Re: native American personas (fwd)

[mn13189@WCUVAX1.WCU.EDU]

Poster: mn13189@WCUVAX1.WCU.EDU


On Wed, 26 Mar 1997, Craig Levin wrote:

> Ah, but I shall. The Northmen never lingered as the Spaniard and
> the Portuguese would in later years, and cultural exchange of the
> level that we have to thank for Indian corn in Europe and tobacco
> in Turkey only developed at the very tail end of our period. I

I've been doing a littel research into this since this thread came up.  It
seems that Norse colonies in the New World could have existed and been
sustained from the 10th to the mid-14th centuries. Some estimates have
them extendidn into the 15th centuries but this does not seem very likely.
In any case, most everyone agrees that Norse occupation was done with
before the major European powers started their age of Exploration (Spain,
Portugal, England, etc.).  Of course, these settlements were very small,
and rarely encountered Natve populations. And those encounters almost
always ended in violence.  The only trade goods brought back to the Old
World seem to have been wood, such as maple.
	All of this information comes from the book I mentioned
previously (the title escapes me now, but it dealt with the settlement of
the New World, Viking to 1612).  The author, I should mention is VERY
skeptical about any pre-Columbian discoveries other than by the Vikings,
and he is still wary of a lot that has been attributed to the Vikings.  Of
course, this book is a few decades old, and I'm sure new evidence has been
brought into light since its publication.
Aye,
Eogan 

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