Posted on 12/03/2001 11:18:01 AM PST by electron1
I have a question. I was discussing Native Indians with a friend of mine, and she seems to believe that Indians were nature loving angels and our ancestors totally ruined their harmonious relationship with nature. Is this true?
This may very well be true, but since it fits perfectly into the liberal propaganda, I have my suspicions. Since liberals are known for supressing the truth to further their cause.
I have also seen posts on here where a person has briefly mentioned that the way we currently imagine the Indians of the time is not true to how they actually were.
Can anybody assist me in understanding the true character of the Indians at the time? I appreciate any input.
"you know...nice tortures such as deboweling."
I assume you mean disemboweling.
IIRC, Wallace was dragged through the streets, hung from the gallows, then cut down while still breathing.
After this, he was drawn. This is different than simple disembowelment... his intestines were ripped out slowly, then burned.
Next he was quartered... all his limbs and head were cut off.
His head was placed on a pole on London Bridge, while his limbs were sent to various points around Scotland.
Yes, this sounds pretty savage to me.
"Why don't some of you spend as much time naming European cultures who fought over land and employed torture."
The question posed by the poster of this thread was about the Native Indians.
Post a thread about the various atrocities of other ethnic groups and I am sure lively discussion will ensue.
"There are many savages in the world...I don't think color of skin or culture made much of a distinction."
What part of my post implied that I thought savagery was exclusive to the Indians?
The words I posted were those of a contemporary observer, John Lawson.
He actually experienced the things described. We didn't.
FWIW, he was pretty friendly to the natives when compared with some contemporaries.
Yes, my ancestors are responsible for horrible things, too... on both sides.
My mom is part Cherokee but I don't know how much.
My dad's family has been here since Jamestown, ca.1623.
I am not so shallow as to think that anything regarding this issue is black or white... more like shades of gray.
No one is blameless in this.
American, British, American Indian, French, Japanese, German...
All cultures have things they are ashamed of, or at least should be.
I believe this definitely includes America's treatment of the native Indians.
However, they were not all the gentle natives that historical revisionists would have us believe.
Anyone who says otherwise is being totally disingenuous.
There are plenty of other people on this thread that you should take greater issue with than me.
Take a look.
FRegards.
CD
Cortez had several men with him who later wrote books about their journey to Mexico City, and all agree that before their arrival at Veracruz, they stopped off a while along the coast of Yucatan, where the Mayans were thriving as farmers. In fact, Cortez and his men said there were a few earlier Spanish explorers living among the Mayans in Yucatan. However, at that time, the big Mayan cities were no longer as important as they had been in the past. They were like rundown and stuff. Sort of like Detroit. By then, most of the Mayan culture had become very rural as it had been in the past.
What is most interesting in my area of New Mexico is that there is some evidence of Mayan explorers visiting New Mexico about 1,000 to 1,200 years ago. Ive read that New Mexico turquoise has been found at Chichen Itza, and Macaw feathers have been found at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. Chaco thrived for about 200 years, then a big drought came and many of the early New Mexico Indians moved over along the Rio Grande, about 1,000 to 900 years ago.
I was able to visit Yucatan about three times in my life, and I still remember much of my 1964 trip as if it were just a few weeks ago. I love the place. It is more tropical than Northern Mexico. The local Hispanics, Spanish, and Mayan tend to not think of themselves as Mexicans. They are Yucatecans.
I keep reading that Navajos and Apaches speak a similar language, meaning that in the past their tribes were the same or came from the same place, from up in Canada. While the Pueblos apparently descended from the local Anasasi, who descended from the more ancient local Indians who were here for thousands of years.
I NEVER mention the name Kit Carson out here. In fact, I cant even mention Columbus.
There are still remote trading posts on the large Navajo reservation that use a barter system, the older Navajos dont speak any English, and they trade rugs that they make and other stuff like mutton for regular food goods. You probably know this, but Im saying it for the others.
Chief Powhattan in NY was running a large government (by Indian standards). Pocahontas may have purposely staged the intervention when she "saved" John Smith, in a shrewd move to get him to ally with them.
It would be stereotyping to pretend all indians were naive, peace loving people, although most had nature-centered religions, so it would not be wrong to call them "in tune with nature."
Yeah, they had already perfected human sacrifice even before the Europeans met them.
So now that the DemocRATs want to give subsidies to bison ranchers, I guess we'll se the destruction of the forests. Maybe we should warn Earth First. And PETA.
The Aztecs practiced religions and customs that might be associated with a period of 3000 to 2000 BC. There accomplishments included pyramid uilding, cannabilsm, war and slavery.
The tribes of the east coast of the US were more social/communal. They hunted and gathered food and build villages. Their arts and craft were more developed. They might be more in line with the time period ater the fall of the Roman Empire say 500 to 1000 BC.
The Eskimos were very tool adept since their very survival depended on making tools to hunt and forage for their very existence. They were a very isoated culture and and developed arts, dance and story telling to pass on their history. Hard to date them since they were little changed by time.
The Plains Indians were more mobile, (once they obtained horses from the Cortez expeditions. They built villages, foraged, and fought each other with a gusto. They might also be categorized in the time period of 200 BC to 500 AD.
There are some excellent Native American History courses given at most junior colleges. It wouldn't hurt to pursue this interest in the libraries and on the Internet.
Most people from Tennessee have some Indian blood in them. Usually Cherokee. Elvis was part Cherokee.
You are absolutely correct. When the white settlers began moving west and encountered the various mounds and such, the surviving Indians had no idea who made them although they were (the mounds, etc) less than 100 years old. All the old story tellers had died off and the communications link had been broken and all the acquired knowledge was lost.
I recently read that the Appalician(sp) Mountains contained the largest monolythic group of people remaining in the US. The Irish and Scots who settled there are largely, still there and have not intermingled with other races/nationalities as has most of the rest of the US. (I didn't explain that well but, you get the jest.)
She and her baby were kidnapped by indians in 1697. She and a fellow captor escaped with revenge -- in the form of some 10 indian scalps.
The people I am most familiar with are the Anasazi. They were a mostly peaceful agricultural people that also traded with many others tribes. While they were good at agriculture, especially growing corn, they never applied that knowledge to forests. Consequently, they did a lot of damage to the forests of the southwest, which have still not recovered, 700 years later. Some info here
As for being environmentalists at one with nature, in the way that a liberal means it now, I think would be completely illogical and absurd to them. Nature was something to be fought and defeated, or it would kill you. A philosophy where nature is a benevolent provider is for people who have lived indoors their whole lives.
There is also a tendancy for liberals to assign nature worship to them, as in some sort of gaia worship. They were religious, but there is no evidence I know of that they worshiped nature, in any way that a liberal would have wanted them to. They believed in an afterlife for people, and believed that they could communicate with the spirit world. They had sacred places, such as certain rock formations, but they did not worship the rocks themselves, or any other natural object. They also built sacred spaces with their own hands, something completely out of place if they worshiped "nature."
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