Hello and welcome to a history of the United States.

Episode 62. Native Americans, two.

Myths, legends, and folk tales.

Understanding Native American history is inherently problematic and contradictory.

The problem lies between the two different approaches to the subject.

One of them is used by historians and archaeologists, of which this podcast falls into the Gascriov.

And then, there is a second contradictory account, the one offered by the Native Americans

themselves.

The following remark was made by Ernest Birch Jr. in his 1991 work, from Skeptic to Believer, the making of an oral historian.

Quote, several scholars actually boasted to me that they do not believe what native elders have told them.

Ironically, but perhaps appropriately, many natives do not believe

archaeological, historical, or ethnographic accounts of traditional life when made by Euro-Americans,

unless they are corroborated by the oral testimony of the elders. End quote.

This is confirmed by documented interviews with tribal elders.

When presented with migration routes across the United States, following the arrival of man from Beringia, an elder of the Navajo Nation examined it and said that it might be possible,

but not for his tribe, before repeating elements of the Navajo origin story. Anthropologist Robert

Lowey states in 1917, quote,

Indian tradition is historically worthless,

because the occurrences, possibly real,

which it retains or of no historical significance,

and because it fails to record or to record accurately the most momentous happenings, end quote.

The two elements are seemingly incompatible.

...