Considering the Long-Term Consequences of Designating Native American Sites as European Creations

Abstract

During the European colonization of North America through the twentieth century, some Native American sites were initially designated as European settlements and forts rather than Indigenous in origin. This was especially true for Native American sites on the Great Plains, as several sites in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas were initially considered European trading posts. Even though archaeologists have long recognized the Native American origins for these sites, those initial European designations often persist in local American communities today, a fact that undermines many of the long-term Indigenous occupational histories of these places. Names have power and archaeologists can continue to help rewrite these narratives by recognizing Indigenous perspectives and claims. Furthermore, newly developing “pericolonial” frameworks can be utilized to model the consequences of these designations, especially given that many of these spaces were part of, yet viewed as apart from, the main vanguard of settler colonialism.