# Indians in the Americas before Columbus



## Oxankle (Jun 20, 2003)

This discussion of the Indian in America before the white man came was off-topic in the food-stockpiling thread so I thought I'd move it over here. 

Emdeegee posted:
"The concept that American Indians and all the indigenous peoples of the Americas were primitive and living in small tribes is exactly what the white man wanted the world to believe and this is the history we have been taught. Just as with Africa - a continent that had some of the greatest civilizations ever created by humans. And the first Christians and Christian country was what is now Ethiopia.

Pemmican was just one food. They were experts at the preservation of meat and fish through smoking and drying as well as caching grains, corn, potatoes etc."

I find some of this just plain wrong. Let us start with the idea that Christianity started in Ethiopia.

Then let's move on to the preservation of meat and fish, the storing of grains, corn, potatoes, etc.
My first observation is that one cannot generalize. The growing of crops was unknown to some tribes, some were so nomadic that they grew nothing, eating what they found growing or living where they happened to be. Life among the "civilizations" of South America was radically different from that of the peoples of N. America. Life of those on the coasts was far different from that of those in the interior. Indians did not have the wheel; women and dogs were the beasts of burden until the European showed up with horses, and then the possessors of horses became the oppressors of those without. 

I think the jury is still out on the origin of the peoples of the Americas. There is some evidence that ships were sailed into the Atlantic and wrecked in S. America. I've read that certain tribes of S. America on the Pacific coast have the silky chicken from China. We know that Scandinavians visited up and down the the Atlantic coast, and I suspect that dna tests might show some of that bloodline in our northern tribes. Oklahoma claims to have a boulder with ancient Nordic runes carved on it. If so, I'll bet that bloodline lurks somewhere in an Indian tribe. 

Finally, I don't think that there is any evidence ANYWHERE that the Americas had a handle on metallurgy, chemistry, agriculture, sanitation, transportation or government to the degree reached by Europeans. the Chinese or the Egyptians. Claims have been made for advanced civilizations in Africa, but I've seen little proof of those.


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## oneraddad (Jul 20, 2010)

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

I'd say the pre-Columbian empires in South America had a very good grip on agriculture. Pre-Columbian population of South America estimated at 20-30 million people. Compare that to Europe. Then compare anywhere else in the world to China of that period. 

No doubt there were pre-Columbian contacts of outsiders to America. But on such a small scale, no significant sharing of genetics. I think pretty universally accepted native Americans originated from east Asia. Now may not been same east Asians as live there now. Things change. https://www.newscientist.com/articl...m-alaska-reveals-origins-of-native-americans/


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

Ive read that the EARLY whites who intered Huron country found vast acres of corn growing. Ill say I read that an estimate was 100 acres, BUT, I don't believe it. Wyatt Earp said that his dad had 100 acres of corn also when he and brothers were kids, and I don't believe that either.


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

FarmboyBill said:


> Ive read that the EARLY whites who intered Huron country found vast acres of corn growing. Ill say I read that an estimate was 100 acres, BUT, I don't believe it. Wyatt Earp said that his dad had 100 acres of corn also when he and brothers were kids, and I don't believe that either.


Why don't you believe it, Bill? A LOT of the Native Americans grew corn, and in a good harvest year they traded it as well to the tribes that did not have gardens. Sign language developed party because the Native Americans did trade with the other tribes: ancient shell jewelry has been found thousands of miles from the coast. And, the settlers grew as much as they could and often hired people to help them. While the "poor homesteader" that Hollywood loves to make stories about really was common, those who could tough it out often became quite prosperous and often did hire people to help them.


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## Kiamichi Kid (Apr 9, 2009)

https://forums.familytreedna.com/fo...n-affinities-of-native-american-y-chromosomes


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## Kiamichi Kid (Apr 9, 2009)

https://forums.familytreedna.com/fo...-links-between-siberians-and-native-americans


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## Kiamichi Kid (Apr 9, 2009)

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6157/409


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## haypoint (Oct 4, 2006)

From the earliest of times, there has been speculation as to the origin of the Algonquins. Here is one explanation, related by Charlevoix as an undoubted matter of fact. Father Grollon, a French Jesuit, while laboring at Bowating (Sault Ste. Marie) in his early days, made the acquaintance of a Chippewa woman, having treated her for some trifling ailment. Many of the Jesuits were skilled in medicine.

Having been recalled to Paris, he was sent from there by the general of the order to China, where a thousand miles from the coast, he met, to his unbounded astonishment, the woman from Bowating! His inquires elicited the fact that while accompanying her husband on a hunting trip to the north of Lake Superior, they had been taken prisoners by the Indians of the north, her husband killed and herself taken as a slave through regions “extremely cold”, to a wide strait filled with islands; where she was again captured by a band of roving Tartars, and carried by them to their inland plains. A journey of such magnitude would be no small undertaking even in these days of steam and aeroplanes.

The same route reversed, no doubt gives us our best clue to the ancestry of the Algonquins and other Indian nations on the Western Continents.

Many words used by the Chinese were in use also among the northern Indians, having resemblance not only in sound, but in significance. The Chinese call a slave “shungo”, the Chippewa name for dog was “shungush”. The Chinese call their tea ”shousong”, the Chippewa word for tobacco was “shousosau”. Many other Chippewa and Souix words contained the syllables “che”, “enaw” and “chu”, common enough in Chinese. Father LeHuc has written an interesting monograph, showing three hundred points of resemblance between Chippewa and Chinese languages.


