The First Black Native Americans

We have been lied too about Black History. When I was growing up my mother made it clear that we were part Choctaw. So in 1967, I took a survey at my High School: DuSable, in Chicago and found that over 40% of my classmates had Indian heritage.


Choctaw

At the time many people laughed at us because they only saw Lakota ad Apache on T.V. Today because of the WWW, there are numerous pictures of Black Native Americans on the Web. Below French artist Alexandre de Batz's renderings of Native American life in colonial Louisiana, such as "Desseins de Sauvages de Plusieurs Nations" ("Drawings of Several Native Americans of Various Nations") from 1735



As you can see there was not one Native American ethnicity

Several types of blacks entered the Americas including the Khoisan, Anu or negrito type and the Proto-Saharan variety of blacks. Up until recently it was believed that the first humans crossed the Bering Strait 12,000 B.P., to enter the North American continent.(Begley 1991, p.15) This view was never accepted by physical anthropologists who have found skeletal remains far older than 12,000 B.P.

Today archaeologists have found sites from Canada to Chile that range between 20,000 and 40,000 years old. In Brazil evidence of Africans date back 100,000 years.

There are numerous sites in North and South America which are over 35,000 years old.1 These sites are the Old Crow Basin (c.38,000 B.C.) in Canada; Orogrande Cave (c.36,000 B.C.) in the United States; and Pedra Furada (c.45,000 B.C.)2 Given the fact that the earliest dates for habitation of the American continent occur below Canada in South America is highly suggestive of the fact that the earliest settlers on the American continents came from Africa before the Ice melted at the Bering Strait and moved northward as the ice melted.
The appearance of pebble tools at Monte verde in Chile (c.32,000 B.P), and rock paintings at Pedra Furada in Brazil (c.22,000 B.P.) and mastodont hunting in Venezuela and Colombia (c.13,000 B.P.), have led some researchers to believe that the Americas was first settled from South America.3 C. Vance Haynes noted that:"If people have been in South America for over 30,000 years, or even 20,000 years, why are there so few sites?....One possible answer is that they were so few in number; another is that South America was somehow initially populated from directions other than 4north until Clovis appeared".

P.S. Martin and R. G. Klein after discussing the evidence of mastodont hunting in Venezuela 13,000 years ago observed that : "The thought that the fossil record of South America is much richer in evidence of early archaeological associations than many believed is indeed provocative.... Have the earliest hunters been overlooked in North America? 5Or did the hunters somehow reach South America first"?
The early presence of ice-age sites in South America suggest that these people probably came from Africa. This would explain the affinities between 6African languages and the Amerind family of languages.

In very ancient times the American continent was inhabited by Asian and African blacks. The oldest skeletal remains found in the Americas are of blacks. Marquez (1956,p.179) observed that "it is [good] to report that long ago the youthful America was also a Negro continent." Dr. Dixon (1923) noted that as early as 70,000 B.C., Austroloid and later negritos crossed the Bering Strait to reach the New World. His dating for these early Blacks crossing the Beringa is far too earlym because ice made it impossible to cross from Asia to North America, until at least 12-15,000 years ago. This meant that Blacks had to come directly from Africa and Eurpe to settle the Americas.


And Lanning (1963) noted that "there was a possible movement of negritos from Ecuador into the Piura Valley, north of Chicama and Viru" in early times.

In the 1970’s in Brazil an interesting skull of a girl was found. This skull was reconstructed and dated back to 12,000 BC. Dr. Walter Neves professor of biological anthropology at the University of Sao Paolo, after reconstructing the “Luzia” skull found that this personage was either an African or Pacific island type Black7. And recently, archaeologist found the skull of another Blck girl dating to this period, they named Naia.

I am happy to be an Afro-Indian. My heritage is of Africa and America Being here today is just making America the way it was originally. A continent first explored and inhabited by Africans. who began sailing to America probably as early as 100,000 years ago. We definitely know Africans were here by 30kya.
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Notes

1. Warwick Bray,"The Paleoindian debate". Nature 332, (10 March) 1988, p.107.

2 . Ibid, p.107; "Man's New World arrival Pushed back", Chicago Tribune, (9 May 1991) Sec.1A, p.40;and A.L. Bryan, "Points of Order". Natural History , (June 1987) pp.7-11.

3. Bryan, p.11.

4. C.V. Haynes,Jr.,"Geofacts and Fanny". Natural History ,(February 1988)pp.4-12:12.

5 . P.S. Martin and R.G.Klein (eds.),Quarternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution, (Tucson:University of Arizona Press,1989) p.111.

6 . M.Ruhlen,"Voices from the Past". Natural History, (March 1987) pp.6-10:10; J.H. Greenberg,Language in the Americas. Stanford:Stanford University Press,1987.

7 Neves W.A . and Pucciarelli H.M. 1991. "Morphological Affinities of the First Americans: an exploratory analysis based on early South American human remains". Journal of Human Evolution Journal of Human Evolution 273
Powell J.F. and Neves W.A . 1999. "Craniofacial morphology of the first Americans: pattern and process in thepeopling of the New World". Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 42:153-188
Neves W.A ., Powell J.F. and Ozolins E.G. 1999. "Extra-continental morphological affinities of Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1: A multivariate analysis with progressive numbers of variables. Homo 50:263-268; Neves W.A ., Powell J.F. and Ozolins E.G. 1999. "Extra-continental morphological affinities of Palli-Aike, Southern Chile". Interciencia24:258-263