I Need Sources for a Balanced Discussion of Aboriginal American Culture

Try looking up the Karankawa Indians (Texas). Many reports of cannibalism, especially towards their rival tribe the Commanche.

Click here for a pleasant story

Karankawa Info

Scalping Link

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How were the Native Indians when Columbus arrived?[Angels?, Savages?,etc]

The journals of Lewis and Clark talk about the practice of stampeding an entire herd of buffalo over a cliff in order to use just what the Indians needed. I guess that's not exactly a reference that you can link easily, but it is where I first read of the practice.

I believe the journals also talk a little about slavery. Sacagawea, the wife of their interpreter, had been captured by other Indians as a slave and eventually sold to her husband. I talk a little about her life at Sacagawea: Reality vs. U.S. Mint.

I hope this helps.

WFTR
Bill

What difference does it make? - This is one where you could look worse for winning.

I am sure that they killed as many buffalo as they could any way they could. So what? Environmentalism and endangered species were not part of the vocabulary. Survival was. There were not enough of them to do any lasting damage, so no lasting damage was done by them. On balance, they did a lot less damage than we have, but that is because of our sheer numbers, and because we change whatever land we touch permanently. Evidence of their footprints might be gone with the next rainfall.

If some want to glorify the romance of indian life and nomadic culture, let them. It is no threat to find it interesting or to find harmony with the land in it. It was a simpler time and a simpler life than ours, and many, like me who hate concrete and highrises, enjoy the imagery of Dances with Wolves. Niether side should try to apply today's thinking to it.

If some want to glorify the romance of indian life and nomadic culture, let them.

It doesn't stop there. The noble Indian myths are tied into environmental
pressure to 'preserve' land as nature left it. Indians had a significant impact
on the land, and what we are driving ourselves to the brink to preserve
may have been so altered by Indians, that we have to way of knowing
what 'natural' is. And that's just one of the problems with living a lie.

There were not enough of them to do any lasting damage, so no lasting damage was done by them.

There used to be horses and camels native to North America by 1492 they were no more. Until the reintroduction of the horse, which allowed them to hunt and bring down one buffalo at a time they drove them over cliffs, One tribe of under 100 people slaughtered thousands of buffalo, most left to rot.

The deserts of the southwest used to be only semi-arid until they cut down so many trees that they caused climate change in that region.

The mound builders of the mid-west ruined their environment to the point that they died out from massive starvation. The reason the land was so green and lush when the settlers came along was that the local tribes that they met had just gotten there themselves.

In much the same way the Maya had deforested and stripped Central America. It took a couple of centuries for the land to recover.

I question what you call, lasting damage.

So far nothing on this scale of damage has been done since.

a.cricket

I question what you call, lasting damage. So far nothing on this scale of damage has been done since

I call lasting damage, or lasting impact, our cities, freeways, homes, and development caused by millions of people... but if you want to blame the indians for all the "real" damage done to the environment, go for it. Just know that you are not living in reality any more than the wackos on the other side.

As for whether any particular piece of land being debated is truly "natural", I don't see what difference it makes. Wild lands either have intrinsic value as wild lands or they don't. I happen to believe that some large tracts of land should always be kept wild as a valuable public resource... but that doesn't mean humans must be kept out, or that once humans have set foot on it it is no longer natural, we are natural too. Wild lands protected for the public need to be enjoyed by the public and open to recreactional use and even logging, but that is different than building shopping malls on it. Whether people have been part of the history of landscape or not makes little difference in whether the land as it is now is worth protecting as it is, or not.

but if you want to blame the Indians for all the "real" damage done to the environment, go for it.

I am not blaming them for all the "real damage" Just pointing out that they did do lasting damage.

I call lasting damage, or lasting impact, our cities, freeways, homes, and development caused by millions of people.

They also had cities, highways, homes and development caused by millions of people. If we all vanished today much of our infrastructure would be grown over and destroyed within a hundred years. The same thing that happened to them.

