A very large Great Horned Owl in a cave midway up the Tower Rock bluff. I thought it was a bobcat at first.
I learned in a Latin Studies class (with a chill white dude professor) that when the Europeans first saw Aztec cities they were stunned by the grid. The Aztecs had city planning and that there was no rational lay out to European cities at the time. No organization.
When the Spanish first arrived in Tenochtitlan (now downtown mexico city) they thought they were dreaming. They had arrived from incredibly unsanitary medieval Europe to a city five times the size of that century’s london with a working sewage system, artificial “floating gardens” (chinampas), a grid system, and aqueducts providing fresh water. Which wasn’t even for drinking! Water from the aqueducts was used for washing and bathing- they preferred using nearby mountain springs for drinking. Hygiene was a huge part if their culture, most people bathed twice a day while the king bathed at least four times a day. Located on an island in the middle of a lake, they used advanced causeways to allow access to the mainland that could be cut off to let canoes through or to defend the city. The Spanish saw their buildings and towers and thought they were rising out of the water. The city was one of the most advanced societies at the time.
Anyone who thinks that Native Americans were the savages instead of the filthy, disease ridden colonizers who appeared on their land is a damn fool.
They’ve also recently discovered a lost Native American city in Kansas called Etzanoa It rivals the size of Cahokia, which was very large as well.
Makes me happy to see people learn about the culture of my country :D
Also, please remember that the idea of a nomadic or semi-nomadic culture being “less intelligent”, “less civilized” (and please unpack that word) was invented by people who wanted to make a graph where they were on the top.
Societies that functioned without 1) staying exclusively in one location or 2) having to make complicated, difficult-to-construct tools to go about their daily lives… were not somehow less valid than others.
This is why I fucking hate it when Europeans make jokes about how they have “more history” than the Americas. “This church is older than your country hahaha.” Actually, it’s older than the country you put there, massacring millions in the process, but go off, I guess.
How to Become a Crow War Chief during World War II
The legendary Chief Joe Medicine Crow was the last Crow War Chief and a true western hero. Joe Medicine Crow was born on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana, his maternal step grandfather was a scout for Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn, and his grandfather was the famous Crow Chief Medicine Crow.
Joe Medicine Crow was studying for his PhD in Anthropology when war broke out. At first he worked in the naval shipyards in Bremerton, Washington. Then, in 1943 he enlisted in the US Army, becoming a scout in the 103rd Infantry Division. The 103rd took part in the invasion of Marseilles, eventually driving the Germans out of Southern France, then advancing across the Siegfried Line and invading Germany.
According to Crow tradition, there were four things a Crow warrior had to do to become a war chief.
1. Lead a victorious war party
When crossing the Siegfried Line in 1945, Joe Medicine Crow was ordered to take seven men and assault a pair of heavily fortified German bunkers. The team climbed across dense fields of barbed wire while avoiding machine gun and mortar fire. They were then able to destroy the bunkers with TNT, completing the mission with no losses.
2. Touch an enemy without killing him 3. Take an enemy’s weapon
While assaulting a fortified German town, Joe Medicine Crow became separated from his unit. When turning across the corner of street, he collided directly into a German soldier, knocking the soldier’s rifle to the ground. Rather than shoot the unarmed man, Joe Medicine Crow set down his own rifle, instead intending to take the German in an old fashioned bout of fisticuffs. Both men fought hand to hand, until eventually Joe Medicine Crow got a choke hold on him. He spared the German soldier when he started crying out for his mother. Rather than kill him, Joe Medicine Crow allowed him to live, taking his weapon and taking the soldier prisoner.
4. Steal an enemy’s horse
While on a scouting mission behind enemy lines, Joe Medicine Crow came upon a large farming estate owned by a group of SS officers. On the estate, the officers bred horses. In the early morning, Joe Medicine Crow crept past several guards and infiltrated the farm. He quickly and quietly bridled up a horse and corralled up as many other horses as possible, leading an Old West style stampede while shouting Crow war cries and war songs as German soldiers shot at him. He returned to base with 50 captured enemy horses.
After World War II Joe Medicine Crow completed his studies, becoming the Crow tribal historian, anthropologist, and tribal spokesperson. Throughout his life he spoke at several different colleges and universities, at the Little Bighorn Battlefield, and at the United Nations. He has also written several books on Crow and Native American history. He was awarded honorary doctorate degrees from Rocky Mountain College, the University of Southern California, and Bacone College. In 2008 he was awarded the Bronze Star for valor in battle and the French Legion of Honor. In 2009 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Pres. Barack Obama.
On April 3rd, 2016, at the age of 102, Chief Joe Medicine Crow mounted his horse for the last time, and quietly rode off into the sunset.
A Navajo inspired Thunderbird, my family clan symbol and a bald eagle effigy.
Cahokia, near East St. Louis, is one of North America’s great treasures and one of the great wonders of the world. Please help to preserve this incredible piece of American history. They also play baseball in St. Louis. The Cardinals occasionally beat the Cubs in the National League. So go down, catch a game and step back into time at Cahokia National Monument.
The skull like appearance of the ball joint and the fact that it is undamaged makes me think it was likely an effigy. The spear point is 3” long and shaped and sharpened. The dark brown chisel shows fire hardening and does have a bifurcated edge. The hump plates are a part of the vertebrae but the connection is quite fragile. When strung together they hold up the massive hump muscles of the Buffalo.
Front side inscribed figure 3” arms 4”legs in triangle of life form. Backside shows 5 round divots 1/2” center to center. Possible mound grouping map. Glasgow??? Effigy Village Stone unknown purpose. Appears to have an inscribed figure on one side and a possible mound grouping map showing ridges on the other. Greyish hematite hardstone sediment. Some hash marks visible. No usage scars so likely ceremonial. The ruler is 7” long so it’s a big rock.
Treasures of the flood. Early October flooding on an Iowa farm. We dug trenches to speed up the farm pond overflow. The alluvial fan spewed out an array of rocks and minerals. The photo on the right shows a geode with black mica banding two choppers, two blades, a grinding stone or work surface and an arrowhead in the middle. The arrowhead dates it all to the Woodland Era.
Fall Flooding in Northern Iowa
Gathered on private property or traded for.
The rusty little bell is either a decorative saddle bell, a goat’s bell or a Pueblo dancer’s ankle bell. The location was a dried mud puddle several hundred yards from the ruins of a mission. Circa 1150 AD, New Mexico. A Pueblo “sister” in the Chiapas Region identified it as a sacred dancers bell......I’m not so sure. The dancer bells I have seen are usually rectangular shaped with flat sides or deer toes with stone rattles inside but she is a nun and I’m not.
Theory presented in 1993, these photos show a seabed fossil with a more recent bivalve clam on top of 367 million year old crinoids that were flash fried in a mass extinction of every living thing that was in the meteorite’s flight path. The center picture is a small meteorite, an L Chondrite, found in north central Iowa.
Calcite crystals in a mineral nest contains fluorite (green) and manganese (red). Found on a river sandbar in Iowa.
