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The Legacy of Spain in the Americas
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    Posted: 23-Jul-2007 at 00:21
Well, I saw in Canada a couple of fellow of Amerindian background studying engineering, actually. They didn't say they were Amerindians at all; they hide the fact.
 
Now, Canada has 1 or 2 million Amerindian people which is not exactly a small minority at all. Besides, admixture in people "that look white" is commonly accepted, and not only in metis.
 
What I wonder is why in the United States the attitude is not the same. Americans are, after all, browner than most Canadians, but they insist they are crystal clear pure Nordics. I don't understand Americans.
 
Canadians, well, at least I stand them LOL. Even after they treated the Chilean soccer team in Toronto like animals Big%20smile
 
Pinguin
 
 
 
 
 
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Posts: 2394 		  Quote edgewaters Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Jul-2007 at 00:51
Originally posted by pinguin

What I wonder is why in the United States the attitude is not the same.


Different historical background. When the US broke ties with Britain, most of the native allies of the English retained their loyalty to the Crown and turned against the colonials. The British continued to cultivate its alliances with the natives and loosed them on the Americans in conflicts throughout the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Some of the native leaders became heroes in British North America - people like Tecumseh and Joseph Brant. But because they massacred American settlements and inflicted several serious defeats on US forces, often simply because the Americans were terrified of the natives (such as the embarrassing defeat at the "Battle" of Detroit), they became monsters to the Americans. Sort of understandable, because they did some horrible things to the Americans.

So the US history is one that started out almost immediately with all their erstwhile native allies turning on them, while the Canadian history is one in which natives played a big role in securing the nation from the American threat and preserving our independance.

Still, I would be remiss not to mention that Britain failed to repay natives for their services in that time and traded away their lands to the US in peace negotiations, and our history with regards to natives is certainly a checkered one - it was not that long ago (the 1950s) that natives in the far north were still being booted out of their homes to make way for mining and oil operations, and even today, natives on reserves live in squalor. Lest I paint too rosy a picture.

Even after they treated the Chilean soccer team in Toronto like animals


Hah! Well Toronto doesn't know if it's Canadian or American sometimes, and they seem to think the rest of Canada does not exist. I'm not going to defend Toronto's behaviour ...

Edited by edgewaters - 23-Jul-2007 at 01:00
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Posts: 1457 		  Quote elenos Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Jul-2007 at 01:53

Yes. I bet the Brits were the chosen people. They were beyond morality. God had to be a protestant."

 

Im not English and my religion is neither Catholic nor Protestant! Lets say my ancestors of way back were more like the despised Indians for they had religious reverence for their environment.. I judge nobody by their race or religion unless Im being abusive, but never mind about that.

 Forgive me if Im wrong but according to what you have said about yourself you are not of Spanish descent, so therefore your ancestors were not of the same religion. Support of the winning side is always a good idea, but this is the 21st century now and you can be whoever you want to be. What excuse can there be for human sacrifice is one of those rhetorical questions that seem to have no answer?

Only recently been discovered the natives went through periods of terrible drought because of climate change. They turned against each other and there is much evidence of mass suicides. Then the  civil authorities (rightly or wrongly) decided to allow execution for even relatively minor infringement of law so the best families may live through the desperate times rather than the worst families survive. Now thats what the Spanish called human sacrifice. They didnt have the whole story and didnt want to listen.. So what did they do - it is well known they killed whole villages of those they suspected of the practice. So who was sacrificing who in that case?

 
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Jul-2007 at 10:14
Originally posted by elenos

 Forgive me if Im wrong but according to what you have said about yourself you are not of Spanish descent, so therefore your ancestors were not of the same religion. Support of the winning side is always a good idea, but this is the 21st century now and you can be whoever you want to be. What excuse can there be for human sacrifice is one of those rhetorical questions that seem to have no answer?  
 
