Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T23:12:53.009Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The History of North American Education, 15,000 BCE to 1491

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Milton Gaither*
Affiliation:
Messiah College, Mechanics-burg, PA; e-mail: [email protected]

Extract

In an earlier work I provided quantitative evidence for the claim that the recent historiography of American education is characterized by an increased emphasis on the recent past to the detriment of the colonial, early national, and even antebellum eras. In that piece I noted offhandedly that there has been next to no work done on the history of American education before the arrival of Europeans. This article is my attempt to initiate the process of filling this appalling gap. Anyone so foolhardy as to hazard a history of education before European contact in the land that is now the United States, however, must deal at the outset with at least four theoretical and methodological concerns.

Type
Responses
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Gaither, Milton, “Is It Time for Another Historiographical Revolution?” History of Education Quarterly 53, no. 2 (May 2013): 686–94.Google Scholar

2 The one standout exception is the seminal article by Don Warren, “We the Peoples: When American Education Began,” American Educational History Journal 34, no. 2 (2007): 686–94.Google Scholar

3 Foolhardy is the correct word. I would like to thank several individuals whose feedback on this article has made it at least a bit less foolish, especially Don Warren, Michael Marker, Bernardo Gallegos, and Corin Pursell. All of them and many others will no doubt still find much with which to disagree herein. My hope is that future scholarship will improve on what I have begun.Google Scholar

4 Stanford, Dennis J. and Bradley, Bruce A., Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America's Clovis Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Axtell, James, Natives and Newcomers: The Cultural Origins of North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 7; Mann, Charles C., 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 17.Google Scholar

6 Pauketat, Timothy R., Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi (New York: Viking, 2009), 6.Google Scholar

7 Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 7.Google Scholar

8 Morison, Samuel Eliot, The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages, A.D. 1492–1616 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 37.Google Scholar

9 DeJong, David H., Promises of the Past: A History of Indian Education in the United States (Golden, CO: North American Press, 1993).Google Scholar

10 Reyner, Jon Allen and Jeanne, M. Oyawin Eder, American Indian Education: A Histoiy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004).Google Scholar

11 See, for example, Urban, Wayne J. and Wagoner, Jennings L., Jr., American Education: A History (New York: Routledge, 2009), 110; Axtell, Natives and Newcomers, x.Google Scholar

12 As was argued for in Stanford and Bradley, Across Atlantic Ice. Google Scholar

13 Sykes, Bryan, DNA USA: A Genetic Portrait of America (New York: Liveright Pub. Corp., 2012), 686–94. The most robust Indian rebuttal of the archaeological project is Vine Deloria, Jr., Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1997).Google Scholar

14 Martin, Calvin, The American Indian and the Problem of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Nabokov, Peter, A Forest of Time: American Indian Ways of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).Google Scholar

15 For a rebuttal of claims that Indian oral traditions are as valuable as archaeological evidence see Mason, Ronald J., Inconstant Companions: Archaeology and North American Indian Oral Traditions (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006); Kantner, John, Ancient Puebloan Southwest (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1520. Hegmon, Michelle, “Setting Theoretical Egos Aside: Issue and Theory in North American Archaeology,” American Antiquity 68, no. 2 (April 2003): 213–42.Google Scholar

16 Warren, Don, “We the Peoples,” 236.Google Scholar

17 As can be seen in Kupperman, K. O., Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

18 The term “Landscape Learning” comes from Meltzer, David J., First Peoples in a New World: Colonizing Ice Age America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). Chapter 7 of his book was the single most helpful source in working out an educational history of precontact North American Indians.Google Scholar

19 Many scholarly and popular books tell this tale. Three standout general interest works are Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of our Ancestors (New York: Penguin, 2006); Mann, Charles C., 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (New York: Vintage, 2011), and Sykes, , DNA USA. See also Kitchen, Andrew, Miaymoto, Michael A., and Mulligan, Connie J., “A Three Stage Colonization Model for the Peopling of the Americas,” PloS ONE 3, no. 2 (2008), http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2223069/.Google Scholar

