According to the evidence, Central American civilization was greatly influenced by East African culture, specially from Ethiopia, Kemet, or Meroe. It is believed that one or more of these civilizations crossed the Atlantic between 1200 and 400 B.C. Some scholars including Charles Joyner, Richard S. Price, and Gary Nash have recognized the cultural amalgamation and inter-mixing of Native Americans and Europeans or Europeans and Africans. Nevertheless, few focus on the widespread mixing that happened between Native Americans and Africans, the impact each had on the other, and how people like those in Indian Woods persist to endure as bi-racial and tri-racial people who have retained much of their Native American and African society. Colonial societies in Latin America were constructed, with different degrees of emphasis according to their location, on the basis of Iberian, native, and African norms.
The position of women in the colonial stage were strictly defined and framed by the religious and family boundaries. The increasing immigration of women, mainly from the mid-sixteenth century, relegated Indian and mestiza women to secondary roles in a `stable society with a clear racial hierarchy’. Men had the ascendant role in all these societies and monopolized political and religious power. There is a notable relationship between Indians and blacks from their earliest contact in the 1500s to the early twentieth century. This contact has resulted in the development of communities of blacks who are part African and Indian or part African, Indian, and European like the natives who for the last 400 years have lived in a small rural society in northeastern North Carolina, recognized as Indian Woods. Communities like Indian Woods are spread throughout the South and all over America.
The Essay on Native American Women
On few subjects has there been such continual misconception as on the position of women among Indians. Because she was active, always busy in the camp, often carried heavy burdens, attended to the household duties, made the clothing and the home, and prepared the family food, the woman has been depicted as the slave of her husband, a patient beast of encumbrance whose labors were never done. The ...
Many of these mixed-blooded people approved for Indian or white. Many others, who could not overtake, became part of the African-American community. Sill others remote themselves in diverse areas around the nation considering themselves neither Indian, white, nor truly black. Columbus’ own firewood, along with archeological proof, reinforces the argument that Africans explored and traded with the Americas long before the Spanish. Columbus noted that when he recognized communication with the inhabitants, they pointed that the Spanish had arrived from the South, while the Africans who preceded them arrived from the Southeast. Furthermore, Columbus and his crew stated that when they arrived in the Americas they found Africans already there. From 1492 to 1502, the Spanish first confined the peoples of the Caribbean and Central and South America to satisfy their labor needs.
In 1502, the Spanish were the first Europeans to enslave Africans in the Americas. Yet the local population died from European diseases like smallpox and from overwork. Thus in 1502, ten years after Columbus’ landing, the Spanish brought the first African slaves to Cuba from West Africa to replace Indian slaves who were dying out. This began the trans-Atlantic slave deal between West Africa and the Americas and the integration of Native Americans and Africans. The Spanish were followed quickly by the Portuguese and finally the Dutch, French, and English. In 1504, the Spanish started their first sugar plantations on Hispaniola. From that point on, countless Indian and African slaves were forced to grow and process sugar and its byproducts.
By the mid 1500s, the Spanish had established the Central America, South America, and the Southern United States, all of which contained large Indian, African, and varied slave populations. Many of these slaves outwitted their overseers by escaping at the first opportunity. These runaway slaves formed all black but mostly Indian and black communities, which became known as maroon communities. The first runaway or maroon was part of the first consignment of African slaves brought to the Spanish colony of Hispaniola in 1502..
The Essay on 1491: The Americas Before Columbus
New research has emerged revealing that Indians had roamed & utilized the great lands of the Americas long before any European ship landed on its coast in 1491. Therefore, a conflict lies in debates about whether or not Native Americans possessed a complex history before the arrival of Europeans. Like the author of 1491: New Revelations of The Americas Before Columbus Charles C. Mann, ...
