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What's the Harm? Alternative Archaeology and the Trail of Tears

2/13/2013

20 Comments

 
Yesterday I taped an interview with Britain’s ITN about ancient astronauts (to air on their online Truthloader channel later this week), and the interviewer asked me if I thought that a belief in ancient astronauts was dangerous. I answered honestly that I did not think that reading a book about ancient astronauts or watching Ancient Aliens was dangerous, but dispiriting. By contrast, diffusionism, especially hyper-diffusionism—the belief that Atlanteans, Muvians, Irish, Phoenician, etc. world travelers spread culture around the globe—has had demonstrable negative effects. For example, I mentioned a few days ago on this blog how the Rhodesian white minority government used diffusionist claims about a lost white race to justify their rule.

Since last night was the State of the Union address, I thought I’d talk about another State of the Union given by an earlier president, and how alternative archaeology found its way into U.S. government policy.

At 1:30 in the afternoon on December 7, 1830, Andrew Jackson delivered (in writing, not in person) the State of the Union address, and in it he praised Congress for agreeing to see through to “happy consummation” his policy of removing Native Americans from the eastern United States to land across the Mississippi River, which became known in time as the Trail of Tears.

Jackson explained to Congress that the removal of Native peoples was justified because they were not in fact the aboriginal inhabitants of America but were instead the descendants of bloodthirsty usurpers who had murdered a lost white race of prehistoric European colonizers, whose remains were the great earthworks and mounds of the East and Midwest:

Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country; and philanthropy has been long busily employed in devising means to avert it. But its progress has never for a moment been arrested; and, one by one, have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth. To follow to the tomb the last of his race, and to tread on the graves of extinct nations, excite melancholy reflections. But true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes, as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another. In the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the west, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated, or has disappeared, to make room for the existing savage tribes.

Jackson did not explicitly identify the “unknown” race as white, but he did not have to. For half a century, the nation’s scholars had been busy manufacturing the myth of a white race, typically wandering Jews, who had come to early America, built its earthworks, and succumbed to an invasion of Asiatic peoples who would become Native Americans. To this lost race the pyramids of the Toltec were often ascribed, and the Toltec became another “white” race exterminated by the savage “red” Aztecs.

Thomas Jefferson did his best to combat this pernicious idea, recognizing that any attribution of American earthworks to Old World peoples provided a justification for European intervention in American affairs and a challenge to efforts to craft a non-European American identity. In the 1780s he conducted the first archaeological excavation of a burial mound and proved that it was built by Native Americans. He published the account in the Notes on the State of Virginia. (Jefferson also originated the Native American removal policy as part of a corrupt bargain with the state of Georgia.)

Nevertheless, his ideas, while widely read and reported, made no mark upon those who had a competing reason to deny Native Americans their heritage. On the frontier, relations between the Native Americans and the U.S. government were not good, and relations with colonizing settlers were worse. The settlers wanted the Native Americans’ land, and the myth that an earlier white race predated Native peoples served an essential purpose in (a) making claims to white ownership of the land and (b) providing a fictive history to give the settlers “roots” in the land—to make the frontier into a mythical landscape filled with a history that provided deep connection, to make it “home.” The leading candidates for the lost race were (a) the Hebrews, (b) the Phoenicians, and (c) the ancestral Aryans (what we’d now call the proto-Indo-Europeans). Joseph Smith would adopt option (a) in creating his homegrown American religion, Mormonism, which canonized the mound builder myth and officially declared that the Native Americans were cursed by God with red skin for killing off the holy white Americans Jews.

Andrew Jackson himself had spent years fighting the Native Americans in various battles and wars, and he considered them “heathens” and “savages,” and as president called himself the “White Father” of the “red children.” He grew up within sight of several mounds, and members of his wife’s family were active in promoting the myth of white mound builders. At his home, he had a display cabinet where he kept mound builder artifacts, the evidence of a “superior” culture wiped out by the savage red man. (Most were actually Mississippian artifacts.)

The result of Jackson’s policies, justified by the mound builder myth, was the 1830 Indian Removal Act and the deportation of 46,000 Native people over the following decade, of whom many thousands died. Twenty-five million eastern acres opened to white settlement, and the remaining Native peoples were confined to reservations, which continued to shrink in size over time.

Now, obviously, I’m not going to argue that today’s alternative history will lead to similar policies. But it is very important to keep in mind that the intentional warping of history has consequences. Perhaps the biggest irony is that this strand of alternative history, once official government policy, is now considered a “hidden” truth that the same U.S. government is accused of suppressing!