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## haypoint (Oct 4, 2006)

When the earliest of white explorers (Desoto or Coronado?)encountered Native Americans, the warriors all had copper hatchets. At that time in history, the only place where solid pieces of copper were available was the UP, a thousand miles north.
The tribes that did garden, through selection greatly improved corn.


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## emdeengee (Apr 20, 2010)

The complete lack of accurate information - actual propaganda - about both the Americas and Africa is not surprising to me as I knew very little about both from my schooling and in fact everything was very bigoted and wrong. 

1491, America before Columbus and Africa`s Great Civilization are two very informative series. But of course the prejudice will be hard to change. 

Benjamin Franklin used the Iroquois Confederation as the basis for the the framing of the US constitution.

The Iroquois Confederacy had been a functioning democracy for centuries by Franklin's day. Sometime between 1000 and 1450, the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca Nations came together to become the Iroquois Confederacy, and in the early 18th century they were joined by the Tuscaroras. The Iroquois League was, and still is, the oldest participatory democracy on Earth.

There is also a new theory and many dig sites already under way about how and why there is a European DNA connection to American Indians - they crossed the Atlantic. And long before the Vikings. The L'Anse aux Meadows village in Newfoundland dates back to the year 1000 AD which is well past the introduction of humans to the Americas by tens of thousands of years. Discovery of plants from the Canadian and US eastern coast also shows that the Vikings traveled and explored the mainland. Long before Columbus discovered the Caribbean and Amerigo Vespucci landed on the mainland.


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## farmrbrown (Jun 25, 2012)

Yes, every race has their own idea of their "exceptionalism".
It makes them blind to the obvious.
Africa and the region just east of it is where we know man first started.
The Asian continent has roots almost as long and deep and the oldest mountains in the world are here in Appalachia along with the evidence that the inhabitants have been here a very long time too.
Wouldn't it be logical to conclude that if people have been in those places since the dawn of man, that they must have been good enough at it to still be there today?
If the Europeans were the saviors of mankind, wouldn't the story have been that when Columbus arrived, everyone here was dead or starving?


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## Hiro (Feb 14, 2016)

oneraddad said:


> http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html


Howard Zinn is not and never has been a reliable source regarding history:

https://newrepublic.com/article/112574/howard-zinns-influential-mutilations-american-history


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## Oxankle (Jun 20, 2003)

Interesting, I had not read of Mal'Ta or the DNA work done at Texas A and M. It does show that there successive waves of immigration, and that there were differing groups. I still suspect that there were infrequent additions from shipwrecks and explorers. 

I tend to agree with Farmboy on the size of individual corn fields. Lacking equipment and insecticides, the only fertilizer being fish no Indian could tend that much land. Given that corn was grown in hills with beans and squash rather than in rows a tribe's cultivated land might well encompass a hundred acres, but not a hundred acres as we know it now.

We have some idea of the size of wealthy colonials fields--worked with slaves, indentured servants and hired supervisors. Even then it was a rare estate that could manage a hundred acres of corn. 

No dispute on the origins of Christianity?


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## muleskinner2 (Oct 7, 2007)

FarmboyBill said:


> Wyatt Earp said that his dad had 100 acres of corn also when he and brothers were kids, and I don't believe that either.


I am curious why you don't believe that the Earp's could have had one hundred acres of corn. On my grandfathers farm he had over three hundred acres of corn, one hundred acres of potatoes, two hundred acres of hay, and a huge garden. And until after WW2 all of the work was done with teams of horses or mules. That's plowing, planting, and harvesting. I can still remember all of the horse drawn equipment, on my grandfathers farm.


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

How much horse drawn equipment do you think was available in the 1850s. There were no riding corn planters until the VERY late 50s, and they likely only produced a couple doz during the whole decade. Same with cultivators. They had double schovels, that covered 1/2 a row.
As to the Indians, The speculators of those indian 100 acre fields likely didn't see but 5 acre fields in England before coming over here. Farms and fields over there were SMALL.


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## [email protected] (Sep 16, 2009)

pre Columbus native Americans had religion. the Europeans didn't recognize that fact. they preferred to call the people heathens..
there is a place here in Wisconsin where the Chippewa were slaughtered by the white army.. 
I often questioned , where are the history books about the period from Columbus until George Washington ?


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## bobp (Mar 4, 2014)

Its generally known an accepted that north and south america were primarily populated via the land bridge at the bearing straight.
Every tribe traces their dna back that direction to east asia, except that the cherokee who had traces of Western dna, and cultutural aspects that show up which is speculated to be from Israeli lineage. Its been said and studied that the cherokee were the lost tribe of israel. 
Much later there are also influxes of Nordic dna and culture along the east coast, and evidence of Chinese, Japenese and east indonesian travelers and traders along California and in chile. 
But bottom line the majority of the dna is from east asia. This tends to hang some folks up, but the east asians were not what you think of today. Think mongul, sibearan, types..... It fits the profile better.


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

ALSO, At one time Africa and S America were connected. Either the water was way lower than it is now, Noahs Flood? or they broke apart at separate times, Alaska, and SA.


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## muleskinner2 (Oct 7, 2007)

bobp said:


> Its generally known an accepted that north and south america were primarily populated via the land bridge at the bearing straight.


I lived in Teller, Alaska on the Bearing Sea. Every winter Siberian Eskimos, would cross the ice with dog teams to visit relatives, and trade for things they couldn't get in Siberia. They didn't need a land bridge, because the ice freezes twenty feet thick every winter. This travel and trade has been going on for thousands of years, and still goes on today.


