"America is young; If you go to Greece or Italy, you see amazing ancient ruins." Comments?

U S Grant said:

I live about 30 miles away, here in the middle of the United States from burial mounds that are estimated to be over 1,000 years old of Cloverleaf/Caddoan Culture. These weren't well understood until the 1970s. About the same distance away was one of the larger semi-agrarian cities of Colonial Midwestern Pawnee (about 10,000 people prior to the 18th Century). What is often notable in many of these locations however is a rise and collapse of these cultures, often unrelated to European invasion. Not a lot is understood from a peripheral research of these situation why this occurred. You can find burial pyramids in various places like Missouri, through Ohio and South to Louisiana and Georgia that are fairly large, many times dating back to 1000 BCE.

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Thanks for writing back.
You are right about some cases of the societies collapsing after a couple centuries. Sometimes in fact there can be a couple causes, and it can be hard to narrow the issue down to one cause. Chaco Canyon had a huge society in the New Mexico desert, with a complex that was maybe 1/4-1/2 the size of the Collosseum of Rome. The society logged tons of woods and trees in the neighboring area. Bear in mind that this was already a naturally rather dry region. Nowadays, it's even more extreme in its dryness. A key factor in the environmental change was the logging and resource harvesting. It's natural then to think that this was one of the causes.

One of the classic problems up until perhaps around the US Civil War period in the US was safe environmental hygiene. People did not have the same solid understanding of germs and the importance of cleanliness that we do today, which is not to say that there weren't societies and places going back to ancient times where cleanliness was very important. So for instance: Do you have clean water? What do you bathe in? Where do you throw your human and animal waste in relation to where you live? Where do you bury your dead and trash in relation to where you live and your drinking sources? Do you live in a swampy mosquito infested area? These questions might seem annoying but if your settlement lives in the same spot for a century, they become pretty important.

The Spanish made one of their capitols in the current southeast USA at what is today Parris Island near Beaufort, SC. They called it Santa Elena. The area has a lot of salt water, alligators, summer mosquitos. The settlement only lasted about a couple decades in total. I recall one archaeological survey of the area noting issues in the placement of the fort's well and trash, suggesting that after decades of using the same spots where they lived, sanitation would have become a problem.

As I recall, sanitation and urban planning issues were also theorized for the collapse of Cahokia in Illinois centuries before Columbus' arrival. If they just had a village, it wouldn't be as much of an issue, but that was a huge city by the standards of that time, and the urban planning abilities of the city would need to account for the demands of the population scale.

U S Grant said:

What differentiates these cultures from Europe? Possibly Rome for one. Possibly invasions by various other cultures that occurred in Europe, that required the invention of city-states, and kingdoms, as a reaction to invasion??? We don't know. There may have been some hieroglyphics that indicate some form of basic primitive written language, there is a site not more than 75 miles away from me where there is old hieroglyphics etched in a cave. However there are no papyrus rolls or translated scripts to document them.

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What do you mean by the question "What differentiates these cultures from Europe?" Do you mean what factors would keep someone from classifying them as achieving "history"?

In my own view, people would typically count them as part of history. In my view, the mound cities are impressive and built in a way that resembles Mesoamerican agricultural societies, at least at some perhaps more simpler level of development. As such, they are comparable with other early levels of civilization. The Mediterranean west of Italy apaprently had some interesting Prehistoric cities even before their discovry of writing. I am thinking especially of Spain, but there is also the megalithic culture on Malta.

The main argument from those who deny that the Mississippi Culture, or for that matter over Amerindian cultures, count as part of American history seems to be that they are separate from the development of "America". The argument goes that "America", or the US as a sociological polity, is fundamentally a former English colony that absorbed the American Indians and achieved independence, rather than being, say, an Amerindian nation that took in immigrants from England.

But in any case, otherwise the main differences in terms of civilizational evaluation include issues that you brought up. The Amerindians did have cities, but how big were they? 20,000? That was sizable for the time period globally, and enough to be called cities, but it wasn't nearly as big as, say, Rome or Alexandria. Then, what were they constructed out of? The European I was talking with noted that if you go to Italy or Greece you see ruins of amazing construction. The Southwest Amerindians did have stone and brick cities, so their architecture was impressive. But the mound builders of the Mississippi used a lot of earth and some wood, so the design concept and ingenuity seems more primitive.

For some academics, the key issue would seem to be the lack of "literature," ie. lengthy text documents. This criterion seems a bit technical: Are you really going to say that a society without literature lacks history even if they have other comparable impressive advanced features? The Incas had an impressive ancient civilization with big stone cities, agriculture, and long roads, but they used Quipu beads for records instead of script.

U S Grant said:

What I meant, was why didn't they expand in the same fashion.

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There are probably a bunch of factors. One could be trade and mutual support directly or indirectly between multiple civilizations in the Old World. Perhaps a mix of competition and cooperation could be another. Another could be that the Old World had more total resources than the New World.

So for instance, the Old World had ridable horses, and so the use of horses could spread from one part of the Old World throughout the rest of it. The New World did have horses, but they were smaller than Old World horses, and maybe about as ridable as zebras are. People ride zebras, but it's rare and not very practical.

South America has llamas, and those are also ridable, but not they are not as practical for riding either as Old World horses.


The Old World did have a bit of a head start. Suppose that humans came to the New World in 15000 - 20000 BC, and then started farming in Mexico in 6000 BC. Humans had already been inhabiting the Old World for what, hundreds of thousands of years, and agriculture started in the Middle East in what, 15,000 to 7,000 BC? People who populated the New World came from the Old World, like through the Bering Land Bridge from Siberia or across the Pacific from Polynesia.