The difference between their style of land management and the modern is that we tend to clean up our messes but that is for two reasons. The first is that we know how to clean it up rather then just abandoning it for nature to do. The second is that we have the time, money, manpower and food to do so. Remember that these people lived just one harvest away from starvation and massive die offs. We aren’t and that gives us time to correct our mistakes.

There is a great deal of “wild land” left and if it has been tamed if you just leave it alone for a few years it goes right back to wild. Nature wins every time.

I am not attacking them I am trying to point out the silliness of the “Noble Savage who lives in harmony with nature” myth whether it is in the Americas or else where. The idea is dangerous and mostly promoted by people who have watched too many Disney movies and think that walking from one building to another is “communing with nature.”

A more primitive society uses many more resources and is much more polluting and wasteful then a more advanced society. But the exact opposite is being taught in school today and that is very troubling to me.

a.cricket

We are agreeing more than disagreeing. I agree that nature has incredible power to regenerate if given the chance, and I also agree that we now know how to be as good as we can be to our environment when there are so dang many of us, and our habits of paving everything and producing our wares have become so "unnatural" and potentially harmful.

I guess I only question the wisdom of trying to find dirt on the indians as part of the debate. That is why I said in my first comment that we would look worse for winning. It gets us no further in developing a strategy now, and may only make us look like jerks, unless you expand on your point the way you just did above.

I guess we do agree. I have never looked on it as finding dirt, just as finding the truth. I don't care for culture worship, all of them have good points and bad points some more then others. I have, for example, a great deal of trouble finding anything good to say about the Aztec culture. Most of the admirable parts were not developed by them but by other cultures and only used by them.

I generally argue with students and what I have found is that you have to hit them over the head to wake them up. Also that most of them have only the vaguest idea of why they even believe what they do.

Pointing out to someone who’s only idea of what the Druids were comes from watching "The Mists of Avalon" that they had the charming custom of stuffing people in wicker baskets and roasting them alive is the first step in finding the teachable.

Some stick their fingers in their ears and hum loudly. Others are inspired to ask questions and read. Some will accept that what they thought they knew is either false or only half the story. Some won't. Those that do will be inspired to learn how to research and find out for themselves. Presto! You have created a thinker. The world is now a better place.

(Oh, boy but that sounds egotistical!)

You have to light a fire under most people to shake their worldview. And it must be done. Otherwise they are going to continue believing lies and those lies can be very harmful to the rest of us. Even if all they do is hinder the search of others for truth. Look at what happened with "The Kennewick Man". The sight is destroyed and the bones, or at least most of them, have been taken and destroyed or hidden.

What he had to tell us we might never know. Just because a handful of people were so caught up in making sure that their point of view wasn’t disturbed. And they were not even sure that that point of view was going to be disturbed only that it might be.

What happens to history when that point of view becomes the prevailing one? There are efforts to stop archaeological digs into the Anasazi ruins when we are only now just starting to understand how they lived.

Sorry for the rant but I wanted to try to make you understand why I feel this way. Those who teach this stuff are not harmless but are trying to push a watermelon agenda and that is why it matters.

Me personally, I don’t want to go back to the days when starvation was only a bad harvest away.

a.cricket

PING!

check 1491 on the Atlantic magazine web site.

The problem I have with "Dances with Wolves" is that all the lady characters are happy little women, one dimensional picture. Here are women who have to do all the dirty work after their men have a happy buffalo fight (stripping the skins, making jerky, etc. etc.)

Women in many tribes were little more than slaves. Some tribes had powerful women, including the Sioux. But Sioux women prior to menopause had few rights, unless of course they had decent husbands (good women with good husbands have a lot of power over their husbands).

Maceman:

This is from 1709.
IIRC, its one of the earliest accounts of the Indians of North Carolina.

I hope you find this of assistance.

-CD

.

