Oh, but they did. You've likely never heard of the Iroquois Nation or the Mississippian Empire because the white folk that settled in here found it in their best interest to deny or ignore organized civilization.
Dear @bigtom13, I hope you understand first that I have English conversational skills comparable to that of an American elementary school student.😄
Do you mean that white Americans ignored the existence of the Iroquois Nation or the Mississippian Empire for their own benefit?😦
Perhaps the reason is that when whites acknowledge the existence of Indian civilizations in North America, the white supremacist idea that whites first built a civilized state in North America is destroyed.😯
Are you offended by the fact that I used the word the white supremacist?
In 1491 (the year before Columbus) the largest city on earth was right near where St. Louis is today. They controlled the entire Mississippi valley on both sides of the river from the Gulf of Mexico to near where the Canada border is today.
Wow, I was surprised! East Asians like me don't know about Indian civilization in North America. I thought that the Indians of North America did not build cities and lived as tribal societies in tents! 😦
There is some suggestion that the Pueblo people that this place represents were possibly an offshoot of the Mississippian culture due to their fondness for water and their extreme organization. It could be.
I don't know about the Pueblo people. American western films often featured Apache, Comanche, and Navajo tribes at war with white people.
Thank you for your history lessons! 😄
Not offended at the term at all. I'd probably use another-but no less direct.
They (the colonials) didn't just ignore the nations, they actively tried to erase the past to prove that they were taking over a mostly empty land.
The Apache and Comanche were at least semi-nomadic while the Navajo mostly lived in permanent buildings made of wood, stone or adobe. All three fought courageous battles against a vastly superior force and lost. The Navajos accepted the offered treaty and honored it completely. The Apache and Comanche both had splinter groups that carried the fight on long after the main tribe surrendered to the reservations.
The only purely nomadic tribes came out of the great plains. Once they got horses (by about 1550) it was a life style they embraced and lived.
Speaking of horses, two Spanish explorations found the Mississippian Culture, even though it was breaking up at the time. Both expeditions suffered big losses (and turned loose horses and donkeys) DeSoto died on his trip and his very few survivors rafted to the Gulf of Mexico to escape. Not much history written about that.