The American Indian Interaction System I've been posting about from time to time may be said to have lasted for over 4000 years. It pulsed and changed with the earth, with life. It was an interaction of varied people of various languages. It was geographically extensive. It supported a value system which included demonstrating respect for ones ancestors and tolerance for ones neighbors.
The interaction of the peoples of this system seems to have been gratifyingly peaceful. There was death and there was violent death, but there was little warlike activity.
A more recent golden age of of the interactions of these people lasted from about 200 BC to about 400 AD. The center of these interactions seem to have been in the valley of what we call the Ohio River. Its manifestation has been called the Hopewell Exchange System. Its influence was felt from the tip of Florida to well up into Canada and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains. These Amerinds didn't fool around.
The Mississippi River was the main artery of their interaction. The waters of that river and its tributaries were their roads and communication lines, but not their only ones. They, their cultures, and their sacred goods traveled the Great Lakes, and reached the Gulf of Mexico. They knew the Atlantic seaboard, the lands we now call Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, Kentucky,m Pennsylvania, and New York, were important to them, but they also knew Labrador and Oklahoma. People of these areas had interacted earlier, but the age we speak of seems more active and the goods more glorious.
Before the Hopewell culture was the Adena culture. It centered to the north of the Hopewell. The Adena culture was strongly active from about 2000 BC to about 200 BC. Before 2000 BC there was another flowering well to the south of Hopewell culture. If you would help me to trace corresponding climate changes we could perhaps find that cultural locus coincided with climate change.
After 400 or 500 AD to about 900 AD this Mississippi valley culture experienced great change. Productive corn came, a new bow and arrow came. New power, ideas, and beliefs came. Perhaps a new people arrived. Exchange systems changed, but continued, for a time. It also seems that more strife came. There was less tolerance of neighbors and more competition. Ancestors seemed less important. Gods had changed.
Before numbers of Europeans arrived the great interaction spheres had become smaller, less active, less peaceful, and the goods less carefully made and handled. Had what had thrived for over 6000 years with the old gods been led to a 'dark age' in less than 500 years?
As in hopefully all of my posts I am sharing my best understanding of the day and with the desire to benefit you. I try to ever make my words honest. I do not expect to hit the bull's-eye of truth, but it is there I aim. I pray that you contribute to to my understanding or to question it.
