[Lazamataz]

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

How were they?

They were tender.

And if you dipped them in the BBQ sauce, they tasted a lot like chicken.

[IronJack]

There are numerous resources available on the internet and at your local library if you want to research Indian history. Suffice it to say that history is written by the victors, and the White Man vanquished the Indians. So the traditional view of Indians is that they were essentially barbarians whose repeated depredations were answered by benevolent whites who rounded them up and gave them a place to live on their reservations.

The revisionist view is that the white settlers were greedy savages who poisoned the Indian culture with their materialism and their diseases, thus crushing forever a gentle pastoral people who lived in harmony with the land and who would willingly share all its blessings.

Both views are poppycock. Anthropological evidence suggests that the Plains indians lived a subsistence life, barely surviving the hostile climatic extremes of the American Midwest. Other tribes fought intermittently among themselves, often inflicting untold tortures on their prisoners and victims. That same depravity would mark their clashes with Whites.

The Whites were hardly blameless. The constantly reneged on their agreements with the natives, expanding ever westward into their hunting territories, and squandering the buffalo herds on which their very lives depended. Overwhelming profligacy and wanton destruction of Indian property accompanied the westward expansion, and it is not unreasonable to expect resistance to White encroachment. Yet when the Indians resisted, they were hunted down and slaughtered.

Like most history, the answer lies somewhere between the extremes. However, look at the fate of both races today, and you'll have an answer of sorts. An answer that probably just asks more questions ...

[RedBloodedAmerican]

I think the Indians were still struggling. Their pitching staff was weak and they could never get past the Mariners. Other than that, I think they did win their division 2 consecutive years.

[Caipirabob]

*Sigh*

Now everyone knows that the Indians were all completely civilized and all the Indian women were complete babes who talked to trees and assorted vermin and liked to date white explorers particularly when it pissed off their Chieftan fathers.

Seriously, there was such a vast variety of Indian cultures sharing so many different languages, technology levels, cultural traits and values that they had as much trouble presenting unified front as we do today.

They most likely experienced the same issues that most smaller communities experienced. Each groups experiences impacted slightly different by local traditions and values.

I love to read about them and feel the stories, such as the plains Indian cultures, are particularly Romantic. However, on the whole, the fact that they didn't pay taxes is the singular most attractive aspect of their entire culture to me.

By the way, my wife really looks like the picture above. She's a babe!

[Fred25]

Down in Mississippi in the 1700s, there used to be two big tribes, the Choctaws and the Natchez. The Choctaws (who lived near the present city of Meridian) had maybe 5,000-10,000 members and they got along very well with the nearby European settlers. The Natchez (living near the present city of Natchez) numbered maybe 3,000-5,000 and they had gotten along with the local European settlers for more than a hundred years. Both Indian groups were farmers and hunters.

Sometime around the mid to late 1700s, the Natchez tribe had a few leaders who decided they didn’t like the French settlers living near them any more (about 15 miles away), at place called Fort Rosalie, so the tribe suddenly attacked the Fort and killed about 400 French men, women, and children. There were a couple of French survivors, who gradually worked their way to New Orleans where they reported the massacre. A few months later, the French sent an ample number of troops to Natchez, and they dispatched all the Natchez Indians. That is why there aren’t any Natchez Indians in America today.

But there are still plenty of Choctaws, who now number well over 30,000. In fact, several years ago I worked for the Choctaw tribe, which is the largest employer in Nashoba County. Their new Casino and Resort Hotel is doing wonders for the local economy.

Out here in the Southwest where I live now, the Pueblo Indians were almost always peaceful, numbering more than 10,000-15,000 in the 1860s. They were farmer Indians, and when the US Army came out here in the 1860s to “tame” the Apaches and Navajos, all the different small Pueblo tribes were granted large “reservation” area which were off-limits to Eastern settlers. That pleased the Pueblo Indians very much.

On the other hand, the Apaches and Navajos were generally not farmers. For many generations they had “made their living” by raiding Pueblo Indians and white settlers.

After the Civil War, the Army finally subdued these two tribes, gave them very large reservations to live on, and supplied them with crop seed and livestock. Missionaries were assigned to teach them how to farm, but they never were very good at it. To this day, most of them don’t even understand how to raise a family garden. Over several generations, they were taught that they could no longer kill and rob people for a living. It took several generations, but they finally got the idea and became reasonably civilized.

