Ancient Civilizations of North America

Apparently, the relatively sophisticated Mississippian indigenous civilization that flourished east of the Mississipi River was disrupted and decimated by Hernano de Soto in the 1530s, which reportedly included a lot of slaughter, murder, mayhem, and introduction of European diseases the indigenous people had no immunity for. That seems to be one reason when widespread contact occurred between English settlers and native peoples later in the 16 and 1700s, the settlers viewed the indigenous people as relatively backwards and incapable of sophisticated civilization. The settlers actually were not really aware of indigenous North American civilizations prior to disruption and widespread European contact.

"In 1539, Hernando de Soto of Spain landed seven ships with 600 men and hundreds of animals in present-day Florida. Follow his fruitless search for another Inca or Aztec Empire, as he instead encounters hundreds of Mississippian cities through which he led a three-year reign of terror across the land-looting, raping, disfiguring, murdering, and enslaving native peoples by the thousands."

Professor Edwin Barnhart, Ph.D.
Maya Exploration Center
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Ancient civilizations of Amazonia

I have segued to studying ancient civilizations of South America.

The money quotes for me are that in the past decade, evidence of ancient civilizations are being found in the Amazon, which was previously thought to only support sparse populations of Neolithic cultures of people. This is the leading edge of ground-breaking archeological research.

According to one prominent archeologist, researchers have spent the last century oblivious to the archeological evidence in Amazonia because what research money there is generally goes into Andean civilization research. And a trade secret is that most archeologists simply prefer the lifestyle of being able to live in a nice city like Cuzco, and do field work on the side. Human nature, I guess. Few people want to sweat their assess off, hacking their way through a jungle.

Soil and Satellites Are Telling a New Story About Ancient Civilizations in the Amazon

When Francisco de Orellana, a Spanish conquistador, paddled through the Amazon in 1541, he did not find El Dorado, the fabled kingdom of gold he had been looking for. But he did report to have found civilization: large villages and farms sprawled along the rivers, and even massive cities in the distance.

However, when later explorers and missionaries returned to the same spots centuries later, they found nothing but wild tangles of vegetation. Orellana’s reports were dismissed as bogus when scientists chimed in. Large settlements, in the Amazon rainforest? That would be impossible, they said, for the same reason that it’s still impossible to occupy the Amazon today. Although the forests have rich, wild plant life, the soils alone are too poor in nutrients to support long-term cultivation of agricultural crops.

“But what archaeologists have been seeing in the last 30 years is that, quite the contrary—the Amazon has been densely occupied in the past,” says Eduardo Neves, a Brazilian archaeologist.

One surprise has been the discovery of something that is, in some ways, much more valuable than the gold the Spanish had originally been looking for: terra preta de índio, “dark earth of the Indian,” a blend of charcoal and very nutrient-rich earth that is dark in color, and extraordinarily fertile—in stark contrast to the surrounding orange-yellowish, unproductive earth.

Terra preta is often found together with archaeological remains, like potsherds, says Neves from his office at the University of São Paolo, where he is a professor. The soils are an undeniable trace of an accomplished ancient civilization, he says, before the vast majority were wiped out by diseases the European conquistadors brought with them.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/amazon-terra-preta-to-find-ancient-civilizations
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I’m posting a copy of Logan’s speech. Chief Logan was widely respected by both whites and Indians of many tribes. He was a leader of the Mingos which was a loose coalition of Lake Erie tribes. Chief Logan was a moderating influence who prevented a lot of bloodshed on frontier border of PA and WV.

In a series of incidents on the Frontier that led to Lord Dunmores war a handful of trappers led by Jacob Greathouse bushwhacked a group of Mingos by deceiving them to visit their camp, drink some whiskey and have a shooting contest. The group of ten Mingos included all of Chief Logan’s imeadiate family. Including his wife, son, his pregnant daughter and son in law. As soon as the Mingos became comfortable they sprang their attack in brutal fashion. Logan’s son was shot in the back. His wife was shot in the forehead at point blank range and essentially blew her head off. They saved the worst for Logan’s daughter. She was tied to a cross, scalped alive, then Greathouse cut her belly open with his tomahawk and pulled out the fetus and her innards then left her to die of exposure and her wounds.

To say Login was pissed was an obvious understatement. He had been mistakenly informed that the local militia leader Col. Cresap had been responsible for the atrocity. Logan personally vowed to kill Cresap and 10 white men for every member of his family killed. He failed to find Cresap but kept his word by collecting around 100 scalps of white men he killed in revenge. After Lord Dunmores War was ended Logan gave this impassioned speech that touched many people.

