Hasn't drought in the American west been a constant for at least the past 1500 years? Like, that's the origin story of most of the native groups - "everything died so we traveled through the hellish lands of death until we reached a place with water". Those that lived in the area throughout that time (like my own ancestors) left almost no history for obvious reasons, but it's pretty sure that they lived without most of the trappings of what present-day humans think of as civilization, like fire, clothing, or agriculture.
> Those that lived in the area throughout that time (like my own ancestors) left almost no history for obvious reasons,
Humans have lived in the basin where I live for at least 4000 years, and many parts of it are filled with thousands of bits of their pottery as evidence of their presence. I suspect that the Tewa/Pueblo people in general would be a little troubled by the idea that they "left almost no history" behind. I'm not sure what you think the "obvious reasons" would be for this, were it to be true?
> but it's pretty sure that they lived without most of the trappings of what present-day humans think of as civilization, like fire, clothing, or agriculture.
Your assumption is incorrect. The US southwest, like other parts of north America, has been home to human civilizations for thousands of years. The meant civilizations with technologies, art, trade, travel and certainly "fire, clothing and agriculture". Chaco Canyon in NW New Mexico was at one time a basically urban center that functioned as the area hub of a trading route that stretched from south of what is now Mexico City up into Utah, and was likely home to thousands of people living in permanent dwellings.
What is true is that the populations were generally small compared to modern American cities in the region, and would have tended to concentrate in areas with year-round surface water flow. Because of the lack of access to groundwater (as we have today, perhaps at a our long term peril), when the decades-long droughts hit (e.g. in the late 1400s) many of these populations had no choice but to move.
Artifacts are not history, they are items. The names, languages, and cultures of many native groups are completely unknown due to genocide and forced integration.
I said that they lacked the trappings of what present-day humans think of as civilization, not that they didn't exist or have civilization, which I know they did - but they died out due to drought. Much of the time, they lacked resources for widespread access to fire, clothing materials, or sedentary farming, because there was so little water and so little arable land, and they learned to live without those things.
> The names, languages, and cultures of many native groups are completely unknown due to genocide and forced integration.
Now that I understand what you're referring to, sure, absolutely. A apologize for not getting your point there immediately, since it now seems so obvious.
The Chihuahan and Sonoran deserts are certainly unforgiving landscapes for human settlement, even more so without access to groundwater. But they don't represent the full range of landscapes and ecosystems of the "desert southwest" - the northern half of both what is now AZ and NM is still relatively dry compared to areas east of the 100th meridian, but has lots more opportunities for water-requiring civilization-al stuff (especially along valleys like the Rio Grande).
Places like Bandelier and Gila show evidence of sedentary farming that lasted for (at least) hundreds of years. Yes, this is a different ecosystem and climate from the desert areas described in the article you linked to, but just as much a part of the human history of this part of the world.
>The names, languages, and cultures of many native groups are completely unknown due to genocide and forced integration.
This is post hoc ergo propter hoc. The history was lost because the Spaniards burned all the books, with the exception of stuff that was never written down in the first place. The Romans did plenty of genocide and forced integration but we didn't lose the history of their predecessors because they didn't intentionally destroy it all.
>Much of the time, they lacked resources for widespread access to fire, clothing materials, or sedentary farming
This bears little resemblance to the actual history of the Southwest, which was absolutely agricultural:
They also made clothing not only from animal hides but from furs and yucca fibres. Native trade networks extended nearly across the continent, although mostly by local connections. Durable goods such as fiber could easily have made it to the desert. However, they did often wear little clothing, because it's damned hot in the Southwest.
I'd be careful with language like this. My impression is that "they were wiped out by smallpox" is the sort of thing that infuriates native Americans, because it is implies that their cultures were destroyed, a claim they very much dispute. Yes, populations were massively reduced by european diseases, but in most cases (all? I don't know) it did not wipe out the cultures. It have a dramatic impact on them, and did set the stage, of course, for the subsequently arriving colonialists to attempt to continue the process in person (with varying degrees of success).
Certainly all the cultures that were wiped out are not here to object; and those that weren't weren't. But many even of them might have been, after. We have no record of them, so cannot count them. Those still around to object are subject, necessarily, to survivorship bias, and rather more starkly than is usual.
While you're correct about the native people often living as nomads and lacking clothing or permanent structures, it's worth clarifying the "genocide" claim which is a source of mass misunderstanding about American history.
To be clear- many indigenous groups lived as distinct tribes for decades or centuries which then disappeared, but essentially none of them were due to direct contact with immigrants from Europe. Disease, drought, inter-tribal warfare wiped out the vast majority.
The introduction of guns and horses to tribes that had lived in a state of intergenerational conflict led to much higher death rates when groups clashed. Even relatively minor diseases can lead to deaths when the entire tribe needs to keep moving daily to follow a herd of animals.
The narrative of European immigrants wiping out the tribal groups is mostly a modern fiction, heavily signal-boosted by Chinese & Russian propaganda to undermine Western human rights demands by turning contemporary abuses into a "whataboutism" of an imagined past.
> Disease, drought, inter-tribal warfare wiped out the vast majority.
