AIM Support Group of Ohio & N. KentuckyUpdates and Announcements
Friday, October 11, 2002Subject: Christopher Columbus the Truth is being taught Most people know……………… 1492 is the year in which Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic Columbus was good at finding his way in uncharted waters The Nina, The Pinta and the Santa Maria were Columbus’ ships Queen Isabella of Spain gave Columbus money and sailors for his voyage Most people think …………. Columbus discovered America Columbus and the Native Americans he encountered got along well Columbus set out to prove that the world was round But Did you know ….………... ? The Webster definition of discover is “to obtain sight or knowledge of for the first time” – thousands upon thousands of people had seen and/or had knowledge of the Americas prior to 1492, so it was not possible to discover them. Christopher Columbus (like most of his contemporaries) knew the world was round before he set out in 1492. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand provided ships to Columbus in exchange for trade routes to the East and 90% of the wealth retrieved. Columbus’ own journals document the never-ending quest for gold. Hundreds of Indigenous people were captured, taken back to Spain and sold as slaves. Thousands were forced to find gold for the Spaniards or risk physical mutilation and death. By 1494, half the Taino (Arawak) people (those to first be encountered by Columbus) had died or were murdered, they were mostly extinct by 1550. (a mere 58 years) Rather than bringing peace, freedom and knowledge to the natives, Columbus brought slavery, war and destruction. In one passage he states: "They would make good and industrious servants" (Oct. 11, 1492) And in another: "They are fit to be ruled." Amazingly, Columbus is claiming to bring humanity to these people, and at the same time he makes them into slaves. We should consider …… We should not discount Christopher Columbus' daring voyages and many accomplishments. At the same time, however, we should be truthful about what he actually did and what he really stood for. Columbus was a colonizer, a bigot, and a thief on the grandest scale. He forcefully took the local inhabitant's land, he treated the natives as if they were animals, and he enslaved the natives for his and other's profit. Columbus stood for the medieval values of Europe: Expansion, conquest, nationalism, and the forceful conversion to Christianity. As responsible citizens we must demand that the truth be told in our children's schools, and that we recognize Christopher Columbus for who he really was, and not make him a hero. The now well-documented instances of genocidal and displacement policies of the colonial and postcolonial governments contributed to the most extensive depopulation of a group of peoples in the history of humankind! Should we celebrate this genocide with a holiday? The Enduring Legacy of 1492……… Certain events in human history change forever our conception of who we are and how we see the world. Such events not only change our maps of the world, they alter our mental landscapes as well. The event of over five hundred years ago, when a small group of Europeans and, soon after, Africans, encountered Native Americans is of this magnitude. From National Council for the Social Studies http://www.ncss.org/standards/positions/quincentenary.html Educators should ensure that good contemporary scholarship and reliable traditional sources be used in teaching students about Columbus's voyages, their historical settings, and unfolding effects. Scholarship highlights some important facets of history that are in danger of being disregarded, obscured, or ignored. Particular attention should be given to the following: 1. Columbus did not discover a new world and, thus, initiate American history. Neither did the Vikings nor did the seafaring Africans, Chinese, Pacific Islanders, or other people who may have preceded the Vikings. The land that Columbus encountered was not a new world. Rather, it was a world of peoples with rich and complex histories dating back at least fifteen thousand years or possibly earlier. On that fateful morning of October 12, 1492, Columbus did not discover a new world. He put, rather, as many historians have accurately observed, two old worlds into permanent contact. 2. The real America Columbus encountered in 1492 was a different place from the pre-contact America often portrayed in folklore, textbooks, and the mass media. The America of 1492 was not a wilderness inhabited by primitive peoples whose history was fundamentally different from that of the peoples of the Eastern Hemisphere. Many of the same phenomena characterized, rather, the history of the peoples of both the Western and the Eastern Hemispheres, including: highly developed agricultural systems, centers of dense populations, complex civilizations, large-scale empires, extensive networks of long-distance trade and cultural diffusion, complex patterns of interstate conflict and cooperation, sophisticated systems of religious and scientific belief, extensive linguistic diversity, and regional variations in levels of societal complexity. 3. Africa was very much a part of the social, economic, and political system of the Eastern Hemisphere in 1492. The Atlantic slave trade, which initially linked western Africa to Mediterranean Europe and the Atlantic islands, soon extended to the Americas. Until the end of the eighteenth century, the number of Africans who crossed the Atlantic to the Americas exceeded the number of Europeans. The labor, experiences, and cultures of the African-American people, throughout enslavement as well as after emancipation, have been significant in shaping the economic, political, and social history of the United States. 4. The encounters of Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans following 1492 are not stories of vigorous white actors confronting passive red and black spectators and victims. Moreover, these were not internally homogeneous groups but represented a diversity of peoples with varied cultural traditions, economic structures, and political systems. All parties pursued their interests as they perceived them – sometimes independently of the interests of others, sometimes in collaboration with others, and sometimes in conflict with others. All borrowed from and influenced the others and, in turn, were influenced by them. The internal diversity of the Native Americans, the Africans, and the Europeans contributed to the development of modern American pluralistic culture and contemporary world civilization. 5. As a result of forces emanating from 1492, Native Americans suffered catastrophic mortality rates. By far the greatest contributors to this devastation were diseases brought by the explorers and those who came after. The microorganisms associated with diseases such as smallpox, measles, whooping cough, chicken pox, and influenza had not evolved in the Americas; hence, the indigenous peoples had no immunity to these diseases when the Europeans and Africans arrived. These diseases were crucial allies in the European conquest of the Native American. The ensuing wars between rival European nations that were played out in this hemisphere, the four centuries of Indian and European conflicts, as well as the now well-documented instances of genocidal and displacement policies of the colonial and postcolonial governments further contributed to the most extensive depopulation of a group of peoples in the history of humankind. Despite this traumatic history of destruction and deprivation, Native American peoples have endured and are experiencing a cultural resurgence as we observe the 500th anniversary of the encounter. 6. Columbus's voyages were not just a European phenomenon but, rather, were a facet of Europe's millennia-long history of interaction with Asia and Africa. The "discovery" of America was an unintended outcome of Iberian Europe's search for an all-sea route to the "Indies" – a search stimulated in large part by the disruption of European-Asian trade routes occasioned by the collapse of the Mongol Empire. Technology critical to Columbus's voyages such as the compass, the sternpost rudder, gunpowder, and paper originated in China. The lateen sail, along with much of the geographical knowledge on which Columbus relied, originated with or was transmitted by the Arabs. 7. Although most examinations of the United States historical connections to the Eastern Hemisphere tend to focus on northwestern Europe, Spain and Portugal also had extensive effects on the Americas. From the Columbian voyages through exploration, conquest, religious conversion, settlement, and the development of Latin American mestizo cultures, Spain and Portugal had a continuing influence on life in the American continents. -- Albert RunningWolf Chairperson: AIMCISG 1148 Main Brookville, IN 47012 posted by Webmaster@ AIM Support 3:39 PM Last updated:
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