From A New Voyage to Carolina, by John Lawson:

"Their Cruelty to their Prisoners of War is what they are seemingly guilty of an Error in, (I mean as to a natural Failing) because they strive to invent the most inhumane Butcheries for them, that the Devils themselves could invent, or hammer out of Hell; they esteeming Death no Punishment, but rather an Advantage to him, that is exported out of this into another World.

Therefore, they inflict on them Torments, wherein they prolong Life in that miserable state as long as they can, and never miss Skulping of them, as they call it, which is, to cut off the Skin from the Temples, and taking the whole Head of Hair along with it, as if it was a Night-cap. Sometimes, they take the Top of the Skull along with it; all which they preserve, and carefully keep by them, for a Trophy of their Conquest over their Enemies. Others keep their Enemies Teeth, which are taken in War, whilst others split the Pitch-Pine into Splinters, and stick them into the Prisoners Body yet alive. Thus they light them, which burn like so many Torches; and in this manner, they make him dance round a great Fire, every one buffeting and deriding him, till he expires, when every one strives to get a Bone or some Relick of this unfortunate Captive."

.

An account of John Lawson's murder, two years later:

New Berne, North Carolina
John Fiske

Between the Tuscaroras and the numerous Sioux tribes by which they were partly surrounded there was incessant and murderous hostility. On the other hand, there was amity and alliance, at least for the moment, between the Tuscaroras and the Algonquin coast tribes whose lands the palefaces were invading. The first murders of white settlers occurred in Bertie Precinct at the hands of Meherrins, and seem to have been isolated cases. But a general conspiracy of Iroquois and Algonquin tribes was not long in forming, and the day before the new moon, September 22, 1711, was appointed for a wholesale massacre.

A few days before the appointed time the Baron de Graffenried started in his pinnace from New Berne to explore the Neuse River. His only companions were a negro servant and John Lawson, a Scotchman who for a dozen years had been surveyor-general of the colony. Lawson was the author of an extremely valuable and fascinating book on Carolina and its native races, a book which one cannot read without loving the writer and mourning his melancholy fate. No man in the colony was better known by the Indians, who had frequently observed and carefully noted the fact that his appearance in the woods with his surveying instruments was apt to be followed by some fresh encroachment upon their lands.

Lawson and Graffenried had advanced but little way into the Tuscarora wilderness when they were taken prisoners. The Indians were very curious to learn why they had come up the river; perhaps it might indicate that the people at New Berne had some suspicision of the intended massacre and had sent them forward as scouts. If any such dread beset the minds of the red men, it was probably soon allayed; for it is clear that, had there been any suspicion, Graffenried and Lawson would not thus have ventured out of all reach of support.

The barbarians were two or three days in making up their minds what to do. They then took poor Lawson, and thrust into his skin all over, from head to foot, sharp splinters of lightwood, almost dripping with its own turpentine, and set him afire. The negro was also put to death with fiendish torments, but Graffenried was kept a prisoner, perhaps in order to be burned on some festal occasion.

Before the news of this dreadful affair could reach New Berne, the blow had fallen, not only there, but also at Bath and on the Roanoke River. Some hundreds of settlers were massacred, at New Berne 130 within two hours from the signal. No circumstance of horror was wanting. Men were gashed and scorched, children torn in pieces, women impaled on stakes. The slaughter went on for three days.

Old Virginia and Her Neighbours by John Fiske, pages 350-353
Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston, 1902

My Great-Grandfather used to tell me tales of Mic Mac raiding parties that his ancestors would go on - the purpose was to basically destroy the "eskimos" up in the north, since they were cannibals... :0) They also had a hand in exterminating the small group of Mequaegit ("Red Paint People") through warfare...

Oddly enough, my mother's people were referred to by some of their Algonquin enemies as "Mohowaanuck" (which was meant "man eaters")...

:0)

Cannabilism

New Berne, North CarolinaJohn Fiske

New Berne, North Carolina
John Fiske