Indian Givers Chapter Summary
Who really created or discovered the Americas? Many believe Colombus, many believe Lewis and Clark, some believe the Indians or Natives. Whichever the reader does believe is besides the point when The Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World written by the the anthropologist, Jack Weatherford goes in depth about the huge effect Indians have put on our cultural, societal, political practices as well as many agricultural products may not have been produced without the knowledge that Indians put forth into the world. This book also touches on the Indian Givers, who they were and what they did. An Indian Giver is commonly used as an American expression to describe a person who gives a gift and later wants it back, or something equivalent in return. Weatherford's most obvious purpose is to demonstrate that the Native Americans have
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“The mines of upper Bolivia, particularly the mines around Pelosi, strain the limits of human endurance. they are so high and the oxygen content inside the labyrinth of small passages drops so low that the work is almost too strenuous even for the Indians already accustomed to hard labor at high altitudes. the conquistadors, however, found that the miners worked much longer and harder if they chewed the coca leaves. Not only could the men work with less oxygen but they could work longer hours with less food” (199). This quote simply displays a disgusting example of the economic cycle that the Americans had begun. The cycle basically began with workers chewing coca leaves, creating demand for higher production of coca leaves with produced higher amounts of workers at coca plantations, making Pelosi the world’s largest consumer of coca. The act of the workers chewing the coca could make them last much longer in the mines to get more work done. This made the rate of death in the mines
“The mines of upper Bolivia, particularly the mines around Pelosi, strain the limits of human endurance. they are so high and the oxygen content inside the labyrinth of small passages drops so low that the work is almost too strenuous even for the Indians already accustomed to hard labor at high altitudes. the conquistadors, however, found that the miners worked much longer and harder if they chewed the coca leaves. Not only could the men work with less oxygen but they could work longer hours with less food” (199). This quote simply displays a disgusting example of the economic cycle that the Americans had begun. The cycle basically began with workers chewing coca leaves, creating demand for higher production of coca leaves with produced higher amounts of workers at coca plantations, making Pelosi the world’s largest consumer of coca. The act of the workers chewing the coca could make them last much longer in the mines to get more work done. This made the rate of death in the mines