CHAPTER I — THE FIRST PEOPLES COME
20,000 before present (est.)—1607: Indian Migration and Settlement; Early European Exploration

While most histories about the making of the peoples of this nation begin with the arrival of European explorers after 1492 and the first European settlers around 1600, we propose that the full story must also encompass the history, so far as it is known, of the first peoples to have settled in this land. That is thought to have taken place some 20,000 years ago.

This seldom told and little understood story about the great and diverse civilizations and peoples that prevailed in North America before 1607 is an integral part of the history of the American people. The Museum’s first chapter would start with the first known peoples to come to what is now the United States.

In his book, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, published in 2005, the writer Charles Mann lays out much of the latest research by a variety of scientists and other researchers. Among their conclusions is that there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe when Columbus landed. Indians had transformed the land so completely that when Europeans arrived in the hemisphere, it had already been massively ’landscaped’ by humans.

Using the latest findings from the fields of archeology, genetics, history, linguistics, demography, geography, anthropology, genealogy, ethnology, and others, the Museum would portray the long history of human settlement and accomplishment in this land before 1607. In cases where there is strong scientific and historic evidence for more than one theory of that history, the alternative views could be incorporated.

The Museum would try to answer a long list of questions: When did the first humans come to this land? How did they get here? What about Hawaii? Did they come in different waves? Why did they come? How did their cultures evolve from 20,000 years ago to 2,000 years ago?

In the 200 years before Columbus, how were Indian tribes distributed across what is now the United States? What were their histories up to 1607? What was the nature of inter-tribal relationships? What are the population estimates for North America in 1607? What was the nature of native culture, economy, governing structures, communications, weapons, agriculture and health?

In 1500, Europe and North America had well developed civilizations in their midst. How did English and Spanish civilization in 1500 compare with the Maya? How did the civilizations of the Maya and Aztec compare with those of the Indians living in what is now the United States?

The first hundred years after Columbus’ voyages were marked largely by Spanish expeditions into what is now Latin America with forays into areas now occupied by Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. The Museum would explore whether there were permanent Hispanic settlements in what is now the United States during this period. While the Spanish and Portuguese dominated the Western Hemisphere in the 16th Century, late in the 16th Century, the English put the New World into play when Sir Walter Raleigh sent expeditions to the North Carolina coast.

During the 16th Century, the Spanish sent waves of expeditions into South America, the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico. Their main purpose was to exploit the gold and other riches from the Western Hemisphere and to convert the Indians to Christianity. However, the Eurasian diseases that the conquistadors brought with them and the native’s lack of an immune system to fight those diseases led to waves of pandemics that spread throughout the Americas. There is evidence that these probably killed more than half of the native population, with some estimates ranging up to and above 90 percent, within 150 years of the first contacts.

Because of the interactions of peoples throughout the Americas, much of the devastation in North America occurred before any direct contact with Europeans. Thus when the Spanish and Portuguese set out to colonize Latin America and then later the British came to do the same in the North, the latter found the Indian populations reeling, and the civilizations that had been built over a millennium crash over a matter of years. In their weakened state, the Indians posed little opposition to the new settlers on their land.

Other museums, including the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of the American Indian, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, depict the cultures, beliefs and art and artifacts of different Indian tribes. And others, such as the Peconic Museum in Connecticut, tell the story of a particular tribe. But they tell little about the overall history of native people or answer the questions raised above.

While some of these questions could not have been answered a generation ago, or even a decade ago, new research and discoveries about early human life on this land is bringing more and more of this past into light.

This story of America’s earliest settlers and inhabitants as it is currently known and understood needs to be told, and it needs to be open to updating as authentic new information is found. This Museum would stimulate the search for that information.

NOTE: The material herein is based largely on two books that tell part of this story, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann, and Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life by Roger Daniels. Ideas and material from both authors are presented here to give readers a sense of the story. An outline of the story would be developed by the Commission and leading scholars would be expected to develop a detailed outline of the Museum’s story following the establishment of the Museum.