Somewhere around 8,000 BC Gobekli Tepe was built in Asia Minor or Aramaea, and in 10,000-3000 BC we saw Megalithic or Neolithic prehistoric sites popping up around the Old World, like in Malta. Then in 3000-1600 BC we saw Sumer, Egypt, China, and India/Pakistan developing writing and major Bronze Age civilizations with impressive constructions like the Pyramids of Egypt.

Interestingly, in 3000-2000 BC we did see the rise of Andean civilization with Pyramids in the same time that Egypt had its civilizational imperial rise. It's pretty curious because we don't know per se of contact between American civilization and Old World civilizations at that time. Theoretically Egyptians could have crossed the Atlantic to reach the Caribbean or Andes, and the Indus civilization could have crossed the Pacific to reach the Andes. There is evidence that suggests one or both of these routes as a possibility, like Thor Heyerdahl's modern reenactment style voyages.


The Mesoamericans did develop writing, but it didn't catch on as much with the rest of the Americas. I am curious about the Native cave writing that you talked about in your region. The Mesoamericans did have a major impact on the Mississippian and Southwest cultures.

In this case I am talking about the New World cultures in general before Columbus, and not specifically the Amerindian cultures of the current US. This is partly because the US Amerindian cultures, at least in the mound regions that you mentioned and in the Southwest were in terms of civilizational development practically outliers of the Mesoamerican and Andean civilizations, although they did have some of their own unique features.

By comparison, Roman civilization was to some extent an outlier or outgrowth of other civilizations in the Old World. Rome looked much to Greece as an inspiration and model, and Greece in turn got inspiration from elsewhere like Egypt. The Roman writing system came from the Greek one that came from the Phoenician one that was related to the Egyptian one.

U S Grant said:

Indian Cave Park is pretty well researched. Indian Cave State Park - Wikipedia

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That's pretty cool.
You can post some of the petroglyphs here if you want. I recall a stone Anasazi building ruin being in western Kansas. Maybe Nebraska would be too far north for the Anasazi?

Silesius Smithee said:

It really depends on how the question is phrased.

If we're talking about American history, as in (US of) America the Nation as opposed to The "American" continent, then, yes, start with English Colonization. Because as a 'polity', every one of the 13 original states was formed DIRECTLY from English colonies. And I would hazard that if we were still the original 13 without expansion, we Americans would all be thinking of ourselves as near-Englishmen (perhaps in the same way that Australians view it?). well, excepting the occasional crazy dutchman from New Amsterdam York

Fact #1 - In grammar school I was taught that Jamestown (est. 1607) was "the first permanent English settlement in the Americas". Is there any American here who WASN'T taught that??? I was well into adulthood before I learned that the first permanent colony was actually St Augustine Florida (est 1565, by the spanish). But Florida wasn't one of the "Original 13" so this was never even mentioned in Grammar school to us kids.

Fact #2 - As a matter of law, the first of the USA's founding documents - Declaration of Independence - refers specifically to separation from Britain and no one else. Additionally, every one of the original 13, as part of their own 'state' constitutions, formally received "English Common Law" as a backfill to any state statutes.

I mean, here in Georgia (the 4th state), if I were to go into court and argue a case for which I could find no basis in either Georgia Statutes or district precedence, I'd be perfectly free to bring up English Common Law and/or "Blackstone". (Increasingly rare these days, but theoretically possible). But if I were to go into that same court and argue Napoleonic Code, Code of Justininian, Hammurabi, Tang Code, Visigothic Code, or anything else non-English, I'd likely not not only be laughed out of court but hauled out of court in a tight-fitting white jacket that's very difficult to gnaw through the straps of. (I've tried).

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Dear @Silesius Smithee,

Below I am going to answer your message above from the thread "Why has Europe never been dominated by a foreign power?".

The issue was phrased as the history of "America" as compared with the history of Italy or Greece, which means not as a continent. I grew up in the US and find old history interesting, so it's an appealing topic for me.

The answer to the best of my understanding is multi-sided. As a result, I find your answer of starting with English colonization to be legitimate for the reasons that you gave. But I find a converse answer of starting with American Indians to be also legitimate based on other conventions of narrating history. For instance, it seems typical when narrating the "history" of any country to include human habitation even before the arrival or establishment of the dominant group. Thus a discussion on the history of Italy or Greece would include the first inhabitants even before the arrival of Indo-Europeans.

As a result, the evidence that you gave for your POV I find to be legitimate and correct, but nonetheless one could also give contrary evidence for a converse POV.

So Yes, the US was formed out of the 13 original English colonies.

But this brings me to a question for you: Would you start English colonization at Jamestown (the first successful English colony in the US), Roanoke (the first English colony in the US and the start of the "Virginia Colony"), John Cabot (the first explorer and claimant of Anglo-America for the English throne), or even previous English explorers or seasonal fish-campers in Anglo America?

When the English crown subjugated its New York colony from Holland, the crown did so on the justification that John Cabot's 1497 voyage and flag-planting in Canada gave England prior rights to the coast of Anglo-America. And if one counts English colonization as starting in 1497, it means that "America" already started in the medieval period.

In the interpretation of England, Cabot effectively claimed that the coast from eastern Canada down to New Spain and the Spanish Caribbean in 1497 was under the English Crown's jurisdiction, since there were no other "Christian" kingdoms controlling that territory. The 13 English colonies were still part of England's Candian-American dominion, sometimes called Anglo-America. England administered Canada and the 13 colonies as separate colonies, but the distinction before 1783 seems rather hazy and are sometimes both lumped together as Anglo-America. Besides, when England expelled the Dutch from NY, it treated its 1497 claim made in Canada as controlling for its authority in New York.

