Remember, those who oppose Columbus Day stand with the KKK.
• Columbus is hated by the Ku Klux Klan.. During the 1920s, the Klan sought a repeal of the Columbus Day holiday, writing against it and disrupting its celebrations. In 1924, the Klan burned a cross to disturb a Columbus Day celebration in Pennsylvania. A Klan publication, “The American Standard,” ran an article called “Columbus Day, A Papal Fraud” in 1924. And in 1927, the Klan successfully opposed the erection of a statue of Columbus in Richmond,Virginia, only to see the decision to reject the statue reversed.
That's weird. Perhaps they just didn't know enough about him since the facts show he was a kindred spirit with their brand of racism.
" Columbus and his men round up Arawak men, women, and children and enclose 550 of them in pens and four caravels bound for the slave market of southern Spain during his second voyage to the New World. Approximately 200 perish during the passage, and their bodies are cast into the sea. After the survivors are sold as slaves in Spain, Columbus later writes: “Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold” (Resendez, 2016). Additionally, while in Haiti, Columbus orders all Natives 14 years or older to collect a certain amount of gold every three months, an impossible task since there is so little gold there. If Arawak Natives do not collect enough, Columbus has their hands cut off and tortures them. Bartolome de las Casas, a young priest, witnessed many atrocities committed by Spaniards against Native peoples. He later wrote: “I saw here cruelty on a scale no living being has ever seen or expects to see.” Las Casas describes the treatment of Natives thus: “Our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then…. The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians…” (Zinn, 1950). Las Casas also notes that the Spaniards “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.” - Columbus enslaves the Arawak and commits genocide | Investing in Native Communities (candid.org)
It's funny how some worthless bigots are trying to defend Columbus, but their agenda is exposed for all to see and anyone with more than half a brain isn't going to be fooled by this sort of ridiculous tactic.
But please, do go ahead and expose yourself as you defend the guy who displayed " cruelty on a scale no living being has ever seen or expects to see" and "committed irreparable crimes against the Indians" according to a Preist and eyewitness of his crimes and genocide.
So, the facts are:
Columbus did not 'discover America', and wasn't even the first European to land here.
Columbus did not name America, that was a name given by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller.
Columbus did not build America or actually even land here, he first landed in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, on an island he later named San Salvador but was already called Guanahani by the indigenous Lucayan people.
I guess some people are just so desperate to wrap themselves in the fictional comfort of what they grew up with and simply don't have the brain power to accept that they were given a false history that glorified a racist genocidal maniac. I find it interesting that those same folk seem to be the ones who continue to defend the confederacy and fight to keep up statues to confederate racists.
I guess some people are just so desperate to wrap themselves in the fictional comfort of what they grew up with and simply don't have the brain power to accept that they were given a false history that glorified a racist genocidal maniac.
Damn big city political machines more concerned about Italian American votes than real history.
I guess some people are just so desperate to wrap themselves in the fictional comfort of what they grew up with and simply don't have the brain power to accept that they were given a false history that glorified a racist genocidal maniac. I find it interesting that those same folk seem to be the ones who continue to defend the confederacy and fight to keep up statues to confederate racists.
"Bartolome de las Casas, a young priest, witnessed many atrocities committed by Spaniards against Native peoples."
That whole account sounds like a work of fiction. Columbus wasn't a Spaniard. Why aren't the Spaniards ostracized. The Portuguese weren't nice to the native peoples either.
Thanks for providing a post that captures the simplistic, childish view of Columbus that Robert Royal addresses below.
Yes, we get 21 century liberals who live in luxury that Columbus couldn't even dream about hold Columbus to the moral standards of the 21st Century Berkley professor. (no doubt the possibility of him being at least partly Jewish explains some of the hate), instead of a 15th century man, who discovered a land who engaged in all the same behaviors they condemn Columbus for. The interesting thing is why they don't hold the natives to the same standards. Their slavery, genorice and cannibalism is okay but Columbus is a monster? Seems like the soft bigotry of low expectations.
If the natives Columbus encountered were white he would not have enslaved them , nor would there be a Columbus Day today. For that reason the Columbus expeditions were inherently racist.
