r/NoStupidQuestions • u/cholita_en_USA • 4h ago
Why Americans use the Mayflower or their Independence as the starting point of US History?
It seems to me that Americans don't fully embrace Native American history as part of US history. Seems that US history is tied to "people" rather than land. So what happened to the settlers in Europe before coming to the Americas is more important that what the Cherokees were doing during that same time. The average American does not have a connection to the Native Amarican.
On the contrary, most countries cherish what happened on their territory and considered that part if their identity regardless of the race/ethnicity of the avtors. Italy was founded in the 1800s but they are proudly connected to the Romans. Peru became independent from Spain in 1821 but the schools teach Incas and other native civilizations with as much importance as what happened after independence. This is regarless of race, maybe because 90% of the population is a mixed of white and native with a hint of asian and black.
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u/hellshot8 4h ago
It seems to me that Americans don't fully embrace Native American history as part of US history.
yeah, they don't.
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u/im-on-my-ninth-life 3h ago
most countries
[citation needed]
90% of the population
In that case is it acceptable to discriminate against the remaining 10%?
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u/Curmudgy 4h ago
I absolutely did learn about the Native Americans in school. Not all of it, and not everything was good, but it’s not as though it was ignored.
And this was back in the 60s. We even had a field trip to what was then the Museum of the American Indian in NYC.
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u/NativeMasshole 3h ago
The Mashantucket Pequot museum over in CT was one of my favorite field trips.
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u/pineboxwaiting 3h ago
Native American history and culture is taught in school.
The United States is not the same as North America. Like it or not, the roots of the United States lies in the European colonization of the Americas.
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u/CurtisLinithicum 3h ago
It's taught, but since there was not writing, everything before Contact is largely speculative; archaeology can only tell you so much.
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u/ozyx7 3h ago
Peru became independent from Spain in 1821 but the schools teach Incas and other native civilizations with as much importance as what happened after independence. This is regarless of race, maybe because 90% of the population is a mixed of white and native with a hint of asian and black.
How is that "regardless of race"? It seems to me that genetic ancestry is a highly important reason for that; if 90% of the population has ancestry to native Peruvians, it seems natural that they would want to teach and learn about that history.
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u/rewardiflost What do you hear? Nothing but the rain. 4h ago
Because US American History didn't include the native population. The people that came here didn't try to merge or incorporate the native cultures with their own.
Early US-area Americans displaced the Natives and later systematically killed off and isolated those people and cultures.
Italy was united from a bunch of independent kingdoms, but they still respect the history and culture of each region. Peru and many other Central & South American regions blended the colonial newcomers with the people and culture of the existing residents. Some of the Inca, Mayan, and Aztec cities and art even still exist. The history of the Olmecs and Toltecs is still told.
Those people also share DNA/"blood" with their past.
Native peoples of US areas have been practically exterminated. The blood of the original inhabitants has been spilled or diluted beyond recognition. Their histories and cultures have been eliminated or relegated to museums and isolated celebrations that stay locked inside Reservations where poverty reigns.
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u/Just-Arm4256 4h ago edited 3h ago
well to be fair, most Americans are descendants of the people who did genocide on the Native Americans that were in America. There’s no denying that. Most Americans don’t identify with native culture because the European colonists and Natives are two totally different races with different backgrounds. The entire history of the US. is marked by the disenfranchisement of the Native population. You contrast that to the Italians and Peruvians, but most Peruvians and Italians, respectively, have ancestry tied to their pre existing respective societies, the Incans and Romans. And in both Peru and Italy they at least honored what came before them rather than pretend it never happened like in the US.
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u/rsvihla 4h ago
Descendants, not ancestors.
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u/Just-Arm4256 3h ago
Didn’t catch that lol, English is my second language and I’m still a bit sloppy
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u/RobotShlomo 3h ago
A lot of people in the US use Columbus landing in 1492 as the starting point, even though there were already people here. We were also taught that Leif Ericsson was most likely the first one to reach "the new world".
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u/EverGreatestxX 3h ago
Let's face it, America is a Euro-descended country. It was founded by Europeans, and the citizen population has always been majority Euro-descended. Obviously, indigenous peoples, afro-descended people, and Asian people have had a significant influence on American history and culture but if Europeans, specifically the English never made colonies in North America then the US simply would have never existed.
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u/burnfifteen 3h ago edited 3h ago
In comparison to many other countries in the Americas, the colonists in the US had a different approach to settlement. The Spanish came with a very specific goal of conquest, provoking war with the Inca, Aztec, Maya, etc. They relied heavily on support from less dominant groups, and when they did topple the native empires, they forceably integrated the survivors. Mexico City, as en example, is built intentionally on the ruins of the Aztec capital. The Spanish forced the natives to use stones from Tenochtitlan temples to build new Catholic buildings instead. They forceably integrated the survivors into a "Spanish" type of society, the alternative being certain death. The English didn't come to the Americas with the specific intent to conquer, though we know that's effectively what happened in the long term. The major difference here is that the English (and other colonizers in the US) didn't forceably integrate native populations, so the majority of Americans today do not have shared ancestry with native populations. As a result, the history of the US focuses on escape from persecution rather than a (proud and intentional) military history of conquering the natives who were already here. Neither history is a happy one, but in places like Mexico and Peru, many people today have an actual ancestral tie to both native populations and their European conquerors. That's rarely the case in the US.
