Gama by more than two thousand years. Does the teacher take time to research
the question and find that the student is right, the textbook wrong? More likely,
s/he puts down the student’s knowledge: “Rap songs aren’t appropriate in a
history class!” Or s/he humors the child: “Yes, but that was long ago and didn’t
lead to anything. Vasco da Gama’s discovery is the important one.” These
responses allow the class to move “forward” to the next topic. They also
contain some truth: the Phoenician circumnavigation didn’t lead to any new
trade routes or national alliances, because the Phoenicians were already
trading with India through the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Textbooks don’t
name Vasco da Gama because something came from his “discovery,” however.
They name him because he was white. Two pages later, Life and Liberty tells
us that Hernando de Soto “discovered [the] Mississippi River.” Of course, it
had been discovered and named Mississippi by ancestors of the American
Indians who were soon to chase de Soto down it. Textbooks portray de Soto in
armor, not showing that by the time he reached the river, his men and women
had lost almost all their clothing in a fire set by Natives in Alabama and were
wearing replacements woven from reeds. De Soto’s “discovery” had no larger
significance and led to no trade or white settlement.^36 His was merely the first
white face to gaze upon the Mississippi. That’s why most American history
textbooks include him. From Erik the Red to Peary at the North Pole to the first
man on the moon, we celebrate most discoverers because they were first and
because they were white, not because of events that flowed or did not flow
from their accomplishments. My hypothetical teacher subtly changed the
ground rules for da Gama, but they changed right back for de Soto. In this way
students learn that black feats are not considered important while white ones
are.^37
Comparing two other possible pre-Columbian expeditions, from the west
coasts of Africa and Ireland, provides an interesting vantage point from which
to consider this debate. When Columbus reached Haiti, he found the Arawaks
in possession of some spear points made of “guanine.” The Arawaks said they
got them from black traders who had come from the south and east. Guanine
proved to be an alloy of gold, silver, and copper, identical to the gold alloy
preferred by West Africans, who also called it “guanine.” Islamic historians
have recorded stories of voyages west from Mali in West Africa around 1311,
during the reign of Mansa Bakari II. From time to time in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, shipwrecked African vessels—remnants, perhaps, of