It would seem to follow that everyone living on England's claimed American territory would also be under England's jurisdiction, although not necessarily English subjects like French and Dutch colonists. The English also destroyed the remnants of a French colony on Saint Croix Island, Maine and Mount Desert Island, Maine in 1613 and captured their residents.

So although the US was formed out of the 13 Colonies, there are two related issues:
Issue #1: Those 13 colonies were themselves part of England's colonies in the New World. The opening US congress was called the Continental Congress, implying a claim to the Continent, and had delegates from Nova Scotia. The American revolutionary army tried to take Quebec, and although the Canadian campaign was a failure, the inclusion of Canada in the USA seems within the bounds of the original national concept.

The point is a bit moot now since annexation of Canada isn't on the horizon, but it's relevant when it comes to charting how far back the US as a polity would go or how back its colonial legal precedents would go that you refer to in your Fact #2.

Issue #2: Those 13 colonies were themselves formed using inhabitants whose presence preceded English colonization in those colonies. You mentioned the Dutch. There were also Swedes in the Delaware Bay area. Perhaps some former Spanish subjects lived in the coastal areas of S.C. and Georgia, or French ones lived in NY State or Western Pennsylvania. But in those cases we would probably be talking about American Indians.

And that brings us to the American Indians. There are still Indian reservations or tribal lands in some of the 13 colonies like the Iroquois in NY, the Cherokee in western NC, reservations in Massachusettes. England, the 13 colonies, and the US subjugated those tribes, but the tribes themselves nonetheless predate England's 1497 land claim. That is, the US was formed out of the 13 English colonies, but those 13 colonies were themselves formed using pre-existing peoples, settlements, and societies. The 13 colonies and states legally point to English charters as founding documents, but the tribes made up part of the polity in those colonies and states and they have tribal traditions and arrangements that precede the English colonial charters. Those tribal traditions and arrangements could serve as precedents governing the rule of those tribes within these 13 states.

Next, I'm inclined to disagree that the US's people would consider ourselves near-Englishmen if we stayed with just our initial 13 colonies at independence in 1776. The two reasons are the US's diversity and its ideological distancing from England. Besides the Dutch and Swedes, Pennsylvania has had a pretty strong German contingent since colonial times. Some states like South Carolina were majority Black in population, I recall. The socioeconomic arrangement and subtropical climate of the US southeast for that period reminds me of Barbados or some other English Caribbean colony with a strong reliance on slave labor. Some Caribbean islands are still part of European nations without having majority European ancestral populations. If they gain full independence like the US did, should they consider themselves near European? The same principle would seem to apply to those southeast US colonies. In 1776 the "free" population in those states might have had majority British ancestry, but slavery would have been abolished by the 20th century even if the US stayed limited to 13 colonies.

Along with the US's diversity, the US ideologically had a pretty strong focus on distancing itself from England, at least in its overt self-understanding. This makes sense because it makes for a much better case for independence than if the US Founding Fathers identified themselves as nationally Englishmen. Instead, the division in 1776 in terms of propaganda was between "Patriots" and "Loyalists". The paradigm is kind of doubtful, since arguably the British Empire was part of the founders' "fatherland", whereas the founders were also "loyal" to their home land in the US. But once you accept the paradigm that the US is your "country" and England is foreign and thus England should not rule the US, the "near-Englishmen" identity becomes undesirable. Already in the 18th century, American colonists were calling themselves "Americans," since their families for generations had lived in English "America."

And then there's the issue that major factions of the 13 Colonies' founders were trying to get away from English control, like the New England Puritan colonists, the P.A. Quakers, and Maryland's Catholics. I can't really think of a single one of the original 13 colonies that by history would have a sociological makeup overwhelmingly of Englishmen loyal to England. So for instance, the Southern states in the Revolution tended to be less revolutionary, but those Southern states had pretty strong African-American or Amerindian populations. MD and DE may have had less slaves, but they also had strong non-Anglican heritage, and in DE there was a major Dutch and Swedish component.

A big reason why this is relevant is that in terms of national self-understanding of your history, once your country rejects being an ethnic nation state, it makes it more natural to include prior inhabitants as part of your nation's history. So to give an analogy, if Elizabethan England conceives of itself as an Anglo-Saxon-Norman polity, it's easier to perceive a break from its pre-Anglo-Saxon past than in the case of a country like the US that conceives itself as dedicated to its citizens regardless of ethnicity.

As far as Fact #1 in terms of school education, it sounds like different regions of the country give different takes on history in school. I'm from the North and the big rhyme that sits in my head about America's society is "In 1492 Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue."

Columbus got a lot of attention in the popular mind as the "discoverer" of America, and it's noteworthy that plenty of places in the US like D.C. are named after Columbus. In contrast, Cabot doesn't get nearly as much attention in the US, even though Cabot effectively created a legal basis for English settlement in the 13 colonies, whereas Columbus was exploring on behalf of Spain.

I was kind of a history nerd as a kid and reading the 1979 Encyclopedia, I thought it was cool that the Spanish settled Florida like with St. Augustine. Besides that our Middle School studied the colonial period. It would have mentioned the Spanish in Florida. I remember seeing a photo of some tourist carriage in St. Augustine's by the touristy impressive center area. It's a pretty cool area and it's convenient if you live in Georgia. There's been a metaphorical "fan club" over St. Augustine for a pretty long time, which is why the magnate Flagler built big buildings there in the Spanish style. In other words, some of the cool classic foreign European architecture there is actually from history buffs generations ago paying homage. Maybe that includes the two main buildings int he photo below. I don't quite remember:


But St. Augustine does still have some cool impressive colonial Spanish period architecture like the castle there.

