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From your reference: "it is the colonizers who get to write the history" There's a simple explanation for this. The colonists were literate, and would keep dia
by WalterBright 3mo ago
From your reference: "it is the colonizers who get to write the history"
There's a simple explanation for this. The colonists were literate, and would keep diaries and write letters about their experiences. Churches would log births, deaths, and marriages. Printers would print newspapers. Later, these materials were fodder for academics who converted them into historical narratives.
The Indians were not literate and so did not write letters and keep diaries.
Even things like the number of Indians cannot be pinned down with any precision.
- paimapi 3mo agothe Native Americans were highly literate, they just didn't record granular details to ledgers because they didn't have strictly hierarchical institutions that utilized this data for controlling their population there is so much easily searchable resources for this and though it might not be your intent, your comment reads as willfully ignorant for being so broad and bought into the type of 16th century Puritan Eurocentrism that many of the articles above discuss in depth * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_writing_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_writing_systems * https://www.science.org/content/article/roots-mesoamerican-writing https://www.science.org/content/article/roots-mesoamerican-w... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojibwe_writing_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojibwe_writing_systems * https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indigenous-languages-of-North-America https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indigenous-languages-of-Nor...
- WalterBright 3mo agoHighly literate? From your britannica reference: "No native writing system was known among Indigenous peoples of North America at the time of first European contact" And yes, I was referring to the North American Indians. I know the Mayans had writing. I even have a book on the Mayan writing system. > they didn't have strictly hierarchical institutions that utilized this data for controlling their population People did not write letters and keep diaries in order to control their population. The book "Empire of the Summer Moon" which is a history of the Commanche empire, and the book laments that their only sources were diaries and letters written by colonists.
- curioadu 3mo agoI wonder if one could group Central American and North-Central-American civilizations and peoples into two gross and very approximate groups: 1: Sedentary farmers like Aztecs and possibly Pueblos and those doing Three Sisters farming, some of them like the Aztecs having significant civilizational achievements all considered. 2: Hunting nomads, first doing fire-stick farming to create good conditions for hunting animals as well as gather certain plants, and later utilizing horses after their introduction from Europe.
- Gangway0829 3mo agoIf 90+% of whatever society you are from was killed off by disease, and the people who came across the survivors treated them as little better than cattle and systematically destroyed any remaining trace of your society, how literate would history judge you to be?
- WalterBright 3mo agoSee my quote from the Britannica.
- parineum 3mo agoLiterate has a definition that requires the ability to read and write. The North American native population was, by definition, illiterate. They had no written word. It doesn't mean they were stupid, they obviously picked it up quickly when they were exposed to it
- culi 3mo agoI don't think that's true. Mesoamerica had a very rich tradition of papermaking (Amatl) that predated paper in Europe (though probably not Chinese). Colonists severely repressed, criminalized, and even destroyed the paper and writing systems. Thousands of Maya codices were burned in 1562. Almost all pre-colombian libraries (amoxcalli) were destroyed We've deciphered Nahuatl and Maya script but Zapotec, Olmec, Isthmian, Quipu, and other scripts are still not well understood
- WalterBright 3mo agoSorry, I was talking about North America.
- culi 3mo agoThe epicentre of Amatl was North America (Mexico)
- WalterBright 3mo agoMexico is considered central America.
- culi 3mo ago(No it is not) https://www.google.com/search?q=is+mexico+central+america https://www.google.com/search?q=is+mexico+central+america
- WalterBright 3mo agoThe Britannica sez: "No native writing system was known among Indigenous peoples of North America at the time of first European contact"
- curioadu 3mo agoThe destruction during the Spanish conquests of the Aztecs and others was terrible. It was also rather disorganized initially, especially due to the huge delays regarding communication between the Americas and Europe. In regards to paper, while the Aztecs had impressive achievements, especially considering the almost complete isolation of the Americas from the rest of the world (is there any civilization close to the achievements of the Aztecs and other Amerindians in Africa south of Egypt?), are you sure that amatl/amate counts as paper? It was possibly stretched bark, and not woven. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amate#True_paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amate#True_paper > The Maya used a writing material called huun starting from the 5th century. It was made from the inner bark of the wild fig tree. It was cut and stretched thin rather than made of randomly woven fibers, which according to one source, disqualified it as true paper.