New member rules prevent me from provinding the link at this time.
Setting the Record Straight (Infrequently Asked Questions)
Opening statement:
There is a lot of very good information about native peoples of America and their languages out there on the Internet. Unfortunately, there is also a lot of garbage. Some of it poses as scholarship.
We have strived to include links to as much useful information as possible on our website. However, we are trying to present a correct resource here. Though we have linked to websites which take different positions on legitimate disagreements of theory or history (Was Michigamean a Siouan language? Did Pocahontas really save John Smith's life?), we have not linked to anything we know is substantially incorrect, nor to claims which are unsupported by any fact.
Instead, we would like to correct some of the myths, mistakes, and just plain made-up stories of the Internet on this page.
Setting the Record Straight About Native Peoples: Origins of American Indians
Q: How did Indians get to the Americas?
A: Well, Native American tradition is that Indians were always here. Most of the scientific evidence is that Indian ancestors came from Asia in prehistoric times, when mammoths and other ancient animals did. This would have had to happen more than 20,000 years ago, when there was still a land bridge there. No human culture has good records of what it was doing 20,000 years ago, so perhaps we're both right.
Q: Is it possible Indians migrated to America much more recently than that, like 700 or 1000 years ago?
A: No. There are archaeological sites between five and ten thousand years old, and Native American oral histories, like oral histories in other parts of the world, go back thousands of years. Also, by the time of European contact 500 years ago, there were some forty million natives dispersed throughout the entire Western Hemisphere. It would have been impossible for a single group of migrants to accomplish that in 200 or 500 years.
Q: If Native Americans migrated from Asia, then they're not really 'Native' at all, right?
A: Even if Native Americans migrated from Asia, they have been here 20-30,000 years longer than Europeans. Whether or not you call that 'native' is up to you. But the Americas have been inhabited longer than England (12-15,000 years) or northern Europe (10,000 years).
Setting the Record Straight About Native Languages:
What Does "Eskimo" Mean In Cree? Q: Does the word "Eskimos" really mean "eaters of raw flesh" in Cree?
A: Actually, the etymology of the word Eskimo is uncertain. Cree people today definitely associate the name with the Cree word askâwa, which does mean raw meat or eggs. One Cree speaker suggested the original word that became corrupted to Eskimo might have been askamiciw (which means "he eats it raw,") and the Inuit are referred to in some Cree texts as askipiw (which means "eats something raw.")
On the other hand, some linguists have recently suggested that this might be a 'folk etymology'--an origin for a word which, though believed by many speakers of the language, isn't historically true. (An example of folk etymology in English is the word 'niggardly,' which many people incorrectly think is related to the similar-sounding racial slur 'nigger.') The Cree word askimew means "he laces snowshoes," and these linguists believe that may have been the original name the Crees used to refer to their Inuit neighbors.
Either of these theories is possible. In our own opinion, the biggest problem with the snowshoe theory is that lacing snowshoes was not a distinguishing trait of the Inuit--nearly every American Indian tribe in Canada used laced snowshoes, with the style of snowshoe varying from tribe to tribe. For the Cree to call the Inuit "snowshoe-lacers" would have been like the Germans calling the French "shoe-wearers." Why would they do that? Since the Inuit and Aleut did and still do eat some fish uncooked, which the Cree do not, that would have been a much more sensible name (and not necessarily an insulting one, at least originally.) On the other hand, English corruptions of Native American names are often much abbreviated ("Sioux" comes from the last two syllables of the Ojibway name Naadawesiwag, for example,) so it's certainly possible that the original name could have meant "he makes circular snowshoes" or something else meaningfully descriptive.
In any event, regardless of the name's origins, many Inuit people do not like the word "Eskimo" today. Like the word "nigger" (which originally only meant "black"), "Eskimo" has often been used in a racist or demeaning way over the years, so although some communities do continue to use the word, others prefer to be called by their native name for themselves, Inuit.
Setting the Record Straight About Native Peoples: Barbarians and Noble Savages
Q: Hey! You called Battle X a massacre or Massacre Y a battle! Are you a politically correct panderer/a Nazi?
A: No. Please stop and consider whether you are emotionally capable of handling the idea that someone from your ethnic group may have murdered some innocents and/or been beaten in battle fair and square. If not, whether you are Indian or white, history is not for you. I recommend golf.
If you can handle that much, however, then our definitions are these: if most of the dead were civilians it was a massacre, if most of the dead were warriors it was a battle, and if most of the dead were warriors but had already surrendered or something it was a war crime. Little Bighorn was a battle. All the dead were armed soldiers. Wounded Knee was a massacre. Most of the dead were civilian noncombatants. There's really nothing subjective about it.
Q: Isn't it true that before Europeans got here Native Americans never polluted, wasted anything, killed women or children, and they never invented child abuse, rape, or slavery?
