7 ms·

I've read a bit around this topic and a rather plausible explanation is that in North America, the European settler mentality was that the north was all empty l

by altacc 4y ago

I've read a bit around this topic and a rather plausible explanation is that in North America, the European settler mentality was that the north was all empty land. Acknowledging the presence of native American towns, cities, farmlands, etc... would have brought up the inconvenient subject of ownership of the land. It was much more convenient to declare the native Americans as barbarians with little culture & society and the land unused and open to be claimed by European settlers. Inaccurate societal tropes about native Americans still persist today and education about their history is still lacking. South America was more populated but also the European tactic was of conquest of the natives, not total eradication & displacement (although they did an effective job at those as well).

kodah 4y ago
> It was much more convenient to declare the native Americans as barbarians with little culture & society and the land unused and open to be claimed by European settlers. I went to a US public school in the South and also went to a private school. We spent most semesters of history learning about Native American civilizations, construction, and at one point had to build small-scale physical replicas of their cities. That's to say, I don't really buy your explanation for the broader US. Maybe specific pockets. What I do think is more likely is that people believe that warring kingdoms were still normal back then and view Native American tribes as just that - kingdoms that were conquered. That much I can live with, but the constant lying and taking back promises we made to the Native Americans is absolute trash and should be rectified.
- zasdffaa 4y ago
  Cities, yeah? Big ones? I know of mesoamerican cities like Tenochtitlan but I am unaware of any north american Indian cities (to be fair, I'm not from the USA), so some pointers would be very welcome indeed.
  - dreamcompiler 4y ago
    Here are two: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/cahokia-mounds-state-historic-site-world-heritage-site.htm https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/cahokia-mounds-state-histor... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_Culture_National_Historical_Park https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_Culture_National_Histo...
    - zasdffaa 4y ago
      The first is debatable as it's city-ness. But that is an eye-opener! The second, wow! Thanks. I guess the scale both indicate a large social structure.
  - GuardianCaveman 4y ago
    I heard a podcast about this I forget which one but they said basically that corn was slowly developing and spreading north but it was not developed to support large civilizations like it did in the central and South America. Had Europeans not come for another 100-200 years I think it would have adapted to northern latitudes and the base for large populations and large cities would have been there. Yes the natives had corn in the north but it was a strain with very few kernels compared to what was being grown in central Mexico. I can’t recall the details but that’s the gist . I think they said only one million natives existed in the continental US when colonists first landed too
  - kodah 4y ago
    Someone already mentioned Chaco, but I'd like to point you at the Puebloans more widely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puebloans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puebloans
    - zasdffaa 4y ago
      I was aware of the people but I thought they just lived in caves and didn't know of their buildings. Great stuff, thanks.
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
And in the north, nothing can go much earlier than the last time glaciers ground everything to dust.
MockObject 4y ago
> It was much more convenient to declare the native Americans as barbarians with little culture & society and the land unused and open to be claimed by European settlers. Wikipedia says: "The loss of the population [due to disease] was so high that it was partially responsible for the myth of the Americas as "virgin wilderness". By the time significant European colonization was underway, native populations had already been reduced by 90%. This resulted in settlements vanishing and cultivated fields being abandoned. Since forests were recovering, the colonists had an impression of a land that was an untamed wilderness." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics#European_contact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_ep...
- krapp 4y ago
  And yet the phrase "merciless Indian Savages" is literally in the Declaration of Independance.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    What exactly does that illustrate about settlements in North America? Of course the Colonists knew that Native Americans existed. They interacted with them constantly.
    - krapp 4y ago
      That the United States saw Native Americans in the way that altacc described above, an "inferior" race whom Europeans had a God-given right to conquer and subdue.
      - s1artibartfast 4y ago
        I don't think anyone was arguing contrary to the idea that settlers had both the means and motive to conquer and subdue the natives.
      - GuardianCaveman 4y ago
        Thomas Jefferson viewed them as equals and wanted to prevent white settlers from going west of the Mississippi and allow the native Americans to stop warring and enslaving each other, trade and develop schools etc . Perceptions changed later in the 19th century as did policies but the White Americans had been interacting with natives for 250 years by then . It’s not a monolithic attitude and it’s an oversimplification to say they were seen as inferior
sho_hn 4y ago
"1491" is a most fantastic book about all of this.
- nkingsy 4y ago
  Relevant to this question is the story of Cortez and his pigs. Spain immediately set up shop in South America, giving us plenty of stories of vast civilizations, but Cortez made just one minor expedition across Florida and did report large cities, but only the pigs and their disease stayed behind.
- fiftyfifty 4y ago
  There was an article written by the author of 1491 in the Atlantic that is a great abbreviated version of the book for anyone interested: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/30...
s1artibartfast 4y ago
>Acknowledging the presence of native American towns, cities, farmlands, etc... would have brought up the inconvenient subject of ownership of the land. I am highly skeptical of these types of sentiments. They are simply projections of modern sensibilities to the period of European settlement. At the time, might by right was the default in Europe, with near constant wars of conquest. outside of Europe, entire islands in the Caribbean were enslaved and depopulated. Given this context, I don't think information about Native American towns was suppressed to protect the delicate sensibilities of the settlers.
- tchaffee 4y ago
  Then why in every case did they need to portray locals as barbarians when they knew the opposite was true?
  - GuardianCaveman 4y ago
    - labster 4y ago
      I’d call them Russian soldiers, or orcs for short.
    - AlotOfReading 4y ago
      Apache had plenty of knowledge of agriculture. They lived in an agricultural world and interacted with people who were agriculturalists, and even practiced herding (a form of agriculture). Moreover, it's wise to consider the context of gory incidents described in popular culture. This all took place against a backdrop of devastating war that captured the imagination of 19th century popular media. This is one of the periods of colonization where we can clearly point to genocide in the sense that total eradication was unambiguously a political goal and you could get money by bringing a native scalp/head into a government office. Despite that, as someone who's worked with primary sources from this period and region, I'll caution you that particularly lurid descriptions of atrocities are often both exaggerated and cherry-picked. As an aside, the Apache in particular were very well organized as far as first nations go and at the height of their power had thousands of warriors with fairly modern light weaponry. We have sources from the Mexican American war about Mexican commanders refusing to head off American troops because they were more worried about native forces than the Americans. That's also why article XI of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was such an important point for the negotiations.