To be clear, disease was by far the biggest factor.
To be even more clear, diseases introduced via Europeans. Wikipedia's list includes "smallpox, bubonic plague, chickenpox, cholera, the common cold, diphtheria, influenza, malaria, measles, scarlet fever, sexually transmitted diseases (with the possible exception of syphilis), typhoid, typhus, tuberculosis (although a form of this infection existed in South America prior to contact),[4] and pertussis" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_ep...
European colonization was significantly easier because something like 50-90% of the population was gone, 1) causing Europeans to think the land was 'virgin wilderness', with no strong indigenous land claim 2) making it easier for Europeans to conquer the local population, and 3) leaving improved lands that were easier to settle.
> led to much higher death rates when groups clashed
Do you have any numbers putting those rates into perspective? What I've found says it's a relatively small factor.
> The narrative of European immigrants wiping out the tribal groups is mostly a modern fiction
I have no idea of what are you talking about.
The California genocide isn't a modern fiction. The forced relocations and ethnic cleansings of the "Five Civilized Tribes" isn't a modern fiction. The "Battle" at Wounded Knee was a US fiction about a massacre.
I don't even see how this "whataboutism" is supposed to work. US government policy was directly based on white supremacy. It ended up with horrific consequences. We teach those as bad things. So that makes similar contemporary abuses good? Somehow? How?
Your confusion is because you fully believe the myths you've been told. I recognize a message board comment isn't going to change your mind any more than if I tell a devoutly religious person "God isn't real" or an extreme Qanon anti-vaxer that "vaccines don't cause autism". But I'll say it anyway- almost everything the average American was taught in school about native Americans and early settlers is somewhere between completely false and deeply misleading. We teach history as if the natives were peaceful victims and the settlers were violent attackers, but the truth is often entirely the opposite, where refugees from European wars settled as peaceful farmers only to have a Comanche war party find and attack them years later. Unfortunately the Overton window is so far away from reality, that stating basic factual truths like this gets you attacked with the vigor of an atheistic heretic under a Sharia system.
As for the "whataboutism" it's a simple attack against America to silence human rights activists as having essentially "no moral ground to stand upon". If an American says China shouldn't genocide the Uyghurs, they deflect the criticism by refocusing on the (imagined) treatment of various tribes by American policies in the 1800s.
I don't know what you are talking about. To the point where it sound like you are part of the kooks who believe kids these days are being taught to hate their country.
> you fully believe the myths you've been told
Which myths are you referring to?
> is somewhere between completely false and deeply misleading
I'm totally on board with that. The history I learned in school appear to have whitewashed the history.
> We teach history as if the natives were peaceful victims and the settlers were violent attackers
This is completely untrue. I even pulled out my high school American history book, and it doesn't say that. And my high school teacher is still teaching American history.
> where refugees from European wars settled as peaceful farmers only to have a Comanche war party find and attack them years later.
Is this a specific incident you have in mind? The Comanche surrendered in 1875 so you're talking about settlements in 1870 or earlier, and in modern-day Texas or Oklahoma. I'm hard pressed to think of which European refugees you refer to.
] In May 1847, Texas allowed the German settlers near Fredericksburg and New Braunfels to make their own treaty with the Texas Comanches. In exchange for land, the Germans promised a trading post and gifts. Unfortunately, the Germans not only encroached beyond the agreed boundary, but were slow to pay, and in response the Comanches made raids.
This is some time after the Council House Fight, "in which Republic of Texas officials attempted to capture and take prisoner 33 Comanche chiefs who had come to negotiate a peace treaty, killing them together with two dozen of their family and followers" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Raid_of_1840
] In Texas, “the facts of history arc plain: Most Texas Indians were exterminated or brought to the brink of oblivion by Spaniards, Mexicans, Texans, and Americans who often had no more regard for the life of an Indian than they had for that of a dog, sometimes less” (Newcomb, 1961: 334; see also chapters on individual Texas tribes in Ortiz, 1983)
I'm curious - how much regard did this European refugee farmer have for the Comanche? And how did the refugee come to be settled in contested land? Who did he think would protect him, and why?
I ask, because we can directly compare the roughly century of peace between the Comanche and New Mexico, after NM killed Cuerno Verde and made - and upheld - a peace agreement with the Comanche, to know that long-term peace was possible. ... by a non-expansionist power.
> basic factual truths like
There really weren't that many European war refugees settling the plains, so even given that it's a basic factual truth, I don't understand how one small example is at all meaningful over the entire history of English-speaking American expansionism.
> they deflect the criticism by refocusing on the (imagined) treatment of various tribes by American policies in the 1800s
Again, the California Genocide was not imagined. Or do you think it was?
What imagined example are being given? Why make up examples when the real ones are so plentiful?
I mean, Soviet propaganda used real examples of Black oppression in the US to counter American "Free World" propaganda.
] The change came as a result of Roosevelt’s fear that racial inequalities would be used as anti-United States propaganda by the Japanese during World War II. After Pearl Harbor Roosevelt asked the cabinet what were the U.S soft spots, propaganda wise. The reply he received was that the Japanese may claim America is stating that it fights for freedom while oppressing its own citizens. This led him to finally order some enforcement actions against slavery by the federal government.
