A glance, a peek, a little look into the past of one region on Earth
As there was no United States yet during the times we will look at here it might be better to say that this is a look at pre-Columbian North America. That is the lands now claimed by the people of Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. There is much to learn of and from these times. You may take the following as a brief introduction to topics which are entertained on this blog which includes essays, videos, archaeology, prehistory and a bit more.
In the Americas precolumbian times are those times before around 1492 before Columbus had touched on the american continents. A time that began for us when we began to the many different peoples who were encountered by those arriving soon after Columbus. Archaeology is a quickly growing science which is often actually digging up items from the past doings of humans and analyzing them. Prehistory is the history which comes to us not written. I is not a precise time. In away it is information about the past from before there were historians. With this little review I am ready to move forward.
I see now that what I have written here is mostly about what has now become that part of North America, which became the USA. As I am a Gringo, I have a reason, often called an excuse. The name Gringo was originated by Mexicans at one of those times the people north of the Rio Grand chose to fight with those people south of the Rio Bravo and those people chose to fight back. History which is simple is usually best not trusted. The Rio Grand/Grande and the Rio Bravo are both the same river which in my experience is neither grande nor bravo. In English neither big nor fierce.
Anyway, when combatants rested from shooting one another they often sang. Often they sang nightly. Those north of the river very much liked a popular song with the refrain, "And green grow the rushes ho." On the south side of the river one asked another what the noise was and the other answered. "It's the Gringos" the plural of how "Green grow" sounded from that side of the river.
Now I have simplified the story, but that's history.
And now I will go on with short form of the history while being as honest as I can in hopes that you will be the wiser for my telling.
We have have learned from early post columbian persons(often indirectly) such as the Spaniard Hernando de Soto and his report on his 1540 to 1542 travers of what is now the U.S. southwest and also and also from other early Spanish visitors and colonists. Now that was a long sentences, but it was my effort to shorten and simplify this story of history. I hope you enjoyed my effort on your behalf. You may read it again if you so wish. That was less than 200 years ago. Religion is part of history. One of the most recent bringer of many hundreds of such bringers came about 2,000 thousand years ago. Now on YouTube we are being told of human doings of before Noah's flood. Others on You Tube are telling us that we were up and doing 20,000 years ago and probably had experience more than one really big flood and some really big comets, and a lot of parties. Some real experts are tellings that it is very likely humans were up and doing more than 200,000 years ago. Between those times and this there have been some curious happenings and doings.
The Spanish were not the first to arrive in the Americas which we once called the New World. Most of those we called Indians came in waves after the last Ice Age and some before that. Just before the Spanish came the Portuguese had followed the cod here. Before that came the Vikings. It seem that the Dutch followed the Portugues everywhere and got to this New World before the English.
Spanish:
The Spanish looked around a lot and did some finding. The next people who came in some numbers and did considerable looking around were the French, French voyageurs. We have learned from those them. They wrote about their doings as did the Spanish. So from them we have some documented stories we can call history. The French came about 100 years after the Spanish and what we have called Native Americans, had already suffered a lot. What we have called Voyageurs,were interested in fur and traveled to where it could be gotten. They learned to trade with the early comers we have called natives, persons born to the land.
French:
Many French arrived. They moved up and down the Mississippi drainage basin and elsewhere. They observed the native Americans and found them and their settlements less impressive than the Spaniards had. I the past century the native culture had deteriorated greatly. The great die-off had begun.
A French visiter, an artist. saw the Indian activity with the eyes of an artist and saw it as curious, but not impressive. A caption on a 1590 painting of his done in what is the northeast Florida read, "Sometimes the deceased king of this province is buried with great solemnity, and his great cup from which he was accustomed to drink is placed on a tumulus with many arrows set about it." His painting may have have been exactm, but his captio is likely to have been written with more humor than understanding.
The early Spanish and later the earliest French who traveled up and down the Mississippi river and its large tributaries such as the Missouri and Ohio rivers were privileged to see many mounds and other earth works still in use and cared for.
After about 1670 priests and others traveling these rivers were finding most of the mounds becoming grown over with grass and some brush. However, some of the sites, like those at what was to become the present of the city of Saint Louis, Were still able to impress them. Avery few, like those at Natchez, were still occupied and French colonists found it necessary to remove Indians by force.
English:
By 1770 the Indian population east of the Mississippi to the Atlantic coast and all along the Mississippi and its tributaries was greatly diminished. The Dutch, English, were adding to the Spanish, Portugues, and French European arrivals. English were arriving in great numbers and learned little of what the various Indian culture had been 200 years earlier. Still we have gather much information about the mounds, other earthworks, and Indians themselves from the writings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Haven, and later Wesley Powell.
Us, Now:
These days, 500 post Columbian years later, archaeologist are digging up a great deal of bone and artifact and providing us with much new information and providing fresh analysis. Since the great die off there is some return of population growth of population of those of Indian background, but many languages have been lost and much culture has been lost too. But a notable number of those named Indians and there culture is still among us; Americans all. Along with the archaeological information the is significant ethnological information available. You can find more prehistorical and historical information here on Mago Bill. Mago Bill history is mostly Irish.
This example of the relatively new archaeological information available is from the not so new site of Watson Break. Watson Break is located in the present-day Ouachita Parish in the state of Louisiana. It dates from what has been called the North American Archaic Period. What is now Ouachita Parish has been home to many succeeding Native american groups in the thousand years before Europeans began to settle there. People of the Marksville culture, Troyville culture, Coles Creek culture, and Plaquemine culture built villages and earthwork mound sites throughout the area. a notable example is Filohiol Mound site located on a natural levee of the Ouachita river.
Watson Break earthworks date to about 5,400 BP; which is about 3,500 BC. The arrangements of the mounds at WB was constructed over centuries by what is thought to be a hunter gatherer society. It is located near Watson Bayou in the floodplain of the Ouachita river. By the way, bayous might have been human modifications for communications and agriculture. The Break site consists of eleven mounds connected by ridges and causeways to form a large oval of nearly 900 feet across.Researchers believe the Break site is older than the better known Poverty Point site.
Watson Break people seem to have planned and organized work forces to accomplish their earthworks.
The site seems to have been abandoned around 2,800 BC.
You can find out more about Native Americans on this History With RCS blog site and I hope to add more from time to time.
When you have corrections, additions, questions, or other comments there is a "comments" app below for you to use.
Thank you for reading.
Richard Sheehan
