What they ate, what they traded, and how the Indians lived before Columbus: Stereotypes versus facts

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Because of adventure films, cute quotes on the Internet, and books written by colonialists during the days of active colonization, the average European perception of the indigenous people of America is rather stereotyped. Even realizing that South and North America differed from each other in history, many are very vague about what exactly these differences looked like. It seems that in the south they ate potatoes and corn, and in the north - game meat … Right?

Farmers in the South and Hunters in the North

Many agricultural crops came to Europe precisely from what is now Latin America. These are corn, potatoes, tomatoes, pumpkin and some other vegetables. But the people of South and Central America were not the only ones involved in agriculture. The Indians of the Great Lakes (the territory of present-day Canada) ate mainly wild-growing rice, collecting it from lake shores and swamps. Moreover, rice grew so much that it was possible to exchange it for something useful during trade meetings with other tribes.

Despite the stereotypes, before meeting Europeans, the main food for the inhabitants of present-day Peru was not potatoes and corn, but beans, rich not only in nourishing starch, but also in protein. Beans were considered so important that the faces of the most revered gods were painted with bean patterns.

Some of the Indians of North America settled down and grew pumpkins and sunflowers, not counting corn and beans. Sunflower oil was highly prized by the tribes of North America as a hair styling product and was an important trade item between the settled Indians and the nomadic tribes of the prairies and forests. And in California, acorns were a very important product. Flour was extracted from them, which was mixed with flour from cereals to bake bread.

At the same time, it is not at all necessary that those cultures in which they were actively engaged in agriculture owned fertile lands. Many areas were either rocky and arid, or swampy. The Indians had to use their wits to grow their own food and seriously interfere with ecosystems. For example, they arranged a complex system of terraces with fields and vegetable gardens on the slopes of the mountains, or they fashioned artificial islands among lakes from muddy mud so that there was where to plant vegetables.

The Indians knew the statehood of only three peoples

When they talk about pre-Columbian statehood in America, they remember three empires: the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas. But in fact, in addition to these countries, there were many more smaller states in America. Some of them were eventually conquered by stronger neighbors, while others managed to defend their independence for years or centuries.

For example, the Toltecs, Moche, or the people called the Anasazi had their own states - he created a rich city-state in which there were multi-storey buildings and from which wide straight roads ran to the vassal villages. This city was ruined because the Anasazi Indians ravaged the entire surrounding nature. Alas, harmony with nature and respect for its resources are also just a stereotype. Each tribe took everything it could from the surrounding nature.

Another popular stereotype is that all Indians outside the great empires lived in either tepees (wigwams) or huts. Houses for the whole family were built, for example, by the Iroquois, Pawnee and Arikara. Representatives of the culture, which was later called Mesa Verde, built a giant palace in the rocks for their entire five-thousand-strong tribe. The Hohokam and Mogolion Indians built houses in the mountains.

Moreover, the tribe could be sedentary and did not know houses, continuing to install wigwams, like their nomadic ancestors. So it was with the Ojibwe Indians, most of whom lived in villages in one place and grew corn and other vegetables.

In the Indian tribe, everyone respected each other and before the Europeans did not know drunkenness and drug addiction

If we start the discussion of vices with drugs, then it would be more accurate to say that among most Indian tribes, drug use was strictly regulated - it was allowed only on holidays, or only during ceremonies associated with birth, death or initiation. Also, the use of drugs was freer for representatives of the clergy (shamans and priests) - they needed to contact spirits or gods in time to find out the answer to pressing questions. And these were not questions about the meaning of life. Basically, shamans and priests tried to figure out which day is the best to attack neighbors, or how many people need to be sacrificed for the gods to end the drought.

All settlements and states that knew agriculture were able to prepare alcoholic beverages of various strengths, from weak mash to something like strong beer from corn. Among other peoples, the use of alcohol was also strictly limited to holidays and rituals, but in some tribes it was normal to drink as soon as possible. Alcoholic drinks were prepared not only from cereals and berries, but even from cocoa beans!

As for respect for each other, then, firstly, almost all Indians knew what slavery was (among nomadic Indians, captured children and women usually became slaves, and the only chance to escape from slavery was someone who liked you enough to be taken as a wife, husbands or sons). Secondly, among many Indians, all women, except priestesses and shamans, were in a slave position, and the point is not that they did not have the right to vote. They had to endure any treatment, do any work and carry loads on themselves, including her husband's weapons. Old women in such tribes were considered a burden.

Genetic analysis also shows that the Indians constantly, for generations, sold (or gave for ransom) their or captured women as wives and concubines to each other. The same maternal genetic markers can be found in the United States, Mexico, and Peru.

Indians cured all diseases with magic

Magic rituals were an important part of Indian medicine, whether it was about developed empires with complex bureaucratic systems and social policies or the most primitive tribes. At the same time, the Indians also hoped for herbal therapy, surgery and even antibiotics, if we are talking about the Inca state. In fact, the fact that the Incas knew penicillin and gave them the opportunity to raise surgery to heights inaccessible to the Europeans who discovered them. In addition, the Aztecs used pain relievers during childbirth.

In addition, many Indians practiced some form of birth control, and it is not always about infanticide or fetal poisoning. Among the nomadic northern tribes, the obligation to avoid conception fell on the shoulders of men, and it was he who was reproached if a woman gave birth to a child before the previous stifling was four or five years old. Sedentary Indians used fertility-preventing herbs - at least those who had access to those herbs. Only in one Indian state was abortion strictly prohibited - among the Incas.

By the way, about sacrifices. It was thanks to the prevalence of drugs that the Incas had the most humane sacrifices. Usually, beautiful children were chosen as the sacrifice. But they were not cut in front of everyone, but were given an intoxicating potion. The unconscious child was carried high into the mountains, and he froze there, not having time to feel anything. So sacrifice didn't necessarily mean torture or seas of blood.

In North America, things that were not obvious to Europeans were sometimes very important, such as umbrella with bells and flute concert: this is how North American Indians flirted with girls.