Lies My Teacher Told Me

them safely across the sea”—even though the surviving summary of Columbus’s own journal states only that “before them all, he to ...

One way to visualize what happened next is with the help of the famous science fiction story War of the Worlds. H. G. Wells inte ...

dozens with point-blank volleys, loosed the dogs to rip open limbs and bellies, chased fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer t ...

With a fresh token, a Native was safe for three months, much of which time would be devoted to collecting more gold. Columbus’s ...

caused further ecological disaster. Diseases new to the Americans played a huge role, including swine flu, probably carried by p ...

American History reproduces Columbus Landing in the Bahamas, the first of eight huge “historical” paintings in the rotunda of th ...

slaves were one more perquisite that the Spaniards enjoyed. Columbus wrote a friend in 1500, “A hundred castellanoes are as easi ...

initiated by Columbus’s son in 1505. Predictably, Haiti then became the site of the first large-scale slave revolt, when blacks ...

slavery for them, themselves living like soldiers upon the fruits of their labors.”^78 The methods unleashed by Columbus are, in ...

the beginning, all the world was America.” Depending upon their political persuasion, some Europeans glorified American Indian n ...

attitude is easier.^85 Columbus gives us the first recorded example of cognitive dissonance in the Americas, for although the Na ...

suffered: the trans-Saharan trade collapsed, because the Americas supplied more gold and silver than the Gold Coast ever could. ...

person,” wrote George P. Horse Capture, “can celebrate the arrival of Columbus.”^90 Cherishing Columbus is a characteristic of w ...

The point isn’t idle. Words are important—they can influence, and in some cases rationalize, policy. In 1823 Chief Justice John ...

rather than teach both sides of his exploit, they encourage us to identify with white Western exploitation rather than study it. ...

They replied: “They do it because they are cruel and bad.” “I will tell you why they do it,” the cacique stated, “and it is this ...

Of course, this new history must not judge Columbus by standards from our own time. In 1493 the world had not decided, for insta ...

3. THE TRUTH ABOUT THE FIRST THANKSGIVING Considering that virtually none of the standard fare surrounding Thanksgiving contains ...

The Europeans were able to conquer America not because of their military genius, or their religious motivation, or their ambitio ...

the story of the first Thanksgiving. Textbooks are among the retailers of this primal legend. Part of the problem is the word se ...