There are many contemporary places rightly considered hell on Earth. Warzones, famines, genocide, and other more localized situations are truly atrocious. It is doubtful that any of them will be nostalgically remembered in 100 years or so as a lost Eden.
Yet that seems to have happened with the aboriginal inhabitants of North America. Modern stories about them concentrate on the democracy of the Iroquois, the strong physiques of the young men, the spirituality of beliefs, the respect for nature and on and on. All blotted out by the evil invasion of Europeans with their guns, germs, and steel.
To some extent, of course, that is true. But if one delves into original written records, or the histories written by those immersed in such documents, a different perspective is available. An example is the Hurons of 1640 as described by Francis Parkman in the late 1800s, from original writings of the French priests and administrators.
Life as a Huron was not Edenic bliss. Starvation and comatose endurance in the winter, frequent murder, enslavement, cannibalism, torture by other tribes particularly the Iroquois. Childish, often cruel and capricious activities, often based on dreams and visions. Much of it, in fact, “brutal, nasty, and short.” The lives of women generally that of cattle. But you can read it yourself…
I consequently mistrust most armchair anthropology, where folks imagine what life must have been like “back then.” Whenever that “then” may be. Modern day Rousseaus who ignore the evidence of those who actually lived the conditions.
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 