A: Yes, and I've got some great farmland to sell you in Oklahoma.
No, seriously, there has never been a human society in which no one ever abused, murdered, or raped anyone else. American Indian societies were no exception. I've been a little surprised to hear this idea coming from some Indians now as well as white New Agers. Some people need to go back and listen to the old stories a little more. Why do the villains in our legends and oral histories rape, murder, abuse and enslave people if we never knew what that was? This is really the other side of the same "savage Indians didn't understand honesty, love, or loyalty" coin, and it's just as dehumanizing. Of course we knew what pollution, rape, massacres, and wife-beating were, and we knew they were wrong. We had laws against these things, we punished people we caught doing them, and we told stories with morals to teach the children they were unacceptable and would lead to no good end. A dog never does anything evil and never does anything about evil, because a dog doesn't understand evil. Civilized people are capable of evil and work together to protect their society from falling prey to it. Native Americans, contrary to some reports, were and are civilized people.
Q: Who was more savage, the Europeans or the Native Americans?
A: Here is a difficult truth: neither. People on both continents knew how best to live in their native environment, built the tools and machines they needed for their daily lives, wore clothes, made music and art, took care of their children and elders, fought wars, built cities, prayed, and sometimes did wicked things. Most people couldn't read or write, but some could. Some leaders were just, and others oppressed people. Europeans had more advanced weapons, and Native Americans took more baths.
Somehow, this is the very hardest idea for Americans to come to terms with, given the massive genocide that occurred here. If heroic white pioneers wiped out a race of ignorant cavemen who were just living miserable savage lives anyway, or if misguided white aggressors slew a noble and gentle race of otherwordly beings who might have otherwise taught them the secrets of wise living, then those would be comprehensible tragedies. That one group of normal, generally decent people should have slaughtered another group of normal, generally decent people--ordinary human beings who baked bread and did their laundry and watched football games and gossiped about their neighbors and made mistakes and loved their children--is psychologically devastating, almost beyond comprehension. But that's what happened. We're just like you. We always have been. There are just
fewer of us, now.
The site covers a good range of questions and information.
I'll post at the earliest opportunity.
ShepherdsDog
CKA Uber
Posts: 26878
Posted: Fri Nov 02, 2007 8:41 pm
Quote:
Q: If Native Americans migrated from Asia, then they're not really 'Native' at all, right?
A: Even if Native Americans migrated from Asia, they have been here 20-30,000 years longer than Europeans. Whether or not you call that 'native' is up to you. But the Americas have been inhabited longer than England (12-15,000 years) or northern Europe (10,000 years).
Wrong, Europe has been inhabited by modern humans for at least 33 000 years, you ever hear of Cro Magnon? There are also some that have postulated that Clovis Point Culture was brought to North America from Europe approximately 17 000 years ago, and that it actually originated from the Soltrean Cultural hearth in France.
20 - 30K(dates that are only hypothesized) was when they were thought to have freshly arrived from Asia, not when they had fully colonized the Americas. Most of today's Europeans were still living in south western Asia at that time and had to compete/contend with Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, who had been there for almost 500 000 years, when they moved west. Did the ancestors of the natives have another species of human to contend with?
This has been edited for brevity.
sasquatch2
CKA Super Elite
Posts: 5740
Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2007 8:05 am
Yes I was amazed at the bitter reaction of the Fans by the mere prospect that the Clovis had actually originated from Europe. Aye or nay is irrelevant, politically, due to it's extreme antiquity.
As you long rambling post testified the FN were not tree-hugging pacifists and the colonists frequently were cruel conquerors.
Europeans regard the natives as naked savages for several reasons--some accurate some not.
Being non-christian does not make one savage. Clothes have more a protective function than modesty. In much of the world they function as insulation and protection---in the sahara from extreme sunlight and heat. FNs, occupying a less harsh environment than Europe negated the need for a lot of clothes but Canadian winters didn't feature a lot of naked FN.
All this is long enough past to be currently irrelevant.
It does however make rattling good history.
Last edited by sasquatch2 on Sat Nov 03, 2007 8:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
Mustang1
CKA Super Elite
Posts: 7760
Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2007 8:11 am
Actually, Dusk's site's info (at least what i've seen posted here) seems pretty sound, historically (some of the dates could be altered, but that's academic and there's no real narrative errors to speak of). At the very least, it's not revisionist tripe - which is refreshing around here.
ShepherdsDog
CKA Uber
Posts: 26878
Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2007 8:18 am
Quote:
At the very least, it's not revisionist tripe - which is refreshing around here.
this is one of his sources. If this isn't revisionist tripe straight out of a discarded x files script I don't know what is.
I was commenting on his posted information in this thread (actually i specifically stated that earlier), but i haven't had a chance to read "other" sources and evaulate their historicity. I'll check out the above link