Back East in the early settler days, there were “wild” hostile tribes, and there were non-hostile farmer Indians. The hostile tribes were the ones the early settlers, militias, and the US Army battled with. Many early white settlers intermarried with the less hostile tribes. Some Eastern tribes eventually disappeared because they became so “Europeanized” and they intermarried so much with Europeans, they gradually lost their tribal identity. Percentage-wise, I don’t know how many of the early Eastern Indians were “tame” and how many were “savage”.

Up until the late 1960s, Hollywood preferred to make movies about the hostile Indians. But in the late ‘60s, starting mainly with the film “Little Big Man”, Hollywood began making films that portrayed most Indians as “noble” and “wise”, with all white settlers and Army men being stupid and cruel. The truth is some sort of “average”, with some settlers being friendly toward Indians, and some being rather rude, and some of the Indian tribes were friendly, while others weren’t.

One of my great-great-grandmothers was an Eastern Cherokee, and there are still Cherokee reservations back East today, so I assume the Cherokees were not hostile.

[hinckley buzzard]

It may be of interest to your friend to note that all the ancient bones and traces of the eohippus, evolutionary precursor to the modern horse, have been found in the Americas.

But when Europeans came to the continent, the horse was unknown. What happened to the indigenous descendants of eohippus? Why were there no horses in the Americas, when they had actually evolved here? Take a guess.

Here's a clue. The Spaniards, who re-introduced the critter, didn't eat horses unless they had to.

[Kermit]

Ever hear of Kennewick Man? Before the American, not native, Indians showed up in North America, Kennewick Man and his race of people and other races populated at least parts of North and South America. They're not here today. What happened? Quite possibly, these races were exterminated by the American Indians. In a word, American Indians were human beings, good, bad and ugly.

[MARTIAL MONK]

If you want to understand Native culture at the time of Columbus a good place to start is to look at Afghanistan. The same influences which shaped society then are at work in the tribal culture of Afghanistan now. I am struck at the similarities. Change some details and clothing styles and you are looking back 500 years into American history.

[farmer18th]

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?

Yes.

Native Americans were gentle, generous innocents when the Europeans first arrived. They only ate nuts that naturally fell from the husk, never coaxing them roughly out of the plant before they were ready. Before spearing a fish, they would ask the great fish-spirit for permission to eat one of their brothers--and they would always sacrifice a virgin to the river god, so that the fish got an even deal. They were so consumed with a desire for fairness they would burn down the dwelling of any family whose hut got too large--thus preserving the self-esteem of everyone in the village. Fearful of anyone getting too comfortable, they would sometimes slit the pectoral muscles of young braves, jam a stick through the muscle cavity, tie hemp rope to the stick ends, and hang the now uncomfortable one from a tree.

The land belonged to everyone. They considered it silly to own the land. But if someone invaded their hunting grounds, the intruder would be slowly tortured and then killed. (This is an example of their innate fairness.)

They were so religious that the smallest coincidence of nature could send them into a fearful, superstitious panic. This native piety sometimes meant that another virgin would need to sacrificed.

Your friend is exactly right. Just agree with her and walk away slowly, not turning your back.

[xm177e2]

Some were very nice and nature-loving. In the San Francisco Bay Area, they were very peaceful and tolerant. The Iriquois in the Northeast were NOT peaceful, they were vicious warriors. Some of the Indians in the Southwest were cannibals. Some Indians were extremely brutal, murdering pregnant women, torturing warriors from other villages, etc.

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."

[Darheel]

Ask a Lib what 'SCALPING' means.

[Young Werther]

You begin by realizing that the "New World" tribes all existed in different time periods.

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.

[KillTime]

I'm not a student in the matter, but I collect rare books and one of the subjects I collect are books on indian captivity. Yes, many tribes were "in-tune" to nature; they had to be since they lived in and off of nature. But their cruelity to their enemies was very substantual and horrific. Then again, it was no different than the barbaric european torture inflicted upon various religions throught the middle ages, the orient peoples and african tribes torture of enemies throught time, etc. The blood lust and mans cruelty to man for what ever reason is part of the history of all races all over the world. But then again, so is kindness. =)

[nicollo]

As a descendent of Hannah Dustin, well, let's just say in our line revenge was had.

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.

[Vince Ferrer]

bump to your #26 dandelion

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."

[Don Myers]

bttt

[sanantonioalex]

You know what? I think Free Republic posters just flat suck. I posted a reply to this query as somebody who spent ten years among native people and got not one reply to my comments --- all comments were from people who had READ about native people. Y'all suck. I'll be damned if I remain on this site or spend any more effort trying to communicate. Drop effing dead.

[wwjdn]

Remind her that scapling was started by the civilized Europeans, not the Native Americans.

[SunkenCiv]

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