this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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The First Peoples of North America definitely didn't have such sharp, well defined border lines. It's not as of they had a bunch of written treaties establishing hard borders.
This is a conceptual alternate history map of modern day North America without colonisation. It's still reasonably inaccurate of course but it's not meant to accurately portray the borders of a pre-colonised North America.
Sioux is a name given by the colonizers. It's not just the borders.
iirc its a word for enemy, IE the colonists encountered a rival tribe, and never cared to correct their mistake.
The Wikipedia says it comes from a French misspelling of an indigenous word that could be used to describe the people. So it might be a little less offensive than that, but still not great.
In English we use Norse meaning northern people, unsurprisingly it is the word originally used to describe them by people south of them. Those people now called Germans get their name from ceaser when he invaded from Italy, named by the Greeks, who in turn derive their modern name from the Romans because they called themselves Hellanes... Spain gets it's name probably because it was located near a rabbit on a Roman coin... They also named Britain of course and all of them would be the ones going to the new world and naming things there
It's weird but it's pretty common
If they'd endured as independent groups into the 21st century without being colonised by Europeans, as the map shows, they would almost certainly have developed defined borders.
Why? Europe had firm (occasionally changing) boarders for centuries before the sixteenth century, do you think they were simply behind on an inevitable development or that contact with the rest of the world would necessitate their development?
I think it's interesting to try and imagine situations where firm boarders aren't established. In such a situation it's interesting to consider what rules could or would exist regarding immigration and outsider communities.