DISCLAIMER: I am not, have never been, and never will be a history buff. Please understand these opinions come from person who's history grades in school were below average and many assumptions are made. I share this as a typical, ignorant view point which is likely to have factual mistakes. I'm writing this for my memories and apologize if anyone thinks it's ridiculous! Bear with me and don't stop reading my blog. :-)
After a few minutes of discussing Germany's history of kings and empires, one of my students asked how far back American history goes in the classroom. He asked if we learn much about the Native Americans...before the Europeans showed up. I thought about it and realized that I couldn't recall going past the 1700s in our basic American history books. I assume this may be in part because we don't have as many records of the Native American times. For example, since they wanted to live as part of the Earth rather than building it into something man-made, there's little infrastructure to analyze. And while there were probably lots of stories passed down from generation to generation, I assume there probably wasn't a lot of written documentation from that time that lasted through the centuries.
I explained that we learned about the relationships between the Native Americans and Europeans in school, but that the history of our "nation" as a group of people united together under one government or set of rules started after the Europeans arrived. The history of the land itself and the people who lived there, of course, goes back far earlier than that, but for whatever reasons, that's not included in most textbooks. Although I must assume there are TONS of other pieces of literature documenting the time, people, culture and experiences of those tribes.
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