Always amused me that so many thought the Native Americans had no real civilisation and "lived as one" with the land.
We owe a lot to the Scottish, who laid down a generation of arguments in the early 1700s. That's hardly a vaccuum.
There is a tendency to lump together all indigeous people of North and South America, known generically as "Indians".
But in fact, they had little in common with each other, and often were at great odds with their close neighbors, lacking even a common language in many cases. There were traveling "Kokopelli" traders that did carry trade goods, news, entertainment and just plain gossip between tribes over a wide area, which did have some kind of homogenizing effect, in a region that stretched from probably somewhere in the Ohio valley, to the capitals of the Aztec and Mayan empires.
But passive? The adjective just does not apply. There were widespread wars, incursions on territory, and atrocities against enemies that would curdle the blood, even of folk familiar with Old Testament history. The Spanish had somewhat better technology than the Aztecs (horses and firearms), but they were in reality more savages than the civilization they destroyed.
Possibly not then but certainly now.
Not sure all the research in this article is reliable. For instance, it claims that only in the 1990s was it realized that knotted strings represented "texts" but my book on "Picture Writing of the American Indians" (1893) indicates that it was known that Peruvians used a three dimensional array of knotted strings (quipu) to keep accounts.
They never heard of the Comanches?
a) they picked flowers and used all of the beast.
or
b) they acted in self interest and that involved whacking each other from time to time.
I choose b.
Thanks.
you'll find this interesting
Bump for later. Thanks for the article.
ergo.. the myth of 'value free science'
imo
Mann's research and writing is better fit for an article in People or Time. I read this book carefully - Mann is surprisingly ignorant of some pretty well known facts which call into question some of his 'synthesis'of the story of the indigenous peoples. For example, he is unaware that kite flying and kite battles have taken place in Asia (China and Japan) for thousands of years, the 'knot-tying' as a way of recording events. On a more contemporary note, he apparently missed hearing that the famous American Indian actor, Iron Eyes Cody - was born Espera DeCorti on 3 April 1904 in the small town of Kaplan, Louisiana. He was the son of Francesca Salpietra and Antonio DeCorti, she an immigrant from Sicily who had arrived in the USA in 1902, and he another immigrant who had arrived in America not long before her.
A small point but these and other inept analogies and conclusions don't lend much creditability to his logic. He is a mediocre, but entertaining writer of fiction. Actually, he probably is an excellent choice to communicate faux science to the masses - we watch for his next book on the perils of man-made global warming,
earlier on FR...
A fascinating new look at America before Columbus
The Charlotte Observer | Aug. 14, 2005 | CHARLES MATTHEWS
Posted on 08/17/2005 2:43:12 PM EDT by Between the Lines
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1465258/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1486753/posts?page=23#23
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