I am an average Chilean. My personal ancestors are mainly Spanish, althogh I have French and Italians in the family tree. The Native origins are more obscure but I have clues that make me believe I also have that ancestry. The first is the fact a branch of the family has lived in the same valley I live (Santiago Chile) since the middle of the 19th century; That I know that several indigenous communities in there "suddendy" become European and the fact Chileans have 20% Amerindian on them as average. Also a mysterious history of some ancestor that nobody wants to confim LOL
 
My culture is mainstream European, with the typical countrysize "criollo" attitude of the lower classes of my country, from where I come from. I love rodeo! I love guitar playing. I identify with our local cowboys. In Chile we use the cow as a ball to play soccer, though Big%20smileBig%20smileLOL
 
Originally posted by elenos

 
Only recently been discovered the natives went through periods of terrible drought because of climate change. They turned against each other and there is much evidence of mass suicides. Then the  civil authorities (rightly or wrongly) decided to allow execution for even relatively minor infringement of law so the best families may live through the desperate times rather than the worst families survive. Now thats what the Spanish called human sacrifice. They didnt have the whole story and didnt want to listen.. So what did they do - it is well known they killed whole villages of those they suspected of the practice. So who was sacrificing who in that case?  
 
We know all that. We know Native life was really brutal. But we love that people, you know, because we are part of the same family.
 
If I have to chose between European and Native, of course I chose Native because they were in my beloved land long before we, mestizos, castizos and criollos, existed.
 
 
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Posts: 846 		  Quote calvo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Jul-2007 at 14:55
Originally posted by pinguin

 
 
Taino blood exist in large proportion in Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. That shows they were assimilated. Mapuches were more violent than Tainos and survived.
 
 
The fact that most Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans have Taino blood does not prove that there was no decimation of the population.
 
Look at it this way: prior to the arrival of the Europeans the island was probably well-populated, and as in most cases of migration, the number of migrants are always fewer in number compared to the autoctonous population.
 
If there was no decimation, MOST of the blood of Puerto Ricans and Cubans should be Taino, with small admixtures of Spanish and african, but reality is not so.
 
Most of the Puerto Ricans I've encountered in New York look predominantly Spanish, with some of them having african admixtures. Only on very few individuals you see visible Amerindian features. A similar tendencies is observed among Cubans and Dominicans, except that their African contributions are stronger.
THIS PROVES THAT TAINO BLOOD WAS A MINORITY COMPARED TO THAT OF THE OLD WORLD MIGRANTS.
 
In most of the historical migrations: a small number of external migrants could alter the cultural and ethnic identity of an entire region, without altering the local genetic makeup. This was the case of the Arabization of North Africa and the Romanization of the Iberian peninsula.
 
If a major alteration in genes did take place after an invasion, then a decimation or great displacement of the local population must have taken place..., and the fact that the offspring have 20% native blood does not alter this fact.
 
 
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Jul-2007 at 15:06
That argument is not well grounded, I am afraid. There are places in the Americas were Amerindian genetics is more relevant than White genetics like in Guatemala and Bolivia.
 
The fact that Amerindian genetics was surpassed by European in Puerto Rico doesn't show there was extermination, it means simply you brought more Europeans to the Caribbean than the local populations.
 
Tainos and many other Amerindian people have low densities of population because the simple fact they didn't practised intensive agriculture in the European style.
 
Now, if you know the history of the region you have to know that the Caribbean was crowded by Europeans quite soon after their discovery. The rest of hispanic America was colonized from Cuba and sourounding territories rather than from Europe. Meanwhile slavery brough also large number of Africans to those territories.
 
No wonder the Amerindians were outnumbered. There is no need to resort to other explanations in the Latin American history. Amerindians of the Caribbean were simply crowded by outsiders.
 
Pinguin
 
 
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Posts: 846 		  Quote calvo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Jul-2007 at 17:46
Originally posted by pinguin

That argument is not well grounded, I am afraid. There are places in the Americas were Amerindian genetics is more relevant than White genetics like in Guatemala and Bolivia.
 
