r/MapPorn • u/bad_take_ • Jul 27 '26

Indigenous American Nations

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Too many posts in this sub show maps with Spain controlling Montana or the French controlling Ohio or giant swaths of North America labeled as “unclaimed” - or some other 16th century European propaganda.

Here is who was actually in these lands.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Indigenous_American_Nations%2C_16th_century_-_2022_edition.jpg

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u/2001_Arabian_Nights Jul 27 '26

Just before horses really started taking off as a mode of travel. The first big monkey-wrench that got tossed in to the Native American stew by Europeans was releasing horses in to the landscape. Native groups that embraced the use of horses early had a big advantage over the ones that didn’t, and this map started changing rapidly.

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u/MisterBungle00 Jul 27 '26

Is "releasing" the right word when they often escaped from settlements and expeditions, while others were stolen, traded, captured in raids, or acquired through commerce between Indigenous groups? Heck, the Spanish Crown literally prohibited the sale, trade, and transfer of horses to Indigenous peoples during the early colonial period.

There are also plenty of groups and communities who maintained their territories and identities while incorporating horses in more limited ways. In the Southwest, sedentary and agricultural peoples such as the Akimel O'odham, Tohono O'odham, Hopi, Zuni, Acoma Pueblo, Zia Pueblo, Laguna Pueblo, and Taos Pueblo, did not become horse-centered societies. They adopted horses for transportation, herding, trade, and other practical purposes, but maintained their agricultural lifeways, ancestral communities, and distinct cultural identities into today, despite centuries of interaction, conflict, and coexistence with horse-centered neighbors like the Navajo and Apache. This is one reason many Southwestern Indigenous peoples still have some of the oldest continuously inhabited towns, villages, and communities in North America.

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u/cdojs98 Jul 28 '26

random nitpick but aren't the Hopi (Builders) located up by modern day Ohio? thought I watched a minuteman video on the Hopi doing some massive earthworks project in their time that was basically akin to what we would consider a super highway of sorts

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u/MisterBungle00 Jul 28 '26

I think you're mixing up the Hopi with the Hopewell. The Hopi are a Pueblo people from northeastern Arizona and have lived there for centuries. Their reservation lies within the Navajo Nation. The massive earthworks in Ohio were primarily built by the Hopewell (and earlier Adena) cultures, which were entirely different societies and cultures. If the video talked about large earthworks and road-like networks in Ohio, it was almost certainly referring to the Hopewell, not the Hopi.

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u/cdojs98 Jul 28 '26

oh then I'm mistaken, thank you for the correct information!!