And by “original,” I don’t mean the Pilgrims. I don’t mean the Jamestown settlers, who arrived some 13 years earlier. I don’t mean the first permanent Spanish settlement in 1565. I don’t even mean the African slaves who escaped their Spanish captors, who had landed in 1526 in modern South Carolina. Those Spanish shortly left for Haiti, but their ex-slaves stayed and became American immigrants. These ex-slaves were probably the very first non-native settlers of America, the very first true African-Americans.

But what I mean by “original” Americans— I mean those who traveled across the Bering Strait, into modern Alaska, spreading throughout the Americas, settling and developing that land sometime between 12,000 and 40,000 years ago— We don’t really know exactly when. But we do know a bit about these Americans, when they were no longer just settlers, but rather established residents, from the 15’th century on. And we know a bit about how their culture—then a vibrant and living culture—affected what would become our modern American culture, in ways that you may not realize.

Of course, maybe you are already aware of these bits of knowledge, which I’ve gleaned from my current non-fiction read, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen, (which I should have read many years ago, but which unfortunately is still not completely out of date, even though I’m reading an earlier edition than the latest). Even if you know these, most of us are basically ignorant of them, never having gotten past the myths, popular legends, and one-dimensional factoids.