Indigenous Consultation - Shawnee

[Thenewwwguy]

I hope FXS makes them as aggressive and terrifying as they were historically TBH.

especially since they're stereotyped in historical games as being the 'not aggressive natives', lol, esp opposed to great plains civs often stereotyped as aggressive and militaristic even if they fully weren't

also, this is just an aside but one which i think would interest a lot of ppl interested in this specific convo--there's a pretty cool mod in ck3 called after the end that explores the idea of what the post-apocalyptic americas would look like, and there's quite a bit of de-urbanized peoples living in the ruins of the great cities, as well as indigenous peoples who have reclaimed their traditional territory due to the collapse of settler society. it's pretty cool world building, and a fun mod in general.

 

[Thormodr]

I agree with all of this, but it does need to be balanced against the modern fanfaction that indigenous people lived peaceful lives in harmony with nature.

Agreed. The myth of the noble savage.

I can recommend the book 1491. It touches on how the First Nations peoples exploited and effectively used the environment. Really impressive stuff, actually.

From the Amazon description:

In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.
----

Hopefully we get to see some of that Mesoamerican agricultural genius in 7.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

Agreed. The myth of the noble savage.

I can recommend the book 1491. It touches on how the First Nations peoples exploited and effectively used the environment. Really impressive stuff, actually.

From the Amazon description:

In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.
----

Hopefully we get to see some of that Mesoamerican agricultural genius in 7.

this is an aspect of the aztecs i’ve mentioned wanting to see in civ for pretty much as long as ive been in these forums. chinampas are far more interesting as unique aztec infrastructure than yet another mesoamerican ballgame court. isn’t there some evidence that cities like cahokia and tenochtitlán may have been bigger than london, etc. at the time as well?

 

[Phrozen]

especially since they're stereotyped in historical games as being the 'not aggressive natives', lol, esp opposed to great plains civs often stereotyped as aggressive and militaristic even if they fully weren't

also, this is just an aside but one which i think would interest a lot of ppl interested in this specific convo--there's a pretty cool mod in ck3 called after the end that explores the idea of what the post-apocalyptic americas would look like, and there's quite a bit of de-urbanized peoples living in the ruins of the great cities, as well as indigenous peoples who have reclaimed their traditional territory due to the collapse of settler society. it's pretty cool world building, and a fun mod in general.

The great plains aggressive and militaristic tribe stereotype fits the Comanche to a T mostly because they probably were the reason for that stereotype being brutal conquers. The Andes and Andean coast also show lots of urbanization then collapse as many city states polities existed before the Inca. The Incan city list usually has a few of them, Tiwanaku being the absurdist.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

this is an aspect of the aztecs i’ve mentioned wanting to see in civ for pretty much as long as ive been in these forums. chinampas are far more interesting as unique aztec infrastructure than yet another mesoamerican ballgame court. isn’t there some evidence that cities like cahokia and tenochtitlán may have been bigger than london, etc. at the time as well?

The Aztecs had that in Civ 5. The Maya have a ballcourt in Civ 7 so maybe the Aztecs can get it back in this game?
Lakes weren't abundant enough in Civ 6 to potentially make use of that.

 

[Zaarin]

this is an aspect of the aztecs i’ve mentioned wanting to see in civ for pretty much as long as ive been in these forums. chinampas are far more interesting as unique aztec infrastructure than yet another mesoamerican ballgame court. isn’t there some evidence that cities like cahokia and tenochtitlán may have been bigger than london, etc. at the time as well?

The Spaniards were in awe at the size and cleanliness of Tenochtitlan. It was one of the largest cities in the world at the time. Cahokia was the largest city north of the Rio Grande, but I doubt it was larger than London. Huh, it looks like the answer is "maybe." 12th century London had a population of 18,000; I'm finding estimates for Cahokia's peak population anywhere between 10,000 and 40,000.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

The Aztecs had that in Civ 5. The Maya have a ballcourt in Civ 7 so maybe the Aztecs can get it back in this game?
Lakes weren't abundant enough in Civ 6 to potentially make use of that.

ah i didn’t remember that ig lol

 

[notNamed]

The Spaniards were in awe at the size and cleanliness of Tenochtitlan. It was one of the largest cities in the world at the time. Cahokia was the largest city north of the Rio Grande, but I doubt it was larger than London. Huh, it looks like the answer is "maybe." 12th century London had a population of 18,000; I'm finding estimates for Cahokia's peak population anywhere between 10,000 and 40,000.

London is specifically a terrible yardstick for pre-industrial times.
Industrial London became massive, but the medieval thing and medieval England in general is a blip on the radar. The comparison in the first place is just as flawed as going "City so and so is bigger than Kentwood, MI! Imagine that!" today.