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## muleskinner2 (Oct 7, 2007)

FarmboyBill said:


> How much horse drawn equipment do you think was available in the 1850s. There were no riding corn planters until the VERY late 50s, and they likely only produced a couple doz during the whole decade. Same with cultivators. They had double schovels, that covered 1/2 a row.


Simple, they did the planting by hand. That is why you had children. With two or three kids, you could plant corn as fast as they could walk. The only tools needed are a stick to punch a hole every step, and a sack to carry the seed corn. First kid walks the row making the hole, second kid drops the seed in the hole, and then steps on the hole to cover it. It was slow and tedious work, but it's not like they had to go watch cartoons on the TV. With two teams and two plows, they could till one hundred acres in a week. Two kids working daylight to dark could plant one hundred acres in a week.

At harvest time they picked the ears of corn first. My granddad would drive a team and wagon through the corn. Three or four kids on either side of the wagon would pick the ears, husk the corn and throw the ears into the wagon. As a kid I hated corn picking time. After the field was picked they cut the corn by hand. You cut the corn near the ground with a corn knife, and built a bundle with the other arm. When you had all you could carry, you tied the bundle and stacked the bundle in a shock. These shocks were then gathered with the wagon and stored for winter feed for the cattle and mules. When I was a kid we chopped the corn with a single row chopper, pulled by a International M tractor. So except for the sweet corn in the two acre garden, I never had to shock corn.

People today have no idea what real work is. In Central Asia I have seen ten men working in a line, cut hay with sycles as fast as they could walk. Five more men with pitch forks walked behind them, building the rows. The next day a wagon pulled by a team of horses, with two men walking on each side loaded the hay. The hay was hauled to a fenced area, and stacked with pitch forks. The fields stretched as far as I could see on either side of the road.

At harvest time, the entire village turned out to put up the crop. If you didn't work in the summer, you didn't eat in the winter.


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

My family has a diary from one of our female ancestors from back when she was in her early teens. It was eye opening.

Most school days she would state what they had studied in school, she came home, and "plowed a bit". Then she did homework, ate, and did chores. On Saturdays she "plowed a bit" twice, once in the morning and once in the evening. And she did NOT plow on Sunday but she "plowed a bit" pretty much 6 days a week and twice on Saturday.

I can only imagine how much time her brothers spent in the fields.

Yes, I do believe that there were 100 acre corn fields in the early 1800. Families were large and apparently all of the kids worked in the fields.

As for the Native Americans, here in the Midwest the entire village would have had their gardens near the big rivers. There would be an entire string of corn fields that had squash and beans growing around them, and they helped each other so that they could talk while they worked. I can totally see fields near the rivers that would measure 100 acres or more, but while it would LOOK like one field it would be MANY individual gardens.

Security was vital back then. The neighboring tribes might raid. By putting all of the gardens in one spot the young men could keep watch while other people worked in the fields. In fact some of the early settlers were shocked because there were women working in the fields while strong young men were idle, and doing nothing but holding weapons.

Actually they were on guard.


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## emdeengee (Apr 20, 2010)

The largest American Indian city in the north. It was eventually abandoned. In 2015 evidence was found of massive flooding. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

To each their own belief.


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

The Earps had 3 boys that were old enough for Wyatt to relate that story to. Warrn might not have been born yet OR if he was, he was a baby. They had 2 or 3 girls. I doubt if Wyatts dad did much more than keep the kids at it. He likely criss crossed the field with a sled which told the kids where to drop seed, and you DONT plant corn as fast as you can walk. Its about twice as slow. With a 1 bottom cast iron plow, it would take a good month for say 2 or 3 plows to plow 100 acres. They didn't have but double schovel cultivators, and those were cast iron schovels also that took 1/2 a row. IF they could complete 100 acres, by the time they finished, they would be late for the second cultivation, and way late for the third. They would have needed a doz horses counting buggie horses, and they would have had to cut hay enough for the horses, and cows as they surely had maybe a 1/2 doz cows, both beef and milk. There wernt any mowing machines in the 1840s, so it was cut by hand, raked by hand, with the possibility of havint/making a walk behind flip over rake. put on wagons and put in the barn by hand. Nope, I don't believe it. NOW, it MIGHT have seemd to Wyatt that it was a 100 acre field, when in actuality he had added a 0. I could believe that.


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## Oxankle (Jun 20, 2003)

Bill is right. No single family without hired help could put in a hundred acres of row crop before tractors came along. The animals had to be fed, the homestead had to be kept going and all the various parts had to be maintained. 

Homesteads ran to 160 acres of cropland. In the arid areas where only cattle could be raised the government allowed more. If a family had 160 acres they had to reserve part for pasturage, some for the home and barns. By the time we allow for milk and beef cattle, hay land and pig/sheep/chickens or whatever the farmer is lucky to even have 100 acres available for row crops. I have, or had, an ag textbook from 1904 depicting "modern" equipment. By then they had steel plows, horse-drawn mowers, binders, etc. Even so the work was back-breaking and the care of teams and equipment, the necessity for putting up hay and caring for farm animals put a limit on the amount of land a man could manage. Large families helped, but until the children could help families were very limited. I suspect 30 to 40 acres of crop land was more common. I know that in OK the old men told me of having their small farms lost to well-financed bankers who would lend money to confederates for tractors, then "tractor-out" tenant farmers and those who had only horses or mules to work land. In short, it became uneconomical to work a small farm that could be handled with mules. Before long a few well-connected families owned most of the land.