So by that logic, why should we have an Indigenous American Day as Native Americans from as far back before written history raped, killed and enslaved other Native Americans....the exact same thing you leftists are saying why there should not be a Colombus Day.?
• Columbus is hated by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) because of his Catholic faith and Genoese origin.
They didn't consider him white and what is ironic is that Columbus is hated by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) because of his Catholic faith and Genoese origin. The KKK is hated by that purveyor of hate, slavery, murder, sexual abuse, the RCC. Remember the Doctrine of Discovery, which was represented by Pope and good old Chris.
I believe that the KKK tried to uphold the Scottish/Irish moral code by flogging on wayward members.
Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke is running for U.S. Senate and tells NPR that he believes he'll be getting the votes of Donald Trump supporters. And he reiterated his own support for Trump, saying he's "100 percent behind" the Republican presidential candidate's agenda.
o matter how much you think you can gaslight us the right is and owns the KKK.
Lol. One guy, who turned into a Biden voter, vs the Democrats, who held the famous KKK klanbake convention where the KKK worked to elect a progressive nominee.
If the native Americans were white Columbus would not have been credited with "discovering" America and never would have had a holiday named after him.
The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1866 by ex-Confederate soldiers Frank McCord, Richard Reed, John Lester, John Kennedy, J. Calvin Jones and James Crowe in Pulaski, Tennessee. The group was originally a “social club” but quickly became a violent white supremacist group.
Its first grand wizard was Nathan Bedford Forrest , an ex-Confederate general and prominent slave trader.
The Democrats, led the secession from the Union over slavery. All of the founding members were probably Democrats and conservatives that supported slavery.
Italians. Columbus day was made a holiday after 11 italians were lynched in New Orleans. Though every American, of course, has benefitted from Columbus's arrival.
In any case no one objects to an Italian pride holiday. Change the name to Basilone Day in honor of the Medal of Honor recipient John Basilone who was a hero at Guadalcanal.
During his voyages through the Caribbean islands and the Central and South American coasts, Columbus came upon indigenous people that he labeled “Indians.”
Columbus and his men enslaved many of these native people and treated them with extreme violence and brutality, according to History.com.
Throughout his years in the Americas, Columbus forced natives to work for the sake of profits. Later, he sent thousands of Taino “Indians” to Spain to be sold, and many of them died during the journey. The natives who weren’t sold into slavery were forced to look for gold in mines and work on plantations.
While he was governor of what is now the Dominican Republic, Columbus killed many natives in response to their revolt, according to History.com. To prevent further rebellion, he would have the dead bodies paraded through the streets.
hy didnt Columbus leave these people alone and look for the gold and work on the plantations himself?
Why would you ever believe he would have been left alone to do that, even if he wanted to? but of course, he didn't for the same reasons that have been used since the dawn of time across the world. The work sucked. Easiers to have others do it. Again, you know slavery (and all the other things Columbus gets attacked for) existed in the new world before he arrived, right?
And you know that because something happened 530 years ago there is no necessity to honor it today. The only other person from that far back that has a holiday in America named after him is Jesus Christ.
In a 48-page report, Bobadilla informed Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Columbus's actions, including testimonies from 23 people. Columbus was accused of cutting off people's ears and noses for minor offenses, parading women naked through the streets, and selling people into slavery.Although some of the charges might have been manufactured by his political enemies, Columbus admitted to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella that many of the accusations were true. Columbus was stripped of his title as governor.
w that because something happened 530 years ago there is no necessity to honor it today.
What an insane attitude towards our history.
As Royal wrote below: . "One of the central things I sought to demonstrate in 1993 is that the radical critique of the West could not have happened without the very values—equality, human dignity, liberty—that spring from the Western tradition itself" That is the legacy of Columbus landing in this country and that's what celebrate.
