"Land of Women" in American Southwest found by Buddhist missionaries and Spanish explorers

Contributor Hendon Harris (Chinese Discover America), Dec. 25, 2020; edited and expanded by Dhr. Seven, Xochitl, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Native American Hopi Kachina dolls

The Puebloan cultures of the American Southwest are matriarchal societies: Women, not men, are the dominant sex/gender in charge of the culture. This is a longstanding fact, not a recent development.

• An inglorious Columbus; or, Evidence that Hwui Shan and a party of Buddhist monks from Afghanistan discovered America in the 5th century A.D.: Edward Payson Vining, 1847-1920 (archive.org)
• Silk Road transmission of missionary Buddhism
• Edward P. Vining's An Inglorious Columbus (The American Naturalist: Vol. 19, No. 10, uchicago.edu)

When a Buddhist missionary expedition arrived in the Four Corners (UT, AZ, CO, NM) for the first time in 458 CE, they encountered that female-dominated culture.

Hopi women love snakes/Nagas.

There is written evidence of this documented in the ancient Chinese imperial records of the 7th century CE. Among several attempts at written humor trying to make fun of this culture, the Chinese writers referred to this piece of North America as "The Land of Women."

They wrote that the culture they encountered here (during the Buddhist missionary expedition centuries before Catholic/Christian invasions of Columbus and the Conquistadors) had little or no use of men for anything including childbirth.

Amazon women warriors classified in book

Women were dominant and, it was said, became pregnant through their use of "snakes" [Nagas, Reptoids, Reptilians, bestiality?].

The mention of snakes is noteworthy because even today the Hopi (a Puebloan tribes) men have a great interest in snakes as evidenced by their Snake Dance Festival celebrated once every two years.

U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt attended a Snake Festival event. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Spanish explorers came to this same part of North America looking for El Dorado (the lost "City of Gold").

Puebloan culture: Hopi house in Oraibi Village, Native American Southwest

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Amazon Queen Thalestris with Alexander

They were never able to locate the gold mines at the source of the legend(s), but they were able to describe a female-dominated culture that lived in the same region previously described by Buddhist missionaries and Chinese historians over a thousand years earlier.

Spanish explorers in their exaggerated communications back to Spain described the culture they encountered in the Southwest as "Amazon Women."

• The origin of the word Amazon is uncertain. It may be derived from an Iranian [Buddhist Gandharan Indo-Aryan] ethnonym ha-mazan or "warriors," a word attested indirectly through a derivation, a denominal verb in Hesychius of Alexandria's gloss ἁμαζακάραν· πολεμεῖν. Πέρσαι ("hamazakaran: 'to make war' in Persian"), where it appears together with the Indo-Iranian root kar- "make" (J. H. Blok, 1995. The Early Amazons: Modern and Ancient Perspectives on a Persistent Myth).

Original Amazon women in the Buddha's Scythia

These warrior women (of the Buddha's Scythia, ancient Greece, and The Americas, etc.), also had absolutely no use for men including for childbirth.

They were fierce and capable warriors who were not afraid of anyone. Reports back to Europe were turned into highly popular novels in Spain. The present-day name of the state of California began as the name of the fictional Amazon Queen Cali or Calafia.

Reports sent back to Spain and the rest of Europe by Spanish explorers often became accepted as fact very quickly. Today, everyone knows that California is not an island, but for a long time map makers and everyone else knew that it was.

Baja or "Lower California" is a peninsula in Mexico (just above Mesoamerica) adjoining North America. It was an island because the original reports back to Spain said so.

Mention is made of this because the same was also true about what was said in the original Spanish reports about Amazon women. However, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater: The embellished story by men from two male-dominated societies were telling us something very important about the same cultures in the area many hundreds of years apart.

They were both telling us about a matriarchal society they had never heard of nor previously encountered. The fact that they both lacked the understanding of what a matriarchal culture is and how it functions does not mean that they made it up.'

Indigenous Peoples' History (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz)

Instead, it illustrates that they had little or no understanding of what they found. Would it surprise anyone to find out that the Puebloan Native Americans are a matriarchal society even today?

They were when the first Buddhist expedition arrived from Asia in 458 CE. They were when the Spanish invaded in the 16th and 17th centuries. And they still are to this day.

Chinese reports of a "Land of Women," Spanish reports of "Amazon women," and the people of the Four Corners area of the United States (home of the Puebloans) are all the same people living in the same place where they have been centuries.

The science of cultural anthropology studies matriarchal societies. And two ancient visits to this part of our present-day USA describe it, similar reports from vastly different time periods and explorers. Afghan and Chinese Buddhist monks coming to "Fu Sang" actually arrived in what is now North America.