Native American understandings

[hiflier]

6 hours ago, Incorrigible1 said:

Yet they eagerly sought Western trade-goods, when offered.

 

Trinkets look pretty good and flashy when presented to a people who have "boxed themselves in". Now this isn't directed at you Incorrigible1 or anyone else- it really isn't. And this isn't an ethics thread but I need to say it anyway. Just because a people, no matter who they are, is considered primitive by some one's standards does not automatically translate into a right to invade, abuse, belittle, harass, kill, enslave, or otherwise do whatever it takes to usurp what the primitive people have or enjoy as a way of life. It just isn't right. Period.

 

Rant over. You may now return to your regularly scheduled program.

[JDL]

TritonTr196, the Paiutes had a story about banding together to defeat the giant Stick Thrower Indians (Si-Teh-Cah) in Lovelock Cave in Nevada.  The forty-niners thought it was hooey.  Until guano miners began to excavate Lovelock Cave and found that the Paiute legend was backed up by the archeology.

[wiiawiwb]

Indians slaughtered each other, including women and children, and conquered other Indians without hesitation. Sometimes it was for retribution, other times it was simply to conquer land. Those sound rather European don't they?

 

 

Edited August 9, 2017 by wiiawiwb

[Incorrigible1]

5 minutes ago, wiiawiwb said:

Indians slaughtered each other, including women and children, and conquered other Indians without hesitation. Sometimes it was for retribution, other times it was simply to conquer land. Those sound rather European don't they?

 

 

No, they were all gentle creatures of nature, swooped down upon by the evil Europeans. Get with the program.

[wiiawiwb]

Of course Indians boxed themselves in. They chose to live in a manner unchanged for centuries if not for thousands of years.  Meanwhile, the world around them was rapidly changing. I find nothing romantic about stubbornly refusing to accept a changing world. In so doing, they willfully and knowingly chose to make themselves an island in the sea.

 

Oh, and by the way, I was born in the United States which, by definition and by law, makes me a native American.

[hiflier]

7 minutes ago, wiiawiwb said:

I find nothing romantic about stubbornly refusing to accept a changing world. In so doing, they willfully and knowingly chose to make themselves an island in the sea.

 

Yep, what happened to NA's is all their fault, is that it?. Again, I cannot believe I'm reading this kind of stuff in this day and age.

Edited August 9, 2017 by hiflier

[TritonTr196]

That's why I said many, not all. But in the lovelock cave case, nope. The 49'ers didn't think any thing about this story because they were long dead when this tale was fabricated.  Sorry but absolutely no legend of any thing was backed up by any archeological evidence from lovelock cave concerning any type of Bigfoot or any other giants. Until the Smithsonian finds those hidden giant skeletons or that girls decendants comes forward with the dress, it's still nothing but a story that was started by one girl writing a brief description about it in a book she wrote in the late 1800's with no evidence to back it up. In fact, she never even mentioned the word giant or gave any indication they were huge or fully covered with hair in her book. Hardly legend material. The paiutes themselves never told or heard of this story. Nothing but fantasy.

[Yuchi1]

1 hour ago, wiiawiwb said:

Indians slaughtered each other, including women and children, and conquered other Indians without hesitation. Sometimes it was for retribution, other times it was simply to conquer land. Those sound rather European don't they?

 

 

 

There the were no words in NA language for "own the land" as that is a European construct. They occupied land and contested for hunting rights with some tribes (i.e. Comanches) heavily invested in the warrior culture. Family units were cohesive and elders respected and given honor by the younger generations. Much in the same manner at Korean New Year celebrations where the men then the women/children kneel on rice mats in front of their elders to ask for blessings for the coming year.

 

While we're not supposed to discuss such things here, however as a historical fact, many of the atrocities committed against NA's had either their basis and/or justification based in Christianity.

 

That most definitely is a European construct.

4 hours ago, hiflier said:

 

Trinkets look pretty good and flashy when presented to a people who have "boxed themselves in". Now this isn't directed at you Incorrigible1 or anyone else- it really isn't. And this isn't an ethics thread but I need to say it anyway. Just because a people, no matter who they are, is considered primitive by some one's standards does not automatically translate into a right to invade, abuse, belittle, harass, kill, enslave, or otherwise do whatever it takes to usurp what the primitive people have or enjoy as a way of life. It just isn't right. Period.

 

Rant over. You may now return to your regularly scheduled program.

 

Further, the $24 worth of beads the Dutch paid for Manhattan, invested at the 50 year CD rate of 6% would today, be worth more than the island and all of the real property sitting upon it.

[norseman]

1 hour ago, wiiawiwb said:

Of course Indians boxed themselves in. They chose to live in a manner unchanged for centuries if not for thousands of years.  Meanwhile, the world around them was rapidly changing. I find nothing romantic about stubbornly refusing to accept a changing world. In so doing, they willfully and knowingly chose to make themselves an island in the sea.

 

Oh, and by the way, I was born in the United States which, by definition and by law, makes me a native American.

 

But they were cut off from the rest of the world. And they did not knowingly stay in the Stone Age. In fact the Incans, Mayans and Aztecs were very sophisticated.

 

They adapted quickly, but it wasn't enough to hold back the world. 

 

Its not anyone's fault, it's just human evolution.

