The People Who Lived in the Middle West 1,500 Years Ago

 

While "the talk of the town" these past many decades has been about computer technology including artificial intelligence, what I find equally exciting is evidence about human lives and human ways of organizing themselves, including new technologies, while leaving no written records. In the last few years, parts of dugout canoes have been found in Michigan and Minnesota. These mean large trees were felled and formed into canoes with sharpened stone tools. Steel was other places but not here. It is evidence there were settlements that existed for considerable periods of time and were organized and skilled. 

From the material found it is evident locals had experience and knowledge about the wood from different species of trees. I have split elm for firewood and know it to have strong fibers. Native knew this, too, and used it in their canoes. 

Several of the canoe parts have been found where rivers meet. Later, these became to sites for cities because of the commerce going past on rivers. No doubt, ancient native societies settled in the same locations for the same reasons. 

All of this reinforces the message of what we now know about native societies. They were not "savages" who only hunted. They were instead sophisticated societies who developed and changed their livelihoods, organizational structures and even locations as preferences and weather changed. 

Lots of information about early people in North America was recorded by the French Jesuits who came to convert them to Christianity. The Jesuits found Christianity to be a hard sell because natives had already debated religion among themselves and found flaws in the Jesuit case for Christianity.

The people here before Europeans knew how to make canoes, trade and organize their societies.