20 Comments
Ruth Calov link
2/13/2013 04:54:08 am

Interesting, and Jackson was relocating not just the tribes but their slaves as well. It's still hard for the reservations to open up to direct descendants who are of yet another race and color, but who became part of those tribes and their traditions.
E.G.; http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/340446.Our_Land_Before_We_Die

Reply
Mike Heiser link
2/13/2013 05:07:08 am

Very interesting. I'd recommend Livingston's recent book, Adam's Ancestors, to your readers. It documents the struggle of European civilization, dominated as it was by the worldview of the Bible (whose worldly was duly misunderstood and filtered through the Catholic Church and the Reformation) to account for New World civilizations. I could see many Americans succumbing to this sort of alternative history. However, it should also be noted that Jefferson favored Indian removal, and that Jackson saw himself in some respect as following Jefferson. Jefferson's rationale, though misguided, was nonetheless understandable, perhaps even admirable if we judge him sincere. (And I think he was, as he was something of an Indian culture enthusiast). Jefferson believed that Indian removal was the only way to preserve Indian cultures, as the alternative was annihilation, since assimilation wasn't happening (it did happen with the Cherokee, who were also removed due to racism and greed, but that's a slightly different trajectory).

Reply
Mike Heiser link
2/13/2013 05:08:09 am

that should be "worldview" not "worldly" in the second sentence.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
2/13/2013 09:22:48 am

Certainly Jackson wasn't the only one involved, and Jefferson did reluctantly start the removal process. You're right that he thought it was the only way to preserve their culture.

In that time, there were many attempts to decipher whether the Native Americans were a separate creation or the children of one of Noah's sons, and if so, which one. In a weird way, this actually helped to bolster the theory that Native Americans crossed the Bering land bridge from Asia (proposed in the 1700s) because it helped to answer which of Noah's sons gave rise to them.

Reply
Rocky R Rockbourne
2/13/2013 06:36:23 pm

Hi Mike, this Adam's Ancestors seems to be a good read, thanks for mentioning it. I don't know when I'll read it, but between now and when I can get a hold of it, I am wondering if you could tell me if it has any discussion of the origins of British Israelism/Christian Identity movements as it's a topic that's been on my mind lately.

Reply
L Bean
2/14/2013 07:39:01 am

The Naqba might be a third-rail topic here, but there is certainly a modern parallel to Jackson's sentiments suffused throughout Israeli archaeology. The hundreds of Palestinian villages which were emptied of their inhabitants earlier in the century and renamed have, for decades now, been combed and recombed for evidence of ancient Judaic relics, and while it would be too time consuming to catalogue, lets just say that each shard of pottery is held up as "evidence" of who the land originally belonged to. And the logical conclusion is that the land has been rightfully "returned" to its original owners.

There is no contemporaneous challenge mounted because the winners are writing write the immediate history, as usual.

Sorry if this is too political a topic, but most colonial enterprises have stories like this. It's just bizarre the way such sentiment has surfaced in TV shows like America Unearthed, and it rather proves the decline of reason, in favor of cultism, as is present in many declining civilizations.


Tara Jordan
2/14/2013 03:12:02 pm

Fortunately Mr Heiser,since you are doing such amazing job at debunking Ancient Aliens Mumbo jumbo,most debunkers are reluctant at challenging you and asking you to face your own contradictions.After all,this is not such big deal,you are merely replacing a pseudo scientific belief system (ancient aliens theories) with your own religious belief system (the Judeo Christian fairy telling).I love "scholars" & "academics" who have the capacity of leaving rational thinking & scientific methodology at the door of the church on Sunday

Reply
AMH Carter
2/13/2013 07:15:15 am

JASON I LOVE YOU!!!! I dont know where you found this out but is there a book I can track down on the subject?

Reply
Jason Colavito link
2/13/2013 09:24:31 am

Thank you! One of the classic books on the mound builder myth is Silverberg's "Mound Builders of Ancient America," though it's a bit dated and tends to focus on the archaeology rather than the cultural impact.

I'm actually writing a book about this right now, so if any publishers are reading this, I'm happy to put you in contact with my agent.

