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Visit These Non-Profit Web Sites:
Alliance For Native American Indian Rights
Native American Educational Association
Tennessee Trail of Tears Association
Books about Indians:
Loud Hawk : The United States Versus the American Indian Movement
Exploration
of Ancient Key-Dweller Remains on the Gulf Coast of Florida
INDIAN ACHIEVEMENTS
This page
isn't meant to be a comprehensive list of every important thing that Native
Americans
have ever done. Indian societies, like others all over the world, have
accomplished many remarkable things, too many to list on a web page. Our main
intention is to point out some achievements that Indians don't usually get
credit for.
Some of the most significant Indian achievements can't be adequately described in an itemized list, and it takes some time to begin to understand these things. We hope that Native Nashville will help our visitors gain some of this understanding.
Our source for most of this information is Indian Givers, by Jack Weatherford. This book and Native Roots, by the same author, rank high on our suggested reading list.
Agriculture
Indian people developed 60% of the world's food crops including corn, potatoes, tomatoes, pumpkins, kidney beans, lima beans, black-eyed peas, blueberries, strawberries, peanuts, pecans, maple syrup, vanilla, and chocolate. There are no food plants native to the Americas that were not first cultivated or harvested by Indians.
Indians developed non-food crops such as cotton, tobacco, sisal, indigo, basalms, latex (rubber), and chicle (chewing gum).
Architecture
The Aztec pyramid of Cholula has 15% more volume than the tallest Egyptian pyramid. The Aztec pyramids were the most massive buildings in America until the space shuttle facilities were built in Florida. The Mayan pyramids of Tikal are still some of the tallest structures in Central America. The pueblos of Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon were the largest apartment buildings in the United States until the twentieth century.
The Aztec, Maya, and Inca pyramids and other monumental buildings continue to stand in areas which are periodically devastated by earthquakes which inflict major damage on the modern cities in the same areas.
Medicine
Indian healers were the first people to use quinine, ipecac, vitamin C to cure scurvy, and the active ingredient in cocaine to relieve pain. They invented petroleum jelly, witchhazel, and many other ointments and salves. The world's most common laxative was also invented by Indian people. Many other pharmaceutical products originated from Indian cures.
(The U.S. Department of Agriculture maintains a database that contains 17,634 items representing the medicinal uses of 2,147 species from 760 genera and 142 families by 123 different native American groups. You can search it online at http---probe.nalusda.gov-8300-cgi-bin-browse-mpnadb)
The physicians of the Andean Indian civilizations of South American may have been the first to practice brain surgery. The Aztecs made scalpels from obsidian that are sharper than the finest steel scalpels made today - only lasers make finer incisions. Indians invented rubber hoses and syringes for medical applications.
Political Thought
The development of the American system of representative democracy owes much to the representative democracy of the Iroquois League, which had many elements in common with other Native American societies. Benjamin Franklin, Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress, and Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense, the first call for American independence, were heavily influenced by their contacts with the Iroquois and other Indian tribes. Franklin specifically suggested that the early American states, which were then separate and sovereign powers, to unite in a system based on the Iroquois model.
Technology
Indians invented rubber. They made rubber by treating latex with sulfur and heat, and used it to water-proof cloth, shoe soles, hats, and tarps. They also made rubber balls, ropes, cups, and bowls.
Indians used pitch, tar, asphalt, and petroleum to water proof cloth, baskets, and boats and roofs.
The ancient Hohokam people who lived in the desert of southern Arizona developed an extensive system of clay-lined, water-tight irrigation canals. The modern city of Phoenix, Arizona was built on the Hohokam city now known as Pueblo Grande. The canals are still used today to grow the same crops the Hohokam grew.
Transportation
Indians invented the canoe and the kayak. They utilized the river systems to establish trade networks that could move goods from one end of America to the other.
The Incas of Peru built and maintained a highway system that covered an area larger than western Europe. Fourteen thousand miles of primary and secondary roads in this system have been found so far. The main route was five thousand miles long, and it was the longest road in the world at the time it was built.
Around the twelfth century the Anaszi Indians built a system of roads in the Four Corners area of the United States that covered an area the size of Ireland. These roads were the most efficient highways in the U.S. until paved roads were built in the twentieth century.
Many
of the roads and highways we use today follow the same routes as the roads used
by Indians for thousands of years, such as the Natchez Trace and the Sante Fe
and Oregon Trails.