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America before Columbus
America before Columbus
By Denis Mueller
When Columbus came to America in 1492, the land he supposedly "discovered" was already inhabited by over 75 million
people, twenty-five million of which lived in North America.
The natives of America migrated across the Bering Straits
and settled into warmer areas of the continent. About a thousand years before Christ, the Hopi Indians who live in what
is now called New Mexico, were building cliff dwellings,
farming and creating villages.
When Julius Caesar was conquering the Western world, an Indian culture called the Moundbuilders, who lived in the Ohio
Valley, were making huge structures out of the earth. One of
them was said to be over three miles long. The area served as
a trading post of sorts, where people came from the West, the
Gulf of Mexico and the Midwest for trade and the exchange of
goods. So you can see, a system of trade and commerce existed
before Columbus even arrived.
In what is now called Pennsylvania and upper state New York,
lived the Iroquois. The Iroquois lived in villages and had a
very sophisticated social system, which was in many ways,
superior to the European culture. The land was worked in common and it was owned by the whole nation. Women held a high
place in the Iroquois culture. Family names were tied to the
women, not the man. If a man married, he joined the family of
his wife. Women farmed the land while the men hunted for fish
and game. Power was shared by men and women and the European
model of male dominance was conspicuously absent in the Iroquois culture. Children were not punished harshly and were
taught equality in possessions. This is contrasted with the
severity of the Puritans who believed in harsh punishment.
This is contrasted with the culture that the Europeans
brought to the New World. The Europeans were a society of
rich and poor, controlled by priests, governors and male
heads of families. The Iroquois society had no laws, sheriffs, judges or juries, yet boundaries of behavior existed.
If someone stole food or shamed their family, they were
banished until they had morally atoned for their actions.
So this was the land Columbus "found." There was no written
language, however, their history was passed on by oral tradition. They paid attention to the development of an
individual's personality. This kind of community lasted long after
the Indians were conquered. John Collier, who lived with the
tribes of the American Southwest, said of the spirit of the
natives, "if we could make it our own, there would be an
eternally inexhaustible earth and a forever lasting peace."
Perhaps this is myth making, but many of the journals kept
by Europeans repeated the same thing; What can we learn
from this? First, we can see that hierarchy leads to divisions in all societies and this stratification of power
leads to dominance by a few to the cost of many. This is
true of all European systems whether it be capitalism or
communism. Secondly, mere laws and punishment does not lead
to a peaceful society. Maybe we should study this culture
in our schools and incorporate some of its beliefs into our
own violent society.
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