I was pretty skeptical when I first heard we would be studying the Indian mounds of Wisconsin. Since I live on Little Lake Butte des Morts and have been in a Wisconsin public school, teachers have seemingly been trying to portray these mounds as numbingly dull as possible. I have never been exposed to any real information regarding these tiny hills, apart from the fact that Indians made them a really long time ago. Besides displaying how absurdly ignorant I am, I feel this ties into our discussion of the longstanding racism whites established when they first arrived in North America.
The explorers who discovered the mounds covering the Midwest landscape did not believe the natives were competent enough to build them, and thus developed other far more outlandish rationalities for the earthworks' existence. Without discussing the Atlantis or ten lost tribes theories, I find it amazing how a group of people could collectively repress an even larger group of people immediately. The Native Americans did not have records or necessarily accurate understandings of the mounds' origin either, but they were written off far more severely than they deserved. As is later revealed by this book (among other things), they had a very meaningful process of burying the dead and ceremonial rituals suggesting a strong sense of religion. I can only assume that the explorers who came to America might have respected these practices if they took the time to study them, given the impact of religion upon Europe at the time. Alas, the very tolerance on which our country is founded exposes our opposite and very serious intolerance issues. We could have significantly more accurate and interesting things to report about the Native Americans atleast hundreds of years ago had the early visitors been less focused on gold and publishing pseudoscience. My education would have made me more well-rounded and accepting of cultures, instead of assuming anthropological studies are inherently dull.
I agree with everything that you have written. I find it appalling that just because these researchers didn't know much about the Native American's they automatically claimed that they weren't capable of building such massive and meaningful mounds, when in reality they were, and like you said, the book proves the reasons behind the Natives' ideas and buildings.
ReplyDeleteI think it's funny(not the ha-ha funny) in a way that no one has any historical information or records that can accurately describe who built the mounds. I also think its interesting that even today, as you said, teachers just drag kids to go look at dirt piles without giving too much information at what makes the mounds significant.
ReplyDeleteI am also upset by the fact that early settlers wrote off the Native Americans as capable of building these beautiful mounds. If the settlers would have stopped coming up with bogus theories revolving around Atlantis or the 10 Lost Tribes, maybe we would have a more accurate record of the society that built the mounds.
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm glad to read that we were more interesting in approach to mounds than previous exposures. The mounds really are awesome, in my view.. And the clueless approaches to the mounds are part of story.
ReplyDeleteWhat I found most interesting with the early theories as to who build these mounds was the different ways the prejudice against the Native Americans presented itself. First, they thought they were to primitive and un-advanced to organize themselves in way to produce these mounds. Then they thought there was a Lost Race that either left the area or died. Then, scholars speculated that the Indians were such savages that they actually brutally killed the mound builders. I guess to me, the most interesting thing was how the Native Americans went from being portrayed as primitive and small minded to being portrayed as selfish savages that killed the advance and skilled mound builders, when really, the mound builders were the Native Americans.
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