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This applies to most of the American lore about “Indians” as well. The people that nearly all European descent settlers encountered were many generations on fro

This applies to most of the American lore about “Indians” as well. The people that nearly all European descent settlers encountered were many generations on from an utter cataclysm of continental plagues that nearly eradicated them, and certainly destroyed what advanced civilization they had pre-Columbus. The white people didn’t know they were devastating the native Americans, but they were super off-base to judge them as savages when it’s far more accurate to say that the natives who did contact and conflict with the young USA and Canada were more like post-nuclear-holocaust survivors.

dendrite9 3y ago
I've been reading Indigenous Continent by Pekka Hämäläinen recently, I picked it up now that it is available as a paperback. The history is fascinating and I highly recommend it with the note that I'm ~1/3 of the way through. Early on in the book he describes the rise of Cahokia and other Mississippian societies in America as tied to the climate in the medieval warm period. And how during the Little Ice age the priestly class could not create good conditions for agriculture, which undermined their power at a time when crops were failing and hunting became a dominant food source.
- kridsdale1 3y ago
  Fascinating.
- NSMutableSet 3y ago
  Check out https://www.sidis.net/TSContents.htm https://www.sidis.net/TSContents.htm I initially came across this book due to a Reddit post about the author being a failed child prodigy. My first thought on seeing the table of contents was "damn, this book sounds racist". But it's actually a series of historical accounts in support of Native Americans and their history.
  - atombender 3y ago
    This looks... dubious. The starting point postulating that America was populated by people from the lost continent of Atlantis does not inspire confidence in this account's historical accuracy: > An origin as a race in some specific place is more probable―most likely, in some region now under the Atlantic Ocean. ... A red-race civilization certainly developed around the north central Atlantic region on both sides of the ocean, and the geographical center of this was in what is now the Sargasso sea, in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, but where tradition on both sides of the ocean places the lost continent of Atlantis.
masklinn 3y ago
> The white people didn’t know they were devastating the native Americans, but they were super off-base to judge them as savages when it’s far more accurate to say that the natives who did contact and conflict with the young USA and Canada were more like post-nuclear-holocaust survivors. Odds are good they knew (thanksgiving is literally foundational american history, but the Wampanoag were near ended by the end of the century). But “they’re just savages” makes it much easier to genocide them and steal their land than “they’re survivors of a civilisational collapse”. The US put significant effort in extirpating the tribes from their homelands and exterminating them, this labor was considered so important even the civil war did not stop it (the Long Walk of the Navajos started around the same time as the Siege of Atlanta and the displacement / forced marchs policy outlasted the civil war, the california genocide was basically an ongoing policy from the mid 1840s to the end of the boarding schools and eugenic policies — though most of the direct killing had been achieved by the turn of the century, …).
- markdown 3y ago
  > civilisational collapse This almost implies that their civilisation failed of its own accord, rather than it collapsing because 90% of the population were wiped out by introduced plagues/epidemics.
  - Amezarak 3y ago
    There was a major collapse in North America before the arrival of the Europeans. Cahokia, for example, was abandoned before Columbus ever set sail. The diseases hit an already traumatized population.
- Amezarak 3y ago
  It's important not to leave out the fact the warfare was two-way. I mean this in an extramoral sense, not taking one "side" or another. It's just too easy to fall into the "settlers exterminating natives because they're in the way" narrative, when that's not what happened.
  - masklinn 3y ago
RajT88 3y ago
> super off-base to judge them as savages If they didn't have the weapons (and immunity) to fight them off, they were going to judge them like that no matter what. I seem to recall the story of the Spanish finding Tenochtitlan at its peak, and then destroying it.

dendrite9 3y ago

I've been reading Indigenous Continent by Pekka Hämäläinen recently, I picked it up now that it is available as a paperback. The history is fascinating and I highly recommend it with the note that I'm ~1/3 of the way through. Early on in the book he describes the rise of Cahokia and other Mississippian societies in America as tied to the climate in the medieval warm period. And how during the Little Ice age the priestly class could not create good conditions for agriculture, which undermined their power at a time when crops were failing and hunting became a dominant food source.

kridsdale1 3y ago
Fascinating.
NSMutableSet 3y ago
Check out https://www.sidis.net/TSContents.htm https://www.sidis.net/TSContents.htm I initially came across this book due to a Reddit post about the author being a failed child prodigy. My first thought on seeing the table of contents was "damn, this book sounds racist". But it's actually a series of historical accounts in support of Native Americans and their history.
- atombender 3y ago
  This looks... dubious. The starting point postulating that America was populated by people from the lost continent of Atlantis does not inspire confidence in this account's historical accuracy: > An origin as a race in some specific place is more probable―most likely, in some region now under the Atlantic Ocean. ... A red-race civilization certainly developed around the north central Atlantic region on both sides of the ocean, and the geographical center of this was in what is now the Sargasso sea, in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, but where tradition on both sides of the ocean places the lost continent of Atlantis.

masklinn 3y ago

> The white people didn’t know they were devastating the native Americans, but they were super off-base to judge them as savages when it’s far more accurate to say that the natives who did contact and conflict with the young USA and Canada were more like post-nuclear-holocaust survivors. Odds are good they knew (thanksgiving is literally foundational american history, but the Wampanoag were near ended by the end of the century). But “they’re just savages” makes it much easier to genocide them and steal their land than “they’re survivors of a civilisational collapse”. The US put significant effort in extirpating the tribes from their homelands and exterminating them, this labor was considered so important even the civil war did not stop it (the Long Walk of the Navajos started around the same time as the Siege of Atlanta and the displacement / forced marchs policy outlasted the civil war, the california genocide was basically an ongoing policy from the mid 1840s to the end of the boarding schools and eugenic policies — though most of the direct killing had been achieved by the turn of the century, …).

markdown 3y ago
> civilisational collapse This almost implies that their civilisation failed of its own accord, rather than it collapsing because 90% of the population were wiped out by introduced plagues/epidemics.
- Amezarak 3y ago
  There was a major collapse in North America before the arrival of the Europeans. Cahokia, for example, was abandoned before Columbus ever set sail. The diseases hit an already traumatized population.
Amezarak 3y ago
It's important not to leave out the fact the warfare was two-way. I mean this in an extramoral sense, not taking one "side" or another. It's just too easy to fall into the "settlers exterminating natives because they're in the way" narrative, when that's not what happened.
- masklinn 3y ago

RajT88 3y ago

> super off-base to judge them as savages If they didn't have the weapons (and immunity) to fight them off, they were going to judge them like that no matter what. I seem to recall the story of the Spanish finding Tenochtitlan at its peak, and then destroying it.