r/AmericanHistory

The Grand Union Flag

The pre-Hispanic civilizations of this region of the continent severely punished infidelity because they considered it a threat to the collective order. In a highly organized and centralized society, the community depended on family stability for agricultural production, the fulfillment of the mita (labor tax), and social reproduction. Infidelity was not a private or unimportant matter, but a serious crime that disrupted group harmony, generated conflicts, and jeopardized the cohesion necessary to maintain such a vast empire. The first Spaniards described exemplary punishments such as stoning, throwing off cliffs, or death by beheading, precisely to deter people from committing such acts.

This collectivist view explained the severity of the punishment. The emotional suffering of the victim of infidelity was not seen merely as an individual or unimportant pain, but as a malaise that affected work performance and the entire community. In a system where the government intervened in almost every aspect of daily life, punishing infidelity was a way to protect the overall balance and prevent personal vices from spreading.

In contrast, in contemporary Peruvian society, infidelity is no longer a criminal offense and has become a private matter, of no importance to society. It is seen as a personal failing that each individual must "overcome on their own." This change reflects the shift from a collectivist to an individualistic vision, where autonomy, privacy, and personal freedom take precedence over group stability. Marriage is understood more as a romantic relationship based on mutual satisfaction than as an institution serving the community.

Several factors explain this transformation in contemporary Peru. The republican legacy, Anglo-Saxon liberalism, urbanization, chicha culture, the 20th-century sexual revolution, and the weakening of traditional community structures have shifted the emphasis from "we" to "I." Today, the emotional pain of the affected party is considered a personal problem to be resolved with therapy, divorce, or resignation, without collective societal intervention. Although many people still value fidelity, culturally there is a tendency to minimize the responsibility of the unfaithful partner and to accept that "things happen" in relationships.

In conclusion, pre-Hispanic civilizations severely punished infidelity because they understood that the individual was part of a greater whole whose harmony had to be preserved at all costs. Present-day Peruvians, immersed in an individualistic logic, prioritize personal freedom and relegate adultery to the private sphere, even though this often leaves the aggrieved party more isolated and frustrated. This contrast shows how the shift from collectivism to individualism has transformed not only laws but also values ​​regarding responsibility, suffering, and social cohesion.

In contemporary Peru, it is common to observe that certain sectors, particularly indigenist, socialist, and progressive movements, evoke the idea of ​​the return of the Inca Empire (also known as Tahuantinsuyo in Quechua language), at least in terms of recovering some of its organizational principles. However, within this modern romanticized vision, a fundamental aspect is often omitted: the administration of justice. These groups, although they invoke pre-Hispanic models, tend to analyze reality through modern legal categories, deeply marked by Greco-Roman law, of European origin, and by the influence of the liberal and revolutionary justice systems of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, both in Europe and the Anglosphere. In these systems, punishment and responsibility are conceived, above all, from an individualistic perspective.

This conceptual framework contrasts sharply with the justice systems in place in pre-Hispanic indigenous civilizations, including the Inca Empire (Tahuantinsuyo), where punishment was essentially collective. Justice did not focus exclusively on the personal responsibility of an individual, but rather on the restoration of community order, which meant that punishments, compensation, or benefits could be imposed on families, communities, or entire villages. In the Inca Empire, crime was not seen merely as an isolated act by an individual, but as a disruption of order and balance that involved the offender's immediate environment. If a man committed a serious offense, it was assumed that his community or family had failed in their duty to educate, supervise, or correct him in a timely manner, thus activating a mechanism of "legal solidarity" in the punishment.

This shared responsibility was particularly strict with local officials and leaders. If a crime was committed within a jurisdiction and the perpetrator was not apprehended, or if the crime occurred due to administrative negligence, the Curaca (local ruler) or the officials in charge of that town received the punishment in place of, or alongside, the perpetrator. The logic was one of total oversight. The Inca government delegated considerable authority but demanded absolute control over all aspects of life within its domains. Therefore, impunity or disorder in a town was the direct fault of whoever governed that area, and punishments could range from public reprimand to death.

The most extreme cases of collective punishment were applied in situations of treason, corruption, disorder, rebellion, or sacrilege. In these scenarios, early chronicles recount the practice of "desolation," meaning that the town of origin of the guilty party could be razed to the ground, their relatives executed up to the fourth degree of consanguinity, cultivation of those lands was forbidden, and the place was declared cursed. The objective was both educational and terrifying: to eradicate any seed of disloyalty, misrule, and chaos, sending a powerful message to the other provinces about the cost of challenging the rule of the Sapa Inca, who was considered a living deity.

Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, in his Comentarios Reales de los Incas, quotes Father Blas Valera referring to the severity of these laws: Los hijos de los que delinquían contra la majestad real o contra la divina, y los de los traidores, eran castigados con la muerte o con perpetuo destierro y con infamia pública. ("The children of those who sinned against royal or divine majesty, and those of traitors, were punished with death or perpetual exile and public infamy.") Likewise, the chronicler Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala vividly describes punishments where entire families suffer for the transgression of a single individual, and mentions the "Zancay," a prison of perpetual torture for traitors, where the punishment extended to their lineage to ensure that "bad blood" would not flourish.

Therefore, although this justice system may seem brutal from today's Peruvian perspective, legal historians like Jorge Basadre have explained that it served a purpose of state, effectively maintaining cohesion in a vast, heterogeneous, and multinational empire without a permanent police force. Unlike European justice of the time, which was often arbitrary or dependent on feudal or manorial status, Inca justice was draconian but systematized and predictable. The community knew that everyone's fate was tied to each individual's behavior, creating a highly effective system of social self-monitoring that reduced common crime to minimal levels.