Own up to our negative history, explain why it was wrong, and use that to prevent further genocides.
So if I understand you right, Namibia lacks the "trappings of what present-day humans think of as civilization" because many San live as hunter-gatherers?
The link you gave describes people who live on the margin; "peripheral members of the Puebloan culture". Not "most of the native groups", which is the phrase yous used earlier.
Yes, many modern people don't have a sense of the pre-Spanish history of the Southwest. How is their ignorance relevant?
> Artifacts are not history
PaulDavisThe1st wrote "I suspect that the Tewa/Pueblo people in general would be a little troubled by the idea that they "left almost no history" behind."
The current buildings of Taos Pueblo, as an example, started about 1,000 years ago. And they have a detailed oral history.
] Consultation and collaboration with Pueblo people and scholars has changed the way that archaeologists think about migration away from Mesa Verde. Now, based on Tewa oral history, researchers understand that Mesa Verde people simply moved farther east, towards the Rio Grande region of northern New Mexico, where many of their descendants still live today. Using oral history, archaeology, and soil science, archaeologists have been able to come up with new ideas about the end of Mesa Verde. Even though there was a drought at the end of the time that people lived at the site, we can see that the environment was only one of the things that led people to move. The conditions when people moved weren’t much worse than they had been before.
(Emphasis mine.)
> everything died so we traveled through the hellish lands of death until we reached a place with water
Or, "The oldest tradition of the people of Acoma and Laguna indicates that they lived on some island; that their homes were destroyed by tidal waves, earthquakes, and red-hot stones from the sky. They fled and landed on a low, swampy coast. From here they migrated to the northwest, and wherever they made a long stay they built a "White City" (Kush-kut-ret)" - http://www.legendsofnativeamerica.com/region_southwest/legen... .
In that story, things died because it was too cold, until Summer and Winter came to an agreement.
And as I quoted earlier, "The conditions when people moved weren’t much worse than they had been before."
to be fair to t-3, they seem to have some real focus on the Chihuahan and Sonoran deserts, and I suspect that things may indeed have been a little different there than the areas occupied by the Tewa/Pueblo peoples and even the Hopi.
The idea that the people there 'lacked resources for widespread access to fire' is preposterous. And t-3's own example shows the Jumanos 'developed a high skill in tanning buffalo and deer hides from which they made clothing and moccasins', the and the Mansos women 'cover themselves from the waist down with two deerskins', so definitely with access to resources from which to make clothing.
The only recent human population that lacked fire was the Tasmanians. They of course had fire when Tasmania was still connected to Australia, but lost the secret, probably in some catastrophe that wiped out hereditary fire-keepers.
Tasmanians were almost exterminated by British occupiers conducting safaris.
It sounds like your saying that there have been droughts in the past that repeatedly uprooted and changed entire cultures lives and history.
Right now we're going to be facing even more severly droughts due to climate change that will very likely impact far more people far more severely.
So you're correct: when this happened in the past simply do to natural variation in the region in caused incredible hardship on the residents of the region.
Now we're experience this from factors changing the environment on a much larger and more aggressive scale, so it will likely be even more devastating the the past.
> hey lived without most of the trappings of what present-day humans think of as civilization, like fire, clothing, or agriculture.
While some of the native populations of the region where nomadic groups and likely didn't have agriculture, they all had fire and clothing. In addition there were plenty of agricultural civilizations in the region.
> Now we're experience this from factors changing the environment on a much larger and more aggressive scale, so it will likely be even more devastating the the past.
The peoples impacted by the decades long droughts in the past did not have access to groundwater and in general terms did not have the capacity to build significant dams. This changes the impact story quite significantly.
However, they also didn't practice agriculture on the scale or with the irrigation practices that have become common in the US southwest now, and since it is this that uses 75% of all the water, the more likely change if intense drought continues is the abandonement of the "reclamation" dreams hatched in the 1920s and 1930s after 20-30 of the wettest years in the history of the United States as a nation.
> Right now we're going to be facing even more severly droughts due to climate change that will very likely impact far more people far more severely.
There isn't evidence that global warming is causing more droughts in California. Just because the globe overall is warmer and experiences more droughts, doesn't mean every part of it is warmer and experiences more droughts.
Global warming could actually be causing the opposite, and there would be even more severe droughts if less CO2 had been emitted by humans.
Drought has always been part of the American west. The distinction here is the frequency & intensity of # of drought days. Those are increasing due to us pumping GHG into our atmosphere.
The ecosystem in the west has adapted to drought, but they never adapted for a sudden increase in drought in only a few decades (not long enough for evolution to create useful adaptations on a large scale to speciate) + a competing species reducing total avail land and taking up water supply.
> The SPI is the number of standard deviations that observed cumulative precipitation deviates from the climatological average
Is "the climatological average" the same as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatological_normal? if so then it's a pretty misleading metic. You can deviate from "normal" in both directions roughly at the same frequency, all the while dragging normal below a "you can survive this" threshold.
The West was unusually wet when white settlement really got going. That's why the idea of 'rain following the plow' was able to exist for so long without being obviously discredited.
