly. Sorry!
Declanomous 10y ago
It's so strange how history touches on Christopher Columbus and then immediately jumps to the Mayflower even if you take honors-level history courses in High School. I incidentally learned more about pre-Colombian NA from an intro art history course and an intro religious studies course I took my senior year of college than I did in my entire education up until that point. It's kind of crazy that most people I know believe that Europeans showed up to an almost entirely empty content, and were like "Oh hey, free land." I learned about Squanto at some point, but I never learned the reason why he spoke English is because he was kidnapped by an English explorer and brought back to Europe. Or that he managed to work his way back to North America and found his tribe had been wiped out by a plague, and that this plague was a huge part of why North America was so sparsely populated. It's pretty frustrating, because teaching the land was just empty and unused is so far from the truth that it is basically propaganda.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  It's propaganda on both sides. You are correct, there are many people who act like the natives weren't practically exterminated. However, on the flip side, there's a sort of revisionist history that ignores that the vast majority of natives were wiped out unintentionally due to disease. Many new frontiers for Europeans were basically empty due to disease preceding them. Additionally, we tend to forget who the natives actually were. The Mississippian culture was forgotten, but so are the Comanches - a tribe that in the 1700s and 1800s had an uncontested empire and were described as the best light cavalry in the world. They had a massive striking range and were infamous for raids on European settlements. In these raids they had no compunction about rape and torture (infants included). It wasn't seen as wrong to them - their enemies the Utes would have done the same to them. History is often much more nuanced than people want to admit. Note, it's also crazy how empty America really was compared to Europe, China, or India at the time. If you look at maps of world population, you've got tens of dozens of cities larger than 1 million in population throughout Eurasia and virtually none in the Americas prior to 1800.
  - allemagne 10y ago
    The view that you're trying to correct generally requires a bit more knowledge than the one pushed by an average person's education. Simply teaching, by default, that there was an apocalyptic plague among Native Americans unknowingly caused by Europeans would go a long way towards balancing the narrative.

by neaden 10y ago

Swizec 10y ago

I wonder what the largest cause of this is. Two ideas come to mind: 1. We just don't have access to pre-contact North America. We weren't there to write about it, they didn't write about it, and we don't have a lore lineage because we're not part of the culture. 2. Considering what happened, it's more convenient to think that we didn't really destroy anything much and we "brought culture to the savages" and made things better. Afaik much of Africa suffers from the same sort of problem.

neaden 10y ago
I think it is largely the second, after all many of the different nations did have prolonged contact with America or the 13 colonies and have descendants around right now who can tell us stuff. In regards to Africa, let's face it, most of us (and I include myself here) are pretty bad with history. I would have a hard time writing more then a cursory paragraph about the 30 years war for instance even though it is an important part of European history and I can't really tell you anything about the Taiping Rebellion except that the guy on one side thoght he was Jesus' brother even though it happened at the same time as the civil war and killed many many more people. With Native American history though it is the history of where I live. I have spent my whole life living in areas that were previously controlled by the Anishinaabe people but never learned anything about them in class. To me that would be like a German student knowing as little as me about the 30 years war or a Chinese student who can't tell you the basics of the Taiping rebellion.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  This is a global issue. History is written by winners. There are a lot of cultures within China or Russia or any other country that have been destroyed over time in the goal of national progress. History unfortunately does that to nations and peoples. The average European is as ignorant about the Sami as the average American is about the Tonkawa.
dpc59 10y ago
At least in Canada, a lot of the cultural lore was destroyed through systematically sending native children to religious schools where they weren't allowed to speak their language or practice their culture.
grkvlt 10y ago
However, point two is somewhat correct - we did make things better for the indigenous population. Imagine if Western Europe had been subjugated by the Native Americans somehow - our standard of living would have declined, we would have lost the chance of the scientific revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, let alone the 20th. I don't recall there being universities, or metalworking, sea travel, etc. before Europeans brought them to America. Cultural relativism can also be seen as abuse. Let's leave those stone age islanders alone, who are we to say that our culture is better than theirs? Of course it's better. It's abusive to deny them the hundreds of years of scientific and technical progress. We would see it as abuse if someone had a child and didn't send them to school, instead forcing them to learn how to hunt and fend for themselves... Well, that got off-topic quickly. Sorry!

Declanomous 10y ago

It's so strange how history touches on Christopher Columbus and then immediately jumps to the Mayflower even if you take honors-level history courses in High School. I incidentally learned more about pre-Colombian NA from an intro art history course and an intro religious studies course I took my senior year of college than I did in my entire education up until that point. It's kind of crazy that most people I know believe that Europeans showed up to an almost entirely empty content, and were like "Oh hey, free land." I learned about Squanto at some point, but I never learned the reason why he spoke English is because he was kidnapped by an English explorer and brought back to Europe. Or that he managed to work his way back to North America and found his tribe had been wiped out by a plague, and that this plague was a huge part of why North America was so sparsely populated. It's pretty frustrating, because teaching the land was just empty and unused is so far from the truth that it is basically propaganda.

aaron-lebo 10y ago
It's propaganda on both sides. You are correct, there are many people who act like the natives weren't practically exterminated. However, on the flip side, there's a sort of revisionist history that ignores that the vast majority of natives were wiped out unintentionally due to disease. Many new frontiers for Europeans were basically empty due to disease preceding them. Additionally, we tend to forget who the natives actually were. The Mississippian culture was forgotten, but so are the Comanches - a tribe that in the 1700s and 1800s had an uncontested empire and were described as the best light cavalry in the world. They had a massive striking range and were infamous for raids on European settlements. In these raids they had no compunction about rape and torture (infants included). It wasn't seen as wrong to them - their enemies the Utes would have done the same to them. History is often much more nuanced than people want to admit. Note, it's also crazy how empty America really was compared to Europe, China, or India at the time. If you look at maps of world population, you've got tens of dozens of cities larger than 1 million in population throughout Eurasia and virtually none in the Americas prior to 1800.
- allemagne 10y ago
  The view that you're trying to correct generally requires a bit more knowledge than the one pushed by an average person's education. Simply teaching, by default, that there was an apocalyptic plague among Native Americans unknowingly caused by Europeans would go a long way towards balancing the narrative.