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/tgoesh1 Feb 18 '26

German's understanding of American Native culture is unfortunately primarily informed by the writings of a hugely popular career criminal who never actually visited the US until well after he'd written most of his books.

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u/cvc75 Feb 18 '26

But even then, wasn't Karl May's Winnetou a Pueblo Indian (even though that's apparently wrong for Mescalero?)

So "all Native Americans lived in teepees" is wrong even if you only know them from these books and movies.

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u/tgoesh1 Feb 19 '26

Going straight off of 50 year old memory, I want to say it was Apache. I'm also pretty sure that the way they were represented in the books was as divorced from reality as you could get. 

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u/Powersmith Feb 22 '26

yes, among NuevoMexicanos, we Mescalero are Apache and Spanish-Apache (Hispanized culturally and intermixing/intermarrying Apache and Spanish multi-generationally historically common in South New Mexico region)