From: kja@cbnewsf.cb.att.com (krista.j.anderson)
Newsgroups: soc.history
Subject: Re: Oldest City in North America?
Date: 11 Sep 92 21:34:05 GMT
Organization: AT&T

Ok, I dug out my chronology from _Atlas of the North American Indian_
by Waldman and Braun.
Nobody has offered a definition of "city".  Does it require ruins
that survive to the present, a certain population, or what?

Anyway, the Olmec civilization in Meso-America had 3 major cities
that flourished:
    San Lorenzo  in c. 1200-900 BC
    La Venta     in c.  800-400 BC
    Tres Zapotes in c.  100 BC

The Adena Mound Building culture flourished in the Ohio Valley
c. 1000 BC - AD 200.  Some effigy mounds still exist here and
there, so does that count as a city?
The Hopewell Mound Building culture in the East flourished
c.  300 BC - AD 1300.

In c. 100 BC - AD 1500 there was a Hohokam culture that left behind
the irrigation that still keeps Phoenix, Arizona as an oasis today.
The descendents of the Hohokam are probably the modern-day Pima
and Papago (now known as T'ono Ootam or something like that).

There were also cliff-dwellings and pueblos in the Southwest from
about 300 BC, many of which left lots of interesting ruins.  Oraibi
was founded in AD 1150 and is claimed to be the "oldest continuously
occupied town in U.S."

The Mayan city of Teotihuacan flourished in c. 300-700.
The Mixtecs were hanging around in c. 900.
The Toltecs had their capital in Tula in c. 987.
And the Aztecs founded the city of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City)
in c. 1325.

Another large pre-Columbian city was Cahokia, located where the
Missouri and Illinois Rivers join the Mississippi.  The outline
doesn't have a date for it, but it was sometime during the
Mississippian Temple Mound Building culture's era of c. 700 - 1700.

Some other ancient cultures were the Old Copper Culture
(4000-1500 BC) in the Great Lakes region and the Red Paint People
(3000-500 BC) in the Northeast, but they didn't build cities.

Just for the record, Meso-America, Meso-Indian and Middle America
are often used in Native American history/archaeology to refer to
the areas of Mexico, Guatemala and Belize because this was the
territory of the Olmec, Mayan, Toltec and Aztec cultures.

Columbus started a settlement of sorts on San Salvador, the island
that is now Haiti and Santo Domingo.  I'm not sure what year it was.

St. Augustine, Florida, was founded in 1565, although some people
would say it was a fort rather than a settlement.
In 1568, some Jesuits founded a school in Havana for Indian
children "brought" from Florida.

The Roanoke Island, North Carolina, colony was started in 1585, but
of course disappeared.

There was a Spanish colony near San Juan pueblo, New Mexico in
1598.  Jamestown, Virginia was founded in 1607, and Plymouth was
settled by Englishmen and women in 1620.  A Boston Bay colony was
formed the year after, I believe.

Most history books, the atlas mentioned above included, seem to
continue with the east coast with a British emphasis at this
point.  However, there was a lot going on in the Spanish
territories in California and the Florida coast and Tampa Bay
area.  Also, the French entered the Great Lakes region both from 
the north and along the Mississippi from the south.  By the time
Lewis and Clark took the eastern people west in 1802-3, the Indians
were familiar with European types except through the Great Basin
and Rocky Mountains.  They were still a bit of a novelty to some of
the Plains Indians who were especially taken with the one Black man
with the expedition (York?).  But the Pacific Coast peoples Lewis
and Clark encountered were completely unimpressed, although
generous enough to feed the men and Sacajawea, the Shoshone girl
who accompanied them along with her newborn son.  Well, I obviously
digressed.