 

What did Neanderthals think the first time they saw Homo Sapiens for the first time with throwing spears? What did a Australopithecus think the first time a Homo Erectus showed up with a hand axe? What did the Germanic tribes think when they faced off with a Roman legion? On and on.....

[Yuchi1]

https://www.britannica.com/event/Trail-of-Tears

[JDL]

TritonTr196 said:  "That's why I said many, not all. But in the lovelock cave case, nope. The 49'ers didn't think any thing about this story because they were long dead when this tale was fabricated.  Sorry but absolutely no legend of any thing was backed up by any archeological evidence from lovelock cave concerning any type of Bigfoot or any other giants. Until the Smithsonian finds those hidden giant skeletons or that girls decendants comes forward with the dress, it's still nothing but a story that was started by one girl writing a brief description about it in a book she wrote in the late 1800's with no evidence to back it up. In fact, she never even mentioned the word giant or gave any indication they were huge or fully covered with hair in her book. Hardly legend material. The paiutes themselves never told or heard of this story. Nothing but fantasy. "

 

Ok, Triton.  I know for a fact that you're full of it.

 

I grew up just Northwest of Reno, Nevada in the late 60s and 70s.  My father was a geologist who graduated from the Mackay School of Mines at UNR.  One of his classmates, grandson of the man who founded the first uranium mines in Nevada, had one of the remaining skulls from the Lovelock Cave, handed down to him.  He used it as an ashtray.  It caused quite a stir at his parties due to its sheer size and the use to which he put it.

 

When we weren't camping in the Sierras, we were exploring old mining camps, ghost towns, and archeological sites on weekends.  That area was my backyard, and I've viewed three of the large ( seven and eight feet) intact red-haired mummified skeletons (excavated from Walker Lake Cave, in this case) a dozen different times over those years, while they were on display at the Mark Twain Museum in Virginia City for over a decade.  We, on this forum, made an investigation to find out what happened to those three specimens and the others that were excavated from Lovelock Cave.  They were collected from the Mark Twain Museum by the Bureau of Land Management in the early 80s and are not currently on display in any of the museums that BLM manages.

 

During the 1912 and 1924 archeological investigations, the upper layers of the cave floor contained Atlatls, atlatl darts, and arrows, but no bows.  There was evidence of a large fire built at the entrance to the cave, as the Paiutes claimed (they trapped the Si-Teh-Cah by building a fire at the cave entrance and firing on them to prevent them from escaping).  The lower levels of the excavation contained atlatls and darts, but no arrows.  Pretty consistent with the Paiute legend.

 

Now why would a larger framed indian use an atlatl long after the short bow was developed and other tribes were using it?  A larger indian would need a proportionally larger bow, and the vegetation in that area did not support a bow of that size with respect to material strength.  So the Si-Teh-Cah continued to use the atlatl, the stick thrower.  With longer arms, they could throw an atlatl with great power and at a greater distance than a smaller person; and they quite likely could hit targets at a greater distance than someone smaller using a short bow.

 

There are extensive threads on this topic if you search for them; and the archeological report from 1924 is included, along with other documentation that I collected from the Nevada Historical Society a few years ago.

 

And, for the record, the Si-Teh-Cah had nothing to do with Bigfoot.

[Yuchi1]

Microphone hits floor......

More of how civilized the Europeans were:

 

http://www.ifthelegendsfade.com/

 

[wiiawiwb]

Indians were brutal and ruthless. They tortured and murdered their own people long before Europeans ever set foot on this continent. No one was spared particularly women and children. Indians were anything but peace loving and gentle.

 

War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage (Oxford University Press, 1996) by anthropologist Lawrence Keeley

 

Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage (Saint Martin's Press, 2003) by the archaeologist Steven LeBlanc of Harvard

 

Also, do a little reading about how the Comanche tortured Tonkawa captives. In the end, the Tonkawa had their tongues ripped out to stop the screaming.

 

It'll curl your hair.

 

 

 

 

[hiflier]

19 minutes ago, wiiawiwb said:

Indians were brutal and ruthless. They tortured and murdered their own people long before Europeans ever set foot on this continent. No one was spared particularly women and children. Indians were anything but peace loving and gentle.

 

War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage (Oxford University Press, 1996) by anthropologist Lawrence Keeley

 

Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage (Saint Martin's Press, 2003) by the archaeologist Steven LeBlanc of Harvard

 

Also, do a little reading about how the Comanche tortured Tonkawa captives. In the end, the Tonkawa had their tongues ripped out to stop the screaming.

 

It'll curl your hair.

 

 

 

 

 

That's because they are HUMAN and so no different than any other in the brutality department. The English, the French, the Russians, the Germans, the Africans, the Chinese- ALL of those people were, and are still, brutal. It isn't the brutality that is the issue. In fact it's normal. What is the issue is the right some people assume for themselves in taking over a land that they invaded. That's the issue. There is no automatic permission in place for anyone to do that. Manifest Destiny- well isn't that a sucky excuse dreamt up to make it all perfectly alright.  WRONG! It's NEVER alright. It's a natural thing in our civilization to do- but it still doesn't make it OK. 'Pilgrims' robbed Native American grave site as soon as they got off the Mayflower. The plundering of NA graves continues but few know about the practice or its history: http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/324 

 

"The looting of graves, however, continues. In 1999, 80% of the graves in a traditional Snoqualmie burial ground in Washington were looted by professional grave robbers using a backhoe"

[Incorrigible1]

So leave.