by altacc 4y ago

kodah 4y ago

> It was much more convenient to declare the native Americans as barbarians with little culture & society and the land unused and open to be claimed by European settlers. I went to a US public school in the South and also went to a private school. We spent most semesters of history learning about Native American civilizations, construction, and at one point had to build small-scale physical replicas of their cities. That's to say, I don't really buy your explanation for the broader US. Maybe specific pockets. What I do think is more likely is that people believe that warring kingdoms were still normal back then and view Native American tribes as just that - kingdoms that were conquered. That much I can live with, but the constant lying and taking back promises we made to the Native Americans is absolute trash and should be rectified.

zasdffaa 4y ago
Cities, yeah? Big ones? I know of mesoamerican cities like Tenochtitlan but I am unaware of any north american Indian cities (to be fair, I'm not from the USA), so some pointers would be very welcome indeed.
- dreamcompiler 4y ago
  Here are two: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/cahokia-mounds-state-historic-site-world-heritage-site.htm https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/cahokia-mounds-state-histor... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_Culture_National_Historical_Park https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_Culture_National_Histo...
  - zasdffaa 4y ago
    The first is debatable as it's city-ness. But that is an eye-opener! The second, wow! Thanks. I guess the scale both indicate a large social structure.
- GuardianCaveman 4y ago
  I heard a podcast about this I forget which one but they said basically that corn was slowly developing and spreading north but it was not developed to support large civilizations like it did in the central and South America. Had Europeans not come for another 100-200 years I think it would have adapted to northern latitudes and the base for large populations and large cities would have been there. Yes the natives had corn in the north but it was a strain with very few kernels compared to what was being grown in central Mexico. I can’t recall the details but that’s the gist . I think they said only one million natives existed in the continental US when colonists first landed too
- kodah 4y ago
  Someone already mentioned Chaco, but I'd like to point you at the Puebloans more widely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puebloans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puebloans
  - zasdffaa 4y ago
    I was aware of the people but I thought they just lived in caves and didn't know of their buildings. Great stuff, thanks.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

And in the north, nothing can go much earlier than the last time glaciers ground everything to dust.