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## haypoint (Oct 4, 2006)

Right after the end of the Civil War, a couple guys came into Michigan, near where Bay City is and bought up 10,000 acres of swamp. They hired steam shovels to create a system of drainage ditches. This land and thousands around it is some of the most productive land in the country. I find it amazing that in a time when plowing one acre a day was the norm, to buy such a huge tract of land.
In school, we were taught about the white pioneers, but that many roads began as Indian trails and dozens of Michigan cities are Indian names. Louis and Clark were not in uncharted lands. They passed numerous Indian tribes that knew vast areas. Their expedition was just to chart it for white people.
Often history is scant. It is also slanted by the authors. Today it is popular to paint Indians as nature lovers, living in peace with others, happy and healthy. Some would have the schools set up to educate Indian youth as prison camps, filled with abuse. But Tribal Chiefs encouraged these schools and many families offered up their children because feeding them was such a burden. Most learned a trade and were grateful for these schools. They were generally funded by the generous congregations of churches either out east or in Europe. 
The Iroquois were murderous. They raided tribes, murdered Indians, robbed, raped and took slaves all along the shores of Lake Huron. After attacking and eating Chippewa Indians at Sault Ste. Marie, they continued into Lake Superior. The Chippewa, in the pre-dawn fog, attacked these warriors, killing all but a few that escaped. They lined the skulls up along the shore for a long ways. The place of this great battle is now known as Iroquois Point. There is a lighthouse there now.


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

Where I was born raised, the allotments to settlers was 160 acres, But only, id say, one in 20 was able to keep the whole 160. most, including 40 off of our farm was sold off to raise money to consolidate and build bldgs., animals, and what machinery was available to farm what could be farmed by horses and mules. My Aunt Bert and Uncle Milts place net to us was/is an 80. Also the next 2 places either side of it. Grandpa Adolphs place next to us across the road is a 200, but I think he bought 40 off of someone else, as he had money.


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## muleskinner2 (Oct 7, 2007)

Oxankle said:


> No single family without hired help could put in a hundred acres of row crop before tractors came along


Tractors were not common until the late 1920's and early 1930's, How did the world feed itself before then? When WW2 ended my father was fifteen years old. My grandfather bought his first tractor the next year. My dad had five older brothers, and three uncles that lived close. They farmed hundreds of acres of corn, potatoes, beets, and hay, all with horses. My grandfather always kept a span of long legged mules, for mowing hay. They walked almost twice as fast as a horse. He still mowed with a span of mules when I left for the army in 1975. A pair of horses was called a team, a pair of mules was called a span, as were oxen.

The horses were fed hay, and maybe some corn. Grain was scarce and expensive. You went to bed at six thirty or seven, and got up at three thirty or four. Before you ate breakfast you fed your horses. Many times the horses were kept in stalls, and never unharnessed during the busy season. The Amish still do this today. By the time a horse was eight or ten years old, he was used up and sold to a rendering plant. This is why many farmers used mules. They could work until their late teens, or twenty. It takes about twenty minutes to feed ten or twelve horses. They would stand in their stalls and eat, while you went back into the house and ate your breakfast. You put the horses back in the stalls at night, fed them and went to bed. Every six or seven weeks the horses would have to be shod. This takes about one hour per horse. All of this is very labor intensive. But if it is all you have ever done, and are used to it, you just did it and didn't think anything of it.

By the early 1900's they were raising thousands of acres of wheat, in the western united states, and Canada. All with teams of horses and mules. In the 1840's and 50's it would have been much harder, and very labor intensive. If you had a big farm, you raised big families, and hired seasonal help. A farm laborer might make ten or fifteen cents a day, plus room and board. It was a very hard life, and most men were dead by fifty years old. I am very glad that I didn't live back then.


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## Shrek (May 1, 2002)

My grandfather told me of how his family farm beside my two great uncles farms were worked by all three families sharing bodies for labor and sometimes trading labor with neighbors also.

My father said his earliest memories of working the farms in the 1930s was when he was just out of toddler age and able to walk good and he and my second cousins not old and big enough for the harder work, took turns following my grandfather or uncles behind the mule team plow at a distance stomping the larger dirt clods and dragging a short handled scratching fork to finish the plow turned line for planting.

He also told me about one of the guys he was in the Army with who was an American Indian from Florida or some other area of tribal swampland who told him his family garden farmed on small islands in the swamp much as his ancestors did during the time of Columbus and the Spaniards being in North America.


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## Oxankle (Jun 20, 2003)

I can personally verify part of this. After my grandfather died in 1937 my grandmother moved to a smaller place where she farmed 5 acres of cotton and ran about thirty cows on a sand land farm. Shen kept one span of mules which outlived her and died in the pasture on an uncles's farm. My father as a young man in the 1920's followed the wheat harvest, helping run the thresher. Wheat was not grown like what we think of as a "row crop" or drilled as we do today. The farmer on the plains simply turned the ground, harrowed it, and planted his wheat in the Fall. It lay over during the winter and was harvested in early Spring before the prairie grasses really got started. An old man in OK told me that he planted wheat with one of the hand-held spreaders---I forget the brand but they are still sold and I once owned two of them. The kind with a bag and shoulder strap, a crank and centrifugal spreader.

This same old man told me that as a boy he watched the Indians demand three or four beeves of ranchers on their Indian lands. The Indians then butchered the animals, cut them up, hung the beef on piles of brush and feasted on it during a three-day brush arbor powwow. This was an annual affair and the ranchers who leased the Indian Land learned that it was an expected part of the lease. A man from whom I leased hunting land told me that his Indian uncles controlled ten thousand acres of prairie and had oil money. Spent it all living high and touring Europe and had something like 400 acres when the two of them died. 

