How the West Was Lost by Native Americans

Frontiers of Anthropology ^ | 11-20-2012 | Dale Drinnon

[Renfield]

Everybody knows that Europeans took a lot of land from Native Americans, but this animated GIF by Tumblr user sunisup gives a great sense of just how fast the people living in North America were pushed west after Christopher Columbus "discovered" the continent.

She turned an old graphic by Louisiana State professor Sam B. Hillard into a mini-movie that viscerally demonstrates the gradual chopping away of Native American land through cessions, or a surrender of territory to another entity. The green represents Native American land, and any part that turns white was ceded. She writes: "Made because I was having trouble visualizing the sheer scale of the land loss, and reading numbers like 'blah blah million acres' wasn’t really doing it for me." Numbers wise, the amount of green land shown after 1895 is about 2.3 percent of the original size.
Hillard got his information from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of American Ethnology. The history of Native Americans is complicated, so the graphic only documents land that was ceded. Any land that was ceded but then later turned into a reservation may shop up again later in the time lapse. Whatever the in-between negotiations, it's clear the land disappeared quickly. The difference between 1784 and present day Indian reservations is striking.

sunisup.tumblr.com (via atlasextinctnations.blogspot.com)

[wizr]

No.

I think some people use God to forward their own interests. Do you think Christ would have forced children from their family homes to learn the white man’s way?

Some religions and Washington worked together to subjugate native peoples.

[ansel12]

If you know that Christians don’t worship “Gods” then you should not have written it, but thanks for clearing it up.

[wizr]

Please, go back and read Post #60 (my post).

I used a lower case (g) for gods, not as you just stated.

THHHHHAT’s ALL, FFOLKS!!

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

I was referring to the Battle of New Orleans (1815).

There was a large contingent of Choctaw Indians fighting on the side of Jackson. His allies, later deported.

[ansel12]

Christians worship gods?

[GenXteacher]

Pretty much. There is a yin-yang dynamic- you can find savagery in civilization, and some characteristics of civilization in savagery. But it generally works for scholarly study.

[GenXteacher]

“Why was the nomadic nature worshiping Amerindian given so much credit for living at one with nature and being enlightened - while the nomadic nature worshiping Mongol is given so little credit for living at one with nature and being enlightened?”

It is a good question- I mean, according to eco-geek scholars, the Mongols reduced civilization to near zero in a lot of places, leaving it in a state of nature... On top of that, they showed no discrimination as to whom they killed- Russians, Chinese, Afghans, etc- very politically correct. Strange that they are not celebrated by leftist scholars as enlightened, indeed.

[Osage Orange]

Pretty sure the Chippewa's, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi's were pretty well known to live in the Great Lakes region for hundreds of years.....

I wouldn't have called them nomadic.

[Vigilanteman]

Among the least nomadic tribes were the Mandan, who moved to what is now North Dakota from the Ohio Valley in the 14th century. They were very much a settled in agricultural civilization by the time Lewis and Clark rediscovered them in 1804. The French explorer LaVerandre had wintered with them nearly a century earlier.

Then, of course, there were the Pueblo, whose villages had lasted centuries before the nomadic Apache and Navajo begin to raid them.

We have a Navajo friend who tells us the division of the Navajo and Apache are basically a white man's invention. The only real difference is that the Navajo accepted white man's invitation to settle down and go into sheep ranching a half century or so before their Apache cousins accepted a comparable offer.

The plot gets even thicker than that. According to the legend of the Navajo and Apache, their ancestors were forced into the nomadic lifestyle by a cruel and barbarous civilization from the south which enslaved them and used them in human sacrifice. Thus, they escaped across the great desert and moved north.

Accordingly, many of them do not look kindly on the Mexican invasion of our southwest. They see it as a centuries old conflict of a centuries old conflict of the Aztec oppressors who ruined their own homeland now invading the land which they helped tame.

[BwanaNdege]

Right! Also, aren’t there several “reservations” in New York that have casinos?

[BwanaNdege]

Right! Also, aren’t there several “reservations” in New York that have casinos?

This map will zoom in a good bit.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Bia-map-indian-reservations-usa.png

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks Renfield. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[gimme1ibertee]

Good point. Thanks for the education!

[Mad Dawgg]

"How the West Was Lost by Native Americans"

They forgot to invent Gunpowder and lever action repeating rifles.

Its hard to win when you gotta scrounge your weapons from the enemy.

[WhiskeyX]

The Chippewa’s, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi’s were nomadic in the sense that their communities were built in temporary structures and not fixed in one place during a year or short period of years. This was a necessary and nomadic cultural practice required by their sedentary form of hunting, gathering, and gardening culture and economy. The community had to be moved seasonally or periodically when the game for hunting became scarce, the soils lost fertility for gsthering and gardening, and disease became problematic due to the accumulation of pests and sanitary degradation. As in many nomadic cultures, the communities rotated the campsites for their communities and lodges within a geographic region that shifted along with the changes in territorial dominance among the bands, clans, tribes, and confederations.

The Pre-Columbian and early colonial contacts with Europeans resulted in these people migrating away from their territories along the shores of Eastern North America to and around the Great Lakes region. This mass migration of the culture seems to coincide with one or more pandemics resulting from contact with Old World diseases and possible indications of a Pre-Columbian New World diseases such as forms of hemorhagic fevers found in such places as present day Mexico City and its valley.

These mass migrations were negotiated with their brother Mi’kmaq and father Abnaki peoples, and were made at the expense and conquest of the Iriquois, Sioux, and Fox among others. So, they were in fact a nomadic and migratory Neolithic culture.

[WhiskeyX]

“Some religions and Washington worked together to subjugate native peoples.”

What, if any, viable alternatives were there given the propensity of so many of these Amerindian cultures to revile, hold in contempt, raid, conquer, torture, enslave, and/or exterminate every last man, woman, child, and dog of their enemies?

If their positions of military dominance had been reversed, how many of the Amerindian cultures would have refrained from exterminating the european cultures and acted to preserve the European culture as subject nations for reasons of morality? Note, this question does not imply or suggest there were no such Amerindian cultures at all. It does ask how many such Amerindian cultures there could have been.

[Osage Orange]

Interesting...and makes sense.

Thanks-

[Osage Orange]

I read this book awhile back....Real informative read.

http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful/dp/1416591060

You might enjoy it..........

[Osage Orange]

I guess it depends on what we think "nomadic" means exactly.

Thanks-

[Vigilanteman]

Thanks OO. I always enjoy reading your comments on Native American topics.