6 Ridiculous Lies You Believe About the Founding of America

I'm going more false than not. The author greatly exaggerates the size, organization, and technological complexity of the native tribes. While the Iroquois and a handful of other East Coast/SE tribes did have their shit together, most of the tribes west of the Appalachians were rather backwards with only periodic bursts of higher civilization. Also, the Vikings didn't have muskets, canons, or cavalry at their disposal like the British, French, and Spanish did.

I thought you said lies. Nothing I read was anything new.

Wow, did Mato write this? Lol!

It was actually an interesting article. When you begin to sift out the obvious hatred of the europeans and the bias, there are (some) truths in the article. But Mark is right ...very little of it is new. This is stuff anyone can learn if they turn on the History Channel.

In defense of American high school teachers, when you take a subject such as American History, there is so much to cover in such a short time, that you really only get the 'Cliff's Notes' version of history. It was only when I got into University that we began to focus on specific topics and were able to cover them in much more detail.

I also liked what Bryant had to say about the Eastern Indian tribes vs the west. The Eastern tribes had the large villages (as did many of the South and Central America tribes) and some form of civilized society. Cross the Appalachians (or maybe the Mississippi R) though and you find that the indians were largely nomadic, broken down into smaller tribes that could move quickly in search of food.

And plague did devastate the indian populations...but we knew that in high school! Heck, Hollywood has depicted the effects of plague too. But this author is implying that the indians were all benevolent kind noble savages and the mean old europeans came in and destroyed em all just for the spite of it. While plague and fever did kill many indians, so did war. He conveniently left out the fact that the indians were fighting one another like cats and dogs long before the Vikings ever found their way here. Also, you cant tell me that no indian ever got sick until the europeans arrived. So the story about Squanto (while mostly true) doesnt mean that Europeans were to blame for all his problems. Ther ejust werent many Europeans in the area when Squanto's village succumbed to plague. That leaves the indians themselves being responsible.

Another question to consider (for all you Darwinists reading), is if the Indians were so strong and powerful as this article tries to prove, what does their peculiar habit of getting sick and dying after a handshake with a european say about the theory of natural selection?

Everyone today wants to point out how the white man ran roughshod over the indians and how noble and great the indian culture was. But lets face it...the indians were living with stone age technology and unable to evolve to the point that they could compete with the intellect and resourcefulness of the Europeans. They could not manufacture iron products, had no knowlege of explosives and gunpowder, used primitive forms of armor, knew nothing about horse riding, were incapable of holding their liquor and had to scavenge off of the stuff Europeans threw away to compete. They couldnt even compete with the small blacksmith shops in the colonies! Their idea of munufacturing a bridge was to throw a log across a creek. They couldnt even fashion a nail. Many also had a custom of stealing from their neighbors which led to much animosity between the two groups.

To me, this points out that, rather than being pushed toward extinction because they were lied to or cheated out of their property, they really were inferior and incapable of keeping up with European technology.

The lies or myths were laid out before the truth, which of course is only partial truth as any single article could delve into. Though i think from early on westerns admired their culture, but their culture/civilations didnt win out, and i dont think it can really be attributed to any one thing. Also this article seems to cover only the US and english colonies rather than those of the americas at large, completely failing to recognize st.augustine as being founded 50 years prior to plymouth rock, making it americas first successful european colony.

You hear about the one tribe out in oklahoma who all look not quite full blooded and they carry down some tradition that hebrews settled somewhere with their ancestors from whereever back east before they were relocated.

I also dont think its fair to suggest that just because they may have been technologically inferior at the time of their meeting the white man, that they were somehow inferior altogether. We have to remember that aside for the llama and alpaca in south america, there were no beasts of burden in the americas until the europeans brought them. No camels, mules, donkeys, horses, oxen, nothing. Just dogs, and the wild buffalo which idk if it would have made a suitable working animal or not. Not to mention all of europes technology was "borrowed" from the east anyway. Otherwise the natives wouldnt have looked much different from the druid culture in pre roman britain. Metal working, gun powder, even sailing technology and more was borrowed from the east. And i think there is a natural lure to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle thats almost instinctive, even for ppl from more advanced societies. And rather collectively, mankind decided that permanent settlements, or "civilization," was the way to go thanks to the agricultural revolution. I also think. That in spite of their isolation from the shared knowledge of the rest of the world, and lack of large labor beasts, some pretty advanced civs did arise, rivaling even the old world in size and complexity.

I also dont follow in the vagely supremacist idea that man can be broken up into superior or inferior races, as appearance and customs aside, we are all the same.

Not being supremacist. When I said "inferior" I mean that they were inferior technologically and my poit is that the indigenous people here were pretty much doomed. The only way they could have survived was if they somehow maintained their isolation...which was unlikely.

Well i was just talking about the immune system thing, which again was a result of their relative isolation compared to eurasia and africa all intermingling through trade. Europeans carried a lot more diseases but also a lot more immunities that the natives didnt have. And yes, i think when two cultures meet, the technologically inferior culture is pretty much doomed, at least to exist as it previously had.

Yeah, they didnt have clean water in Europe and didnt bathe. They stunk. I can only imagine what the Indians thought when they met the first Europeans.

I wouldnt even want to imagine. Really incredible they went on to sominate the world being so far behind in certain areas.

Pun wrote:I wouldnt even want to imagine. Really incredible they went on to sominate the world being so far behind in certain areas.

Simple explanation really:

Miles1 wrote:

Pun wrote:I wouldnt even want to imagine. Really incredible they went on to sominate the world being so far behind in certain areas.

Simple explanation really:

Everybody loves Eddie Izzard!!!