 

[Zaarin]

London is specifically a terrible yardstick for pre-industrial times.
Industrial London became massive, but the medieval thing and medieval England in general is a blip on the radar. The comparison in the first place is just as flawed as going "City so and so is bigger than Kentwood, MI! Imagine that!" today.

True. Tenochtitlan, though, was bigger than pretty much any major metropolitan center in Western or Central Europe. (Not sure off the top of my head how it would compare to Constantinople.)

 

[Thenewwwguy]

London is specifically a terrible yardstick for pre-industrial times.
Industrial London became massive, but the medieval thing and medieval England in general is a blip on the radar. The comparison in the first place is just as flawed as going "City so and so is bigger than Kentwood, MI! Imagine that!" today.

to be fair, i think we should start comparing more historical cities to kentwood, MI. Like how many kentwoods was angkor? how many kentwoods was classical rome?

 

[notNamed]

True. Tenochtitlan, though, was bigger than pretty much any major metropolitan center in Western or Central Europe. (Not sure off the top of my head how it would compare to Constantinople.)

It's not really such a foregone conclusion, TBH. Especially when you start considering the issues of estimating the population size, which leaves massive error margins both for Tenochtitlan (where you can find arguments for everything from 70 000 to 500 000 or more) and cities like Paris (150 000 to 300 000). You can't really argue about specific numbers and well-sorted, authoritative order of cities this far in the past.
The more important and definite thing we can say is that it was impressively big and Spanish themselves compared it positively to the cities they've lived in. Which ought to be enough to prevent the idea of some teepee trailer camp or a simple countryside town with a pyramid instead of a church at its core.

 

[RedCourtJester]

This is the key point. Studies have found that oral stories are generally considered sacred and immutable, and consequently considerably less prone to editorially emendation than written texts (even sacred texts as early manuscripts of the Tanukh and Bible demonstrate). Also, illiterate societies have long memories. A downside of literacy is you don't have to memorize something if you can look it up again. It's amazing how much pre- and proto-literate people could store in their minds.

Key point being that they mutate less once they have solidified. Just because a story didn't change much through oral tradition doesn't mean it didn't undergo changes in its infancy prior to propagation. I would argue many stories needed some kind of exaggeration, streamlining, and/or outright fabrication in order to even attain the sort of memetic strength that was then given sacred importance and preserved through oral tradition. People don't really care to pay attention to the mundane and overly complicated.

All the immutability of oral stories proves inherently is the tipping point at which they caught on as a cultural fiction and stopped mutating. It doesn't really point much to factuality of their origins or their present truth value without outside corroboration.

 

[Zaarin]

Key point being that they mutate less once they have solidified. Just because a story didn't change much through oral tradition doesn't mean it didn't undergo changes in its infancy prior to propagation. I would argue many stories needed some kind of exaggeration, streamlining, and/or outright fabrication in order to even attain the sort of memetic strength that was then given sacred importance and preserved through oral tradition. People don't really care to pay attention to the mundane and overly complicated.

All the immutability of oral stories proves inherently is the tipping point at which they caught on as a cultural fiction and stopped mutating. It doesn't really point much to factuality of their origins or their present truth value without outside corroboration.

I'd prefer "factual" to "true" in this context, but this is no different from written records except that oral histories are generally less subject to editorial revision post factem. That doesn't make them better or strictly more reliable; it simply means that oral history can't be dismissed as "just stories" the way early anthropologists tended to do.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I'd prefer "factual" to "true" in this context, but this is no different from written records except that oral histories are generally less subject to editorial revision post factem. That doesn't make them better or strictly more reliable; it simply means that oral history can't be dismissed as "just stories" the way early anthropologists tended to do.

- And this is true both for Completely Oral and Oral With Hints:

The Haida up here in the Pacific Northwest have purely oral stories which include accurate descriptions of the landscape as it appeared during the last Glacial Period - about 10,000 years ago. That's an extremely impressive time span to maintain an accurate anything.

The Lakota made Winter Count calendars on deer or bison hide that were circular pictographs of the months of a year and Important or Impressive things that happened in each month. Once examined and compared to written (European) records, it was discovered that they accurately depicted events in time and place (to within weeks) dating back almost two centuries.

And, of course, on the other side of the Eurocentric Divide, the Iliad was, it is estimated, written down sometime in the 8th century BCE, yet it describes combat techniques of the Mycenean Era AT LEAST 400 years earlier, and gets place-names of citadels and palaces so accurate they have been used as the basis for successful archeological excavations.
Again, not bad for, as far as we know, unassisted Memory to maintain accurate information.

