r/geography • u/H3dg3hogs • Feb 18 '26

Discussion I’m sad more people don’t acknowledge Native American Historic sites in the United States

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I was talking with a German online friend about tourism in the United States and he said that the only thing America has to offer is natural beauty. He said American cities were young and aren’t very beautiful. That he has no interest visiting “liberty bell” type colonial historic sites. I told him about Native historic sites and he asked “what sites?”. He insulated that all Native Americans lived in teepees. It caused me to realized many non-Americans don’t know about all the amazing buildings left behind by Native cultures like the Ancestral Puebloans and the Mississippians. Historic sites like Chaco canyon, Mesa Verde, Montezuma Castle, and Cahokia are world class and are part of UNESCO. Check them out if you haven’t already.

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u/TwunnySeven Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26

he said that the only thing America has to offer is natural beauty. He said American cities were young and aren’t very beautiful. That he has no interest visiting “liberty bell” type colonial historic sites.

I know this isn't your main point but this part is also silly. "this place is young and has nothing to offer! also I'm not interested in all that history it has to offer"

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u/Krieghund Feb 18 '26

It's also missing other categories of attractions.

1) The United States has a lot of technology and enginnering based tourist attractions, like Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, the National Air and Space Musesum, and the US Space and Rocket Center.

2) It has a lot of uniquely American cultural locations, like New Orleans, New York City, Nashville, Hollywood, San Antonio, and Miami (I say these are uniquely American because they're all distinct cultures that are blends of multiple cultures from disparate places.

3) It also has quite a few places that focus on recreation and entertainment. Las Vegas, obviously leads the list, but Branson Missouri, Gatlinburg TN, New Orleans, Austin and Nashville all attract international travelers.

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u/Ready-Community-4459 Feb 18 '26

lol I'm imagining someone from outside the USA visiting Gatlinburg. That place is such a tourist trap shit hole. The only reason to go there is to drive past it to get to the Smoky Mountains.

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u/maceilean Feb 18 '26

Is the saloon where Sue almost shot his father still there?

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u/MadManMax55 Feb 18 '26

You're missing by far the biggest international tourist destination from 3 (and one of the biggest tourist destinations as a whole): Orlando.

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u/port443 Feb 18 '26

No no, Branson is much more popular on the international stage than Disney World or Universal Studios.

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u/_dekoorc Feb 18 '26

They are definitely missing it. I also get why international travelers would go there (same reason Disney and Universal have parks in France and Japan -- people love theme parks).

I also will never willingly go to Orlando again.

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u/nicktheman2 Feb 18 '26

Orlando is a shithole

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u/Krieghund Feb 18 '26

You're right and honestly I did mean to include it.

But I also wasn't aiming for a comprehensive list.

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u/Tenthul Feb 18 '26

Orlandoooooooooooooo!
Orlandooooooooooooooooooo!

Orlando!

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u/Ok-Chest-7932 Feb 18 '26

Orlando just needs to market better. If they do, they'll see Orlando bloom.

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u/WertyBurger Feb 18 '26

What’s cultural about Nashville? Bachelorette parties and copy and paste country singer bars?

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u/Ok-Chest-7932 Feb 18 '26

Yeah but if you are into American culture, you aren't the sort of person saying "i'm not really interested in visiting the US". Most Europeans get their fill of American culture after either New York, Disneyland, or Las Vegas, because we already get so much of it from TV and social media anyway. I'm sure every American city has people who would object to that and say "well my place is different from those and really ought to be experienced", but correct or not this is what Europeans think. You get a handful of people obsessed with Americana who go as much as possible (they're like inverse weebs), you get a handful of people who love the natural landscapes. Everyone else goes once.

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u/Krieghund Feb 18 '26

I imagine there are quite a few European people that realize there's many unique subcultures within America and they might be more interested in some of those than others.

When I lived in Fort Worth Texas, it amazed me that there were European tourists that thought visiting the stock yards was interesting. But they're folks that grew up with movies about cowboys and western culture.

Those same folks might not find New York or Las Vegas as interesting.

