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nonplussedbyreligion:

political-linguaphile:

The most beautiful and saddening representation of North America that I have ever seen.

Little Known History Fact: Native Caribbean tribes were also destroyed for their lands

I don’t know the date, or about the complete accuracy of this map.  I know Seminole was not originally a single tribe, it was a combination of Northern Floridian and Southern Georgian tribes that I don’t see on this map. What I do know is that several tribes including the Ciboney, Taino, Arawak, and Carib were in Jamaica, and most of the Caribbean as well.  This used to be the face of the Caribbean:

The loss of land, lives, and cultures was always the saddest part of history for me.  Schools in Jamaica, or at least the schools I attended, didn’t just quickly run through the true history of the Islands as I experienced in American schools with Native American history and slavery.  It was very important for national identity that we knew exactly where we came from.  

The national motto of Jamaica is “Out of Many, One People” and the Coat of Arms has two Indians on it representing the Taino and Arawak tribes.  The motto wasn’t always so wonderful though, it used to read “INDVS VTERQVE SERVIET VNI”- “The two Indians will serve as one” or “Both Indies will serve together.”  That motto represented the servitude these two great Caribbean tribes had been reduced to.  The Caribs were a bit tougher and those who weren’t killed off by diseases brought by Europeans, fought back.  Of all the tribes they lasted the longest, and live on now, but mainly through marrying slaves.  The last known speaker of the Carib language is said to have died in the 1920s.  A few other tribes also survived, but also through having children with people of other races.  There are no Native Caribbean tribes remaining.  However since many of these tribes made there way to the previously uninhabited West Indies from South America, I’ve always held hope that some remnants of their past exists there. 

Looking at maps like the one above reminds me of how many Native people lost their homes.  I live in Arizona now, a state with a large Native American population.  When I first moved here a tour guide told me I needed to be careful about wondering onto and breaking laws on Native lands.  He wasn’t telling me this out of respect for their land and laws, he was being a complete dick who felt they had no right to their own lands since this was America.  I didn’t bother telling him that every square mile of this country was their land; it would have been like talking to a wall. 

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