Incidentally, Mary Renault's novel The Praise Singer has as its protagonist a traditional Greek poet/song writer who is very unhappy with the (to him) new-fangled idea of writing down Homer and other Great Works that he has spent his life memorizing accurately and completely and prides himself on knowing without any aids. I suspect a similar outlook could be found later amongst Scandinavian bards or scandalized Druids confronted with some scribbling Roman.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

I'd prefer "factual" to "true" in this context, but this is no different from written records except that oral histories are generally less subject to editorial revision post factem. That doesn't make them better or strictly more reliable; it simply means that oral history can't be dismissed as "just stories" the way early anthropologists tended to do.

Did we do this? Who are you thinking of? Boas, for instance, made it his life's work to collect oral histories.

 

[Zaarin]

Did we do this? Who are you thinking of? Boas, for instance, made it his life's work to collect oral histories.

I didn't have a particular name in mind and was definitely thinking more 19th century and earlier--not so much formal anthropologists as scholars in other fields who did work we'd now call anthropological. You're absolutely right that the likes of Boas and Sapir took oral history very seriously. But there was definitely a patronizing attitude towards oral history among scholars (especially historians) before the twentieth century, and I'd say it's persisted in pop history even as academics have learned to take it seriously.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I didn't have a particular name in mind and was definitely thinking more 19th century and earlier--not so much formal anthropologists as scholars in other fields who did work we'd now call anthropological. You're absolutely right that the likes of Boas and Sapir took oral history very seriously. But there was definitely a patronizing attitude towards oral history among scholars (especially historians) before the twentieth century, and I'd say it's persisted in pop history even as academics have learned to take it seriously.

Dismissing oral evidence does not seem to be the 'norm' today:
The University of Washington to my north has a large collection of oral histories collected from Pacific Northwest tribes (it's where I learned about the Haida stories), and my sister, who got her PhD in anthropology/archeology specializing in the native American southwest, told me years ago that one way of double-checking a site was to go through the oral accounts of native peoples living in the area now: they could (assuming no intervening migrations) be very accurate in explaining at least what was remembered about what happened to the earlier people.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

I didn't have a particular name in mind and was definitely thinking more 19th century and earlier--not so much formal anthropologists as scholars in other fields who did work we'd now call anthropological. You're absolutely right that the likes of Boas and Sapir took oral history very seriously. But there was definitely a patronizing attitude towards oral history among scholars (especially historians) before the twentieth century, and I'd say it's persisted in pop history even as academics have learned to take it seriously.

So when we teach intro to cultural anthropology, we usually set the basics in the 1920s - Boas, Benedict, Malinowski, all of whom had their own particular way of seeing things. Boas, for instance, was caught up in the idea of the "vanishing world" of indigenous North America and set out to record as many stories as he could. Benedict gave us a notion of "culture" similar to what we use today, and Malinowski told us to get away from the colonial official and the missionary and live life among the people that we aim to study. We've largely complicated a lot of these methods and stances, but it's not a bad starting point. While I might look back to some earlier writers (Marx, Freud, Mauss, Durkheim, etc), we tend to start "our" discipline around 1920ish (Frazer, etc., is fun to read but not really helpful).

But myths have always been interesting - it's kind of what we do. There IS at times a trend of - maybe not dismissing the historicity of myth, but at least saying that it's a minor note to myth's other features. While a lot of myth (e.g. flood myths) in early years were taken as being memories of fact, in the 1920s, for instance, anthropologists were less interested in that and instead to trying to trace how stories were shared between populations. In the 60s, we often looked at things as an interplay of symbols, and in the 80s as literary conventions. And then in the 90s we're back to taking seriously historicity. So let's take flood myths in Mesopotamia. In the early 20th century, we might trace how flood myths went from one population to another as a sign of their interrelation - they were passed like cultural memes; in the 60s, we might talk about how stories about dry land were juxtaposed with stories about water and make conclusions about the structure of mythic thought. This might be "just stories," as you mention - it's not really caring about how a myth came about, but more about what makes it effective. Who cares if there was a sailor lost at sea coming back from war in the Bronze Age, what makes the story interesting is the yearning for home, the experience of being treated like a pawn in some greater game, etc.

Nowadays, it's mixed. What makes a myth meaningful, I might argue, is what it does now, for the person telling, and for the person listening.

 

[Zaarin]

What makes a myth meaningful, I might argue, is what it does now, for the person telling, and for the person listening.

I 100% agree with this. That's also why I distinguished between "true" and "fact" previously, and why I hate Hollywood's "based on a true" story nonsense, as if the purported historicity of the narrative made it more meaningful. All good fiction is true, even if by definition it is not factual.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Nowadays, it's mixed. What makes a myth meaningful, I might argue, is what it does now, for the person telling, and for the person listening.

- And, it might be added, what it does will depend not only on the Myth, but the background both people also bring to it: the Haida myths about the ancient story of their people mean something very different to a member of that culture than they do to the Canadian or American anthropologist or historian encountering it . . .