Maybe it has to do with growing up in the North, but the Plymouth Colony, the Mayflower, Plymouth Rock, the Pilgrims, the First Thanksgiving all stick in my head as pretty foundational for English colonization in the US. Actually Jamestown was 13 years earlier in 1607, but I'm just dealing with what childhood history images come to my mind. In your mind as a kid would you give Jamestown or Plymouth Rock more attention?

In any case, the point about school education is still arguable because in Grade School we still learn about the Native Americans. Arguably, the teaching about them works achronologically, with a narrative running along these lines: "In 1492, Columbus discovered the Americas on behalf of Spain. And he found people living here, the Indians. And they have some cool background like agriculture (corn, tobacco). And the Aztecs and Mayans in Mexico built big pyramids..."

As for Fact #2 - Legal Precedents, the typical conception from Law School is that Yes, the US Common Law follows English Common Law precedent. So your idea is legitimate. But the converse can also be argued in a couple ways.

First, under legal theory, suppose that US and English Common Law practically didn't touch on some issue. Could you bring up in passing a precedent from another legal system. And I think that the answer is Yes, although there is no requirement that the judge follow it. Roman Law is a pretty strong source for the modern Western Legal System, to the point where I think bringing up something from the Justinian Code would be reasonable, depending on the situation. You would want to show why you are mentioning Roman Law. I'm guessing that you could be arguing that there was no relevant Common Law and that you are relying on general accepted foundational legal principles. It seems like something that you would mention in a Brief, but not Closing Arguments.

I don't even know if Germanic tribal law would be more controlling than Roman Law. The Normans conquered and ruled England starting in the 11th century and they had the Roman Legal system in France. But the Anglo-Saxons were Germanic tribes with Germanic tribal legal practices. So English common law seems probably like some concoction of the two. I mean, even if Germanic law were more foundational in England, would US courts pay more attention to it or to Roman Law for guidance? It seems Roman Law would get more attention, even if the US courts base themselves on a Germanic model. That's what I mean by a concoction.

Second, more to the point, the US does have states and entities whose legal systems diverge from or precede the English colonial system. If you are in Louisiana, it seems you could argue using the Napoleonic Code. Puerto Rico is part of the US and it is a former Spanish colony settled before the mainland European colonies in the US. I am not quite sure how Florida's or other US former Spanish colonies' legal precedents would work, but I'm guessing that Spanish colonial law would play a guiding role at times.

You can respond that those other states were not part of the founding 13 colonies, but even there the point is arguable, since colonial Florida's territory probably included pre-English Georgia and South Carolina. Conceivably you could have some Spanish road or land grant that is still a legal realty some place in Georgia. And in any case, these former Spanish colonies like Puerto Rico are still part of the US and their pre-English precedents would still be controlling in parts of the US.

So even if in 1776, pre-English colonial laws were not precedential for US states, the same would not be the case today since those other former pre-English colonies like Puerto Rico joined the US.

Third, there are Indian tribes in the US, including the former 13 colonies, that are counted as self-governing under tribal councils, and their traditions and thus precedents precede English colonization.

hairesis said:

Even so, I agree with @Silesius Smithee conclusion. The U.S. was primarily British in origin with minor contributions from other cultures. Besides the civil law connection, cultural history also shows this. English language dominated from the start. The Anglican and their Separatists dominated religion. That doesn't mean there weren't exceptions. Van Buren was Dutch and English was his 2nd language. Catholics established several parishes in Maryland. But these other cultures did not overwhelm the country. The U.S. didn't have printers pressing in 5 different languages or 5 different denominations erect churches in the same town. Some of that multicultural history starts to happen with the waves of migrations in the 1800s. Setting the date or "origin" matters.

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Dear @hairesis
I think that POV of the US being primarily British in origin is legitimate, but the converse POV is also legitimate. The basic issue is the date or origin. Countries can be viewed either in political-ethnic-sociological terms of their polity's history, but they can also be viewed in terms of the chronology of the population within their current borders. So for instance, you can view Turkey in terms of the chronology of the Turkic tribes in the Turkey as they developed into the Ottoman Empire and then modern Turkey. Or you can view Turkey's chronology in terms of the chronology of humans on Turkey's current territory, or in terms of the historic period starting with the development of writing there in Antiquity.

If you follow the series of legal precedents for Georgia or the general flow of the development of US Law, you are going to follow back to the English colonies, then England's legal history to the Norman Conquest. Maybe you will go back to the Roman-based legal system in Norman France or the Anglo-Saxon tribal system.

In this regard, @Silesius Smithee made a good point: If you talk about other legal traditions like Cherokee/Creek/Muscogee/Miccosukee tribal rules or Spanish colonial statutes in a Georgia court, it's going to get ignored. Otherwise, you would really need to give a good reason why you would be including it, like if you are arguing property issues related to one of those tribes or empires. So for instance Title 44 of the Georgia Code protects American Indian Human Remains and Burial Objects, and recognizes specific Tribes.

2022 Georgia Code
Title 44 - Property
Chapter 12 - Rights in Personalty
Article 7 - Protection of American Indian Human Remains and Burial Objects
Part 3 - Legitimate American Indian Tribes
§ 44-12-300. Tribes, Bands, Groups, or Communities Recognized by State as Legitimate American Indian Tribes[/H1]

Universal Citation: GA Code § 44-12-300 (2022)

1. The State of Georgia officially recognizes as legitimate American Indian tribes of Georgia the following tribes, bands, groups, or communities:
   1. The Georgia Tribe of Eastern Cherokee P.O. Box 1993 Dahlonega, Georgia 30533; (2) The Lower Muscogee Creek Tribe Route 2, Box 370 Whigham, Georgia 31797; and (3) The Cherokee of Georgia Tribal Council Saint George, Georgia 31646.
      
