the Story of America
Is there such a thing as "Native Americans"? Are the people we call "Indians" native to America? What does it mean to be a native American?
A Fascinating Story
When the peoples who would one day be referred to as "Indians" first came into the Western Hemisphere – North America, Central America, and South America – was it a "migration"?
Recall the story of the migration of the twelve tribes of Israel out of Egypt, permanently and as a population, to their "Promised Land": can the people who left Asia for what Europeans would one day call the New World be considered as a migration?
Since about 30,000 years ago, as well as can presently be determined, people have been making the trek from Asia to the Americas.
Several unrelated, genetically distinct groups of people made the journey to the New World.
During the Ice ages, so much water was locked up in the ice that covered North America and northern Asia that the Earth's ocean levels were much lower. Similar to the Isthmus of Panama, which connects North and South America, the two continents of Asia and North America were connected by a strip of land – an isthmus fifty miles wide.
Some of those people – all members of hunter-gatherer tribes – who lived in the easternmost part of Siberia routinely walked across that isthmus.
Did they think of it as traveling to a new continent? Did they think of themselves as explorers, searching for new worlds?
Wanderlust is part of human nature. There will always be a substantial portion of the human population that simply wants to know: "What's over the next hill?"
There would also have been some hunter-gatherer tribes – or breakaway portions of tribes – that set out in search of new lands for hunting and places to live. Hunter-gatherers do not build permanent settlements; they must move from one area to another when game becomes scarce.
Did they know they were moving to a new continent?
They could not; they did not possess maps. They had no idea where they were going. Writing and record-keeping were many thousands of years in the future, and would first appear thousands of miles away.
As they crossed that isthmus from Siberia, they had no way of knowing whether the land we call "Alaska" was of any size, or was just a temporary broadening-out, beyond which might be another isthmus and still further lands. Those first arrivals were just wandering hunter-gatherer tribes, just like people had been since before they left Africa.
But repeatedly, people did travel across the Asia-America isthmus, tracking and hunting the animals that did likewise, as well as to escape from would-be attacking tribes in China and Siberia.
When food is plentiful, more babies are born. When food gets scarce, tribes must look for better hunting opportunities. When tribes grow too large for the available food, they must split into two smaller groups, to make foraging easier. To a hunter-gatherer, other tribes are competitors for what limited food is available: the only choice is to fight or starve.
Not only did people cross that isthmus from Siberia into North America, but some of those living in North America journeyed back into Asia for reasons of their own: perhaps to see if the old legends told in their own tribes were true, or while hunting for food, or, again, due to simple wanderlust.
Ninety miles is not that far for people to travel. That isthmus was the site of many such crossings in both directions.
The people who crossed that isthmus were of several different branches of humanity. Humanity began migrating out of Africa 70,000 years ago. Several subsequent migrations occurred across Asia, the islands of Southeast Asia, Australia, and Europe. Genetics and environmental conditions separated humanity into many separate distinct groups.
"Indigenous" is a meaningless term.
The repeated crossings into North America were made by a variety of people unrelated to each other.
Crossings were made by people in Siberia.
Crossings were made by non-Chinese Asians living in the area we now call "China", driven out by the people who were ancestors to today's Chinese.
Crossings were made by the Eskimos who lived in Asia above the Arctic Circle. Eskimos were late comers, reaching North America only 5,000 years ago, as they hunted Arctic seals, walrus, and whales.
Some groups walked across the isthmus. But others sailed from Asia to the New World; their ancestors had invented boats and discovered navigational techniques for sailing on the Pacific Ocean. They continued in their boats down the North American coast, past what would one day be Vancouver, and further on, the American Southwest. There is even arguable evidence that some continued on down to the west coast of South America. The Eskimos had their kayaks and umiaks; did they walk into North America, or travel by boat?
Five hundred years before Christopher Columbus, Polynesians sailed across the thousands of miles of the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii, and settled there. There is even evidence that about that same time, some Polynesians probably sailed to South America.
Meanwhile, on the Atlantic Ocean, Vikings from Norway were sailing to Newfoundland. But their settlements, which were intended to include ongoing trade with Europe, were unsuccessful – part, due to attacks by the hunter-gatherer tribes there – the Indians.
After 1492, thousands of Europeans sailed across thousands of miles of the Atlantic Ocean in technically-advanced sailing ships to settle in the New World of North and South America.
Those who are born in the Americas, regardless of which of the many ancestral homes – Asian, European, or otherwise – from wherever their ancestors departed, are all "native Americans" – without exception.
To refer to any one group as being preferentially "native" or "indigenous" above the others is an unjust distortion of the history of the Americas. Call it for what it is: a deliberate insult to the rest of us.
Those who live in the Americas, and particularly those born in the Americas, are Americans. We can see the alternative in places like Bolivia, where those of European descent are now told they must forfeit their property, and that their safety is no longer assured by the police. Under such persecution and tyranny, their only recourse is escape to another country, if they can find a haven that will accept them.
The New World's Most Radical Change
For those who live in the United States, the word American has a much more substantial meaning – one that is unique for its inhabitants, regardless of their historic origins, and in stark contrast to anywhere else on the entire planet.
When hunter-gatherers began planting and harvesting – agriculture – the first villages were born. The unending violence of hunter-gatherer tribes evolved into the wars and conquests of kingdoms and empires, in Mesopotamia (and later, in China).
The beginning of the end of that tyranny and destruction arose with the creation of the United States of America.
For the first time ever, the law – the U.S. Constitution – was established to stand above a government, limiting its powers, and preventing it from taking actions harmful to its citizens.
The United States, for all its missteps, is arguably humanity's first civilized country – the first country built on freedom, and not oppression. The result of America's birth is the ongoing emergence of economic prosperity and the decline of tyranny that is slowly spreading throughout the world today.
That revolutionary political environment is far more important to each of us as individuals, than is any historical tradition of so-called "native Americans" – and certainly beyond membership in any tribe, which is to say, beyond the traditions and histories of endless violence world-wide measured in tens of thousands of years.
Freedom – the rights of the individual – "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" – are unique hallmarks of the political environment for Americans living in the United States of America. Assuring that such freedom will be experienced by Americans not yet born is the best heritage and birthright – the best tradition – that we can pass along to all future "native Americans".
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Native Americans – the Story of America also appeared in the Simpsonville Sentinel newspaper. See it at https://simpsonville-sentinel.com/the-news/read-news.php?sid=727.