I don't think for a minute that we can make any "general" statement about the way American Indians lived or dealt with each other.


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## Cornhusker (Mar 20, 2003)

emdeengee said:


> Benjamin Franklin used the Iroquois Confederation as the basis for the the framing of the US constitution.


Ben Franklin wrote The Constitution?


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## whiterock (Mar 26, 2003)

Kinda like the old tv commercial. It's Shake and Bake, and Ben helped.


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## keenataz (Feb 17, 2009)

Today it is popular to paint Indians as nature lovers, living in peace with others, happy and healthy. 

If you read the actual history from FN or talk to FN elders, that is truly wrong. The fought wars, killed each other, had inter tribal killings, lived to about 30, starvation was a constant.


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## emdeengee (Apr 20, 2010)

No one who has studied the culture and history of First Nations peoples all over the Americas ever said that they were not involved in wars, slavery, kidnapping, theft, and all the other crimes. The huge civilizations involved the same desire for expansion as all of the European and Asian civilizations. As with age in Europe the average age was 30 to 45 years (30 fir women) but that is an average. Many died younger and many lived to 50 and 60 and some even into their 70s and 80s. So much was dependent on a strong immune system when you considered that a tooth infection could kill an emperor or a peasant. And actually a lot depended on luck.

The entire balance of life for indigenous peoples changed with the arrival of the white man. The loss of 90% of the population over the next 200 years changed everything in how they lived. JIt was exactly the same for them as when the Roman empire collapsed and Europe was plunged into the Dark Ages for hundreds of years because of the loss of so much knowledge. The First Nations peoples of the 18th and 19th century were very different from the peoples who lived and thrived and created incredible civilizations before 1491 in all the Americas.


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## Oxankle (Jun 20, 2003)

LOL, EMDEENGEE:
How do you figure that people who had no written works, no wheel, no draft animals or riding stock, no metallurgy and whose beasts of burden were women and dogs had "incredible civilizations"?

Keenataz comment on the situation of Canadian "First Nartions" peoples. His comments, with minor alterations, can be applied across the United States. We had an acknowledged cannibal tribe, the Karankawa, on the Texas coast along the Gulf of Mexico. Settlers wiped them out. 

The Spanish found a more organized society in S. America but warfare and human sacrifice were the norm there. 

I'm still waiting for evidence to show that Christianity began in Ethiopia.


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

Part of our constitution was taken directly from the Native American treaties that they made with each other. Also the tribes did some very serious trading with the tribes that they were not fighting with. I do not know if I would call their civilization "Incredible", but they definately HAD a healthy civilization.

They also had slavery and warfare, but they were not alone in that.


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

Chuck, That seeder is called a Cyclone if it has a crank I have 3 of them. If it has a tube at the bottom corner of the sack, it was called a Horn. I had one of them as a kid.


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## Oxankle (Jun 20, 2003)

Thanks, Bill. I'm finding it hard to sort out the information I want from all that stored in the old noggin. I bought a new cyclone, left a few grains of seed in it and a damned mouse chewed a big hole in the sack. Bought a new sack for it but was never happy with the result--had pot metal gears, too. Found an old one at a sale, had cast iron gears, much better.


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## haypoint (Oct 4, 2006)

In my northern area, most Native Americans were given land. I guess you could turn that around and say there was land not taken from them. My abstract shows the government giving a tract of land to a tribal chief. Most Indians either sold the land or were unable or unwilling to pay property taxes. So, the land went to those that would pay the taxes. Most land that was recovered by paying back taxes was logged of and then reverted to the government for nonpayment of taxes.
The Catholic and Methodist churches, focused on converting Native Americans, held tracts of land, untaxed then as it is now. Eventually, those that sold or lost their land, moved onto the church's property. Later, that land became either reservation or tribal lands.
As he natives lost lands, Finnish immigrants, with money earned from working in the mile deep copper mines, bought land, cleared forests, planted crops, built roads and created communities. Carving a farm out of wilderness was hard and many died. over 2/3 of the population died from the flu epidemic.
While 80% of the local Native American population are 1/4 or less Native American, they are allowed tax free lands, millions of dollars of federal money pour in (schools, housing, infrastructure, while the tax free gambling casinos pull in millions every day.


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## Oxankle (Jun 20, 2003)

Haypoiny: Your post gave me a chuckle. You got it right. First, the Finns were the only people who paid us back their WWI war debt, so I am partial to Finland. 
Second, the part that gave me the chuckle---There are not enough full-blood Indians in this country to fill a troop ship, but it appears that there are almost as many casinos as Walmarts!!!! 

Don't get me wrong---If I were part Indian I'd be on that gravy train too. In my area the Indians were Osages and Cherokees, traditional enemies, but they are united in demanding government favors.


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## emdeengee (Apr 20, 2010)

Cornhusker said:


> Ben Franklin wrote The Constitution?


Yes he was part of the convention and he is the only founding father to have signed all four of the documents that created the US.

"Although Franklin was eighty-one years old and in generally poor health, he participated as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia with George Washington presiding. Many of the delegates had widely different ideas about how the country should be organized and run, including Franklin. For instance, he believed that executive power was too great to be placed in the hands of one person and that a committee was a much better option. Alexander Hamilton, on the other end of the argument, wanted a single executive, appointed for life. The convention chose a single executive with a limited term. "

IMO Franklin once again showed himself to be an exceptional man and politician by wanting the executive power to not be in the hands of one person. He was right.


