Indigenous Rising

In many ways, the indigenous civilizations of precolonial North America were more highly developed than European cultures. The cities and roads of the Aztec culture astounded the European conquerors. The agricultural systems featured advanced forms of irrigation, with the cultivation of foods that were unknown to the Old World. Some of these foods (potato, corn, peanuts, and other grains) were later to provide 60 percent of Europe’s diet and were responsible for the greatest explosion of population since the Neolithic Age (Feagin & Feagin, 1993). Substances from the New World (cocoa, tobacco, coca) were to provide Europeans with exhilarating addictions in the centuries to come.
Medicinal products from the Americas revolutionized the treatment of disease in Europe and still fascinate pharmacologists with as yet untapped treasures. The political systems of native peoples ranged from the religious theocracies in Mexico, sources of advanced astronomical and mathematical achievement unparalleled in the world of that day, to the democratic councils of the Algonquin, Iroquois, and other nations that were much admired by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson (Hardt, 1992).