The Reason why the Iroquois are in Civ 3

[orange]

Historians...hah!

The Queen of Malta was influential in the rise of Facism in Hitler's Germany prior to world war II

find me a source that proves me wrong, but until then, I'll go on believing this.

Isn't that still the custom for newly chosen presidents in the USA?

That didn't make any sense.

[DarkCloud]

Originally posted by Ribannah

http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/index.html

Re: Democracy


The tribal structure of the Iroquois is quite complicated, because apart from the nations and the confederacy, they also had clans (eight of them). Marriage within a clan was not permitted. The main clans, that existed even before the formation of separate tribes, were (are) present in all of the nations as well as in many other tribes.
The clan (within a community) had a democratic assembly of all male and female adult members, all with equal votes. This assembly elected sachems (peace-chiefs), war-chiefs and also the other "Keepers of the Faith," and deposed them; it took decisions regarding blood revenge or payment of atonement for murdered members; it adopted strangers into the clan. In short, it was the sovereign power in the clan.
The sachems from the several clans formed the council of a tribe (nation) to handle tribal affairs. Representatives of these councils sat in the Grand Council of the confederacy. The Five Nations Grand Council counted 50 sachems in total.
Every single member of the tribe(s), male or female, had the right to participate in every discussion. Any decision made by any council had to be unanimous.

(Compiled from the same text by Fredrick Engels as mentioned in my previous post.)

Edit: What Engels doesn't mention is that the sachems - always male - were nominated by the clan mothers of families holding hereditary rights to office titles. The Grand Council at Onondaga could also nominate sachems outside the hereditary structure, based on merit alone. These sachems, called "pine tree chiefs," were said to have sprung from the body of the people as the symbolic
Great White Pine springs from the earth. These two additions add Monarchic and Republican elements to the government of
the Iroquois.

All that says is that the Iroquois pleaded with the Americans to be allied with them at the end of the sigining of the Declaration of Independence.

Frequently, the Iroquois nations did things not together, but one chief would sign something and another would sign another, neither knew what the other did- (one of the reasons colonists created the term "indian giver") (not through much fault of the indians...)

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Ironwood
Has anyone else ever heard of the Cherokee script? I read, a long time ago, a story about a Cherokee who developed a genuinely *phonetic* script, specially tailored for the Cherokee language. I don't know if it's true, of if so, if it ever had any real application, but it's cool, nonetheless.

Ah, the Cherokee; now there's a real civilization. Permanent villages, agriculture, independent dealings with other powers; were it not for the fact that the Iroquois were more influential in the long run, I'd say the Cherokee are a better bet for a genuine civ.

I suggest you read Guns, Germs, & Steel it has a whole chapter about the Native Americans and discuses the Cherokee extensively. The Cherokee did develop their own alphabet in the 19th century but this was derivative work of the Roman alphabet. The Cherokee thought that if they settled as farmers, developed their own written language, and had tribal elections that they would get better terms from the Americans. Boy were they wrong.

[Boris Godunov]

Pass the crow

Sorry for my absence...been excruciatingly busy at work, and I've also been arguing with the Southern apologists in the OT forum.

Anyway, after a lot of reading up on the subject...

...I've changed my mind. Native Americans deserve to be in the game as much as any culture. While we can quibble over the Iroquois being their representative, I don't think there is any way to exclude the Amerinds without being painfully Eurocentric.

The problem is that th vast majority of the history we learn and accept as true comes to us from a European perspective. Not until recently, perhaps the last 30 years, have history texts been able to shed the Eurocentric rhetoric and focus more on what really did happen.

American civilization is irrevocably and indisputably tied to Amerindian culture, and their influence is pan-global. If you want one example, here it is: 50% of the crops cultivated and raised around the world today were unknown to the rest of the world until Native Americans showed Europeans how to grow them. I'd say that's major world impact.

If you want some really interesting insights, I suggest reading "Lies My Teacher Told Me," by James Loewen. It will open your eyes to a lot of stuff (like Woodrow Wilson was an ardent white supremacist!)

So I can't change my poll vote, but there it is.

Cheers.

[Guynemer]

Wow. I think that's the first time I've seen someone on these boards actually admit that they were previously wrong. Kudos to you, Boris. That took some serious stones.

I lent my copy of Loewen to my best friend... now that it's being cited left and right both here and OT, I want it back.

[orange]

He wasn't "wrong" he just changed his opinion. There is no right or wrong in this debate, it's all opinion.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Guynemer
Wow. I think that's the first time I've seen someone on these boards actually admit that they were previously wrong. Kudos to you, Boris. That took some serious stones.

I lent my copy of Loewen to my best friend... now that it's being cited left and right both here and OT, I want it back.

No, I didn't admit to being wrong. I merely changed my opinion based on my doing more in-depth study of the issue.

I wouldn't hesitate to admit if I was wrong, but that's a slim possibility anyway...

As for Loewen, his book is excellent. However, I think he tends to exaggerate a little to make his points more potent. Still, what he says is probably about 95% accurate and utterly dismaying. If check out the OT thread on the South, you can see just the kind of Eurocentric historical revisionism that he is talking about. People don't want to think their ancestors did bad things, so they will make up anything to make them look better.

Still, I think orange et al have strong reasonings for their opinion, I just no longer am in that camp. I think Ribannah has not helped her cause by blatantly overstating the case, though.

Cheers.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by orange
He wasn't "wrong" he just changed his opinion. There is no right or wrong in this debate, it's all opinion.

D'oh! Beat me to it.

Danke.

Cheers.

[Guynemer]

Yeah, "wrong" was the wrong word I suppose, but you guys got the thrust of my gist, or something like that. I don't think I could ever hope to win a debate on semantics.

[joey703]

Re: Need for clarification

Originally posted by Wernazuma III
dead end society

actually i believe the aztects were called a dead end society for a different reason. The aztecs depended upon human sacrifice(which implied intervention by the gods) to every problem they faced. They failed to use intuition or science in order to overcome various problems. Thus, they were in a dead end society, as it wouldnt evolve techonologically over time...

BTW, how come the Mayans arent in the game. They were quite advanced (especially in mathematics). Damn, this is the first time that college course I took on "Mexican History" proved useful...

P.S. I still cant believe the Koreans aren't in the game, and this confederacy is. Believe me, if you read just a little bit of korean history there one of the few countries that still are around that dates back to the ancient era.

[tleilaxu]

way back on the first page someone made a reference to the mississipians as a worthy civ.

i just wanted to add some information

Cahokia (now East St. Louis) was the biggest Pre-columbian city north of Mesoamerica (30,000 might not seem like much these days but it was a big place)

In the late woodland period they had a trade system that extended from new york to oregon. cahokia had already fallen into obscurity before columbus showed up, peaking about 1300.

i for one think that the americas could have been done better with more civilizations. civ is in generall too western oriented.

north america should have: cahokia, sioux, iroquis, aztecs, mayans

south america should at least have the incas

africa should have the zulus, ethiopians, mali (timbuktu), egyptians and carthaginians

east asia should have the japanese, chinese, koreans, mongols, huns and the angkor wat people.

IMHO

and we should be able to play with 32 civilizations!

[orange]

tleilaxu

I don't understand...

are you for everything you said or against it? at the end of your post made it all seem like a joke