Sorry, I should've been more clear. I was asking in context of the earlier question you answered about pre colonial Africa. Many of the factors you mentioned are obscuring the history in Africa also affect the pre Columbian Americas, like the bias toward monument building societies who had standing armies and writing, but like you said, the extent of the genocide against indigenous Americans is bigger than in Africa, so that's the kind of comparison I was thinking of.
Oh ok, so like an overview of the continental historiography, yeah I can do that. Â
one interesting comparison between the two continents is that in both, certain specific civilizations get a lot of love and attention while most get neglected. The Aztecs, Inca, and Maya, as well as specific North American tribes (Apache, Iroquois/Haudenosaunee, Sioux) get a TON of attention and focus, while others are totally neglected and ignored. Just like how in Africa, certain parts of African history get a lot of love (Egypt, the Zulu, Ethiopia) but the rest are neglected. Â
So like with Africa, you have a few of the same factors that makes pre-Columbian American history get neglected. Â
1) Racism, like with Africa you have the problem of non white history, where the major historical institutions just do not put as much money and energy into the subject as those with white people. There is so much more written about Native history post 1492 than prior. However, its actually less neglected than SubSaharan African history is, because white people actually came to live in the America and got interested in the history (eventually). So you will find a lot more books in English on the history and culture of various Amazonian people groups than those of the Congo. This probably also has to do with the fact that in many South American countries, Natives or mixed race descendants, still make up a large part of the populations of these nations and play an active part in the historical/political community. And since these nations are new and generally speaking more powerful than the new African states (wow that is a generalization I am going to respect as all the Nigerains and South Africans get pissed at me) there is a more established histographical traditionÂ
2) Lack of written sources, or in the case of the Inca, we still havenât figured out the written sources translation. Its actually a lot worse than Africa, because while there were Native civilizations that got written languages, a lot less than Africa, and Africa has the advantage of having accounts from Arabic traders in the middle ages.  Once you take into account the centuries of destruction, and we are actually left worse than Africa on that account
3) A multitude of languages. This isnât as bad as in Africa though, because most of these are filtered through Spanish, Portuguese or English, so if you speak one of those, it opens up a ton of options for you. So while the language barrier is still a problem, if you are willing to learn English suddenly there are a tone of new optionsÂ
4) Neglect because you didnât build the big thing. The Americas gets this less than Africa because some of the âtribalâ cultures became huge like...fetish items for various settler civilizations, and while there are a LOT of problems with that (see below) it does mean that groups like the Sioux will get more historical attention. This tends to only apply to some people groups over others though. Â
Then there are some unique challenging facing Native American history vs Africa Â
5) Massive genocide on an almost unimaginable scale. Donât get me wrong, the colonization of Africa was abominable and was full to the brim of various genocides. However the vast majority of the African civilizations who were subjected to colonization are...still around. Subjected to cultural erasure and murder but they still exist. Meanwhile with the Native Americans, entire regions are just...gone forever. And this isnât just because the Europeans were a lot more genocidal focused in the Americas than in Africa (thought that is a factor). A big factor is the âGreat Dyingâ which was the series of plagues unleashed by the arrival of the europeons, which possibly killed up to 90% of the new world, up to 110 million people, sometimes even before Europeans even encountered them. Then Europeans massacred like 90% of people on top of that. SInce most of what we rely upon here is oral history...yeah that really hurts. Â
6) Deliberate cultural erasure. This was also evident in Africa but was never really as successful, the various colonial regimes in the Americas really made an effort to wipe out native culture, and while entirely successful, which adds to the problem of oral history
7) However, due to the US being the most powerful nation in the world, it does mean that a lot of historical societies who are into local history get into Native American history, so despite all of those disadvantages, Pre Columbia Americna history is actually a lot easier to access than most African history, because there is a ton of interest. Iâve studied at three universities in the US and all of them offered some sort of Native history course, and none of them offered a pre colonial African, and some of these research schools have been around for centuries. Now there is the problem of cultural fetishism, where white people start to take on a Utopian vision of pre Columbian society which just gets in the way of real history, but there is genuine interest so it is a LOT easier to get into Native History, doubly so if you can read Spanish. Â
