Everybody knows that before Europeans arrived on the shores of America, it was the Native Americans that dominated the continent. They lived in tents and hunted for their food. Everything was fine and then the Europeans showed up and they shared their food and that’s why we have Thanksgiving and then the Indian tribes just sort of…went away. Or they walked on some kind of tear trail or something. And then Europeans colonized the New World and everything was great. That’s about the extent of knowledge that an average person has regarding the Native American people. Of course, as with most of the things you know (or think that you know), it is no where near that simple. The history of Native Americans is a drama as complicated and nuanced as any you have ever heard. Many of the over-simplifications you heard about in school don’t do justice to a period of time that lasted thousands and thousands of years. Entire empires and nations rose and fell within the Americas. Some cities in Central America rivaled the greatest civilizations of the Middle East. And when Europeans came, the relationships between them and the natives was complicated to say the least. These are 25 little known facts about Native Americans.

 

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http://endgenocide.org/learn/past-genocides/native-americans/