Essay On North American Myths

The Native Americans are a prime example of the repression, poverty, and discrimination many minority groups have had to endure throughout the years. The Native Americans had their own land, culture and language. They were people able to adapt well to their particular region by hunting, fishing and farming crops. Their cultures primarily rested on wise use of all natural resources available. Many historians believe there were between 6 and 10 million Native Americans living in what later became the United States before the arrival of the Europeans (Parrillo, 2011). This paper will analyze the views the Europeans had about the Natives, what came about from these views and where the Native American

After reading “Second Thoughts of Colonial Historians and American Indians” by James H. Merrell, it is important to acknowledge the symbolicism of the language used by so many Colonial Historians as they recount significant instances throughout our Indigenous American History. In many comparisons, word selection used to describe the Native peoples, tend to simplify their existence as merely hunters and gatherers.

The fascination with Native Americans has been a constant with outsiders since explorers first “discovered” the New World. The biggest surge in this fascination came in the mid-19th century when the Indian Wars were starting to come to an end and the belief that Native Americans were disappearing, walking into the sunset never to be seen again. This led to an increase in the collecting of anything Native American, from artifacts to stories to portraits. The inevitable outcome of this was that Native Americans, who were never considered very highly to begin with, where now moved into a category of scientific interest to be study. This scientific interest in Native Americans is what many museums and other institutions based their collections and exhibits on and is one of the issues that many Native Americans have with how both their people and their culture were, and to some extent still are, represented in these places.

The Enlightened Archaeologist – an article authored by Jeffrey Hantman and Gary Dunham chronicles Thomas Jefferson’s investigation of the Indian burial mound located on the South Fork of the Rivanna River in the 18th century. The site excavated by Jefferson, however, is no longer visible, most likely due to dissipation by inevitable natural occurrences (I.E. excessive rainfall, flooding rivers, etc.) or human activity such as farming. The “Father of American Archaeology” correctly predicts the latter in his book, Notes on the State of Virginia, in which he states, mounds “…put under cultivation are much reduced in their height, and spread in width, by the plough, and will probably disappear in time” (1787). Fortunately for Archaeologists of the late 20th century (1988) an Indian burial mound identical to that of the one Jefferson described in his book was uncovered just 14 miles from the South Fork of the Rivanna River.

The Native Americans once thrived on the rich land of the Americas, and they built a long-lasting civilization with the help of nature, gods, and organized roles within the tribes. However, the thriving population plummeted after their encounter with diseases and forced labor brought upon them by the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores. Although at first the conquistadores mistreatment of Native Americans seem shallow and unethical, their conquest of the Americas only partially reflects the claims of the English Black Legends..

American archaeologist and anthropologist, Stephen Plog, wrote an account of the pre-Columbian natives of the Americans titled Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest. Plog’s purpose is to communicate the cultural and ritualistic lifestyles of the prehistoric natives of the southwest, which spans across the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada with some mention of trade with Mexico. The author has demonstrated an effective approach of an objective viewpoint on the lives of the prehistoric south westerners using sources from excursions from previous archaeologists such as, Paul S Martin and David R Wilcox among many others who excavated the vacant villages of the southwest.

It is without doubt that there has been a prominent distinction between the Native Americans and the English settlers upon landing in Virginia in the early 1600s. With the prior ‘knowledge’ from previous pioneers in America, the colonist had viewed the Natives in a vilified manner as savages without proper means of civilization. These so called ‘heathens’ were said

When the Europeans first came to the America, they assumed that they would be welcomed and be looked up to because of the gifts and trade they brought over. However, they couldn’t be farther from the truth, as the Natives feared their foreign weaponry, technology, and animals. Both groups, although in different circumstances, had misconceptions of each other that altered the views the Europeans and the Natives had of each other.

Throughout all regions above Mexico, Native Americans from all different tribes built structures that were useful to them. They built burial mounds all across the Mississippi River Valley and other regions. These mounds came in all shapes and sizes, and some even had figures of

The Myth of the Moundbuilders is a myth accepted by American settlers from Europe, in North America into the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. America was being populated and the new colonizers began to notice many artificial earthworks all around the continent. Circular, straight and mound statues were built and uncovered when the new farmers started to clean around the trees in the forest.

American Indians shaped their critique of modern America through their exposure to and experience with “civilized,”

In the examination of the multitudes of American myths and values, a common use and theme can be found uniting all of them. These myths and values, to one degree or another, are designed to make old white men feel better about themselves and as a cudgel used against the changing culture that challenges their privileged position. The myths I will be exploring today involve sanitizing their past, glorifying their actions, and answering challenges to their thrones.

Throughout history, and all over the world, mythology has been developed as a way of explaining the unknown and coping with one’s existence. Why does the sun shine? Well, seemingly, to generations past, something is controlling the universe, so there must be a god in charge of the sun and many other natural phenomenon. During the creation of Native American myths, “there was much in the way of free-range food, but hunting wasn't as easy as getting up in the morning, taking a stroll and shooting a few passing bison with your bow” (Godchecker). Times were tough, “even Plains societies who lived off the prolific buffalo fell under the threat of starvation at times” (Godchecker). Finally, “when herds were found, the people were grateful and

Throughout the article, Archaeology as Anthropology, Lewis Binford argues that by looking at culture through a systemic view point our interpretations of the past can become stronger and will improve the field of archaeology and anthropology as a whole. His article is integral to the foundation of ‘New Archaeology’ because it gave a critical review of the short comings of a cultural historic approach, and provides suggestions of improvement that have been applied and even built upon in contemporary archaeology. These improvements are discussed by looking at three major functional sub-classes of material culture, with regard to the processes of change, and then applied in the context of the utilization of native copper in eastern North America. This approach created a new viewpoint with which to understand the past through cultural material and was one of the highlights that brought the field of archaeology to what it is today.

TheThe difficulty, however, about such an inquiry is that nearly all the available data are confined to those concrete survivals like graves, sacred places and their contents, sculptures, bas-reliefs, engravings and paintings that have escaped the ravages of time. Their interpretation must be to some extent conjectural, but much of the material has survived, little changed, in everyday occurrence among the peoples who live today under conditions very similar to those of early humans. If employed with proper caution such evidence can afford useful and illuminating clues to the purpose and meaning of prehistoric religion.