Sicilian Culture: News: America Before Columbus

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America Before Columbus
By Dennis Mueller

When Columbus came to America in 1492, the land he supposedly "discovered" was already inhabited by over 75 million people, twenty-five million of which lived in North America.
The natives of America migrated across the Bering Straits and settled into warmer areas of the continent. About a thousand years before Christ, the Hopi Indians who live in what is now called New Mexico, were building cliff dwellings, farming and creating villages.
When Julius Caesar was conquering the Western world, an Indian culture called the Moundbuilders, who lived in the Ohio Valley, were making huge structures out of the earth. One of them was said to be over three miles long. The area served as a trading post of sorts, where people came from the West, the Gulf of Mexico and the Midwest for trade and the exchange of goods. So you can see, a system of trade and commerce existed before Columbus even arrived.
In what is now called Pennsylvania and upperstate New York, lived the Iroquois. The Iroquois lived in villages and had a very sophisticated social system, which was in many ways, superior to the European culture. The land was worked in common and it was owned by the whole nation. Women held a high place in the Iroquois culture. Family names were tied to the women, not the man. If a man married, he joined the family of his wife. Women farmed the land while the men hunted for fish and game. Power was shared by men and women and the European model of male dominance was conspicuously absent in the Iroquois culture. Children were not punished harshly and were taught equality in possessions. This is contrasted with the severity of the Puritans who believed in harsh punishment.
This is contrasted with the culture that the Europeans brought to the New World. The Europeans were a society of rich and poor, controlled by priests, governors and male heads of families. The Iroquois society had no laws, sheriffs, judges or juries, yet boundaries of behavior existed. If someone stole food or shamed their family, they were banished until they had morally atoned for their actions.
So this was the land Columbus "found." There was no written language, however, their history was passed on by oral tradition. They paid attention to the development of an individual's personality. This kind of community lasted long after the Indians were conquered. John Collier, who lived with the tribes of the American Southwest, said of the spirit of the natives, "if we could make it our own, there would be an eternally inexhaustible earth and a forever lasting peace."
Perhaps this is myth making, but many of the journals kept by Europeans repeated the same thing; What can we learn from this? First, we can see that hierarchy leads to divisions in all societies and this stratification of power leads to dominance by a few to the cost of many. This is true of all European systems whether it be capitalism or communism. Secondly, mere laws and punishment does not lead to a peaceful society. Maybe we should study this culture in our schools and incorporate some of its beliefs into our own violent society.
Sources, Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States.
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