Prehistoric American Indians Series To Learn

The atlatl would have been carved from wood, antler, or bone and used to increase a spears force and velocity during the hunt for deer, elk, and other large animals.

Prehistoric American Indians Series To Learn

Check out our atlatl video series to learn more about the atlatl, its uses, and to see it in action.

But centuries of forced relocation, disease and genocide have made it difficult to find where many Native American tribes once lived.

Aaron Carapella, a self-taught mapmaker in Warner, Okla., has pinpointed the locations and original names of hundreds of American Indian nations before their first contact with Europeans.

Now, the 34-year-old designs and sells maps as large as 3 by 4 feet with the names of tribes hovering over land they once occupied.

So far, he has designed maps of the continental U.S., Canada and Mexico.

A map of Alaska is currently in the works.

He adds that some Native American groups got stuck with names chosen arbitrarily by European settlers.

They were often derogatory names other tribes used to describe their rivals.

For example, Comanche is derived from a word in Ute meaning anyone who wants to fight me all the time, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Its like having a map of North America where the United States is labeled gringos and Mexico is labeled wetbacks, Herman says.

Whether youre naming places or naming peoples, you are therefore asserting a power of sort of establishing what is reality and what is not.

Carapellas maps serve as a reminder that the population of the American countryside stretches back long before 1776 and 1492.

Canada and his map of Mexico.

Carapella describes himself as a former radical youngster who used to lead protests against Columbus Day observances and supported other Native American causes.

He says he now sees his mapmaking as another way to change perceptions in the U.S.