A very good essay that is too long to post in its entirety. The whole thing is worth reading, especially for the implications of the simple minded demonization of Columbus:
It used to be possible to assume that any person who had graduated from high school (even grade school) would be familiar with at least a few real facts about what happened in 1492. That this is no longer the case reflects failing educational institutions, to be sure, but also, it needs to be said, an anti-American—even an anti-Western and often anti-Christian—impulse within the West itself. You don’t need to believe that, say, the French or Communist revolutions, for example, benefitted the human race to take the trouble to know dates like 1789 or 1917 and something about what they mean. Yet the year in which a far greater change came into the world—beginning the colossal process by which the various nations and continents truly became one global, interconnected world —is now, for many, something to be ashamed of, even to denounce.
When the first edition of my book 1492 and All That appeared in 1992, the contrarian view was already starting to take hold. During the 1992 quincentenary of Columbus’s first voyage, many of us who had tried to think through what it meant—both good and bad—found it difficult to say anything positive about it in print, on television and radio, or even in academic settings without being scolded. More than three decades later, scholars have done what they are meant to do: uncover even more of the rich, inspiring, frightening, appalling, glorious, and inglorious features of the Age of Discovery. But there exists something approaching a taboo about saying anything positive about Columbus or any of the other European explorers. People ready to condemn him for every ill that has occurred on these shores, strangely, would never think of crediting him with the many goods that have been achieved as well. And it would not be stretching things to say that the blanket rejection of Columbus has become something of a poorly informed metaphor for the repudiation of virtually all of Western history.
And it doesn’t stop there. As historian Wilfred McClay has observed:
The pulling down of statues, as a form of symbolic murder, is congruent with the silencing of dissenting opinion, so prevalent a feature of campus life today. In my own academic field of history, it is entirely of a piece with the weaponizing of history, in which the past is regarded as nothing more than a malleable background for the concerns of the present, and not as an independent source of wisdom or insight or perspective.
He adds:
Those caught up in the moral frenzy of the moment ought to think twice, and more than twice, about jettisoning figures of the past who do not measure up perfectly to the standards of the present—a present, moreover, for which those past figures cannot reasonably be held responsible. For one thing, as the Scriptures warn us, the measure you use is the measure you will receive. Those who expect moral perfection of others can expect no mercy for themselves, either from their posterity or from the rebukes of their own inflamed consciences.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet had the old Christian wisdom as well as mere human decency exactly right when he observed: “Use every man after his desert and who shall ’scape whipping?”
These truths have even greater significance if we consider that what is at stake is not merely the historical evaluation of Columbus or Europe or “white privilege,” but the meaning of civilization itself. Given the universal evidence of human sinfulness and imperfection, we put ourselves in the position of preferring to have no cultural roots at all if we demand only to allow into public spaces and permissible discourse what we believe—on unclear grounds—is now the perfection of moral vision. One of the central things I sought to demonstrate in 1993 is that the radical critique of the West could not have happened without the very values—equality, human dignity, liberty—that spring from the Western tradition itself, and more specifically the Christian understanding that sees every human person as a child of God, a vision that has existed in no other civilization.
Slavery, for example, has been a universal in human history from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to China, classical Greece and Rome, as well as Russia, the scattered kingdoms of Central Africa, the First Nations of Canada, various other North American tribes, the great empires of the Mayans and Aztecs, the Ottoman Empire, and the antebellum American South. Chattel slavery—outright “ownership” of other human beings—which is often said to have been invented in the American South, actually can be dated back at least to the Code of Hammurabi (1750 B.C.) and ancient Egypt. Slavery’s elimination, on the other hand, was almost entirely the work of “white” Christians like las Casas, beginning close to the time of the discovery of the Americas, and later British Quakers and Methodists drawing on Biblical sources. It still exists, of course, but in places lacking a Christian sensibility.