Reply
Rocky R Rockbourne
2/13/2013 07:00:06 pm

Interesting post. I had no idea Jackson held such bizarre beliefs. Fortunately for most of us, I don't think any politician today in a position of extreme power could get away with espousing them. However, these alterhistories--even at their most naive--seem to me to leave the intellectual ground fertile for hate groups and other cults who refuse to get with the times, with very damaging consequences for the victims and/or members of these groups. Ideologies that in some way entail racist theories have always left a peculiarly bad taste in my mouth once I could recognize them for what they were.

Reply
Christopher Rozema
2/17/2019 01:33:30 am

You say it's fortunate that today politicians in extreme power could not get away with espousing beliefs that place Westerners in the Americas before Native Americans. But Mitt Romney ran for President in 2008 and 2012. I guess I'm wondering if the Mormons changed their beliefs. As the article clearly states:

The settlers wanted the Native Americans’ land, and the myth that an earlier white race predated Native peoples served an essential purpose in (a) making claims to white ownership of the land and (b) providing a fictive history to give the settlers “roots” in the land—to make the frontier into a mythical landscape filled with a history that provided deep connection, to make it “home.” The leading candidates for the lost race were (a) the Hebrews, (b) the Phoenicians, and (c) the ancestral Aryans (what we’d now call the proto-Indo-Europeans). Joseph Smith would adopt option (a) in creating his homegrown American religion, Mormonism, which canonized the mound builder myth and officially declared that the Native Americans were cursed by God with red skin for killing off the holy white Americans Jews

Reply
Rocky R Rockbourne
11/16/2020 02:05:23 am

Wow, I was looking up this site for posterity and found a reply six years after I posted here. I've since come to the conclusion that weird beliefs about race are far more common than I used to think and explains a lot about American politics right now.

L Bean
2/14/2013 07:45:57 am

Excellent post, Jason. In addition to these truly insane shows about aliens and ancient travellers, there is a growing sector of founding-father hagiography, too. Though you can bet your Thomas Jefferson bible that not one of these shows ever mentions the hideous sausage-making that went on in America's early years.

There must be a really frightful synergism that manifests after "taking in" the full spectrum of this form of entertainment with no basis of education, that's for sure.

"Lighten up man, it's just a tv show!" Argggh.

Reply
Bob M.
2/19/2013 04:23:40 pm

Unfortunately we get the same sort of rubbish in New Zealand. Walls built by ancient Celtic settlers who arrived here before the Polynesians. In actual fact natural rock formations, but try to convince the true believers about that :-).

Reply
Titus pullo
2/20/2013 01:02:42 pm

Another case of politicians or the govt class pushing ridiculous theories. The eugenic movement of the early 20thcentury pushed by those twins titans of progressivism teddy and Woodrow was just as bad. Or the bad so called science around global warming.

The root issue is the theory that so called social science is really science at all. It isn't. Science is based on the empirical method but with human actions this isn't possible.thats the reason economics is such a joke despite using advanced math. Keynesian economics uses all sorts of high level math but can't forecast verywell and is basically astrology. Debunking theories using facts and logic is important. But sometimes the folks on this blog have a political ideology and filter their debunking resulting in the blamewhitey mentality. Keep your Marxist poetical views to ur self and focus on the facts.america wasn't some paradise before European immigration. And there are no people who don't have blood on their hands.

Reply
BobM
1/16/2014 12:32:39 pm

It may well be that social sciences aren't science, but on the whole eugenics was promoted by biologists / physical anthropologists and refuted by sociologists. At least in my country. And I suspect also in the U.S.

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Phillip
2/23/2013 05:26:11 pm

I am impressed by your integrity, thank you for hosting this site.

cheers

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A.D.
1/16/2014 06:53:31 am

"Perhaps the biggest irony is that this strand of alternative history, once official government policy, is now considered a “hidden” truth that the same U.S. government is accused of suppressing!"

I believe those who promote this lie are using a covert effort to hide their racism and their racist agendas.Just as racist are now throwing out buzzwords as PC,marxist,communist,jew,leftist,anti white bla bla. to silence their opponents.

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PaulN. link
7/4/2014 03:45:25 pm

It should also be noted that the "Five Civilised Tribes" fought this order by taking it all the way to the Supreme Court, and won. The Supreme Court found Jackson's actions un-Constitutional. Jackson's reaction that since the court found in favor of the tribes let them enforce it. Otherwise, since he was commander-in-chief and had the power, they had to go.

Reply
Dave
12/17/2014 01:04:10 am

I get the sense that you oppose alternative explanations simply because they might be used or misused by someone agenda. Truth should not be obscured in a such a way.

Solutrean hypothesis as bosltered by Kennewick man and the Florida bog people....

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