“Wildly Divergent History”: The Book I’d Rather Read
We all love Patricia C Wrede. She has written much awesome in her career. The Thirteenth Child, though, is pretty troubling. The things she's said about it are troubling. And the book itself, according to reviews, is a disappointment. Now erasure is a hot topic at the moment, and I think it's actually an interesting idea. Not in the sense that Native Americans didn't matter and can be neatly wited-out of a text, but because they sent cultural shockwaves across the world that radically altered it forever. Native Americans were and are tremendously influential, and any project that really looks at the effects of erasure is going to point out the staggeringly huge consequences that breathtakingly show just how important they are.
So let’s see… what actually occurs if we erase Native Americans from the world?
1. World Foodways (and don't write it off as trivial-- foodways are sooo important to cultural identity): No tomatoes (Italian). No potatoes (Potato Famine, anyone?) No capsaicin peppers (Indian, Thai, Chinese cuisine), peanuts (Thai), cashews (pan-Asian) , no maize (omg EVERYWHERE)
2. Medicine: ASPIRIN. Apparently the Greeks knew about the medicinal properties of willow bark, but it didn’t actually OCCUR to anybody to DO anything about it for about 1,700 years until they saw Native Americans using it! And good Lord what a huge breakthrough it was. It’s still an important medication nowadays in our “enlightened” age, and all thanks to the sophistication of the people who lived here before. Native American healers were still influential in the late eighteenth century, too. Granted, this is in some part due to the “magical nature people” stereotype, which was obviously completely inappropriate, but they still played a significant role in medicine for hundreds of years after they “disappeared.”
3. Tobacco: Oh my God. Yes I don’t think it’s a very good plant but look at how much it changed the world.
4. The Pyramids of Guimar: If they were indeed the result of Pre-Columbian transatlantic exchange, then the question becomes how much of what we consider European originated in the Americas?
5. Survival of the colonists. While it's often discussed, I don’t think there’s really much debate about the matter. Native Americans had a tremendous influence on the survival of Jamestown, Plymouth, and other early colonies. And the later colonies did well because they built on what they learned from Native Americans. And not because Native Americans were “prepping the land,” but because they were sophisticated cultures that knew how to make the most of the environment.
6. American identity. Now America has been absolutely awful to Native Americans, there's no doubt about that. But a large part of "American" identity is derived from them. When America is depicted in rebellious engravings in the eighteenth century, she's almost invariably a Native American woman. It's a terrible thing that the settlers marginalized, killed, and mistreated Native Americans while simultaneously making them a mascot for a new nation. But this sort of mascot-ness continued into the present day. (And the Redskins need to get their butts in gear already and change their name to something undisrespectful.)
Now this is not to assume that it would be impossible for colonists to figure some of these things out on their own, but the fact of the matter is that these were introduced to the world because Native Americans used them. Cite: aspirin, which Europeans technically knew about for nearly two millennia and didn’t put into use. Also tomatoes, which were for a long time considered poisonous. I know that this list is just a small sample. Can you guys think of other things? Let’s compile a good list. And if I've muffed anything here, pleeeeeeease clarify. I'm working off the top of my head.
So let’s see… what actually occurs if we erase Native Americans from the world?
1. World Foodways (and don't write it off as trivial-- foodways are sooo important to cultural identity): No tomatoes (Italian). No potatoes (Potato Famine, anyone?) No capsaicin peppers (Indian, Thai, Chinese cuisine), peanuts (Thai), cashews (pan-Asian) , no maize (omg EVERYWHERE)
2. Medicine: ASPIRIN. Apparently the Greeks knew about the medicinal properties of willow bark, but it didn’t actually OCCUR to anybody to DO anything about it for about 1,700 years until they saw Native Americans using it! And good Lord what a huge breakthrough it was. It’s still an important medication nowadays in our “enlightened” age, and all thanks to the sophistication of the people who lived here before. Native American healers were still influential in the late eighteenth century, too. Granted, this is in some part due to the “magical nature people” stereotype, which was obviously completely inappropriate, but they still played a significant role in medicine for hundreds of years after they “disappeared.”
3. Tobacco: Oh my God. Yes I don’t think it’s a very good plant but look at how much it changed the world.
4. The Pyramids of Guimar: If they were indeed the result of Pre-Columbian transatlantic exchange, then the question becomes how much of what we consider European originated in the Americas?
5. Survival of the colonists. While it's often discussed, I don’t think there’s really much debate about the matter. Native Americans had a tremendous influence on the survival of Jamestown, Plymouth, and other early colonies. And the later colonies did well because they built on what they learned from Native Americans. And not because Native Americans were “prepping the land,” but because they were sophisticated cultures that knew how to make the most of the environment.
6. American identity. Now America has been absolutely awful to Native Americans, there's no doubt about that. But a large part of "American" identity is derived from them. When America is depicted in rebellious engravings in the eighteenth century, she's almost invariably a Native American woman. It's a terrible thing that the settlers marginalized, killed, and mistreated Native Americans while simultaneously making them a mascot for a new nation. But this sort of mascot-ness continued into the present day. (And the Redskins need to get their butts in gear already and change their name to something undisrespectful.)
Now this is not to assume that it would be impossible for colonists to figure some of these things out on their own, but the fact of the matter is that these were introduced to the world because Native Americans used them. Cite: aspirin, which Europeans technically knew about for nearly two millennia and didn’t put into use. Also tomatoes, which were for a long time considered poisonous. I know that this list is just a small sample. Can you guys think of other things? Let’s compile a good list. And if I've muffed anything here, pleeeeeeease clarify. I'm working off the top of my head.