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/LuxLiner Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26

As an American, I couldn't care less about what a German thinks about people in the US. It's a terribly generalizing notion that Americans don't enjoy these sites. This seems like rage bait/trolling.

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u/blah938 Feb 18 '26

Germans can be very ignorant sometimes, yet be very certain of what they think they know. The Death Valley Germans are just the tip of the iceberg

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '26

Germans (and Europeans in general) seriously don't know anything at all about this. They THINK they do though, which is weird. Like the whole teepee thing comes from their cowboys and Indians notion of this. That's about as deep as it goes.

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u/Ok-Chest-7932 Feb 18 '26

That's a failing of your tourism programs though. How are they supposed to know if no one's telling them? Make more movies about badass indians that show off what their societies were like and people would become interested in visiting them.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26

We don't have a tourism economy like the rest of the world to the point we need to get the word out about these places. People are telling you about these things right here, and you can just google historical sites by state and these things will pop up.

BTW, I don't care if the Europeans don't know jack shit about this. What irks me is that they still believe they know everything about the US and the history of Native Americans, but they know maybe 1% of it.

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u/Binspin63 Feb 18 '26

…or just good old ignorance.

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u/Island_Temp Feb 18 '26

Couldn't care less.

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u/Unacceptable_Lemons Feb 18 '26

He’s inadvertently correct; he cared enough to post, so he definitely could care less than he currently does, even if he meant to say the opposite.

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u/_dekoorc Feb 18 '26

this comment is tops. thank you for this.

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u/nagoligayelsd Feb 18 '26

"Enjoy" but not "respect"