Resilient Cultures: America’s Native Peoples Confront European Colonization 1500-1800 was written by John E. Kicza in 2003. The author has given a comparative perspective on the influence of American natives. This book has covered the indigenous cultures before they get contacted to each other and their adaptation in the form of colonies in a creative way. The author of the book was a distinguished professor at Washington State University and has great contribution in the field of history.
Kicza has mentioned in his book his theory of resiliency and the major culture that has influenced him was Maya as even there was a European expansion, the Mayan culture has not altered its identity. The existence of Mayan culture was almost 2000 years old even before the exploration of Europe. It was the time when Mexican agricultural societies started organizing themselves into some political units. It was also the time when Spain arrived in the new world, this Mayan culture transformed itself from a highly sophisticated and sedentary society to semi-sedentary and a village-based society. This culture was highly civilized with the ability of writing system and an updated knowledge of math and astronomy. But during the ninth century, everything gets collapsed and they left their nobility far behind while adopting consensus politics.
When Spanish came to the Yucatan and they wanted to conquer Mayans, and for this, they have to knock out their capital. But the main problem of that time was the Mayan were not centralized and not living in their capital rather they preferred semi-sedentary lifestyle and paid allegiance only the central community. So Spanish has to conquer them one by one as they were living in the form of small communities in different part of that area. After the fights and battles Spanish did conquer Mayans and they accepted the defeat; even then there were Mayans who were living autonomously fee from Spanish rule to different areas.
Although there were autonomous groups of Mayans they were also affected by the Spanish as during the trip of Franciscan friars to the far forests where he found Mayans; he started to convert them to Christianity. But Mayans were resilient as even after this they have been true to their religion for thousands of years. And although they were converted to Christianity yet these new religious teachings did not affect them and they remain resilient and upgraded to their own values. Another major thing that shows the resiliency of Mayans was that they were not very much influenced by the culture of Spanish. They keep their own values related to cloth, language lifestyle and did not adapt to the new culture. The biggest calamity that Mayans have to fight was that got inflicted by the epidemics brought by Spanish like smallpox etc. and so their population dropped from 240000 to 170000 in next 50 years. The traditional nobility of Mayans was also destroyed due to the decline in their trade as they were forced to move from rural areas to the large towns. Kicza has focused on the argument of Mayans resiliency and it was obvious that their culture was untouched and they were not much influenced by the Spanish.
Another culture that is the Aztec culture to which Kicza considered very resilient was not as resilient as the Mayans. The author mentioned that native cultures have maintained their identity but actually, it is difficult to maintain ones true identity when three is no culture left. The Aztec were once the warriors and they end up like they were none other than slaves, and so it is difficult to say that was quite resilient. Initially, the Aztec did not consider the Spanish a great fear to them they just consider them outsider but when these outsiders tried to conquer this culture the Aztec was left with nothing than to bow and accept their defeat. Similar to the Mayan, the Aztec also fell to smallpox that was brought by the Spanish and they had no immunity for it. I think the Aztec were not resilient as there is another argument to this thesis that there was fragmentation that resulted due to colonial rule. After the victory of Spanish, the Aztec were unaware of who they will ask for freedom and what they will do. So they were forced to small groups as they were quite unaware of their cultural background. The Aztec were not even allowed to follow their religion and were forced to follow Catholicism that again proves they were not much resilient. The warfare and disease both have dropped the number of the Aztec’s population from 20 million to 1.25 million in a century and so the civilization was disintegrated.
Another most resilient culture was Iroquois Nation as they not survived their culture within colonial America but also they have been survived to date. This culture was not dealing with the Spanish but also Britain and the Americans. They have been involved in warfare, treaties, betrayals, and trades but still, have maintained their individuality within American society. One can say that this is a resultant culture as they have preserved their culture before and after colonial periods. They were also attacked by diseases and horses yet they preserve themselves and rather than being affected by others they adapt to the change and become an example of resilience (Kicza, & Horn, 2016).
By reading this book I came to know that Kizca has mentioned the most resilient cultures who have survived a lot of things but in my view rather than resilient these cultures were durable and strong enough and have survived the tough time.
References
Kicza, J. E., & Horn, R. (2016). Resilient Cultures: America’s Native Peoples Confront European Colonialization 1500-1800. Routledge.
