Part of the reason we assume our ideas about native peoples is that
so much of thier written and graphic heritage has been -deliberately-
destroyed (remeber, they were called "heathens" and had to be christianized)
So we really don't know if they had a Vlad-The-Impaler or a Shakespeare,
or not?  That's why the oral traditiona grew and it so important intheir
culture (as it is in African-American culture) those stories are passed
down from generation to generation and naturally something gets lost
in the transference.  Certainly outsiders can't be trusted to maintain
what is known, for the large part, the outsiders ancestors were the ones
who destroyed their culture in the first place -- so why share it with
descendents fo people who broke -very- treaty, raped, pillaged, burned,
etc., etc., and now make 'false images' of things were in "westerns". ??
 
rj
 
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