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## Cornhusker (Mar 20, 2003)

emdeengee said:


> IMO Franklin once again showed himself to be an exceptional man and politician by wanting the executive power to not be in the hands of one person. He was right.


Yep, Obama proved that.


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## emdeengee (Apr 20, 2010)

And Trump is even worse. He wants to be a Putin.


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## Oxankle (Jun 20, 2003)

Yes, Emdeegee: When he is finished with China I understand he is going to renegotiate the Indian treaties and do away with their free license plates, tax their casinos and open up their reservations to law enforcement. Even worse, he is going to close the beer joints just outside the agency and put six-inch steel posts every four feet around the walmarts. He and Putin have agreed on that much; Putin has not yet convinced him that he should tax wool blankets and eagle feathers.


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## farmrbrown (Jun 25, 2012)

Oxankle said:


> Yes, Emdeegee: When he is finished with China I understand he is going to renegotiate the Indian treaties and do away with their free license plates, tax their casinos and open up their reservations to law enforcement. Even worse, he is going to close the beer joints just outside the agency and put six-inch steel posts every four feet around the walmarts. He and Putin have agreed on that much; Putin has not yet convinced him that he should tax wool blankets and eagle feathers.



Tell him to see if he can find a knowledgeable person as an emissary to head THOSE negotiations........
http://articles.latimes.com/1991-05-21/news/mn-2125_1_george-armstrong-custer-iii


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

Have any of you been to Mesa Verde? There are many houses carved out of rock cliffs, requiring ladders to access the upper levels. We toured Spruce Tree House several years before it was closed. The work that was required to carve out those structures must have been long and exhausting. At some point in time the land must have supported a large number of people but now the area is mostly desert.


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## Shrek (May 1, 2002)

Cornhusker said:


> Ben Franklin wrote The Constitution?


 Ben Franklin was part of the Constitutional Convention that ratified it in 1791 and in doing so said that it wasn't perfect but the best they could project was enough at the time. The first 10 amendments considered the most important part of the document under the name The Bill of Rights were ratified as a group after the initial ratification of the main document by the members before the Constitution left Philadelphia as I recall from civics class.


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## Oxankle (Jun 20, 2003)

Danaus:
Human beings, like all of nature, operate on the "conservation of energy" principle. 
At one time those cliff dwellers lived on the ground next to their fields. When raiders found that they could take women and food from these farmers the farmers moved to the cliff houses. That worked for a while, but eventually they died. Possibly from unhealthy conditions---the plague is endemic in the area and the concentration of people in the cliff houses, the food stored there, the presence of rats and fleas all make that a possibility. The white powder found in some of those old dwellings was bone dust. 

Once enough of a tribe was dead there was no recovery---death by warfare, starvation or moving to another area--possibly as slaves of the raiders would have been the only possibilities.


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

I thought Thos Jefferson wrote the Constitution


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

He did. But,Thomas Jefferson drew from many sources before he put the final form on paper.


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## Shrek (May 1, 2002)

Terri,
You must have had a government / civics teacher as ours. Our teacher drilled into us that our Constitution and first 10 amendments that we all recalled was ratified in 1791 was actually in convention for 4 years and three or four members of the delegation each transcribed various drafts between 1787 and the first draft and the 1791 final draft with Jefferson credited with its transcription from the input of all the delegates who ratified it and the amendments.


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## Cornhusker (Mar 20, 2003)

Now all this time, I thought James Madison wrote The Constitution and Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence


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## whiterock (Mar 26, 2003)

Madison took notes. There fore many consider him to be the one who wrote. There were a number that actually got together to put down the final draft, and changes were made over and over. It was a chore to write that piece. Using many references from governments around the world, past and their present. Overall , it is one impressive document!


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## AmericanStand (Jul 29, 2014)

FarmboyBill said:


> To each their own belief.


Lol You can believe anything you want but that doesn’t make it right for instants I think there’s a lot a comparison of apples to oranges here the Indians did not farm in the same way as the white man


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## AmericanStand (Jul 29, 2014)

The stories and my family indicate before tractors came along horn was planted in 48 inch Rose then the move starting to narrow to 4036 and finally 30 nowadays we have corn planted in half that distance
My research into the natives farming practices near Cahokia indicates that they farmed in what we would think of as 10 foot + patches not so much as rows as a group or a gob of crop every 10 feet or more.


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

AmericanStand said:


> Lol You can believe anything you want but that doesn’t make it right for instants I think there’s a lot a comparison of apples to oranges here the Indians did not farm in the same way as the white man


No. And in addition each area had different customs than other areas: that is why it is so hard to compare Native American agriculture with White man's agriculture. 

Many of the Plains tribes would establish their corn and vegetables and then the entire tribe would go hunt the buffalo. They would return months later in time to harvest. That meant that in a good year they would start the winter with corn, vegetables, and dried meat.

The Pueblo Indians planted near their permanent homes. 

I only know a little bit about the other tribes.

Different tribes had different customs and the White man had their customs and they were all different.


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## AmericanStand (Jul 29, 2014)

What do you mean no? Are you disagreeing with my disagreement with Bill or are you just agreeing with my original research into the Indians of the cahokia Period And area?


