Sorry if I'm sounding grouchy - I'm just tired of people using the phrase "The Indians", as if we were all the same, and that what applies to one automatically applies to the other... Nothing is ever that simple.
By the way, 2banana? If you ever get a chance, take a look at the Constitution of the Iroqouis Confederacy - it's well over 500 years old (pre-contact) and is an incredible system - especially for a bunch of stone-agers... ;0)
You don't sound grouchy. I was just teasing you about the "blanket statement."
I'm all for the truth. See my previous posts.
"If you ever get a chance, take a look at the Constitution of the Iroqouis Confederacy - it's well over 500 years old (pre-contact) and is an incredible system - especially for a bunch of stone-agers"
I don't doubt that at all. :)
A bunch of stone-agers... Riiighttt....;)
Hmmm, well put a few whites in the middle of the forest in a survival situation, and put one Lipan Apache in the middle of the forest. No freaking contest as to who would win. :)
Yeah, it sucks. It is as bad as taking the widely varied tribal heritages of those of European ancestry and lumping them under "white".
In both instances, there were numerous distinct cultures, with their own languages and customs, modes of worship, and codes of behaviour.
A Lakota Sioux is no more a Chippewa than a Scotsman is a Spaniard.
Quite a trick, for a group that had no written language or other means of recording what happened hundreds of years before, other than oral tradition, which tends to be corrupted and updated with each passing century and the experiences of the oral "traditionists". Ever play "telephone"?
Point me to a 500 year old document written by the natives in a native language 500 years ago, and I will admit the error of my ways and apologize naked at the Washington mall.