I appeal to any white man to say if he ever entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat; if he ever came cold and naked and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace.

Such was my love for the whites, that my countrymen pointed as I passed, and said, "Logan is a friend of the white man." I have even thought to live with you but for the injuries of one man, Colonel Cresap, who last spring in cold blood and unprovoked murdered the relatives of Logan, not even sparing his wife and children.

There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This has called on me for revenge. I have sought it; I have killed many; I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country, I rejoice in the beams of peace.

But do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.


Epilogue; Cresap when he found out Logan blamed him for his families death wisely ended his career on the frontier and left. Jacob Greathouse wasn’t so lucky. 25 years later he was captured by the Shawnee poling a barge down the Ohio River with his family.

The Shawnee recognized him as the murderer of Logan’s family. In revenge they burned his children at the stake in front of their parents. They then tied Greathouse and his wife to a large shrub by a length of rope tied around their necks. They then slit their bellies open, pulled out a loop of intestine, then whipped them with switches forcing them to walk around the shrub until their guts had been pulled out and wrapped around the shrub. 25 years and they had not forgotten.

This may sound a bit gratuitously graphic yet was fairly typical of what frontier warfare of that era was like.
 
De Soto versus the Mississippians

In 1539 near Tampa Bay in Florida, the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto landed seven ships. He had hundreds of men, 237 horses, 200 pigs, and a three‑year permit from the Spanish crown to colonize. From 1539 to 1542, de Soto and his army made a wide arc through Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, and down into Mississippi. They were searching for another empire like those of the Inca or Aztec. De Soto never found one, but he did find hundreds of cities with palisades, stately palaces, and astonishingly large populations. His expedition was a three‑year reign of terror on the people of North America.

De Soto's army arrived back in Mexico on September 10, 1543, with only 311 of the 620 who landed in Florida four years earlier. De Soto’s army had seen hundreds of proud cities within a patchwork of Mississippian kingdoms. Collectively, they represented a civilization of millions of people, but they would never be the same. De Soto’s path of destruction had a huge impact. When Spaniards returned to all the places de Soto had been just decades later, they were decimated. Kingdoms like Cofitachequi and Atahachi were gone, replaced with people with no central leadership, struggling to farm around overgrown ruins of palaces. Some kingdoms survived longer than others. The Apalachee persisted for another 150 years until English colonists wiped them out, but all kingdoms were affected. To a degree, one of the reasons researchers have trouble connecting modern tribes to their ancestors is because de Soto wiped them out.

source: Professor Edwin Barnhart, Ph.D. Maya Exploration Center
 
In an era when Republicans generally, and Trumpists more particularly, practice white nationalism and assert the supremacy of white Anglo Saxon protestant culture, it was enlightening to review Dr. Barnhart's course notes, as reproduced in part, below.

The Unknown Story of Ancient North America

Dr. Edwin Barnhart

Centuries before European contact, large parts of North America had cities of thousands of people living in finely built houses, palaces, temples, and wide public plazas. There were road systems connecting cities across hundreds of miles. There were kings and councils, architects and astronomers, great artists and musicians— virtually every yardstick the Western world uses to define civilization.

Unfortunately, much of that history has been difficult to trace. A lack of written evidence is one problem for studying some areas, as are the damaging impacts of the Europeans’ arrival on the continent. However, all is not lost, as is shown by this course’s content. It draws on available written accounts, evidence such as DNA studies, and work from archaeologists and other scholars.

The Mississippians left impressive evidence. They built massive mounds, sometimes the size of mountains. Today they are ruins, but in their heydays, they were all covered with hard‑packed plaster surfaces and painted. In essence, they were once pyramids.

The Mississippians also built hundreds of acres of public plazas, sport courts, and massive fortified walls. In their time, communities of thousands of people were living in and around them. Millions of Mississippian people were farming, creating amazing art, and devotedly practicing a shared religion.

In the American Southwest, completely independent of the Mississippians and their ancestors, another civilization grew and thrived. It’s more accurate to say five separate but related civilizations were thriving out there, but only the Ancestral Pueblo endured past European contact.
The Ancestral Pueblo were master architects, engineers, and masons. By their height in 990–1150, they were building multi‑story houses and adobe apartment complexes capable of housing hundreds or thousands of people.

source credit: Edwin Barnhart, PhD Director, Maya Exploration Center, course guidebook "Ancient Civilizations of North America"
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