The Effect of the Mongol Hordes on USA History - Historum

johnincornwall · March 22nd, 2011, 08:42 PM

The Mongol invasions of the XIII century pushed some Manchu peoples toward the north, which in turn displaced others and pushed them toward Kamchatka and the north east of Siberia, like the chuckchi. Some of these peoples passed to Alaska, displacing na-dene (language) tribes like the Apaches (and their relatives the Navajo) toward the south. When the Spanish arrived and lived in the SW desert, the Apaches no longer knew the sea, but had words in their language which recorded their origins in the Pacific North-West.

The word 'apachu' is 'enemy' in the zuni indian language, but they called themselves 'Ndee', that is to say 'the people'. They were a predatory nation, whose warriors confronted all the more peaceful tribes that surrounded them, and later Spanish, Mexicans and Americans.

The Hopi, Zuni and other 'pueblo' indians shared a similar culture and spoke a language of the uto-aztec group. Similarly displaced to upset their peaceful existence were the Commanches, warlike nomads originally from the Lake Athabasca region of Canada.

**Toltec** · March 22nd, 2011, 09:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnincornwall

Some of these peoples passed to Alaska, displacing na-dene (language) tribes like the Apaches (and their relatives the Navajo) toward the south.

So a Russian discovery of America claim.

Interesting piece.

sylla1 · March 22nd, 2011, 10:38 PM

But quite unlikely; the linguistic evolution involved here ostensibly covers a much longer period (thousands of years) than the eight or nine centuries from the Mongol invasions.

Even so, the Na Dene-Yenisei trans-Bering linguistic connection itself is a fascinating, even if still controversial phenomenon:

Quote:

Verbs Across the Bering Strait

When Edward Vajda first encountered descriptions of an isolated Siberian language, Ket, in the early 1990s, its verbal structure reminded him of Navajo.
Now Vajda, a linguist at Western Washington University in Bellingham, has demonstrated the first solid connection between Native American languages and those spoken by north Asians who came across the Bering Strait some 12,000 years ago.
At a meeting of the Alaska Anthropological Association in Anchorage last month, Vajda showed how Yeniseic, a language family containing Ket, is linguistically related to Na-Dene, a North American language group including Navajo.
Vajda compared verbs in Ket and Na-Dene, all tonal languages, and showed how tones in Ket words arose from consonant shifts in similar
Na-Dene words.
He also identified shared vocabulary.
The modern Ket word for “mosquito,” for example, is pronounced “soo-ee”; the ancestral Athabaskan is “tsoo-ee.”
Although a linguistic tie between the two language families has long been supposed, scholars have been skeptical of previous attempts to link them that far back.
Vajda’s work, says linguist Johanna Nichols of the University of California, Berkeley, is a “successful demonstration of a long-distance, temporally deep connection.”

Source: Editorial by Constance Holden, Science, vol. 319, page 1395, March 21, 2008; from a personnal communication by E. Vajda.

johnincornwall · March 22nd, 2011, 10:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toltec

So a Russian discovery of America claim.

Interesting piece.

It's from this current work I'm reading about the Spanish exploration and colonisation of North America:

"Banderas Lejanas, La Exploracion, Conquista y Defensa Por Espana del Territorio de los Actuales Estados Unidos."

It contains an amazing amount of information and they claim it's the first time such work has been pulled together properly. It's well done, despite having the potential to be boring with such data about personalities, places and peoples, if maybe a touch Hispano-biased. But then maybe their achievements have always been under-rated after the subsequent French, English and American colonisations?

By the time of Juan de Onate's expedition (1598-1605), which founded the first permanent colony in New Mexico, the Spanish King and government had forbidden all but peaceful conversion of the indigenous peoples. Fine with friendly types like the Zuni, Hopi and Towa, but the Apaches were having none of it and just didn't seem inclined to peaceful co-existence with anyone.

But it's interesting and a little reminiscent of the crusades debates - when we talk about taking lands off the Apaches and Commanches and 'driving them out of their ancestral homelands', it wasn't their's in the first place! The first colonies were formed with the Pueblo indians blessing and co-operation in direct exchange for help against the Apaches.