The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

CONTENTS

3

Were ancient peoples

different from you?

Some 400 years before Columbus was born, Indians living

near what is now Peebles, Ohio, built the Great Serpent

Mound, shown in the photo. The mound is shaped like a

snake, tail coiled and mouth open—perhaps in the act of

devouring an egg or spitting it out. Why the Indians built

the mound remains a mystery, especially since the effigy

is so huge—a quarter of a mile long—that it can only be

identified as a snake from high in the sky.

Perhaps the snake functioned as a territorial

marker, rather like the graffiti urban gangs use to scare

rivals. Perhaps it was a religious symbol; snakes figured

prominently in the beliefs of later Indians. Perhaps the

serpent conveyed astronomical meanings: Its shape mir-

rors the constellation Draco; and on June 21st, the

longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere,

the snake’s head points exactly at the spot where the

sun sets. (Was the serpent gobbling up the sun?)

Perhaps the mound is some type of memorial to the

dead; skeletons dating from the period are found in

nearby mounds.

We may never know what the mound meant to

those who built it, but we should not imagine that they

were all that different from ourselves. Consider the other

aerial photo. Built in 1982, the Vietnam Veterans

Memorial in Washington, DC is a V-shaped granite wall.

Maya Lin, the twenty-one-year-old Yale architecture stu-

dent who designed it, stunned even herself in winning

the nationwide competition.

What does it mean to us? Lin herself wasn’t sure.

She decided against including statues in her design; no

figure or group of figures could possibly “represent”

all of those who died. Instead, she chose to inscribe

the names of all 58,256 Americans who died in the

war, listed in the chronological order of their deaths.

Those viewing the wall would experience “a journey in

time.” She hoped that the memorial might function

“as a way we can teach the next generations.” “I

might be making up for all the history courses I didn’t

take,” she added.

This book attempts to explain the past; it assumes

that we are not much different from those who came

before us. By learning about them, we learn about our-

selves. Our journey begins where theirs left off.

Readers may fairly point out that this book is entitled

The American Nation. What does it have to do with peo-

ples who lived many generations before George

Washington? The answer is that the early peoples of the

Americas made decisions and took actions that, like rip-

ples on a pond, radiated far beyond their world and into

our own. They changed the land itself, as illustrated by

the Great Serpent Mound. They hunted some animals to

extinction; they devised new crops and cultural systems,

repeatedly adapting to changing environments. Yet noth-

ing in their experience prepared them for the sudden

appearance of strange, bellicose peoples from Europe.

Possessing formidable weapons, riding terrifying animals,

and endowed with an unfathomable power to wreak

sickness and death on entire villages, these invaders

swiftly seized much of the Western Hemisphere. The

American nation was one product of these developments.

But first things first. ■

■First Peoples

■The Demise of the Big

Mammals

■The Archaic Period: Surviving

without Big Mammals

■The Maize Revolution

■The Diffusion of Corn

■Population Growth After

AD 800

■Cahokia: The Hub of

Mississippian Culture

■The Collapse of Urban Centers

■Eurasia and Africa

■Europe in Ferment

■Mapping the Past:

Debate over the Earliest Route

to the Americas

PROLOGUE: BeginningsPROLOGUE: Beginnings

HeartheAudio Prologue at http://www.myhistorylab.com