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

AS, How do you plant horn?, and I NEVER seen a 48in Rose?? The widest they planted CORN where I came up, as far as I know, was 40in, BUT big farmers like my grandmoms first husband, and her second, my granddad, kept a doz there bouts horses. Some 8 or so heavy for plowing and discing, and around 4 for planting and cultivating, and a couple buggy horses. The 4 were smaller. With them, they could plant in narrower rows to around 38in. Same in cultivating. Smaller farms that just kept 4 or less horses usually had medium sized horses to do it all, and consequently, they would have to go to 40 and larger rows. A farmer with a team of mules could also plant and cultivate in smaller rows, then with larger horses.
As to Indians, Ive heard that the Navaho? and pueblo Indians had large acreage farm lands. Course, ive heard that the Hurons also had large lands in farms.


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## oneraddad (Jul 20, 2010)

I heard the Paiute's used the corn to stay drunk all the time ?


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

AmericanStand said:


> What do you mean no? Are you disagreeing with my disagreement with Bill or are you just agreeing with my original research into the Indians of the cahokia Period And area?


I mean that the Native Americans farmed in their own way, as opposed to the settler's ways. The idea of "40 acres and a mule" was not something that they did, or at least if they did I never heard of it. 

In the Midwest the Natives would work as much land as they pleased, by hand, but they did not own the land and whenever it suited them the entire village moved and for the next few years they all worked fresh ground, until they decided to move again. I imagine the Native Americans of other areas had other customs, but I do not know what they were.


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

Dad, Im joking when I say, IS that where they got their PaiuteT, as in paiotie?


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## haypoint (Oct 4, 2006)

Danaus29 said:


> Have any of you been to Mesa Verde? There are many houses carved out of rock cliffs, requiring ladders to access the upper levels. We toured Spruce Tree House several years before it was closed. The work that was required to carve out those structures must have been long and exhausting. At some point in time the land must have supported a large number of people but now the area is mostly desert.


It just takes time. That area couldn't support many people. But over time, working sandstone, many living areas were created. It served as protection from the other murderous Indian tribes that existed far before white men set foot on North America. Central and South America has acres of terraced gardens along the sides of mountains, made from thousands of stones.


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## haypoint (Oct 4, 2006)

Oxankle said:


> Don't get me wrong---If I were part Indian I'd be on that gravy train too. In my area the Indians were Osages and Cherokees, traditional enemies, but they are united in demanding government favors.


The government has been very good to the Tribes over the past 60 years. Liberal interpretations of old treaties. "Free education for Indians (equal to free schools for whites)" has been upgraded to free college to anyone 25% native. Large tracts of land given to establish new tribal, non-taxed, lands, with government supplied housing.
They have been smart in manipulating laws and situations to their advantage. Good for them. They bought a Public school building, unused, for $1. then turned it into a K through 6 grade school. Got Dept of Interior to give a yearly grant $333,000 to the underprivileged Natives. They partnered with Northern Mich. Univ to be a Charter School and get the same state payment, $4,000 per student that the public schools operate on. So they can spend double what the public schools get. This is for a Tribe that pulls in near $1,000,000 a day at the Casino. Pay at the Casino is low, so every penny the Casino pulls out of the economy goes into buying land, putting free houses on it and then renting them out. They are buying store fronts in town, building for profit hospitals and avoiding most taxes. Well played.
Sort of complex to say" Well, white people took their land." Since the beginning of time, spoils to the victors. But also, Natives didn't "own" land. Sort of like the nationless Jewish sheep herders. They traveled around and used what was there and moved on. Much of the land given to Native tribes, it was sold or reverted due to non-payment of taxes.


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## mnn2501 (Apr 2, 2008)

FarmboyBill said:


> ALSO, At one time Africa and S America were connected. Either the water was way lower than it is now, Noahs Flood? or they broke apart at separate times, Alaska, and SA.


MIllions of years before man. All of the land in the world was connected at one point


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## Oxankle (Jun 20, 2003)

Yee Haw!!!!!! Pocahontas has done a DNA test and is reported to have 1/516ths Native American Blood!!!! (If my wife understood the report correctly and if Christine Ford Blasey did not do the testing.). So, Pocahontas might be her real name.


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## GTX63 (Dec 13, 2016)

She did, however I don't think it would be accepted as much more than for her own personal curiosity.
_
Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB) is issued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) an agency under the United States Department of Interior. This certificate (CDIB) is the basis most tribes use to enroll tribe members.

The CDIB is an official U.S. document used to certify that a person does possess a percentage of Native American blood. Note though, the blood must be identified with a federally recognized tribe.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs issues the certificate after the individual has forwarded a finalized genealogy. The genealogy must be submitted with legal documents that include birth certificates, documents showing the applicant’s descents both from the maternal and the paternal sides.
A certificate of degree of Indian blood shows the constituent blood degree of a particular tribe or that of all tribes in the applicant’s ancestry. The percentage required by each tribe to enroll varies. Some tribes require that a minimum degree must be met before granting membership to an individual.

Interestingly, even the federal government requires that you meet a certain minimum before granting you some federal benefits.

To give you a clue, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians a minimum of 1/16 degree of Cherokee blood for tribal enrolment, while the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Higher Education Grant expects you to have the minimum of ¼ Native American blood percentages. That’s 25%._

I'm picturing a tribal council leader looking at her DNA results and asking her "...Uh, what do you want me to do with this?"

Ms. Warren's test has placed her 6-10 generations removed and approximately 1/1024 Native American. Not sure how many other folks get any preferential treatment, much less a teaching or board position based on that, but ho hum...


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## emdeengee (Apr 20, 2010)

So she does have Native American ancestors. I think that most of us would be quite surprised to see just exactly what and who we are made of. There is a TV show called "Who do you think you are?" which is an excellent title as we all have some thoughts as to who we are and most are based on family stories. I had my DNA done and was actually very pleased to find out that the family stories and history had a base in truth. On the other hand there were a couple of surprises. 

