An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States Ortiz

Follow the Corn 31

ricultural areas of North America, the Green Corn Dance remains
strongest among the Muskogee people. The elements of the ritual
dance are similar to those of the Valley of Mexico. Although the
dance takes various forms among different communities, the core of
it is the same, a commemoration of the gift of corn by an ancestral
corn woman. The peoples of the corn retain great affinities under
the crust of colonialism.
This brief overview of precolonial North America suggests the
magnitude of what was lost to all humanity and counteracts the
settler-colonial myth of the wandering Neolithic hunter. These were
civilizations based on advanced agriculture and fe aturing polities.
It is essential to understand the migrations and Indigenous peoples'
relationships prior to invasion, North and South, and how colonial­
ism cut them off, but, as we will see, the relationships are being
reestablished.