My niece posted this on Facebook and I thought it interesting.
Below is the tribal map of Pre-European North America.
The old map below gives a Native American perspective by placing the tribes in full flower ~ the “Glory Days.”
Native Tribes of North America Mapped
The ancestors of living Native Americans arrived in North America about 15 thousand years ago.
As a result, a wide diversity of communities, societies, and cultures finally developed on the continent over the millennia. The population figure for Indigenous peoples in the Americas before the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus was 70 million or more.
About 562 tribes inhabited the contiguous U.S. territory. Ten largest North American Indian tribes: Arikara, Cherokee, Iroquois, Pawnee, Sioux, Apache, Eskimo, Comanche, Choctaw, Cree, Ojibwa, Mohawk, Cheyenne, Navajo, Seminole, Hope,Shoshone, Mohican, Shawnee, Mi’kmaq, Paiute, Wampanoag, Ho-Chunk, Chumash, Haida.
For instance, the “Glory Days” of the Maya and Aztec came to an end very long before the interior tribes of other areas, with some still resisting almost until the 20th Century. At one time, numbering in the millions, the native peoples spoke close to 4,000 languages. The Americas’ European conquest, which began in 1492, ended in a sharp drop in the Native American population through epidemics, hostilities, ethnic cleansing, and slavery.
When the United States was founded, established Native American tribes were viewed as semi-independent nations, as they commonly lived in communities separate from white immigrants.
Heartbreaking.
ReplyDeleteEuropeans have not been kind to indigenous peoples.
DeleteI would be interested to know where you found the figure of 70 million, it seemed very large to me, Wiki page says estimate of the entire world population at the time is 350-400 million and estimates of the native pollution in the Americas before the Europeans arrived seem to vary greatly??
ReplyDeleteIt's the post as I saw it on Facebook, not my writing or research.
DeleteAnd then we had to show up and ruin it all.
ReplyDeleteIt's the way of the world, sadly. Invaders and settlers shape history.
DeleteThat is interesting.
ReplyDeleteThose traditions and peoples should be honoured.
DeleteOfficial public events in our town generally begin with an acknowledgement that were are living on unceded land.
ReplyDeleteI found an official statement by our library.
“We [I] would like to begin by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is the traditional unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg People. We are meeting on land that has been inhabited by Indigenous peoples from the beginning. We are grateful to the generations of people who have been, and continue to be, stewards of this place.”
That kind of acknowledgement is becoming more common.
DeleteMy late brother worked for years with the Tsilhqotʼin (Chilcotin) people of BC to establish the land title for the Tsilqot'in Nation.
Very interesting ... thank you.
ReplyDeleteAll the best Jan
It's a pity the map cannot be enlarged.
DeleteI find my heart breaking a little whenever I consider the plights of indigenous peoples from all over the world. Usually these people lived in harmony with the natural environments they inhabited. Very often, European invaders treated them like sub-humans. It's so sad.
ReplyDeleteBeing forced to move from tribal lands to unfamiliar territory must have been traumatic.
DeleteHi Janice - this is great ... when I was staying on Vancouver Island for that year ... I was really interested in finding out more ... the early peoples had/have so much to offer ... I'll be back to look at this map in more detail - excellent you posted for us - thank you ... cheers Hilary
ReplyDeleteWere you anywhere near Williams Lake? That's where my late brother lived and worked.
ReplyDeleteAs an American I can safely say that the way this country has treated Native Peoples is abominable.
ReplyDeleteIt happens everywhere. Indigenous people are trampled over by invaders and settlers.
DeleteI read this to Bro and we had a long discussion about indigenous people and later immigrants (usually from Europe in the histories we are considering). Maori had been in NZ only about 600 years before Europeans arrived. 15000 years is a much longer undisturbed development of civilizations.
ReplyDeleteThe migration of peoples is a lifelong study for anthropologists. It's hard to imagine New Zealand as unoccupied.
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