Rockport
History Book Club
Wednesday,
March 31, 2021
Native Americans looking East
Wednesday, March 31, 2021. Native Americans—Looking East. When
we normally think and write about the Indians that Europeans encountered when
they first arrived on these shores several hundred years ago, it’s from the
point of view of “looking west” at these red men. They themselves were staring
at white, bearded faces as our forefathers made their first contact with this
continent. Let’s try to imagine it from the viewpoint of the Native Americans,
when the strange ships appeared, and these pale faces appeared. Read any book
about Native Americans that will help you and us to imagine if we were
standing in their moccasins. [Proposed
by Mary Beth Smith]
Richter,
Daniel K., Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America;
2001; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Here is a book that puts the
moccasin on the other foot. When
we normally think and write about the Indians that white men encountered when
they first arrived on these shores several hundred years, it’s from the point
of view of “looking west” at these red men, staring at European faces as our
forefathers made their first contact with this continent.
Daniel
Richter begins “Facing East” by telling of a visit he made to St. Louis,
Missouri, which, before the arrival of Europeans, was the site of the largest
city in North America north of Mexico.
It was Cahokia, near present-day East St. Louis, and here, Indians had
created a large city for the living and the deceased. There were burial mounds and ceremonial
platforms, a “woodhenge” of logs arranged in a circle to track the movements of
the sun, moon and stars, and room for many to live.
At
it’s peak, about 1200 AD, it’s estimated population was 14 to 18,000 people,
greater than London at the time!
At
the time that Columbus and his men were “discovered” by Indians in the
Caribbean, some two million Native Americans inhabited the country east of the
Mississippi. Tribes speaking Moskogean languages occupied the southeast, Sioan
the Piedmont areas of the east; Iroquoian from the Great Lakes eastward and
down into the Carolinas; and Algonquian from the Chesapeake up the coast. For centuries the Indians had moved about the
country on the great rivers.
For
some 10,000 years these people had lived in an environment unconnected with
other humans, so the first Europeans, who were the Darwinian survivors of all
the diseases of their homelands, brought diseases which cut like a knife
through Indian tribes. By the start of the Revolution, only some 200,000
Indians lived in that huge area.
Richter
personalized his story by picking out three notable Indians because their
stories area well-known to many:
Pocahontas,
daughter of Chief Powhatan, who was a young Indian maiden first seen at
Jamestown in 1607, had a relationship with John Smith and then married another
Englishman, John Rolfe. She went to
England in 1616, where she died.
Kateri
Tekakwitha was a Mohawk Iroquois born in 1656.
She was discovered by Jesuit missionaries, who converted her to
Christianity. Her short life was one of
ascetism and sacrifice; before she died in 1680, she led many others to
Christianity. She was beatified by Pope
John Paul II in 1980.
Metacom,
the Wampanoag called King Philip, waged bitter war against colonists. Yet, centuries after he had lived, in the 19th
century he was revered as an Indian hero of our country.
In
recent years, perhaps even going back to the time of President Andrew Jackson,
the story of the Indians of America is a tragic tale. Once proud men of the woods and plains
bundled together and marched westward, made to settle in ever-shrinking
reservations. That is a true picture, of
course, but there is much more, and Richter tries to explain that to the
reader. In the early parts of the book
his narrative is fascinating, but as he goes forward, up to the time of the
American Revolution, his narrative gets enormously detailed and
complicated.
One
of the problems one has in writing about the history of the Indians in America
is that there are no written records—only records written by Europeans as they
reacted to their encounters with Indians.
Then, explorers would take Indians back to Europe to show them off,
perhaps use them as slaves, often to train them so that they could return as
interpreters for future European ventures.
Bit by bit, these people were able to explain parts of their oral
history and way of life to people who did record the information, and this is
what Richter gratefully includes in his history.
In
short, this is the discovery of these ugly bearded men on floating islands that
appeared in various locations on the coast of present-day Canada and
America. These strange creatures
sometimes began the encounter by attacking the Indians with these hard sticks
that made a loud noise. Often, they
brought pretty colored beads, and sometimes they performed strange rituals and
offered the Indians hard biscuits and a red drink. [The early Christian missionaries were
offering the Indians communion.]
The
early explorers were looking for a quick scheme to enrich themselves with gold
and gems. The Spaniards had gathered up
such riches in South America and they looked for it here, as well. When they didn’t find it, they pressed
further and further inland. Early
reports that went back to Europe were discouraging for the get-rich-quick
people. However soon, often with help
from the Indians, they discovered furs, deerskins, tobacco, and all kinds of
vegetables, as well as rich catches of fish.
