The Musings of an Urban Christian

  Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Native Nations: A Millennium in North America," by Kathleen DuVal. Native nations existed in North America long before Europeans, Africans, and Asians arrived and continue to the present day. Indigenous civilizations did not come to a halt when a few wandering explorers or hungry settlers arrived in their homelands, even when the strangers came well armed. Native Americans made up the majority of the North American population through the mid-1700s and controlled most of the land and resources of the continent for another century after that. The myth that Native Americans were primitive people too uncivilized to have developed cities was a convenient way for Europeans and European Americans to assert territorial claims and cultural superiority. In reality, Native America had a long and complex urban history that had been changing and growing for centuries before Europeans arrived. It was true that, by the seventeenth and ...