[CalRobert]

Can you elaborate? Perhaps things have changed since I lived in the US (two years ago) but most people I knew were more or less completely ignorant of pre-colonial American history, and had only a passing familiarity with Columbus' misdeeds. I hope indeed it has changed.

[WalterBright]

Relatively little is known about pre-colonial history in North America, due to the absence of writing from those times. This is pretty much true of all peoples that did not have writing.

[kylebgorman]

The Mayan rulers carefully documented their vicious wars of conquest (among other things). Some believe the Incas, with their "quipu" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu) recording devices, were on their way to a writing system. But that's really it re: pre-Columbian writing.

[WalterBright]

There is a fair bit known about the Mayans because of their writing (and a lot of that survived because it was carved into stone). But the N. American peoples did not have writing, and their lifestyle did not leave behind much for archeologists.

[JoeAltmaier]

Mounds, burials, artifacts (but mostly ephemeral e.g. bone and skin), some surviving culture.

[protomyth]

Quite a lot of the history has been written from the stories carried down, and I do believe the central and south american tribes had writing which is still largely ignored.

(Edit: quite a lot of the old stories are written down, downvoters- I cannot help if you don't value the current efforts. I won't be providing links as there is Google and I have to deal with a damn blizzard)

[CalRobert]

Europeans destroyed them. It's a crime against history that can hardly be expressed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices

[userulluipeste]

I understand that it's simpler to say just "Europeans" instead of "European colonial powers", but before you know it you may cast an unjust collective accuse over an entire continent full of people, many of which had nothing to do with the sins of America's colonization.

[CalRobert]

OK, make that "A group of people who came to the Americas from Europe and behaved in a less than polite manner"

[protomyth]

You do know that there are tribes other than the Mayans?

[happyscrappy]

>central and south american tribes had writing which is still largely ignored.

They were almost completely destroyed by Europeans.

[protomyth]

"Almost" is not all and given the responses in this thread, I get the feeling that people are not aware of the number of tribes in the Americas.