1491, Post 4 of 4: People are people

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, history, western hemisphere

Who were the Indians in 1491, and before?

• They were a Stone Age people, living by hunting and gathering.
• They were a highly cultured people, living a complex political and religious life.
• They were sophisticated agriculturalists.
• They were noble and wise, living lightly on a vast land.
• They lived in the most primitive of conditions.
• They built great cities.
• They managed their environment to make life easier.
• They overran their resources and destroyed their environment.
• They were a people without history, unchanged for millennia.
• They were illiterate savages.
• Their written languages were complex and expressive.

All these statements are true. All are false. All were true at some times, for some groups. None was true of all.

In the prior three posts, I discussed things I found interesing in 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. The history of the Indians of the Western Hemisphere has been hard to discover and harder to publish. The first two hundred years of Indian-European contact resulted in near-destruction of Indian populations by disease, the subjugation of many to unequal trade practices, and the collapse of many of their cultures. The next two hundred years of "Indian wars" resulted in near-depopulation of North America and less intense, but quite devastating reduction in the populations of Central and South America.

By about 1900 AD, most U.S. and Canadian Indians lived on reservations or had been forcibly "assimilated" into white society. Mexican and Central American Indians had been chased into "waste places" the neo-Spanish society didn't care about. The Indians of South America, at least the northern half, were marginalized and mainly ignored by a larger Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking majority.

Once the film industry in the U.S. really got going, about the 1920s, huge numbers of popular films had a "Western" theme, mainly about noble whites prevailing over wily savages. When I was growing up in the 1950s, the only non-negative Indian on a popular TV series was Tonto, who regularly got beat up whenever he went into town. Bill Cosby had it right, "You go to Hell, Lone Ranger!"

If you were to take an Egyptian of the 15th Century BC and drop him near Cahokia, Illinois, he'd be on familiar ground. "These guys are building a big pyramid, like my ancestors did...only bigger!"

Take a village farmer from 13th Century AD England or France, and drop him in coastal Peru. He'd quickly learn a few things, and soon be itching to go home and get better yields from his own field.

Take a courtier from the court of Louis IX of France, say in 1215 AD, and drop him among the New York Mohawks, of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) confederacy. Their "Great law of peace" was but seven decades old, but he would find the intrigues and power by-play quite familiar and invigorating. A number of the "founding fathers" of the U.S. and its constitution claim inspiration from the egalitarian principles of the Haudenosaunee.

Which had the greater population in 1200 A.D., Paris or Tikal (in the Yucutan)? Where were the better-managed forest lands, Spain or pre-Bolivia? Was there, anywhere in Europe, a culture that developed a "long count" to rival that of the Mayas: a cycle that contains 1,872,000 days, or more than 5,000 years? (Considering that their "day zero" was in 3114 BC, the cycle will end in 2112 AD, which is of great interest to all kinds of cultists.)

Of all the statements at the beginning of this post, I consider the following to me "most true, most of the time":

• They were a highly cultured people, living a complex political and religious life.
• They were sophisticated agriculturalists.
• They managed their environment to make life easier.

In other words, they were people, like people everywhere.