The fact that Amerindian genetics was surpassed by European in Puerto Rico doesn't show there was extermination, it means simply you brought more Europeans to the Caribbean than the local populations.
 
Tainos and many other Amerindian people have low densities of population because the simple fact they didn't practised intensive agriculture in the European style.
 
Now, if you know the history of the region you have to know that the Caribbean was crowded by Europeans quite soon after their discovery. The rest of hispanic America was colonized from Cuba and sourounding territories rather than from Europe. Meanwhile slavery brough also large number of Africans to those territories.
 
No wonder the Amerindians were outnumbered. There is no need to resort to other explanations in the Latin American history. Amerindians of the Caribbean were simply crowded by outsiders.
 
Pinguin
 
 
 
Read this article:
 
It claims that although 60% have some degree of Taino blood, only 5% have a MALE armerindian ancestor while a much larger percentage have a female one.
How could you explain this? That all of a sudden male Tainos stopped having children?
 
No one has any idea of the original number of Tainos on the island, but if Chileans, as you claim, are on average 20% Indian, Puerto Ricans and Cubans should have even less of a share as the Indian features among Chileans are much more pronounced.
 
Let's assume that Carribean genes are 10% Taino, this would imply that 10 times the amount of Spaniards emigrated to the islands.
Considering that the population of the Iberian peninsula was no more than 8 million at the time, I doubt that such a large percentage of Spaniards have emigrated to cause such a large alteration in the genetics of America.
 
Few migrations and colonizations prior to the conquest of american has caused significant alterations in genes.
Roman sources claimed "mass emigration" of the proletarian class to the colonies in Iberia, Gaul, and Africa, yet this "mass migration" by the standards of the Romans could barely match the number of the indigenous inhabitants of the colonies.
The Iberian peninsula had 5 million people at the time of the Roman conquest and Italy had also around 5 million. For the Romans to significantly alter the genetic composition of Iberia, at least half of the population of Italy would had to have emigrated!
 
The same should also apply to th New World; and the only reason that Amerindians represent a minority of the genetic compostion of America is proof that they suffered a severe decline in numbers, whether by disease, by exploitation, or both. 
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Jul-2007 at 19:32

I have other sources of information because I live in a country that suffered that process. I know what it come from which and in what amount, because I am inmersed in the culture. I even got notions of Mapudungun, for instance. I have a very clear idea about what happened

However, if you preffer to believe otherwise, it is your choice. If that's your dogma, what I can do about it?
 
I don't discuss religion so I pass. Wink


Edited by pinguin - 23-Jul-2007 at 19:32
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Posts: 2394 		  Quote edgewaters Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Jul-2007 at 19:54
Originally posted by pinguin

If I have to chose between European and Native, of course I chose Native because they were in my beloved land long before we, mestizos, castizos and criollos,existed.


That goes to show that identity is strongly impacted by landscape as well as genetic heritage.

I've always felt a keen tie with the natives in my part of the world too, even though I'm quite sure that I haven't hardly any native blood - if any at all, it's a tiny tiny fraction in my particular case. But I still feel some identification with the people who originally inhabited this land.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Jul-2007 at 20:09
That's what latinos call ("la tierra tira") which I could translate as "the lands calls you". Gloria Estefan wrote a song about it that makes people cry.
 
When you really start to believe your land is your mother, part of your being, then of course you will feel identified with the people that was there before you. That's what natives called "Mother land", a felling Latinos share. We go nuts when living abroad because we have the inprint of our land since born. We miss our snowy mountains, our rivers, our wavy landscape, the pinguins along the sea, our empty desert, or rain forests, our volcanos,  even our earthquakes LOLLOL. We can't live without it.
 