20 In addition to the sources cited in footnote 17 see also Jake Page, In the Hands of the Great Spirit: The 20,000-Year History of American Indians (New York: Free Press, 2003) and Meltzer, , First Peoples. Google Scholar

21 Meltzer, , First Peoples, 239–55.Google Scholar

22 Bousman, C. Britt and Vierra, Bradley J., “Chronology, Environmental Setting, and Views of the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene Cultural Transitions in North America,” in From the Pleistocene to the Holocene: Human Organization and Cultural Transformations in Prehistoric North America, eds. Bousman, C. Britt and Vierra, Bradley J. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2012), 116. Kantner, Ancient Puebloan Southwest, 23–51.Google Scholar

23 Meltzer, , First Peoples, 318–20. Wade, , Before the Dawn, 123–30; Pinker, Steven, The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011), 3842; Kantner, , Ancient Puebloan Southwest, 52–86.Google Scholar

24 Mann, , 1491, 43–44. Cronon, , Changes in the Land, 41–43.Google Scholar

25 Saunders, Joe, “Middle Archaic and Watson Brake,” in Archaeology of Louisiana, ed. Rees, Mark A. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010), 6376; Milner, George R., The Moundbuilders: Ancient People of North America (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005); Brown, Eric E., Mound Sites of the Ancient South: A Guide to Mississippian Chiefdoms (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2013); Pauketat, , Cahokia. Google Scholar

26 Mann, , 1491, 44.Google Scholar

27 Diehl, Richard A., The Olmecs: The Oldest Civilization in Mexico (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2004). Mann, , 1491, 200–1.Google Scholar

28 Diehl, , The Olmecs.Google Scholar

29 Lekson, Stephen H., A History of the Ancient Southwest (Santa Fe: SAR Press, 2008); Kantner, , Ancient Puebloan Southwest, 9–10.Google Scholar

30 Richter, , Before the Revolution, 18–19; Page, In the Hands, 48–49; Diamond, Jared, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Penguin, 2011), 686–94.Google Scholar

31 Reich, David et al., “Reconstructing Native American Population History,” Nature 488, no. 7411 (August 2012): 686–94; Page, , In the Hands, 29–30; Lekson, , History of the Ancient Southwest; Robin Ridington, “Northern Hunters,” in America in 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus, ed. Josephy, Alvin M. (New York: Vintage, 1993), 21–48.Google Scholar

32 Taylor, , American Colonies, xii.Google Scholar

33 Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 20.Google Scholar

34 Mann, , 1491, 33–150.Google Scholar

35 Meltzer, , First Peoples, 217–26. Quote on 226.Google Scholar

36 Cited, in Meltzer, , First Peoples, 227.Google Scholar

37 Meltzer, , First Peoples, 230; Watson, Patty Jo and Kennedy, Mary C., “The Development of Horticulture in the Eastern Woodlands of North America: Women's Role,” in Reader in Gender Archaeology, eds. Hays-Gilpin, Kelley and Whitley, David S. (New York: Routledge, 1998), 686–94; Cronon, William, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 44; Richter, , Before the Revolution, 21.Google Scholar

38 Meltzer, , First Peoples, 308–9.Google Scholar

39 Meltzer, , First Peoples, 163.Google Scholar

40 Meltzer, , First Peoples, 221.Google Scholar

41 Cronon, , Changes in the Land, 37, 54–60; Whitecap, Leah, “The Education of Children in Pre-European Plains America,” Canadian Journal of Native Education 2, no. 15 (1988): 35.Google Scholar

42 Meltzer, , First Peoples, 237–38, 254–55; Sykes, , DNA USA, 11–17; Stanford and Bradley, Across Atlantic Ice, 12.Google Scholar

43 Stanford, and Bradley, , Across Atlantic Ice, 234–35.Google Scholar

44 Whiten, A. et al., “Cultures in Chimpanzees,” Nature 399, no. 6737 (17 June 1999), 686–94.Google Scholar

45 Wrangham, R. and Pilbeam, D., “African Apes as Time Machines,” in African Apes (All Apes Great and Small, Volume 1), eds. Galdikas, Biruté M. F. et al. (New York: Kluwer Academic, 2001), 518; Tom Stafford, “Why Are We So Curious?” BBC Future, June 19, 2012, http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120618-why-are-we-so-curious.Google Scholar