Now lets see if Trump is Swedish as he and his father claimed to try and distance themselves from their German ancestry.


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## macmad (Dec 22, 2012)

*She is 1/1024th Native American, or 0.094%... also known as not a Native American.*

****CULTURAL APPROPRIATION*** "The fact it’s so important to her that someone 100+ years ago in her lineage was *possibly* Native American so she can use it for social/political purposes today strikes me as actual cultural appropriation." - Dave Rubin

According to the New York Times, the average white person in America has nearly double the amount of American Indian DNA (0.18%) as Elizabeth Warren (0.098%), who claims to be Cherokee. Can't argue with science."
*


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## AmericanStand (Jul 29, 2014)

Well bill the best way to plant horn is with the help of a little horny toad .......


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

LOL lol What about the 48in rose? That's gotta be in some deep DODO lol
I always regretted that I had any indian blood in me, along with any other ancestry Im regrettably tied to. Mom, 1908 2003 said her grandmom was indian. X, whose gone through her own ancestry to Abraham perhaps says I don't have any indian blood in me. A slight bright happenstance in life lol


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## Shrek (May 1, 2002)

I don't need a DNA test to prove to me that I, my parents , grand parents and great grand parents are "native American" since we were all born here. As most non American Indian natives, my great great grandparents came from elsewhere.

A friend I grew up with who is descended from the Sioux , said both he, I and all most all our classmates were native American when a teacher put him on the spot of being native and he blew her singling out off by adding that even the American Indians in his heritage came to this continent from somewhere else as the plates of Earth started moving around as this third rock started cooling off ages ago.

The whole class laughed as he finished shooting our teacher down by ending his statement by telling her that just like everyone else in class, he was looking forward to having Columbus Day off school even though he knew his father would have more cattle work lined up for him.

Even though he has noticeable Sioux features, he shares his father's opinion that he is just another Alabama ******* like the rest of us and shared the explanation his grandfather told him of how their ancestors eras ago played American Indians against American Indians until they lost the main round of cowboys and Indians and they became American just like folks of every other ancestry.

His family is actually more cowboy than American Indian in that his family has worked cattle here for three or four generations and he and his kids still do.


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## Oxankle (Jun 20, 2003)

Shrek; tell your friend he has a fan here. That is the kind of Indian I like---An AMERICAN.


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## emdeengee (Apr 20, 2010)

A four part series NATIVE AMERICA debuts this week on PBS. Lots to learn and especially a lot of debunking of the so called history of Native Americans. 

Native Americans were the first to use zero, they had a rope system for calculus that rivaled the abacus, some of the most complex architecture in the world as well as incredible control over land and water and some had a written language contrary to what is believed.

Their knowledge of the universe was advanced beyond anything the great powers of Europe and Asia had and they had incredible skill at chemistry, mining and some metallurgy plus advanced medical treatment and surgeries that were used for thousands of years and not duplicated in the modern world until the 20th century. 

They were also farming before and at the same time as it is claimed that farming was invented in the east. They genetically developed many crops including two of the most used in the world - corn and potatoes (5000 varieties). Plus they developed agro forestry in the Amazon jungle that fed millions of people. Their systems of government and trade were complex and novel. Not backward peoples at all.


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## muleskinner2 (Oct 7, 2007)

Actually there were no Indians in America when Columbus arrived. He thought he was in India, and called the natives Indians. When he left Spain he didn't know where he was going, when he got to the new world he didn't know where he was, and when he got back he didn't know where he had been.


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## frogmammy (Dec 8, 2004)

IOW...the first male driver?

Mon


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## emdeengee (Apr 20, 2010)

muleskinner2 said:


> Actually there were no Indians in America when Columbus arrived. He thought he was in India, and called the natives Indians. When he left Spain he didn't know where he was going, when he got to the new world he didn't know where he was, and when he got back he didn't know where he had been.


But the name stuck. And it still sticks. In Canada the "Indians" chose the name First Nations peoples. In the US the term Native Americans is used but not by everyone.


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## emdeengee (Apr 20, 2010)

frogmammy said:


> IOW...the first male driver?
> 
> Mon


LOL! and not one female on the Nina, Pinta or Santa Maria to tell them where to go.


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

Women on ships were considered unlucky. I suppose, too many guys getting in fights over them and decimating the crew lol. But there were at least 2 pirate queens, Bonny somebody and Mary Reid


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## Oxankle (Jun 20, 2003)

You got my curiosity aroused, Bill. I'm a fan of tough women, so I looked them up. Bonney and Reid were captured and had very short lives. Bonny, I believe, died at twenty three. Reid a little older, died in prison. 
Another, Rachael Wall, died by hanging after running wild from 1781-89.

Two lived to retirement after making peace with the authorities---Cheng-Sao was forced to retire a fleet of pirate ships after the Chinese enlisted the aid of the British navy. Another, a French noble woman, took up piracy against the French for revenge after the beheading of her husband. She disbanded her ships, married an Englishman and lived out her life as a free woman. 

Apparently there were as many rough women in past times as there are today,
Ox


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## farmrbrown (Jun 25, 2012)

muleskinner2 said:


> Actually there were no Indians in America when Columbus arrived. He thought he was in India, and called the natives Indians. When he left Spain he didn't know where he was going, when he got to the new world he didn't know where he was, and when he got back he didn't know where he had been.


And all of that with gov't financing.


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