If living in the Americas Natives are our ancestors, if not by blood at least by spirit. My experience tell me, though, that most people of the hemisphere has at least a drop of Amerindian an don't even know it LOL
 
Now, when you get the meaning of "Mother land", not only ecology will make sense but also celebrating the Inti Raymi (Summer soltice) and participating in a ceremony to the Pacha Mama (Mother Land for Quechuas).
 
It is all the same
 
 
 
 
 
 


Edited by pinguin - 23-Jul-2007 at 20:11
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Posts: 1457 		  Quote elenos Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Jul-2007 at 23:27

Pinquin a little way back you wrote, In the British colonies and in Australia, nobody married indigenous people, or at least that doesn't show in the history books quite often.  Pocahontas is more an exception than the rule.

 From the time the first fleet landed the soldiers, sailors and especially convicts were hard at it so to speak, chasing the lubras (native women). (Catch me and you can have me, whoops, tripped) Many men deserted or escaped to set up their own little tribes where they lived as lords with many children. But time moved on and the new diseases coming in killed many of them, the rest wandered off to become fringe dwellers in shanty towns living a short life and marginal existence. In all very few full bloods are left today.  

 When you really start to believe your land is your mother, part of your being, then of course you will feel identified with the people that was there before you. 

Amen my brother. You are now showing the proud side of yourself we have not seen before. May the Mother of our lands bless us all.

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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Jul-2007 at 23:52
Originally posted by elenos

  When you really start to believe your land is your mother, part of your being, then of course you will feel identified with the people that was there before you. 

Amen my brother. You are now showing the proud side of yourself we have not seen before. May the Mother of our lands bless us all.

 
Thanks brother!
 
Thanks for correct my appreciation as well. Australian Aboriguines are one of the people that I love the most, simply because they have been the target of so much racism, particularly by social darwininsts that claim they are an inferior people.
 
When Katty Freeman won in the Australian Olympics and was cheered by all the public in there sincerily, I got really emotionated. That people deserves the best.
 
Pinguin
 
 
 
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Posts: 435 		  Quote think Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Jul-2007 at 01:39
Elenos, Australians dont identify with the Native side at all. Very few Aussies have Aboriginal blood in them an if there is it would be minor.

have been the target of so much racism, particularly by social darwininsts that claim they are an inferior people


Explain.
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Posts: 1457 		  Quote elenos Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Jul-2007 at 02:06
Many"Darwinists" were not so much racists but they did say the Aborigines were Stone Age people. The fuss still hasn't died down. Some "White Aboriginals" said that to classify them in such a way was an insult to their people. But it was used to tell  of their stage of advancement (whoops, more offence taken).  It took a while but were happy enough when  one bright spark wrote a book and said they were supremely well adjusted to their environment. That made everybody happy and schools got back to teaching the subject.

What I mean by white Aboriginals is these people accept others as their part of their family as long as they join the family. A complicated procedure for you are expected to share your possessions with your brothers and sisters. I don't know whether you heard of potlatch among the Canadian Indians but this system works on somewhat similar lines.

I remember once being up in Darwin in the north of Australia, I had to  to a party that evening, so I bought  a bottle of wine. On the way home I felt drained in the heat so I lay down in park to have a rest. When I woke up I was surrounded by a huge circle of Aboriginals, silently sitting cross-legged in the grass, looking intently at my bottle. They didn't talk but used their gentle kind of body language where no words are needed.  What could I do? I shared my bottle around and then went home. There is so many better stories I could tell, this is only one of many.

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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Jul-2007 at 11:36

Curious,

North American Amerindian and Australian Aboriguines have customs that allowed them to "adopt people".
 
That could never happened with my beloved Mapuches. They are a so proud people that could never allow an outsider inside the group, less to addopt him as one of them. They call all the rest of us "wincas", which mean "robbers". They are very bad tempered, so it is better to respect theirs privacy.
 