Pemmican is dried meat pounded into powder, combined with rendered fat in equal proportions by weight, and pressed into bars with dried berries. That is the entire recipe. Three ingredients. No refrigeration. No cooking required to eat it. A shelf life measured in months to years under the right conditions. One pound of pemmican delivers approximately 3,000 to 3,500 calories, a full day of sustenance for an active adult, in a package you can carry in your coat pocket.

The Cree, Lakota, Blackfeet and dozens of other Plains nations had been making it for generations before the fur trade era, and when European explorers and traders encountered it they immediately understood what they were looking at. The Hudson's Bay Company built an entire industrial supply chain around it. Robert Falcon Scott took it to Antarctica. Ernest Shackleton's men ate it on the ice after the Endurance was crushed.

William Clark wrote in his journal near what is now Great Falls Montana in 1805: the Hunters killed 3 buffaloe, the most of all the meat I had dried for to make Pemitigon. The spelling is characteristically Clark, creative and phonetic, but the reference is unambiguous. The Corps of Discovery made pemmican from bison on the trail and first encountered it as a prepared food at the formal feast hosted by the Lakota Sioux early in the journey.

The journals of Lewis and Clark, edited by Gary Moulton and published by the University of Nebraska Press, are the most thoroughly documented food record in American exploration history and pemmican appears in them as a staple of survival rather than a curiosity. These men were eating nine pounds of fresh meat per man per day on good days and boiling candles to eat on bad ones. When they made pemmican they were thinking about the bad days.

The 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment was one of the first official African American regiments in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

Became nationally celebrated after leading the assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, on July 18, 1863, where it suffered heavy casualties but proved the courage and discipline of Black soldiers.

For the first 100 years after Europeans reached the New World, nobody wanted North America. Spain took the gold and silver of Mexico and Peru. Portugal took Brazil. The French and Dutch chased furs. North America was considered cold, empty and useless. The land that would become the United States was basically the leftover nobody fought hard for.

What happened next was not destiny. It was a chain of accidents, gambles and lucky breaks.

Columbus was looking for Asia and bumped into the wrong continent. The 13 colonies were a mismatched group of religious refugees, debtors and merchants who spent most of their early history arguing with each other. Independence itself was a long shot, won partly because France wanted to embarrass Britain.

Then came the breaks. Napoleon needed cash for his European wars and sold Louisiana for about 3 cents an acre, doubling the country overnight. Settlers stumbled onto gold in California right after the US took it from Mexico. Russia sold Alaska for almost nothing and it turned out to be packed with gold and oil. The Civil War nearly destroyed the whole experiment, but the Union survived and came out industrialized.

By the time the canals were built, the railroads connected the coasts and two World Wars wrecked every rival, America was the last big economy standing. A country nobody believed in ended up running the world.

For a 19th-century geographer, a "mile" was not a static thing—it was a variable impacted by mud, slope, and weather. The railroad changed this by forcing the physical landscape to submit to the mathematics of the grid.

• The Tool of Conquest: The use of the 66-foot Gunter’s Chain allowed surveyors to subdivide the American continent into perfect, taxable rectangles.
• Geometric Determinism: Railroads didn't follow the land; they forced the land to follow the route. This "Controlled Corridor" logic is why modern US highway systems and city boundaries are still locked into 19th-century rail patterns.
• Spatial Standardization: This was the moment the "Map" became more powerful than the "Territory."

Analysis of the Spatial Grid and Infrastructure: How Railroads Standardized Space

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I find this to be an informative video covering The Wilmington Coup of 1898. The video covered Alexander Manly, a prominent Black American Journalist and Civil Rights leader who founded one of the first Black-owned newspapers in America: The Daily Record. The newsroom was later destroyed in the coup by a mob of white supremacists. A very important topic! Definitely an important topic and I had just discovered this topic!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCXWLLfXFK4

Currently, various sectors linked to contemporary indigenism, as well as new currents of socialism, progressivism, liberalism, communism, ethnonationalism, and others, tend to question or reject the use of the term “Indian,” considering it pejorative, inappropriate, or associated with a “colonial legacy.” However, this rejection is very recent in American history, not even more than 100 years old. The term “Indian” was used legitimately on the continent from the 16th century onward.

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, the term was commonly used in political, academic, and even revolutionary discourse, including early Marxist approaches in Latin America / Hispanic America / Iberian America, where it was used as a social and ethnic category without the same level of semantic questioning as today. Over time, especially under the influence of 20th-century European neocolonial intellectual currents and new political sensibilities centered on language, a more explicit critique of the term took hold, promoting its replacement with other expressions. In other words, this rejection is not inherent to American ideology, nor even to the Indian peoples of the 19th and 20th centuries, but rather a stance adopted and imported from contemporary Europe.

"From the 1950s onward, the use of the term 'Indian' became infrequent in academic texts, with the designations 'native people, original people, Native American, autochthonous, indigenous, aboriginal, or peasant people' becoming increasingly common. The influence of indigenism and Marxism brought with it a differentiation between 'Indian' and 'indigenous,' leading to a state of confusion where 'Indian' was seen as a 'colonial' term that should be discarded from the vocabulary of the 'peasant proletariat.'"

(T. Wasserman, 1985).

Source(s):

.- Documentos para la historia de la sublevación de José Gabriel de Tupac-Amaru, The Rockefeller Foundation (1936).