Very interesting question. I was pretty much taught Columbus was some kind of brilliant god in high school–had only the best interests at heart for the lamentably “uncooperative” indigenous folks, etc. Lots of emphasis on bravery, and devoutness and how it shaped our American “can-do” culture.
I got a rather rude awakening in college when I studied Latin-American history. One of the first things we read were his actual words, in the original Spanish–for those who care, Columbus spoke atrocious Spanish. We’d go into class the next day and be like, “Well, we didn’t really understand what he was trying to say here…” to which my prof would reply, “Nobody really does.” Generally he came off as an idiot, obviously over-blowing “the glory of the Indies” to convince Spain to jump on board the colonizing idea… described the “Indians” as weak, docile, manipulable herd animals.
We also read “The Devastation of the Indies” by Bartolome de las Casas (pardon no accent.) “The Devastation of the Indies” was written by a priest during early colonialist times and encapsulates his sense of horror at how awfully indigenous people were treated. The problem is, he gave out some pretty impossible numbers in his account. We discussed how his basic premise–that atrocities were being committed on a massive scale-- was true, but that he’d obviously exaggerated many accounts in the interest of convincing others that Spanish colonists had become monsters.
Then, in “Lies My Teacher Told Me” by James Loewen, I read about how Columbus and his crew blithely raped women and girls as young as 8 years old, herded up villagers and selected slaves, killing the rest. Some members of his crew reported (with no guilt whatsoever) their way of extorting gold from the villagers–they were forced to wear tokens around their necks that “proved” they had paid their bi-weekly tithe of gold–if a villager was found without the proof they had paid the tithe, his hands were chopped off. There were accounts of the enslaved indigenous folks having to carry Columbus and his men around on their hands and knees–the carriages resting on their backs. There were several instances of mass suicide on behalf of the indigenous, deliberately killing themselves to escape the tyranny. There’s an account of a man describing the slave selection process, and how one woman was so frightened that, given the chance to escape, she threw her baby down so it wouldn’t hinder her survival. The witness took it as evidence that the indigenous people were inferior and barbaric, but anyone who knows anything about survival psychology understands that she most likely had been terrorized out of any semblance of humanity by that point. We are talking about the systematic and sadistic destruction of the human spirit.
We’re talking serious, bad stuff here, that often gets whitewashed in the teaching of U.S. history - oh, the hero Christopher Columbus. No, he was actually an openly greedy, manipulative, lying, horrible man with no conscience about raping, torturing, and extinguishing indigenous people.
But U.S. history is extremely Eurocentric–my high school textbooks downplayed every other culture that arrived to the Americas before Europeans… in many ways, we were taught that history began with colonization, and that indigenous folks instantly dropped dead from disease so we weren’t really displacing anyone… there was lots of “wilderness” to “tame” but not much mention of all the civilizations that populated the land when Europeans arrived. The fact that colonists interacted (war, trade, etc) with indigenous people for at least 300 years following colonization, and that indigenous culture has impacted U.S. culture in many key ways, came as a total shock to me.
I always viewed my country as an extension of European ideals, but now that I truly understand the history of this land, I realize it’s much more nuanced and complex than that.
If you’re interested in this sort of thing, “Lies My Teacher Told Me” is a phenomenal book that uses predominantly primary source material for its reporting. Loewen is basically doing a comparative analysis of 12 United States high school history textbooks and then ripping them apart for their completely inaccurate portrayals of historic events. Fascinating, paradigm-shifting stuff–at least for me. Another EXTREMELY interesting part of his book is concerning the issue of slavery and racism and how our students’ ignorance of the truth on these matters basically perpetuates the unspoken rule of white supremacy being the natural order of things–which is how, I’d wager, so many people seem to think the United States is now beyond racism and systemic unfairness. I didn’t really understand racism in this country, or how deeply it runs, how much a part of collective national identity it is, until I read this book.
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