      SOURCE: 2022 Georgia Code :: Title 44 - Property :: Chapter 12 - Rights in Personalty :: Article 7 - Protection of American Indian Human Remains and Burial Objects :: Part 3 - Legitimate American Indian Tribes :: § 44-12-300. Tribes, Bands, Groups, or Communities Recognized by State as Legitimate American Indian Tribes

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State Recognized:
The State of Georgia officially recognizes as legitimate American Indian tribes of Georgia the following tribes, bands, groups, or communities under OCGA 44-12-300:

The Lower Muscogee Creek Tribe
State recognized in Georgia code OCGA 44-12-300
Route 2, Box 370
Whigham, Georgia 31797

The Cherokee of Georgia Tribal Council
State recognized in Georgia code OCGA 44-12-300
Saint George, Georgia 31646

The United Creeks of Georgia
State recognized in Georgia code OCGA 44-12-300
565 Warwick Street
Atlanta, Georgia 30316

---

Non-Recognized:

The American Cherokee Confederacy, Inc.
619 Pine Cone Road
Albany, Georgia 31705-6908
Manahoac Saponi Nation
Union City, Georgia 30219

SOURCE: Georgia Tribes

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The Miccosukees organized under a tribal government after contact with Europeans, and they lived as autonomous communities prior to colonization. Most of the tribe's land was lost during the 1800s, but it has since come through recent settlements and purchases to amass over 120,000 acres (500 km^2) in the northern Florida Everglades and southeastern Georgia.

Miccosukee Tribe Origin
The Miccosukee Tribe was originally part of the Creek Confederacy that spanned much of present-day Alabama and Georgia.
...
As one of four tribes recognized by Florida since 1971, the Miccosukee Tribe has sought federal acknowledgment as a sovereign nation. They currently operate under a constitution (approved July 2010) with an elected tribal council and chairman. ... The tribe owns 12 hotels in Florida, one in Georgia, six in New York State near Buffalo and Niagara Falls, three in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

History of the Miccosukee Tribe - AC Confederacy

The Miccosukee Tribe, also known as the Miccosukee Nation of Indians and sometimes spelled Mvskoke Creek Tribe, is a state-recognized tribe in Florida, created after the United States formally recognized tribes. Many members live near Tallahassee, Florida. It was part of the Creek Confederacy...

www.acconfederacy.org

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On the other hand, if you open a standard US history textbook, even from the mid-19th century, AFAIK it's going to talk about the American Indians, Columbus, Spanish, and other colonial powers like the Dutch and French. It's common for US state, county, water, mountain, and other geographic names to have an indigenous, or other non-British origin.

Opening the Wikipedia page for Decatur, its history section starts by talking about Amerindian settlement and the city being named after an American Revolutionary of French extraction:

Prior to European settlement, the Decatur area was largely forested (a remnant of old-growth forest near Decatur is preserved as Fernbank Forest). Decatur was established at the intersection of two Native American trails: the Sandtown, which led east from the Chattahoochee River at Utoy Creek, and the Shallowford, which follows today's Clairmont Road, and eventually crossed near Roswell. A site for the DeKalb County courthouse was designated in 1822 in what would become downtown Decatur; the city of Decatur was incorporated on December 10, 1823. It was named for United States Navy Commodore Stephen Decatur.

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It seems logical for me that since St. Mary's Spanish Mission in the 17th century was on an island at the end of the St. Mary's River on the edge of Spanish Florida, that it provides the name for St. Mary's, Georgia.

Savannah's name has an Amerindian origin:

The town was named for the Savannah River, which took its name from an immigrant band of Shawnee Indians known as the Savana, who settled near the site of present day Augusta in 1681.

Sherpa Guides | Georgia | Coast | Savannah

Savannah. With its cobblestone streets, historic squares, opulent mansions, and spreading Live Oaks dripping with Spanish moss, Savannah is one of the most distinctive cities in the United States, ranking with New Orleans, San Francisco, and Charleston, South Carolina.

www.sherpaguides.com

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The tourism site for Suwanee suggests that the city's name has a Spanish or indigenous origin:

Suwannee County, the thirty-seventh county created in the State of Florida, was formed on December 21, 1858 out of the western portion of Columbia County. The word "Suwannee" is sometimes thought to originate from the Native American word sawani, meaning "Echo River", "Muddy Waters", or something similar. A more probable origin is that it was based upon the Spanish name for the river, Rio San Juan de Guacara, which translates into the "River of Saint John of Antiquity", referring to John the Apostle. As the Spanish gave way to English dominance, the old Spanish name was anglicized to become "Suwannee". As Suwannee County is bounded on three sides by the famous river, it only made sense that the new county would be named in its honor.

Native Americans, Spanish, & The History That Formed Suwannee County - Visit Suwannee

The melody and words to “Old Folks at Home”, better known as “Way Down Upon the Swanee River”, evoke visions of tranquility upon the old homestead, a return

visitsuwannee.com

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Villa Rica is a Spanish language name referring to the gold found in Northwest Georgia. American settlers gave it the name, but I wonder if the settlers connected it with the Spanish colonies' knowledge that the southern Appalachians in the Georgia/NC region had gold.