MockObject 4y ago

> It was much more convenient to declare the native Americans as barbarians with little culture & society and the land unused and open to be claimed by European settlers. Wikipedia says: "The loss of the population [due to disease] was so high that it was partially responsible for the myth of the Americas as "virgin wilderness". By the time significant European colonization was underway, native populations had already been reduced by 90%. This resulted in settlements vanishing and cultivated fields being abandoned. Since forests were recovering, the colonists had an impression of a land that was an untamed wilderness." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics#European_contact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_ep...

krapp 4y ago
And yet the phrase "merciless Indian Savages" is literally in the Declaration of Independance.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  What exactly does that illustrate about settlements in North America? Of course the Colonists knew that Native Americans existed. They interacted with them constantly.
  - krapp 4y ago
    That the United States saw Native Americans in the way that altacc described above, an "inferior" race whom Europeans had a God-given right to conquer and subdue.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      I don't think anyone was arguing contrary to the idea that settlers had both the means and motive to conquer and subdue the natives.
    - GuardianCaveman 4y ago
      Thomas Jefferson viewed them as equals and wanted to prevent white settlers from going west of the Mississippi and allow the native Americans to stop warring and enslaving each other, trade and develop schools etc . Perceptions changed later in the 19th century as did policies but the White Americans had been interacting with natives for 250 years by then . It’s not a monolithic attitude and it’s an oversimplification to say they were seen as inferior

sho_hn 4y ago

"1491" is a most fantastic book about all of this.

nkingsy 4y ago
Relevant to this question is the story of Cortez and his pigs. Spain immediately set up shop in South America, giving us plenty of stories of vast civilizations, but Cortez made just one minor expedition across Florida and did report large cities, but only the pigs and their disease stayed behind.
fiftyfifty 4y ago
There was an article written by the author of 1491 in the Atlantic that is a great abbreviated version of the book for anyone interested: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/30...

s1artibartfast 4y ago

>Acknowledging the presence of native American towns, cities, farmlands, etc... would have brought up the inconvenient subject of ownership of the land. I am highly skeptical of these types of sentiments. They are simply projections of modern sensibilities to the period of European settlement. At the time, might by right was the default in Europe, with near constant wars of conquest. outside of Europe, entire islands in the Caribbean were enslaved and depopulated. Given this context, I don't think information about Native American towns was suppressed to protect the delicate sensibilities of the settlers.

tchaffee 4y ago
Then why in every case did they need to portray locals as barbarians when they knew the opposite was true?
- GuardianCaveman 4y ago
  - labster 4y ago
    I’d call them Russian soldiers, or orcs for short.
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    Apache had plenty of knowledge of agriculture. They lived in an agricultural world and interacted with people who were agriculturalists, and even practiced herding (a form of agriculture). Moreover, it's wise to consider the context of gory incidents described in popular culture. This all took place against a backdrop of devastating war that captured the imagination of 19th century popular media. This is one of the periods of colonization where we can clearly point to genocide in the sense that total eradication was unambiguously a political goal and you could get money by bringing a native scalp/head into a government office. Despite that, as someone who's worked with primary sources from this period and region, I'll caution you that particularly lurid descriptions of atrocities are often both exaggerated and cherry-picked. As an aside, the Apache in particular were very well organized as far as first nations go and at the height of their power had thousands of warriors with fairly modern light weaponry. We have sources from the Mexican American war about Mexican commanders refusing to head off American troops because they were more worried about native forces than the Americans. That's also why article XI of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was such an important point for the negotiations.