Depending on where you live (and perhaps your political persuasion), earlier this month we celebrated Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples’ Day. While there are many aspects and controversies related to the current “cancel culture” of wanting to tear down statues of Christopher Columbus and renaming the holiday, I’d like to confine my comments here to just one aspect of the discussion – that of giving back the land to the “Indigenous People” who lived in North America before the arrival of the Europeans. You can read more about this in (1).
[A few caveats – first, since there are so
many different tribes of indigenous people and so many different areas they
lived in, many of the statements below are necessarily generalizations. I will
try to make these clear as I explore the different aspects, but space and
available research time means that I cannot address all the various situations.
Secondly, I am trying to use the current vernacular by using such words as “indigenous
people” and “tribes”, but I recognize that there are still many who use other words.
Even in (2), where two of the three authors are enrolled citizens of one of
these “nations”, they use the term “American Indians and Alaska Natives”.]
Tribal Boundaries
North America is a very large area
of land – roughly 9.5 million square miles. There are a number of different
maps that attempt to show how this land was divided up among the various tribes
prior to the arrival of the Europeans. One such map recently being shared is
the following which is circulating on social media.
[Map of Tribes]
However, this map is way too
simplistic in a couple of ways. For one, it shows the boundaries between tribes
as clear lines of demarcation. While not the later rectangular shapes of the US
states, there were no such clear boundaries. Secondly, it uses a common color for
tribes that may have something in common – perhaps a similarity in language.
But many of these tribes, despite having a similar language, frequently warred
among each other. So, this use of a common color and without tribal boundaries
would be like eliminating the border between Canada and the US, but putting
borders around the province of Quebec.
Here is another attempt at such a
map that may be found as part of (2) below.
[Map 2 of Tribes]
As you can see in this example,
there are many more colors, boundaries often overlap, and it gives some idea of
the complexity of the interrelationships between the various tribal entities.
On a smaller scale, here is a map
of the tribal areas of the various tribes in the state of Connecticut from
around 1625 (3). As you can see, there were 19 tribal areas just in this one
small state.
[Map of CT Tribes]
But even this map is quite
contrived (the key is the straight lines forming tribal boundaries). As you can
see in a comparison of the two snips below, the area labeled as “Tunxis”
purportedly from 1625 is actually the boundary of the early Connecticut town of
Farmington (shown here in a 1766 map). But Farmington was not founded until two
decades after the alleged 1625 Tunxis boundaries. And a closer examination reveals
that the 1625 map was not produced until 1930. So, we really don’t know what
the boundaries were in 1625.
[Map of Farmington] [Map of Tunxis
Tribe]
Population Density
What is not shown on these types
of maps is the population density. For an example of that, I’d like to just
look again at one tribe, the Tunxis tribe in CT which occupied the area
including the town I grew up in – Wolcott, CT. This tribal area is the roughly square
area on the above CT map in the center-left. This area is about 20x20 miles or
400 square miles. But the number of members of the tribe in 1640 (the first
estimate that was made) was about 100-150 members. It may have been somewhat
larger previously, but not likely more than a few hundred individuals (4, 5). But
even an optimistic estimate of 400 tribal members would have been only one
individual per square mile. This needs to be taken into account as we’ll see
below.
Also, the population density was
not uniform over the entire area occupied by a tribe. Since the main source of
food would be through hunting (small game on the east coast and larger animals
such a bison in the middle of the continent), the tribe may have occupied just
a few acres and the rest of the area attributed to them would be reserved for
these hunting areas. Some tribes would have had a relatively stable area where
they made their homes, but others were more nomadic and moved frequently for
reasons such as not wanting to over-hunt/fish a particular area, or because the
herds that were the source of their food also moved about.
Tribal Attrition Through
Diseases
Articles about the impact on
Indigenous People through the arrival of Europeans often mention the
introduction of diseases that wiped out large numbers of these peoples.
However, this oversimplification ignores two important aspects.
First, as (6) points out, North
America was not a pristine, disease-free environment. Diseases such as
tuberculosis, hepatitis, pertussis, and polio were already prevalent. It was
true that many new, much more epidemic diseases such as bubonic plague, measles,
smallpox, malaria, and others were not present so that the natives had no
acquired immunity to these diseases. Smallpox was a particularly virulent
disease.