Pinguin
 
 
 
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Posts: 846 		  Quote calvo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Jul-2007 at 13:45
Originally posted by pinguin

I have other sources of information because I live in a country that suffered that process. I know what it come from which and in what amount, because I am inmersed in the culture. I even got notions of Mapudungun, for instance. I have a very clear idea about what happened

However, if you preffer to believe otherwise, it is your choice. If that's your dogma, what I can do about it?
 
I don't discuss religion so I pass. Wink
 
I don't "believe" in anything and I have no bias against any nation or empire. Coming from a scientific/technical professional background, I need figures and proof to be convinced.
International historians all agree that American natives suffered a decimation on the arrival of the Europeans, so that to convince me otherwise I need to see solid proof.
 
I don't believe either "black legend" or "white legend", but only the theory with the strongest evidence to back up.
 
The only figures we have now is: in 1600, the population in New Spain was censored at less than 2 million (spaniards, mestizos, and natives together). No one knows what the original population was, but there was a drastic reduction in numbers; and the only reason to explain this was a severe decimation dues to epidemics.
The 100 million strong population of Mexico and Central America today descend mostly from this 2 million in 1600
 
 
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Jul-2007 at 13:54
Well, at Independence the population of Hispanic America was about 1/15th of the current one, or even smaller. Perhaps 40 million people at the most. Latin America had one of the most impresive population explosions of the world since the middle of the 19th century up to the end of the 20th (and that also is the main reason for our relative backwardness) Today there are circa 580 million people in Latin America, which is getting close to the population of Europe or a half China.
 
Chile for instance had 1.5 million people in 1810 and today it has 16 millions. At contact the numbers for my country were even lower. Perhaps no more than 400.000 people as a total figure. Claiming before contact there were more than that is just exagerating things. In Patagonia, for instance, there were never more than 2.000 people in a region a lot bigger than Britain! The same kind of low densities are also recorded between the natives of the Amazon.
 
 
Pinguin
 


Edited by pinguin - 24-Jul-2007 at 13:57
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Posts: 2394 		  Quote edgewaters Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Jul-2007 at 14:33
Originally posted by pinguin

Curious,


North American Amerindian and Australian Aboriguines have customs that allowed them to "adopt people".

That could never happened with my beloved Mapuches. They are a so proud people that could never allow an outsider inside the group, less to addopt him as one of them. They call all the rest of us "wincas", which mean "robbers". They are very bad tempered, so it is better to respect theirs privacy.


Well, in the case of groups in North America, it was not like a happy fun sort of adoption ... people were captured alive in Mourning Wars and brought back to villages where people had died. Sometimes these were infants and if so they simply replaced a dead infant. Sometimes these were adult captives. If they were adults, they were alternately tortured ritually and showered with gifts of furs and food. At the end of the process, they were given to a family who were in mourning over a dead relative. The torture process was to connect the captive to the otherworld of the dead, and the gifts were to entice the dead relative to enter the person. If the family were convinced that the dead relative had indeed entered the captive, they were adopted into the family. If they were not convinced, then the captive was tortured a little more (to death).

Either way the captive is thought to die; if he is entered by the spirit of the dead relative, his own spirit is consumed in the act of possession. If he dies, he dies. So in their minds in no case were they actually adopting an outsider into their group.

Edited by edgewaters - 24-Jul-2007 at 14:36
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Jul-2007 at 15:08
Mapuches were more straight forward. They usually killed all the men and retained women. That was it.
 
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Posts: 2394 		  Quote edgewaters Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Jul-2007 at 15:36
Originally posted by pinguin

Mapuches were more straight forward. They usually killed all the men and retained women. That wasit.

Pinguin



Lol, yup, that's more straightforward.

The weird thing is that I don't think any of the groups who practiced Mourning Wars ever kept any women as captives - it was always men. I have no idea why this was so, although, in principle, the idea of the Mouring Wars was to replace warriors and increase the forces. Still it doesnt explain why they didn't keep women as well.
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