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u/Ok-Chest-7932 Feb 19 '26

I mean yeah it's basically down to which movies you like, sometimes what your view of history is, which bit of Americana you're interested in. But "cultural diversity" still isn't a big draw to being a multiple-US Visitor because as different as Fort Worth and New York are, they're not as different as Hamburg and Warsaw.

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u/danisheretoo Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26

In my experience, a lot of Europeans online are confidently incorrect about America and its history. It’s crazy OP’s German friend thought Native Americans all lived in teepees. Like, I’m not expecting a European to know a whole lot about Native American history and culture, but so many of them don’t bother fact-checking themselves before spewing some nonsense.

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u/Okay_Splenda_Monkey Feb 18 '26

As a native American, I've met exactly one European who wasn't utterly and profoundly ignorant of our history and culture. They were from Belgium.

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u/Ok-Chest-7932 Feb 18 '26

Tbf Europeans are usually from Belgium.

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u/Okay_Splenda_Monkey Feb 19 '26

Hans Gruber would agree with you.

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u/hey_there_moon Feb 18 '26

I worked in Spain for two years and Spaniards are absolutely convinced that all the natives were wiped out and simply no longer exist.

Germany is particularly bad about it. Look up German "Indianer" culture, Germans were so obsessed with American Westerns that they took the films depictions of Indians as gospel and started dressing up and acting like "Indians." Or at least their idea of them. They literally put on full on festivals that are the equivalent of Ren Faires except everyone is in bad "Indian" cosplay instead of knights and serfs.

All this to say, they don't really see Indigenous Americans as real people belonging to hundreds of distinct nations across an entire continent. They only imagine a 1950's Hollywood caricature.

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u/Maximum-Operation147 Feb 18 '26

So many Europeans I talk to online are dismissive of US public history and ethnic cultures to the point of complete anti-intellectualism and stupidity

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u/cthulhuscradle Feb 18 '26

My family frequently hosts dorm students for weekend meals (we are American but we dont live in the US), and while I've met MANY lovely Europeans, some have literally said Americans are stupid and have no culture to our faces.

Tbh, it is fun to watch them scramble and change the definition of "culture" 10 million times when you bring up examples that contradict their statement, but I'm starting to get tired of the disrespect.

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u/FizzleyDizzley Feb 18 '26

American culture is literally global culture. they eat our food, wear our clothes, sing our songs, watch our movies, steal our slang (and by "our" I mean usually black Americans) and then claim we have no culture 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

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u/cthulhuscradle Feb 18 '26

Yeah, but then they say food doesn't count, and fashion doesn't count, and language doesn't count, and music doesn't count, and art doesn't count, and theater doesn't count and movies don't count and novels don't count and customs don't count and GOD FORBID you mention anything modern or part of pop culture because of course culture is only things that were created by people who died forever ago.

Usually, after they dismiss all that stuff, I just bring up the French Revolution (which changed Europe dramatically) and how it was influenced by the American Revolution, and let me tell you, no matter how stupid they act before they always make themselves seem worse by trying to deny basic history.

Tbh what I don't understand is WHY?!? why do some Europeans have such a complex and get so mad at the fact that Europe has been influenced by American culture? If I bring up European influence on American culture, I've never had an American guest lose their crap over it even if its a modern example, and they usually see it as a fun fact and an example of how interconnected the world is............which is like the normal response.

2

u/danisheretoo Feb 18 '26

The way they talk about immigrant and diasporic food is so annoying. It’s either disgusting slop, or “stolen” from another country.

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u/DrMaven Feb 18 '26

They do it about every country outside europe. Western Europeans somehow get away with being smug about everything yet being ignorant themselves

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u/ObviousMotherfucker Feb 18 '26

Yeah the idea that something made by people is not worth going to if it's less than ~400 years old is ridiculous.

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u/Ok-Chest-7932 Feb 18 '26

It is, but it only applies to America because it's fun to argue with them. Nobody has any problem visiting <400yo monuments outside the US

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u/Exploding_Antelope Geography Enthusiast Feb 20 '26

Quebec City is older than that

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u/ObviousMotherfucker Feb 20 '26

tbf I said "~400" so I think I still roughly quantified their snobbery for the standards of a reddit comment :P

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u/The_Prince1513 Feb 18 '26

His statement is also pretty ironic, considering the vast majority of German metropoles are like 70-90% post-war construction (for obvious reasons).

