Comment 60625

By adrian (registered) | Posted March 02, 2011 at 22:30:39 in reply to Comment 60621

(Tybalt, you should consider writing an article for RTH.)

One of the most interesting and informative books I've ever read that dealt with a lot of native history is "What Is America?" by Ronald Wright. This is a book about the history of the United States and how that has created the culture and society of America today, but given the importance of native Americans to that history, much of the book is about that.

The book utterly dispells the myth of the "savage Indian", describing instead sophisticated agricultural societies. For example: many of our crops were domesticated by natives (e.g. maize, potatoes, sweet potatoes, manico, beans and squash); the New World had "towns, roads, governments, priesthoods, armies, art and architecture, books and archives"; by the mid-1820s the Cherokee Nation had higher rates of literacy than in the United States; various native American governments sent diplomats on diplomatic missions to the Old World, including the Cherokees and Iroquois, acting as full representatives of nation states.

I don't think many people realize that although whites destroyed many native societies, they also allied and entered into treaties with many native societies, and those treaties are still legally binding. That of course requires some knowledge of history, which is not a strong point of North Americans, but there you have it.

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