The Wikipedia page on the Georgia Gold Rush notes:

Since the 16th century, American Indians in Georgia told European explorers that the small amounts of gold which they possessed came from mountains of the interior. Some poorly documented accounts exist of Spanish or French mining gold in North Georgia between 1560 and 1690, but they are based on supposition and on rumors passed on by Indians.[1] In summing up known sources, W.S. Yeates observed: "Many of these accounts and traditions seem to be quite plausible. Nevertheless, it is hardly probable that the Spaniards would have abandoned mines which were afterwards found to be quite profitable, as those in North Georgia."
...
Hernando de Soto led an expedition in 1540, and "came across a young native who showed the Spaniards how gold was mined, melted, and refined by his people." Ozley Bird Saunook, a former Cherokee chief, claimed "his people knew of gold in the area as early as the sixteenth century when de Soto passed through the region."

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Waleska is named after the daughter of a Cherokee chief (Waleska, Georgia - Wikipedia).

Georgia's River basins are:

• Altamaha River
• Chattahoochee River
• Coosa River
• Flint River
• Ochlockonee River
• Oconee River
• Ocmulgee River
• Ogeechee River
• Satilla River
• Savannah River
• St. Mary's River
• Suwannee River
• Tallapoosa River
• Tennessee River

These are all indigenous or Spanish based names. The Flint River is the English translation for the Muscogee Indian name:

One early name given to the river and to the village settled by ancient Eastern Woodland tribes near today's city of Albany is Thronateeska, or Thlonotiaske, meaning "flint picking-up place." The Muskogee Indians called the river Hlonotiskahachi, ronoto being Muskogean for "flint." When Hernando de Soto first saw it on March 5, 1540, he named it Rio de Capachequi. Later Spaniards called it the Rio Pedernales, pedernal meaning "flint" in Spanish.

Flint River - New Georgia Encyclopedia

The Flint River, which stretches from the Piedmont to the Chattahoochee River in southwest Georgia, is one of only forty rivers in the nation’s contiguous forty-eight states that flow unimpeded for more than 200 river miles. The Flint has had many names. One early name given to the river and to...

www.georgiaencyclopedia.org

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Maps of Spanish settlements in Georgia:

The US Capitol is in the District of Columbia, named after Columbus. Columbus Day is a federal holiday, and the main debates about whether to keep it as a holiday seem to range over whether to continue honoring Columbus as the leading known European discoverer of the Americas since the Norse, or to cease it due to concerns over Columbus' brutality toward the indigenous population. It's generally not argued that his holiday should be replaced with a federal one honoring Cabot.

Although de facto the history of America's civilizational-cultural roots can solidly be traced back to pre-Columbian England, through the Norman Conquest and into Anglo-Saxon England, in real life if an American History schoolteacher or professor starts far back into medieval England's history and skip the American Indians, Columbus, other colonial poweres, and narrowly deal with Cabot, Anglo-American colonial history and the modern USA as a state, people are going to think that something is off. Maybe back in the 18th and early 19th century they might think that the person is a Loyalist or has limited historical knowledge. Nowadays they might think that the person is overly Eurocentric. Why test high school kids on the dynasties of English monarchs and medieval wars but skip the Spanish colonization of the Americas in an American history class?

You can reasonably respond to parents that America gets its legal and political heritage solidly from England and that the 13 Colonies were declaring independence from England, not Spain. But if one is going to use the standards of US court room expectations to define American Legal History, it seems analogous to use the standards of US schools and colleges to determine the normal contours of standard "American History."

Part of the reason is US self-understanding and identity. The US doesn't define or recognize itself ideologically as an English colony or ethnic English society. It overtly considers itself dedicated to all its citizens regardless of ethnicity and to a major extent tries to be that way. Black History Month and Martin Luther King Day are national annual events. Maybe if one was were living in a European Third World colony in the 19th or 20th century in coastal Africa, they might teach their own history that way: Pre-modern Europe + Their own Colonial Territory.

(Continued in the next message)

Dear @hairesis,

The other points that you made in the paragraph that I quoted from you in my last message (Message #173) are generally tenable, as are converse points. The leading political, economic, and otherwise influential families in 1776 were probably foremost English in heritage, and that may have been true for the voting population too. Conversely, the majority of the inhabitants of claimed US territory were non-English and some other heritage group may have been more common depending on one's categorization, like Algonquins collectively or a specific Algonquin tribe. Certainly when English colonists arrived and began settling the Virginia Colony in 1585-1620 in what is now VA and NC, the population on the territory that the colony claimed was overwhelmingly Native American.

The name Virginia itself was apparently inspired by indigenous terminology:

"Virginia" is the oldest designation for English claims in North America. In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh sent Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe to explore what is now the North Carolina coast. They returned with word of a regional king (weroance) named Wingina, who ruled a land supposedly called Wingandacoa. "Virginia" was originally a term used to refer to England's entire North American possession and claim along the east coast from the 34th parallel (close to Cape Fear) north to 45th parallel. This area included a large section of Canada and the shores of Acadia.

The name Virginia for a region in North America may have been originally suggested by Raleigh, who named it for Queen Elizabeth I in approximately 1584.[7] In addition, the term Wingandacoa may have influenced the name Virginia." On his next voyage, Raleigh learned that while the chief of the Secotans was indeed called Wingina, the expression wingandacoa heard by the English upon arrival actually meant "What good clothes you wear!" in Carolina Algonquian and was not the name of the country as previously misunderstood.

