The first immigrants to Europe arrived thousands of years ago from central Asia. Most pre-contact Europeans lived together in small villages. Because the continent was very crowded, their lives were ruled by strict hierarchies within the family and outside it to control resources. Europe was highly multi-ethnic, and most tribes were ruled by hereditary leaders who commanded the majority “commoners.” These groups were engaged in near constant warfare.
Pre-contact Europeans wore clothing made of natural materials such as animal skin and plant and animal-based textiles. Women wore long dresses and covered their hair, and men wore tunics and leggings. Both men and women liked to wear jewelry made from precious stones and metals as a sign of status. Before contact, Europeans had very poor diets. Most people were farmers and grew wheat and vegetables and raised cows and sheep to eat. They rarely washed themselves, and had many diseases because they often let their animals live with them.
Religion infused every part of Europeans’ lives. Europeans believed in one supreme deity, a father figure, who they believed was made of three parts, and they particularly worshiped the deity’s son. They claimed that their god had given humans domination over the earth. They built elaborate temples to him and performed ceremonies in which they ate crackers and drank wine and believed it was the body and blood of their god, who would provide them with entrance into a wondrous afterlife called heaven when they died. Many wars were fought over disagreements about the details of this religion, each group believing their interpretation was the right one that should be spread across the land.
Now imagine that is part of a textbook that has entire chapters on the Mississippian polities of the 1200s and a detailed account of the diplomatic situation of the southeastern provinces in the 1400s and 1500s, an enormous section that goes through the history of the rise of the Triple Alliance in Mexico and goes through the rule of each tlatoani and their policies, the heritage of Teotihuacan and its legacy in later Mesoamerican politics, elaborate descriptions of the trade routes that connected and drove various nations in North America. Long explanations of the rise of various religious movements such as the calumet ceremony and Midewiwin, and how they affected political agendas and artistic trends. Pages and pages and pages going through the past thousand years of American history century by century.
And these three paragraphs are the only mention of European history before the year 1500.
If your textbook of North American history goes into the details of the Middle Ages, the Reformation and Renaissance, the Silk Road, and European monarchies, and you don’t include equal description of the Mississippian coalescence and dispersal, Haudenosaunee-Algonquian relations, the Woodlands, trans-plains, and southwestern trade systems, the Mexica conquests and the Fifth Sun ideology with explicit naming of various places and leaders, then your textbook is inadequate.
Why do you include those “pre-contact” European things? Because they explain the motivations and reasons for what Europeans did. But people largely imagine North America as this timeless place and don’t recognize that pre-contact American history had just as much of an effect on post-contact history because it provides explanations of the motivations and reasonings behind indigenous peoples’ actions.
But of course, that would require people to recognize that indigenous people had their own histories and agendas and agency that affected the course of history rather than making them a passive recipient of European historical force.
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bluerosegirl08 said:
Wow and my preception is changed forever.
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cherie said:
Im European and came from Asia and have Asia in me as well as Irish, I would love to know more and in laments terms, I want to know my history. and why am do I have Mongolian in me , Is that from coming from Asia
?
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pagan said:
what the hell? Christianity is not our true culture! It is an invasive FOREIGN cult from the Middle East. True Europeans worshiped their indigenous Gods such as Odin, Zeus. etc.
Also the culture you describe is not the native culture of Europe, but Christian nonsense.
Ben Sheard said:
Which is precisely why three paragraphs is inadequate.
Paulina said:
It was the description from a textbook, no one thinks it is actually accurate. The textbook writers never get the history right, only from one perspective. At least the only concern with your race is that they didn’t get your religion right. They have cut out all of the hardships of us Native Americans and to this day there is still no justifications for our stolen land, racism, stolen identities/culture and mass genocides. Instead we are ignorant because no one knows the actually history or the full picture behind the events that took place.
Thomas Kenning said:
Reblogged this on open ended social studies.
tom said:
truly in my own observation, if it have nor been for european conquests in new america, i wonder what life would be for our native indian brothers. highly likely that their culture and race well preserved even more. without white intervention their tradition won’t lost forever…. just my thought
adventuresfromelle said:
The same could be said of the indigenous people of the Caribbean (notably the Tainos and Kalinagos) before their “extermination” as my whitewashed history books say, and West Africans in West Africa before trans-Atlantic slavery. Surely East India has their own tales to tell too. Sigh. We can only pick up the pieces and preserve what’s left of our identities.
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