46 Wade, , Before the Dawn, 47–50; Pinker, Steven, “Language as an Adaptation to the Cognitive Niche,” in Language Evolution, eds. Christiansen, Morton H. and Kirby, Simon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 1637.Google Scholar

47 Cronon, , Changes in the Land, 43.Google Scholar

48 Cronon, , Changes in the Land, 65–66. For a rich examination of how modern Apache continue this tradition of linguistic landscape learning see Keith H. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996).Google Scholar

49 Whitecap, , “The Education of Children,” 35; Ridington, “Northern Hunters,” 32–33.Google Scholar

50 Momaday, N. Scott, “The Becoming of the Native: Man in America before Columbus,” in America in 1492, ed., Josephy, Alvin M., Jr., (New York: Vintage, 1991), 18.Google Scholar

51 Whitecap, , “The Education of Children,” 34–35.Google Scholar

52 Page, , In the Hands, 53–54.Google Scholar

53 Meltzer, , First Peoples, 302–3.Google Scholar

54 Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 170.Google Scholar

55 For a good introduction to the vast literature on this question see Pinker, , Better Angels of our Nature, 2–3, 31–58. See also Wade, , Before the Dawn, 151–53.Google Scholar

56 Pinker, , Better Angels of our Nature, 31–58.Google Scholar

57 Richter, , Before the Revolution, 27–30; Pauketat, , Cahokia, 35–50.Google Scholar

58 Ridington, Robin, “Northern Hunters,” in America in 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus, ed. Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. (New York: Knopf, 1992), 45.Google Scholar

59 Finkel, Michael, “Australia's Aboriginals,” National Geographic, June 2013, http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/06/aboriginal-australians/finkel-text.Google Scholar

60 Quoted, in Mann, , 1491, 285.Google Scholar

61 Mann, , 1491, 285–86; Cronon, , Changes in the Land, 108.Google Scholar

62 Cronon, , Changes in the Land, 183.Google Scholar

63 Cited, in Mann, , 1491, 287.Google Scholar

64 Lekson, , History of the Ancient Southwest, 40; Page, In the Hands, 61; Kantner, , Ancient Puebloan Southwest, 67. Google Scholar

65 Mann, 1491, 20, 225–6.Google Scholar

66 Taylor, , American Colonies, 12; Lekson, History of the Ancient Southwest, 226; Kantner, Ancient Puebloan Southwest, 67–75. Google Scholar

67 For various views of the evolution of religion see Wade, Nicholas, The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why it Endures (New York: Penguin, 2009), Bering, Jesse, The Belief Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life (New York: Norton, 2011), and Bloom, Paul, “Is God an Accident?” Atlantic Monthly 296, no. 5 (December 2005); 105–12.Google Scholar

68 Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 165; Richter, , Before the Revolution, 24–25; Whitecap, , “Education of Children,” 38; Taylor, , American Colonies, 19.Google Scholar

69 Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 166; Ridington, “Northern Hunters,” 34–35.Google Scholar

70 Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 166; Page, In the Hands, 16–17.Google Scholar

71 Page, , In the Hands, 16–17. For a fascinating discussion of the different reaction to Christian missionary efforts by hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists in Alaska, see Andrei A. Znamenski, Shamanism and Christianity: Native Encounters with Russian Orthodox Missions in Siberia and Alaska, 1829–1917 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999).Google Scholar

72 Kantner, , Ancient Puebloan Southwest, 65–66.Google Scholar

73 Taylor, , American Colonies, 19; Axtell, Natives and Newcomers, 22.Google Scholar

74 Whitecap, , “Education of Children,” 37.Google Scholar

75 Story related in Page, In the Hands, 63–64.Google Scholar

76 Ridington, , “Northern Hunters,” 34–35; Whitecap, “Education of Children,” 38.Google Scholar

77 Pauketat, , Cabokia, 148.Google Scholar

78 Childs, Craig, House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization across the American Southwest (New York: Little, Brown, and Co., 2007).Google Scholar