The 1609 charter for the Virginia colony "from sea to sea"

Colony of Virginia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Perhaps most of the voting public was non-English as well (Irish, Welsh, Scottish, Dutch, Swedish) in 1776. Some Slave States I recall had more black slaves than White residents. Nowadays, already for decades the leading ethnicity in the US as a portion of the population has been German heritage, whereas people of primarily English heritage make up only a small percent of the population. Someone put forward a motion at the nation's founding to consider German as an official US language, and although that option was rejected, it shows that German Americans were at least a significant component of the population already.



Furthermore, even though the leading families and of the voters were probably foremost English in 1776, this doesn't in itself make the State "English", as opposed to a pluralistic society. England as a nation probably thought of itself as dedicated to the English people, but that doesn't mean all nations where the leading group was English also thought of themselves this way.

Let's consider the case of Mexico. I think people are going to more often make the case that Mexico's national history goes back to the Mesoamericans. Mexico's population probably has a majority indigenous heritage, and had a quite impressively formed civilization when the Spanish arrived in the 16th century.

The theory that is mostly accepted points out that it is formed from three Nahuatl words: 'metztli' meaning 'moon'; 'xictli' translate as 'belly button' or 'centre'; and the affix '-co' indicating 'place'.
SOURCE: Inicio

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However, in terms of the leading families politically, economically, and the legal system, at the time of Mexican Independence from Spain, and still today, the foremost role may be played by Spanish heritage and legal traditions.

So although the leading US families may have been and may still be English from 1776 to today, they didn't conceive of their state as an English ethnic nation-state, most of the population was and is non-English, and English became probably sometime in the 19th century a smaller portion of the voting population than German Americans. Further, although identifying the politically and economically strongest ethnicity in a nation is valuable to understanding the nation's makeup, that criterion doesn't clearly strictly determine where to draw the origin date and point of a country.

Dear @hairesis

I usually give everyone who posts a Like. I voted for #2 in the poll list. I'm open minded on the topic. If you want to argue that "America" is young and started with English colonization, that looks legitimate to me. In that case, would you start it with John Cabot an the Bristol fishermen exploring or staying in Anglo America in the late 15th century, or with English colonies at Roanoke Island and Jamestown?

The converse position also looks legitimate to me. If someon wants to ask when the first humans arrived in "America," when the first surviving stone towns were built here, when the first literate people arrived here, these also look like legitimate and rational topics. I would expect people addressing those issues to talk about topics like the crossing at the Bering Strait, the stone pueblos of the Southwest, visits by Mesoamericans, Vikings, or Spaniards. I think it's a fun issue to consider. It goes along with what your Signature line says about the challenge in "the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic."

There is a tree called the CORA tree at Frisco on Hatteras Island that some link to the CRO and CROATOAN markings left on trees at the Roanoke Island Colony by the Lost Colonists.

In 2006, writer Scott Dawson proposed that a Southern live oak tree on Hatteras Island, which bears the faint inscription "CORA" in its bark, might be connected to the Lost Colony. The CORA tree had already been the subject of local legends, most notably a story about a witch named "Cora" that was popularized in a 1989 book by C. H. Whedbee. Nevertheless, Dawson argued that the inscription might represent another message from the colonists, similar to the "CROATOAN" inscription at Roanoke.[217] If so, "CORA" might indicate that the colonists left Croatoan Island to settle with the Coree (also known as the Coranine) on the mainland, near Lake Mattamuskeet.

A 2009 study to determine the age of the CORA tree was inconclusive. Damage to the tree, caused by lightning and decay, has made it impossible to obtain a valid core sample for tree-ring dating. Even if the tree dates back to the 16th century, establishing the age of the inscription would be another matter.

Roanoke Colony - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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The capital letters CORA carved into the tree in Frisco bear a striking resemblance to the tree carved on Roanoke Island with the capital letters CRO and the carving on the post at Fort Raleigh carved CROATOAN. All three CORA, CRO, and CROATOAN are all carved about 5 ft. from the base and 4" tall "in fayre capitall letters." All of the carvings are similar and give credence to a theory that the carvings are part of a messaging/distress system that John White instructed the colonists to use should they have to leave the original settlement site on Roanoke Island, while White traveled to and from England with life-sustaining supplies. There is a theory still floating around that the "CORA" inscription was left by colonists, as the "CROATOAN" inscription was left as a message to inform White that the colonists were leaving the nomadic hunting and fishing tribe on Croatoan.

In 1588, colonists including Virginia Dare, abandoned the outpost at Croatoan, an Indian village of the late 16th century. There are two archeological sites of this village; H1 Cape Creek in Buxton, N.C., and another in Frisco, N.C., still called Indian Town by locals to this day. The most notable evidence of the correlation between the Roanoke Island site and the Hatteras Island site are the coins and counters recovered by locals at the H7 Archeological Frisco Dune site, noted by William G. Haag. Counters are an antique method of mathematical computation. They are made with malleable metal, a hammer, and a die. The counters found at the Frisco Dune site appear to be the exact same as the counters at the Fort Raleigh site on Roanoke Island. Not only do they have the identical designs, markings, and wordings, but they also have the same irregularities; providing solid evidence that they were made by the same die, and most likely part of the same set.

The Cora Tree: A Halloween-Worthy Local Legend | Island Free Press

The Outer Banks is a raw, windswept landscape dotted by ancient Southern Live Oaks gnarled by centuries of fierce winds and tropical storms that nurtures creative whimsy and mystical legends. It is no wonder the area is home to ghost sightings, spirits, legends, and lore. Some of these...

islandfreepress.org

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hairesis said:

Seriously. There is only so much time in a school year. I took a college history class that focused on French, Dutch, Spanish, and English; Algonquin, Iroquian, Sioux, Peublo, Taino, etc., the rise of mercantilism, of the Separatist Churches, etc. It took 14 weeks to go from Columbian contact (1492) to the Boston Tea Party (1773), and we didn't even get to the American Revolutionary War! This class was called "Colonial America". It was great content, fairly inclusive -- everything from Indigenous culture, to African slavery, to European colonists.

