Like the story of the wise blind men describing an elephant to a village of blind people, another what if drill has brought up the subject of who is a native american and who is an immigrant or explorer from the old world. In the story, all the blind men were correct in what they felt.
Another story. While I worked at a 23,000 acre plantation in SC (mapmaker, comptroller, and later president) the subject of deer hunting results and population biology came up. Did we have too many for the land, or two few, as an example. In this case, and to continue the story, we brought in PhD "experts", or deer bigots as we would joke. We could choose from Clemson, UGA, and Auburn (there are other groups). We chose the UGA group for people reasons. At the conference, the retired professor emeritus of wildlife biology got up after the others, and basically said, in my words, that everybody could be correct, and proceded to explain himself to my satisfaction. It reminded me of the wise blind men story.
Let me continue to construct a question for this mooring stones research in south dakota. It has to do with who is a native american and who is an old world european immigrant.
If an old world european comes to the USA area, and in my question intermarries with local indigenous people, are their offspring native americans or old world europeans? Using my 30 years per generation belief, if we continue for 6 generations (180 years), is one progeny who is 1/64 old european a native american or an old european?
There is no "official" answer best I can figure. The rules for tribal membership for the 500+ Indian tribes vary all over the place.
My answer for this investigation as to the origin of the mooring stones in south dakota; who did it, and when, may have to do with the answer or opinion as to an answer to this question of who is an old european or a native american.
There is much I read in my research that "counter attacks" all the old world immigration ideas, often stating or implying that it was native americans who did what ever. To suggest otherwise is racial prejudice or even simple poor archaeology. Since I am retired and old enough not to care, this is water off a ducks back. All I want to do is research. And traditional archaeology does count.
So like the professor emeritus story, I wonder if we can all be somewhat correct. In practical terms, could some of what we are researching be a combination of some old world idea, and people who are mostly native american, by whatever definition of native american?
To me, culture counts. For lack of knowing what to do, we do what we know. This includes our religion.
There are many present day analogies. Many christian and muslim missionaries in the past have "converted" indigenous peoples only to find today that they practice a combination of the "new" religion and the previous animist religion(s).
Since I am culturally from the south of the USA, I am out of my league in the midwest native american cultural and political stuff.
And I think there are immigrants, and their progeny; then, and today.
So two questions follow:
- Has any of the above discussion come across the readers experience to date?
- Could the origin of the south dakota mooring stones possibly be some combination of old world ideas and new world people?