79 Pauketat, , Cahokia, 109.Google Scholar

80 Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 155.Google Scholar

81 Cited, in Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 201.Google Scholar

82 Quoted, in Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 211.Google Scholar

83 Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 212.Google Scholar

84 Richter, , Before the Revolution, 26.Google Scholar

85 Quoted, in Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 169.Google Scholar

86 Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 164.Google Scholar

87 Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 150–51, 168.Google Scholar

88 Russell, Howard S., Indian New England Before the Mayflower (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1980), 103.Google Scholar

89 Cited, in Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 191.Google Scholar

90 See Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 191–97, 376.Google Scholar

91 Axtell, Natives and Newcomers, 196–97.Google Scholar

92 Cited, in Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 210.Google Scholar

93 Cited, in Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 211.Google Scholar

94 Axtell, , Natives and Newcomers, 213.Google Scholar

95 Sobel, E. and Bettles, G. “Winter Hunger, Winter Myths: Subsistence Risk and Mythology among the Klamath and Modoc,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 19, no. 3 (September 2000): 276316.Google Scholar

96 The leading advocate of the overkill thesis was Martin, Paul. His most expansive account can be found in Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). For a refutation of overkill, see Meltzer, First People in a New World, 239–80. For a more complex view premised on computer simulations, see Whitney-Smith, Elin, The Second-Order Predation Hypothesis of Pleistocene Extinctions: A System Dynamics Model (Saarbrüken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2009). For a refutation of the recent theory that the extinctions may have been caused by a comet, see Gary Haynes, American Megafaunal Extinctions at the End of the Pleistocene (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009).Google Scholar

97 On Island, Wrangel, for example, wooly mammoth lived on for thousands of years after they had gone extinct everywhere else. They finally died off about 2,000 BCE, about the same time humans arrived, though environmental change may have also been a factor. See Thomas, M. G., “The Flickering Genes of the Last Mammoths,” Molecular Ecology 21, no. 14 (July 2012): 3379–81. On the early extinctions in Tasmania and Australia, see Roberts, Richard and Jacobs, Zenobia, “The Lost Giants of Tasmania,” Australasian Science 29, no. 9 (October 2008): 14–17 and Diamond, Jared, “Paleontology: The Last Giant Kangaroo,” Nature 454, no. 7206 (August 2008): 835–36.Google Scholar

98 Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: Norton, 2005), 3552, 354–75. Mann, , 1491, 253.Google Scholar

99 Mann, , 1491, 182–86. For a spirited critique of the overkill thesis from an Indian point of view, see Vine Deloria, Jr., Red Earth, White Lies, 93–160.Google Scholar

100 Taylor, , American Colonies, 12.Google Scholar

101 Ridington, , “Northern Hunters,” 25.Google Scholar

102 Page, In the Hands, 73–75.Google Scholar

103 Page, In the Hands, 75–77.Google Scholar

104 Page, In the Hands, 79–87; Richter, , Before the Revolution, 30–32.Google Scholar

105 Kantner, , Ancient Puebloan Southwest, 195–232.Google Scholar

106 Kantner, , Ancient Puebloan Southwest, 13; Richter, , Before the Revolution, 30–32.Google Scholar

107 Richter, , Before the Revolution, 32; Kantner, , Ancient Puebloan Southwest, 15.Google Scholar

108 Page, In the Hands, 88–89.Google Scholar

109 Lekson, , History of the Ancient Southwest, 242.Google Scholar

110 Pauketat, , Cabokia, 26; Richter, Before the Revolution, 22–24.Google Scholar

111 Mann, , 1491, 301.Google Scholar

112 Mann, , 1491, 303–4.Google Scholar

113 Richter, , Beforee the Revolution, 33.Google Scholar

114 Pauketat, , Cahokia, 8.Google Scholar

115 Mann, , 1491, 301–2; Richter, , Before the Revolution, 35–36.Google Scholar