The Publishers League

In every culture, there are various fields and means of employment or subsistence living that are specific to the society in which they have developed. In some culture, such as the Masai in Africa, a boy must slay a lion to prove that he can be a hunter and, thus, a man. In Jewish tradition, a boy enters a man hood at age thirteen upon the successful completion of his bar mitzvah. In the mid western states of the USA, this right of passage comes when a father teaches his son how to plant corn; a tradition that dates back to before colonial times, to a land in which the Native Americans ran the show. In fact, contrary to modern notions, America’s Native American population once numbers in the tens of millions and boasted large cities and sophisticated societies. Were it not for the arrival of the Europeans, and both the war and disease they brought with them, there’s just no telling how far Native American may have been able to climb here in the United States.