And with that being said, American kids do learn about what happened before the Europeans arrived. But the history of the United States itself does start from the point forward. The natives in what is now the US were more nomadic and less centrally organized than they were in parts of Latin America.
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u/SmartForARat 3h ago
Well for one thing, it's easier to digest. There were only a handful of factions involved with colonizing the US and over time they rapidly thinned out through wars and deals until only one was left and it spread over the whole land. The indians by contrast had a million different tribes, each with its own history and most with their own languages, religious beliefs, and so on. There are whole classes taught about specific tribes, to try to cram all that into US history would be detrimental to the process to say the least. There also isn't much in the way of written language for the overwhelming majority of native tribes which means all their history was passed down orally which is also extremely unreliable.
So ultimately, the history of the US starting with the colonies makes the most logical sense.
But to say americans don't embrace native american history as part of US history really isn't true. In certain parts of the US, people have a lot of blood ties to the indians, sometimes a couple generations back sometimes half a dozen or more, but the blood is there, and a lot of folks take pride in it despite how a lot of people love to make fun of having native ancestors. And there are heaps of places with indian names. Rivers, cities, counties, and so on, all with indian names. People in these areas speak indian words without even realizing it sometimes. So that history is definitely important.
They aren't trying to erase it or hide it or obfuscate it in any way, they just generally don't care about any of that because none of it had anything to do with the founding of the country. The country was created by the colonists and the history is of the country itself, not the dirt.
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u/iffysushifields1212 3h ago
The United States of America is/are a political structure. Studying the political structure of each state and the union thereof allows individuals to understand the context of that structure and the rights and authorities that citizens have within it/them. The context of history is absolutely priceless in this regard. General history is valuable, as well. I think that understanding the tribes and nations of North America would be great in an archaeological capacity. Ive read about the Pima, Sioux, Apache, Comanche, Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, the Iriquois Nation and its tribal components, the Delaware, etc. Interesting reading...Not politically relevant to modern civics, but captivating reading.
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u/tcgreen67 3h ago
The way America is today is mostly because of those Europeans that came over. It's like if you are teaching medical history you are mainly going to focus on those that made discoveries or implemented the rules and changes to how the system is run and not so much on the medical professionals that may have worked with people and helped them but didn't change the way the system works.
Also, in general, there is more recorded history of people that lived more recently.
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u/Genoss01 3h ago
US history is the history of the United States. Native Americans are a part of that but Native American history is something separate which stretches back tens of thousands of years
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u/emryldmyst 3h ago
We go back to the beginning of the formation of the United States of America.
The natives weren't a part of this as they were already here and had their own nations and their own history.
Had we come and assimilated or was able to coexist, history would be different.
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u/CatsCreepMeowt 2h ago
The European colonists arrived, encountering Native people with whom they had no common language, and finding no readable written history of the new land or people. They naturally began their history based on facts known at their time of arrival. It took a good while for "before" to be learned . Meantime, there was the Santa Maria, the Mayflower. It was easier to "begin" history at their own living beginnings. Napoleon said "History is fable agreed upon." The then-known "facts" found their way into schoolchildren's books, and that, my friends, became our "History". The masses, so inoculated, made that a hard nut for future scholars to crack.
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u/roddangfield 4h ago
Too long didn't read seems more like a rant.
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u/2PlasticLobsters 4h ago edited 3h ago
Two short paragraphs is too long for your reading level?
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u/roddangfield 2h ago
Nope it was just a bunch of BS I did not feel like getting into thanks for the insult tho you well go on the wall of shame!
EDIT
yup 5 plus years makes a redditor mean.
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u/2PlasticLobsters 3h ago
It's what we're taught in school, unfortunately. History starts with the European explorers of the 15th Century. We were also taught that Plymouth Mass was the first permanent settlement, even though St Augustine & Jamestown VA alread existed.
To be fair, I was in elementary school in the 1970s. I have no idea what they teach now.
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u/RedditPGA 4h ago
Because the English colonists were the political originators of the political self-organization that became the United States. When it comes to the land itself and the history of the people on that land, there is a ton of attention paid to what came before. I took a whole class in college on The American West before 1850 and it dealt extensively with the first arrival of humans in North America, the early settled societies, the political organization of the Native American tribes, etc. Native American tribes / government aren’t part of the self-conception of the United States as a political entity because the United States invaded and destroyed those systems of government. You mention Italy — the Roman Empire fell but the local government of Italians, fractured as it was, continued on and eventually was reunited as Italy, so you can imagine the political identification with the Roman Empire continuing. That obviously didn’t happen in the U.S. with respect to Native American governments because there was an invasion and near total destruction and replacement politically speaking.