Secondly, because the Europeans
often had acquired immunity, they were not aware that their arrival would be
introducing these new diseases. The “germ theory” of diseases was not introduced
until several centuries later (7) by Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) and others. In
the story of the Pilgrims (8), we see that some disease was inadvertently
introduced by fisherman and traders into Maine where it swept down the east
coast in Massachusetts. Thus, when the Wampanoag man, Tisquantum (also known as
Squanto) had been kidnapped in 1614 and who then returned in 1619, he found his
entire tribe had been wiped out.
However, this introduction of new
diseases was primarily inadvertent. Except for a single instance in 1763 (9),
the impact of diseases was not used as a method to help “conquer” the
indigenous people, and even in that instance, there is no clear evidence that
it was successful.
However, even before the arrival
of the Europeans, diseases had an impact on individuals in North America just
as they did in other parts of the world. But the arrival of the Europeans did
result in a “spike” of various diseases, even if inadvertent. However, I do not
believe that this cause should be included in the current discussion about “give
back”.
Concept of Land “Ownership”
As I had noted in a prior blog
(4), the Indigenous People generally did not have the same concept of “land
ownership” as did the Europeans. Land was owned by the tribe as a whole and not
by individuals/families. Thus, in those instances where a tribe “sold” land to
a group of European settlers, they often viewed the transaction as simply
allowing their new European “neighbors” to jointly hunt in these same extended
lands and their original rights to hunt on these lands were retained. Some
tribes “sold” their land multiple times.
Conquest or War between
groups
It is true that there were many
instances of outright war between the Europeans and the Indigenous Tribes.
Since the Europeans often had the advantages of both numbers and more advanced
weapons, they were usually victorious. But those advocating for the land to be
given back to those who were conquered/ousted, ignore the fact that
inter-tribal wars had been going on long before the arrival of the Europeans.
This leads to an interesting philosophical
question. If a large tract of land belonged to tribe “A” in the distant past,
but tribe “A” died out or moved on to another hunting ground and the land was subsequently
taken over by tribe “B”, then tribe “B” was conquered by tribe “C” who went to
war with the Europeans who killed many of them and took over the land, then who
should the land be given back to? While tribe “C” had it taken away from them,
does it rightfully belong to tribe “B” or even tribe “A”?
Other Issues
Besides infectious diseases and
conquest through wars, there were other ways that some tribes were impacted.
One was through relocation. Some of these relocations were forced upon the tribe by the Europeans (such as
the “Trail of Tears” (10) which took place in the 1830s). But others made the decision
to move on their own, including the Tunxis tribe from CT (5) who moved west to
NY in 1774.
Some other tribes became smaller
and sold their lands for other reasons. As the Europeans introduced new crops
and farming methods, the local tribes sometimes adopted these same methods for
growing food and relied less upon hunting. Thus, they needed less land to
support the same number of tribal members.
Finally, some tribal members made
the decision to adopt the Christian religion of the Europeans and became more
integrated into the local communities. Since this may have also included
adoption of the type of dress and living situations, some even, over time,
identified themselves less as Indigenous People and more like the Europeans.
Casinos
Some tribes have gotten other
concessions such as being allowed to have exclusive casino licenses (30 states
now have “Indian” casinos with a total revenue of over $33 Billion in 2018 (11)).
After paying taxes, etc. these casinos return substantial sums to their tribal
members (in addition to giving opportunities for employment). Two of the three
largest casinos are in my home state of CT (Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun). These
support the government of the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes
respectively.
I have a nephew and two nieces
who are members of the Odawa tribe (12). Their casino generated over $40
million in revenue last year. The profit from this casino is used to help
support the roughly 15,000 Odawa tribal members. They also work together with
the local, county, and state governments to improve the part of Michigan they jointly
oversee.
Moving Forward or Giving
Back
At any rate, because of the
number of different factors, including those mentioned above, it is difficult
to lump all Indigenous Peoples together and to propose simple solutions such as
“giving back” the land. It is a complicated situation and may require
complicated and creative solutions. But simply ignoring this part of our
history and ignoring the consequences of some of the decisions that have been
made in the past is not the right solution.
References:
(4) https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/07/wolcott-history-indians.html
(5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunxis
(6) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071659/
(7) https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbiology/germ-theory-of-disease
(9) https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smallpox-blankets
(10)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears
(11)
https://www.500nations.com/Indian_Casinos.asp
(12)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odawa
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