America before the Europeans

Did the pre-1492 natives have the ability to stay on topic for more than three pages of a forum thread?
:leaving:

I don't hear anybody complaining about the early period historical background info. Everything I posted about what is now North Carolina starts right around 1585, when the first English colonists went ashore (temporarily). That's because I haven't seriously researched anything prior to that.

I'm curious as to how the Tuscarora nation was accepted into this group, during the 1713-1722 transition period. I would think it might have been quite controversial.

 

Jonny

Are those other animals capable of rational thought? Do they write constitutions, make treaties, form regulations and laws that try to limit their actions? Do they put in place police to enforce the laws and a judiciary that punishes transgression?

 

Karen

Ultimately the sun will expand and destroy the earth – but not for a few billion years.

You think your recorded cultural force is so weak that it would just disappear? You can’t think very highly of it?

I can go into any decent bookshop and pick up books going back thousands of years and from a multitude of countries and cultures – I’ve read amongst others Homer, Cicero, a number of Norse sagas, the art of war, Don Quixote, Jules Verne and I could just go on and on. And I don’t speak Greek, Latin, Norse, Chinese, Spanish or French.

Are you honestly telling me that you think Melville, Twain, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, London, Hemmingway, Kerouac, Vonnegut, Irving etc etc wouldn’t last? And that’s just books what about the great art, film, music…yes how about music what about Jazz, folk, rock and roll, rap? (hell even country).

As to ‘American Culture’ what is it, I mean is the culture of 21st century America the same culture as 17th century America, I’d argue it is not.

Many people around the world are being taught English because it has become the present world’s lingua franca.

I’ve met many Dutch, Germans and even French that speak better English that many British people I’ve met.

A Brit or Yank can travel around the world getting by just with English, I know I’ve meet them.

Anyway I’ve gone off at a tangent and should stop.

 

You are clearly exaggerating the influence of the Iroquois League on early American political thought. Those principles were also found throughout Europe, be they in existing governments or in political theory.

No one is disputing that.

And such a union was rejected at the time. Your point?

Again, no one was ever disputing that.

 

You're exaggerating again....

 

Just to clarify, most of the books and published articles are actually about the second attempt at Manteo, which has been nearly forgotten. The folks dropped off there in 1585 were picked up the next year, replaced by 15 military men who were supposed to hold the location over the winter. Nobody knows what became of them, and nobody seems to care. The Lost Colony mystery pertains specifically to the group that was dropped off in 1587 and found to be missing in 1590.

Roanoke Island's only two towns are named after two tribal leaders who were said to have had very different personalities. Whether historically accurate or not, the story points out that the natives were never 100% in agreement as to how to deal with the white settlers.

There's a relatively new theory that the Lost Colony's first big move was to a location directly to the west where the main body of Albermarle Sound splits. That could have come before or after the move to Chesapeake VA, or maybe the group divided. Considering the number of years between 1590 and the first significant effort to find them, they had time to go a lot of different places, maybe more than once.

Regardless of the route taken, all the scenarios end up pretty much the same, with a small number of survivors being absorbed into the native population over time.

I believe the first move was prior to any European influence. It really is strange, to see a move that large by a non-nomadic tribe.

I don't know whether the majority of the smaller NC and SC tribes branched off from them, or were already there and halfway joined them later. There was some obvious autonomy, because the Town Creek Indians were the only ones in the state to decide that building burial mounds was a worthwhile effort. The nearest burial mound to their site is in Moundsville, West Virginia, several hundred miles away.

Worst of all, they were the target of serious military action from 1711 to 1713.

Once they decided to leave, they wrote this state off forever, to the point of disowning any tribe members who chose to stay behind.

The relocated Cherokees in Oklahoma didn't (and still don't) feel that way about their members who escaped capture in western NC. Some knew the high peaks of the Great Smokies range so well that not even the US Cavalry could track them down.

I wonder how it was decided what land they would be given. They needed a lot of acres for hunting. It's great for them that they stayed on good terms with their former neighbors!

I'm not going to worry too much about anything that far out.

I don't know; everything seems so transient in the internet age. I've already lived to see a lot of things unexpectedly leave this area. I guess anything is possible. A change in the dominant language would definitely accelerate the process of cultural change into a pop culture revolution.

Very little ever completely disappears from the academic world, but that involves a relatively small number of people. Even in New Orleans, the number of active jazz venues has fallen sharply in my lifetime. The digital archives won't ever go away, but what will the corporations that own the rights do with them? Will they find a market?

Tying it back to the original subject, it really would have benefitted the Native Americans greatly if they had shared a common language. That surely worked against them, in dealing with the English colonies.

 

Yes we can deny that influence because the men who founded our nation never once acknowledged that influence. You're pointing out coincidences, nothing more.

Yes, because if the Senate in 1988 says something is true it must be....

Facts? You're presenting supposition and coincidences, not facts. No where has it been documented that Jefferson, Franklin, and so on said "we got idea X from the Iroquois".

 

Frontiersman Robert Rogers related to the British that in Indian villages, Quote:
Every man is free....no person, white or Indian, sachem or slave, has any right to deprive anyone else of his freedom.

hmmm if no one had the right to deprive anyone of his freedom where did the slaves come from ?

 

Jennings wrote: Empire of Fortune it seems to be a rebuttal of prior studies of the period. Yet it seems just as one sided as the prior book by Francis Parkman: Half Century of Conflict.

 

Really? You know that?

 

interesting read

 

The Two Hendricks, by Eric Hinderaker. There is a statue of Old Hendrick at Lake George, he stands with Wm. Johnson. He died in battle on: The Bloody Morning Scout, of 1755, stating: "if we are all to die we are too many"

 

Awesome thread, I had no idea that the Aztec culture was so populated.

I always have thought of the Aztec/Mayan/Incan culture as Atlantis. The stories of Atlantis speak of great technology (pyramids etc that are , a great migration, etc. And the stories originate from Egypt, which came 2000+ years before Ancient Rome... So I think the cradle of Civilization is ACTUALLY America, then from there it went to the Indus Valley and Gaza, THEN to Greece etc.

Caral in Peru was discovered to be older than the pyramids... And the Indians in the Americas DEFINTELY had Pyramid tech or at least the beginning of the ideas for them, considering they showed up there soon.

 

When Samuel Champlain visited Cape Cod, he found it thickly settled with farming villages, the locals, sensing a danger to their title compelled Champlain to decamp to northern latitudes, places with less settled agriculture & less people.

Upon the arrival of The Pilgrims a few years later, they reported Cape Cod depopulated. Did Champlain leave behind a pestilence?

Did The Plague / Black Death ever reach The Americas?
Were The Vikings to blame for bringing plague. It this what wiped-out Cahokia Ill.?

 

True. It is merely apologists making lame excuses for the horrid behavior of the pilgrims.