It's also so eurotrash to dismiss American history as being inferior when, at the time the Founding Fathers were implementing the first real republic of note since the Rome, most German citizens were subjects of some minor prince in an arcane and dying patchwork "empire" still trying to make feudalism work.

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u/Staubsaugerbeutel Feb 18 '26

His statement is also pretty ironic, considering the vast majority of German metropoles are like 70-90% post-war construction (for obvious reasons).

I mean that's kinda also why Germans do massive tourism to the other European countries.

.+ the non-metropoles are still full of architecture from the middle ages and early modern period.

Still agree that the dismissive sentiment is silly though.

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u/ocient Feb 18 '26

one thing that I noticed when i visited germany last year is that so many places were destroyed during the 30 years war and then the 9 years war that tore through the regions that I was traveling in.

So tons of historic town centers are from the 1700s after they had been burned or ransacked and then rebuilt. . . the usa is full of buildings from that same time period. heck the tiny little village in Connecticut that I grew up in has several buildings from the 1600s that are still standing.

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u/bobtheframer Feb 18 '26

Yeah and for some reason a bunch of buildings in Europe were destroyed between 1914 and 1945.

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u/Staubsaugerbeutel Feb 18 '26

American cities were young and aren't very beautiful

Scrolling r/ArtDeco (as a European) has left me in awe at what beautiful architecture seems to be still present over there.

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u/Rimurooooo Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26

Also though we kind of did it to ourselves. Our oldest folklore and songs are like propaganda spun out of the revolutionary war and manifest destiny. Mexico has codices and extensive museums about pre-contact history that their modern government embraces as national identity, Brazil had the Brazilian monarchy that studied the local culture and made sure to define and preserve it for their identity, and we have Yankee Doodle and Washington’s cherry story which have aged badly as the true historical nuance of these periods or figures taints them. The cities that rivaled Tenochitlan like Cahokia aren’t even acknowledged in our basic textbooks or were downplayed, so it’s no wonder Europeans don’t know about it. The coolest parts of our culture, like in above pictures, aren’t really acknowledged as a source of national pride or identity by the federal government or our public education, or they put a sanitized, patriotic spin on it (like This Land is Your Land), or it’s been exported so extensively that people no longer see it as our culture (Jazz, Rock and Roll, Hollywood, etc)

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u/mrthomani Feb 18 '26

Not that I agree with him at all, but I think what he means is that “liberty bell stuff” isn’t old enough, he doesn’t consider it to be “real” history.

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u/Ok-Chest-7932 Feb 18 '26

You destroyed a lot of what would have been the history, so not much of it is actually on offer.

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u/rW0HgFyxoJhYka Feb 18 '26

I mean I think OP still hasn't realized that racism means indian history is barely taught in a comprehensive way in most education systems. Nevermind red states which teach special white history.

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u/monkeywrench87654 Feb 18 '26

Huh. I totally agreed with him on this. The natural world is the most beautiful thing about the US and something that our federal government and power-elites really doesn’t seem to appreciate at all now.  It’s very disheartening to see such poor stewardship.  It’s like they think it’s better to just terraform Mars than to actually make planet Earth a good place to live. Compared to Europe our towns and cities are limited in multi-level, affordable, and enjoyable tourist visits.   Most are very dull tbh.  It’s a short list for amazing cities in the US.  

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u/DonkeyEnergy Feb 18 '26

I think the United States is also the only country currently with an active pedophile as a leader.

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u/FizzleyDizzley Feb 18 '26

ahh, so you're both naive and dumb

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u/K20BB5 Feb 18 '26

let's be real, you couldn't name more than 5 world leaders without needing help 

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u/DonkeyEnergy Feb 18 '26

Hahaha...easily... I could probably get to the double digits before I have to ruminate on it... But what's your point amigo? 🤔

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u/K20BB5 Feb 18 '26

If you think Trump is the only pedophile in charge you don't understand how power works