Cahokia

DISCOVERY OF NATIVE AMERICAN SOCIETIES

The history of Native Americans in North America is about 500 years old, but this knowledge dates from “discovery” of America by Europeans. For most who study history of “New World,” it begins in 1492. Had history been written from point of view of Native Americans, year 1492 would be the point in history that forever changed their way of life. The native tribes, of course, were here long before their discovery. In fact, Anasazi or “Ancient Pueblo” people of Colorado River region of American Southwest are now well documented to have preceded Navaho and Apache tribes of this same region. These ancient Pueblo, or Anasazi, are now known to have migrated from Mexico into Southern Arizona region about 3,000 years ago and to have introduced maize (corn) cultivation to this region.

Settlements are known to exist at Cahokia, Moundville, Alabama, and Natchez, Mississippi existed long before 1492. The Siouan, Algonquian, and Iroquoian, in addition to many others, developed great societies. The Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara, among others, occupied huge expanses of Midwest. Within these tribal cultures, no laws, courts, judges, prisons, or police existed, nor was there the need for such formal mechanisms of social control. Nonetheless, these tribal cultures prospered with the multitude of informal social control mechanisms that included exclusive hunting privileges reserved to more powerful tribes in designated geographical boundaries. Of course, conquest of native tribes by U.S. government would later impose the whole new body of land ownership regulations. (Young 2000 p20)

Columbus erred in his identification of indigenous people because he was unaware of large land mass located between Europe and Asia. Columbus called Caribbean people Indians because of mistaken belief he had discovered the shorter route to India. Yet his greater misjudgment was to interpret indigenous people and cultures that he encountered based on the European point of view (Josephy 1963:4). For the Native American view of early history of Americas, see Richter (2001).

WARFARE BETWEEN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT AND INDIAN NATIONS

The world of Plains tribes changed after 1492 primarily because of disease, economic changes, and devastating impact on environment caused by white settlers, sometimes referred to as “hairy men.” But surprisingly, there was not the great deal of warfare between native tribes and frequently insatiable settlers. In fact, during period of heaviest fighting from 1865 to 1898, Plains Indians killed only the total of 919 U.S. soldiers, and large majority of these involved defensive battles in response to assaults by U.S. Cavalry. More than the third of aforementioned 919 fatalities occurred at Fetterman Massacre in 1866 and Little Big Horn in 1876. (Wall 1995 p90)

By time of U.S. Census of 1920, American Indian population count had fallen below 100,000 people. Of course, while it was true that on some rare occasion American Indians would kill white settlers, this event was extremely rare. In fact, recent calculations of total number of white settlers killed by Plains Indians from 1800 to 1870 measure such fatalities to be fewer than ...