KS> SB> I know that most Indians lived on farms and in towns
  > SB> when the white man came over, and were not nomadic.
KS> Although I've read this somewhere before, I had forgotten it.  I
  > can see where a movie made about attacking a people that could be
  > viewed in such a setting (farm and town) as essentially "civilians"
  > would not be good box office draw.  I can readily see why books
  > written about Indians would necessarily also fall into this
  > category.  And I can see how movies and books like these would
  > help to obfuscate the issues.
Not only were many of us town dwellers, we were traders, too.  The
Mississippi River was a major trade route for the Indians, just as it
later was for the white man.  Pipestone quarried in the mid-west was
used on the east coast.
KS> SB> The Spaniards took great pride in burning those
  > SB> libraries to the ground.
KS> Unspeakable loss.
Yes, it was an irreplaceable loss.  The Aztecs had far more knowlege in
astronomy than the Spaniards, and a far more accurate calendar system.
They were far better agriculturalists than the Europeans.  Their cities
had sewer systems to take waste water away from the cities; and canals
to bring fresh water in. The Spaniards marveled at the engineering
involved in those canals, and at the cleaness of the cities. Most of
that knowledge vanished forever in the ashes of the libraries.
What most people don't know is that they also won the first battle with
the Europeans, in spite of the fact that they had neither guns nor
horses. What destroyed them was not the superior weapons of the
colonists.  It was the diseases of the colonists: smallpox and measles
and even the common cold, diseases they had never encountered before.
By the time of the second battle, over half the population was dead, and
most of the rest were very, very ill.
KS> SB> Many kids in the DC are taught about manifest destiny, that Indians
  > SB> were nomadic, and that we were all pre-literate.
KS> Makes sense.  Why raise a passle of kids to know the truth.  I know
  > about hiding/burying guilt.
You probably do.  You were raised in post World War II Germany, weren't
you?
                          Sondra
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 þ SLMR 2.1a þ I am positive that a definite maybe is probably in order.
--- Opus-CBCS 1.7x via O_QWKer 1.1
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