The book, 1491, by author Charles C. Mann delivers a meticulously crafted masterpiece of the “true” history of the Native Americans before the Europeans invaded the Americas and rewrote their history. Mann delves deep into the once pristine and massive empires of Native Americans that are typically disregarded in our modern day society due to sheer ignorance of life before modern colonization began. The author himself, Charles C. Mann, is a highly accomplished writer that has written for many big time companies such as The New York Times, Smithsonian, and even The Washington Post. He has received multiple writing awards from a vast majority of fields that range from the American Institution of Physics to the Lannan Foundation. In fact, 1491,
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1491 is not exactly a chronological timeline or complete history of every aspect of “Pre-Columbus” America. Instead, the book is pieced into three parts that Mann believes to be the main points of his findings: Indian demography, Indian origins, and Indian ecology. Although this book is about the times before Columbus arrived, it spends the majority of the book revealing facts from times after Columbus arrived. Mann describes the reasons for this instance to be because many Native American cultures had no form of writing and recording their history and that the contact between the Europeans revealed the first person accounts of the living conditions of the natives. Mann also states that the contact between Europeans and Natives highlighted many aspects of the indigenous societies that weren’t clear before such accounts were …show more content…
Although Mann admits that his reference is wrong, I believe that he should have used the term “Native Americans” instead to avoid further confusion. Indians are typically from the Eastern part of the Earth, while Natives were on the Western front. I believe that the inquiry into a new understanding of the history of the natives should be accompanied with the correct terminology. I must admit that I am not a big fan of long, information-heavy books. However, Mann’s style of incorporating different graphs and depictions of what he was describing kept me somewhat engaged in the reading and conveyed his main points
1491 is not exactly a chronological timeline or complete history of every aspect of “Pre-Columbus” America. Instead, the book is pieced into three parts that Mann believes to be the main points of his findings: Indian demography, Indian origins, and Indian ecology. Although this book is about the times before Columbus arrived, it spends the majority of the book revealing facts from times after Columbus arrived. Mann describes the reasons for this instance to be because many Native American cultures had no form of writing and recording their history and that the contact between the Europeans revealed the first person accounts of the living conditions of the natives. Mann also states that the contact between Europeans and Natives highlighted many aspects of the indigenous societies that weren’t clear before such accounts were …show more content…
Although Mann admits that his reference is wrong, I believe that he should have used the term “Native Americans” instead to avoid further confusion. Indians are typically from the Eastern part of the Earth, while Natives were on the Western front. I believe that the inquiry into a new understanding of the history of the natives should be accompanied with the correct terminology. I must admit that I am not a big fan of long, information-heavy books. However, Mann’s style of incorporating different graphs and depictions of what he was describing kept me somewhat engaged in the reading and conveyed his main points