Indian Contributions :: essays research papers

President BushThe strength of our Nation comes from its tribe. As the early inhabitants of this great land, the inhering peoples of North America played a unique role in the shaping of our Nations history and culture. During the month when we celebrate Thanksgiving, we especially celebrate their heritage and the contributions of American Indian and Alaska Native peoples to this Nation.The contribution of the American Indian to the English language is something that is frequently overlooked. These words range from such common English words as "raccoon," "moose," "quahog" and "mackinaw" to literally thousands of place names "Chicago," "Tallahassee," "Cheyenne," "Hackensack," "Keokuk," "Rockaway," and many others. Historians point off that the first settlers on American shores discovered many things they had never seen beforehand and which appeared nowhere else in the world. To get the English words fo r an Indian objects the settlers simply spelled out as best they could in English their impression of the Indian sounds. understandably there were often various spellings. An early spelling for skunk was "squuncke," a persimmon was first spelled "putchamins" and the Niagara was the "ongniaahra." One political word widely used today, "caucus," appeared in several of the Indian languages.A case can be made that contact with American Indians actually served as one of the catalysts for the Scientific Revolution in Europe. In 1571 King Philip II of Spain commissioned physician Francisco Hernandez to document the medicinal seeds, plants, and herbs that the Aztec used. Spanish physicians exploring indigenous American cures soon published three textbooks based on this information including one on surgery.Although more than 200 of the plants that American Indians (from North, Meso-, and South America) used as remedies became part of the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, an official listing of all effective medicines, the originators of these remedies often remain unacknowledged.Freeze-dried food, syringes, rootbeer, rubberized clothing, beef jerky, and many of the tenets of the United States Constitution are only a few of the independent inventions and original discoveries that American Indian people gave to the world.American Indian agriculture has had a significant effect on worldwide agriculture and economy. Jack Weatherford, in his book Indian Givers How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World, pointed out that Indians cultivated over 300 food crops, and contributed to the world three- fifths of the crops now in cultivation. The Indian farmers of North and South America gave the world corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, beans, pumpkins, squash, chocolate, vanilla, papayas, persimmons, jicama, pecans, chilies, hickory nuts, peanuts, cassava, helianthus seeds, maple syrup, tapioca, and avocados.