Richter
does a good job of letting us view these explorers through the eyes of Indians,
as he describes their religious and spiritual outlook, and the world view they
had as these strangers appeared.
As
time went on, Indians got to look forward to the material things that the
Europeans brought in their ships, like kettles and axes and knives and cloth,
and over generations they grew to depend upon these things, which they
purchased with furs and skins and whatever else the Europeans valued.
Americans
today are often quick to condemn our forefathers in the way they treated the
Indians. One must be scrupulously
careful to try to understand the environment that early settlers saw. Each encounter, from those by Cartier and
Champlain in the north, to those by DeSoto in the south, had its own villains
and victims. Many of our forefathers
really wanted to make a new life for themselves, but they brought cattle, and
wanted to plant farms, and that was enough to upset the Indians. You can understand that to Indians, planting
fields, raising domesticated livestock, putting in fences --- were all things
that they could not tolerate.
Before you condemn our
forefathers, first learn all you can about the world that they were living
in. It makes little sense to evaluate
them by 2021 standards. The men and
women who arrived on America’s shores in 1620 and afterward were making a huge
jump for a new life. In many cases their
lives back in Europe were miserable. And
when they arrived here, in some cases their very presence was a threat to the
Indians.
Try to study their lives,
and try to understand the lives of the Indians, and think how you would have done it better.
-end-
Dear History Lovers,
Thanks to Cindy Grove, Library Head, for hosting today, and Bill Tobin for running the meeting when my computer dropped me off.
HISTORY BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2021
Wednesday, April 28, 2021. The Quest for Truth in History. How do we know it’s true? We’ve just gone through a difficult time in our
national history, when what you may have believed may have been false, and what
was “false” depended upon your political orientation. Propaganda, deception,
and conspiracy theories have always been used by governments against the outside
world and for their own people. How can you
figure out what is true and what is false? Read any book about public
information and propaganda in any era, in any country. [Proposed by Sam
Coulbourn]
Andrew Jackson
Wednesday, June 30, 2021. History of U.S. Presidents. Suggest a review of the 46
Presidents of the United States. Read biography of one or more Presidents.
Possible topics for discussion are the major policies, achievements, strengths,
failures and weaknesses relating to domestic policy, foreign policy,
immigration, use of military force. What are your thoughts? Are we creating a
“more perfect union”? Does history show U.S. presidential politics getting more
or less venial today than historically? [Proposed by Craig Cervo].
Wednesday,
July 28, 2021. Influence of Women in American History. Wednesday, July
28, 2021. Influence of Women in American History. Women have been
around as long as men, with and without a voice. How have women tried to
influence America? Did they succeed or fail? Why? Pick
a time or an issue that was important to women and explore it from the female
perspective. [Proposed by Mary Beth Smith]
Wednesday, August 25, 2021. History of North Africa, from Morocco to Egypt, and including Algeria,
Tunisia, Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Mauritania and more. Pick a nation or a group of nations in the
northern tier of Africa and learn how they interact, how they came to be, what
problems are they having, or had, that attracted world attention in the
past. Some examples: The Barbary Pirates
and how America’s President Jefferson took them on; The Italian Colonial history
in Abyssinia and Somaliland; World War II—Field Marshal Rommel in North Africa;
“Carthago delenda est!” The Punic War between Rome and Carthage; Tunisia
and he Start of Arab Spring. [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn]
Wednesday,
September 29, 2021. The Fight for Civil Rights. America began with
the fight for Civil Rights for colonists and the fight continues for groups of
Americans. Pick a group – what are they fighting for, what’s their
strategy, are they gaining or losing ground and why?
[Proposed by Mary Beth
Smith]
Wednesday, October
27, 2021. Mass Refugee movements in History. Movements of a large number from one nation to another can
and have changed the face of the earth. Read about any era on this topic or
read about the phenomenon as a whole. Consider the movement of Arab nationals
today into Europe, or the pre-historic migration of peoples from Siberia to North
America. Or perhaps Irish victims of the potato famine coming to America and
Canada in the 1840s. [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn]
Wednesday, December 1, 2021.
[Moved back one week to avoid conflict with Thanksgiving.] Reconstruction, 1865-? Abraham Lincoln had a clear picture of what should be done after
the end of the War Between the States, but his assassination meant that Andrew
Johnson, the Democrat who succeeded him, would be President. Read about this
dangerous, murderous time in our history as we sought to regain the 11
Confederate States in the Union. Read
about the growth of white supremacist organizations, and the different ways that
America handled the end of slavery, and welcoming (?) millions of newly freed
Africans to America. [Proposed by Mary Beth
Smith]
There will be no later meeting in December.
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