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Dear @hairesis
According to the parameters of your class "Colonial America", it would seem that the pre-Columbian Natives and the pre-English colonists (Spanish Florida, French colonies in Canada and the eastern coastal US) count as part as the history of "America".

hairesis said:

Yet it was still constrained by reality.

The reality is limited time compels us to teach certain things even in a class called "American History" or "U.S. History". I prefer the former classname -- as do many textbooks now -- but even then the process of selecting what fits in the given time will probably piss someone off. "Why didn't this start with 1619 instead of 1776?" "Why is the War of 1812 reduced to the burning of the White House?" I can imagine being said as criticism.

Technically speaking, I'm referring to the 'problem of coverage'. (Note below) A coverage class attempts to "cover" a specific time, place, people and, sadly, leaves the student full of facts but few skills in historical study. The life-long, humanistic study of history and its methods, like source analysis, argumentation & debate, close reading, etc., are minimized if not ignored. This is a well-known problem in teaching history that has been criticized. One solution is to teach by inquiry but, as a deeper reflection reveals, people want certain people, places, dates, etc. to be known by every student.

If I enable a students to read their culture, to go full-blown multicultural, like a Native American reads Tecumseh's letter, an African American student reads W.E.B DeBois letters, and a British descent student reads John Adam's letters, etc. and teach these student methods for doing history with those sources to enable them to do history themselves, someone is going to come along to criticize on content. "Why did my child not learn about Reagon saving us from communism?" or "Why aren't you teaching about feminist history?" or "We're a proud union family and you've taught barely anything about labor history!" etc. Basically what I'm saying is that the teaching of history developed (or devolved) into an expectation of covering specific content, and multiple people have different opinions about what that content should be.

---

Note: My history advisor co-authored an article about this in the Journal of American History that covers the scholarly debate. The End of the History Survey Course: The Rise and Fall of the Coverage Model. Another scholar wrote a few years earlier about alternatives to coverage that support my advance of method + inquiry instead of facts + lecture. The latter is more light-hearted of a read with practical advice from case study while the former is a serious analysis.

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The general thrust of what you are saying is that time is constrained in classes, and so certain things can get covered but not everything. That makes sense. I think that you aren't arguing that whereas John Adam's letters are part of US history, the Women's Rights movement is not. You are saying that whereas c. 1619 is a major foundational time and the destructive 1812 British occupation of the capitol is a major historical event, other American events like the 1812 War's battles aren't important enough to fit into the limitations of class time. Plus, historiography should be better studied and in real life people want important events like the Revolutionary War to get covered.

None of what you've said in your passages that I've just quoted whether Native American and Spanish colonial history would qualify as American history per se like John Adam's letters and the events of the 1812 War would qualify.

Let's say that we go with the method and inquiry model. In that case, one inquiry could be how and when the US founding fathers and state schools themselves understood American history to begin.

With so many places like the District of Columbia, Columbia, SC, Columbus, Ohio, Columbus, GA (2nd largest city in GA) named in Columbus' honor, he would seem to be a foundational historical figure in the US national consciousness. The Wikipedia article on Columbus notes:

The figure of Columbus was not ignored in the British colonies during the colonial era: Columbus became a unifying symbol early in the history of the colonies that became the United States when Puritan preachers began to use his life story as a model for a "developing American spirit".[224] In the spring of 1692, Puritan preacher Cotton Mather described Columbus's voyage as one of three shaping events of the modern age, connecting Columbus's voyage and the Puritans' migration to North America, seeing them together as the key to a grand design.[225]

The use of Columbus as a founding figure of New World nations spread rapidly after the American Revolution. This was out of a desire to develop a national history and founding myth with fewer ties to Britain. His name was the basis for the female national personification of the United States, Columbia,[229] in use since the 1730s with reference to the original Thirteen Colonies, and also a historical name applied to the Americas and to the New World. Columbia, South Carolina and Columbia Rediviva, the ship for which the Columbia River was named, are named for Columbus. ...

The Americanization of the figure of Columbus began in the latter decades of the 18th century, after the revolutionary period of the United States,[247] elevating the status of his reputation to a national myth, .... americanus.[248] His landing became a powerful icon as an "image of American genesis".

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The background story about the Columbia River's name is that US Captain Robert Gray visited the river in his ship the Columbia Rediviva in 1792 and gave the river its name. Hence we also have British Columbia.

However, Columbus discovered and claimed the Americas for Spain, rather than for England. The US couldn't make direct territorial or other political claims at its foundation 1776 through Columbus. The US at its foundational moment was made of 13 English colonies that revolted from the UK, and their lands had been claimed for England by England's explorers like John and Sebastian Cabot in 1497-1509. This implies that the US founding fathers didn't narrowly limit their understanding of the history of "America" to their own national English colonial political-legal legacy, but rather included in it prior events like Spanish colonial history.

I got interested in this topic recently when I looked at the Age of Empires III screenshots and it showed the Spanish colonization period. AOE II has a Dos Pilas mission for 7th century Yucatan, an 11th century Vinland Saga scenario, a 14th century Custom Scenario about Abu Bakr II's Malian exploration of Brazil, a 15th century Portuguese "Old World" exploration campaign, and 16th century Aztec and Amazon campaigns. Both AOE II and III have Roanoke scenarios. AOE III has a Jamestown Custom scenario. These are just some of many scenarios and campaigns on the New World history theme.