I t disturbs some people to learn that slavery, genocide, imperialism, even ritual human sacrifice and cannibalism were present in the Americas long before any European or other outsider ever set foot there. But they were. Slavery was a part of Native American traditions, both before and after the arrival of Europeans. It was, of course, common in the large empires, as in empires on other continents. But it also existed in what is today Canada, particularly the Pacific Northwest, and almost everywhere . As late as the notorious Trail of Tears—the mid-19th-century series of forced relocations of several tribes from the American Southeast to west of the Mississippi—there were black slaves, owned by Native Americans, among those making the trek. A 2018 Smithsonian magazine article, “How Native American Slaveholders Complicate the Trail of Tears Narrative,” recalls how awful that episode was, in which at least 4,000 died. The article also explains:
What you probably don’t picture are Cherokee slaveholders, foremost among them Cherokee chief John Ross. What you probably don’t picture are the numerous African-American slaves, Cherokee-owned, who made the brutal march themselves, or else were shipped en masse to what is now Oklahoma aboard cramped boats by their wealthy Indian masters. And what you may not know is that the federal policy of Indian removal, which ranged far beyond the Trail of Tears and the Cherokee, was not simply the vindictive scheme of Andrew Jackson, but rather a popularly endorsed, congressionally sanctioned campaign spanning the administrations of nine separate presidents.
And there was genocide by Native Americans as well, even among groups for whom any decent person will feel a great deal of sympathy. Amid this year’s July 4th celebrations, controversy erupted over the American presidents represented on Mount Rushmore and even the U.S. government’s ownership of the site. But the history of the place tells a melancholy tale. In 1776, the very year that the American colonies declared their independence, the Lakota Sioux conquered the Black Hills, where Mount Rushmore is located. They wiped out the local Cheyenne who held it previously, and the Cheyenne had taken it themselves from the Kiowa. As one informed historian pointed out:
The Lakota Sioux arrived in the West after being on the losing end of a war with other tribes in Minnesota in the late 1700s. Known as the Lakota, or simply the Sioux, they waged genocidal war on other tribes before they took over the Black Hills from the Cheyenne…. [T]hey did the exact same thing that the United States did to drive the Lakota out.
It’s very difficult to escape the network of human evils that have existed throughout history. The American author Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a highly influential book in 2015 on the history of racism and white supremacy, Between the World and Me , in the form of a kind of message to his son, Samori. The son was named after a late 19th-century African leader, Samori Ture, a devout Muslim who fought French colonialism in West Africa—but who also captured and sold black slaves, in time-honored African tradition, to finance his empire-building.
To recall such things is not to excuse Europeans or Christians who should have behaved better then and still should now. But it is to get a clearer picture of what we as a species have been, rather than the fictional representations of purely good and purely bad actors that have displaced the truth.
It’s common today to charge Christians with violence or religious bigotry not only toward Native Americans, but even against Muslims. During the 2020 riots one Islamic group called for renaming St. Louis, Missouri, because the French king for whom the city is named—Louis IX of France (1214–1270)—had fought against both Jews and Muslims. In modern pluralistic societies, where large numbers of people with very different beliefs must try to live together in some sort of civic orderliness, such religious tensions obviously need to be avoided. But it’s not so easy to transpose postmodern American concerns into the Middle Ages, let alone the Age of Discovery
If revisionist views of European nations in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance tend to make them look like nothing so much as Game of Thrones , recent scholarship about pre-Columbian America makes much of the New World appear not so very different. Our picture of native peoples in the English-speaking world has been strongly shaped by images of the relatively thinly settled Indian lands that the English colonists encountered (especially after diseases from Europe felled large percentages of native communities). It was from them that we derived the notion of the “noble savage”: physically fit, independent, living lightly on the land. That picture is not entirely wrong—for a rather small segment of indigenous populations. It depends, however, on focusing on small tribes (about 100,000 natives lived in all of what is now New England in the early 1600s, about one sixth the current population of Boston) and ignoring continual tribal warfare with its scalpings, kidnappings, and torture of captives. Most of the native settlements along the New England shores, for example, were protected by ramparts from attacks by warriors of other tribes.
When it comes to the large city-states and even empires that have been uncovered in Meso- and South America in recent decades, the argument for a universal human nature (and not an entirely happy one) across differences of culture, place, and age gains significant support. People who have actually looked into, say, Aztec civilization know that Tenochtitlán—the core of today’s Mexico City—appeared to the earliest Spanish explorers, some of whom had sailed to the most opulent Mediterranean cities, as far richer in buildings, population, foodstuffs, and various cultural achievements than any city in Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. It was also the center of an empire—perhaps containing as many as 5 million people—built by conquest over neighboring peoples and maintained by human sacrifice to bloodthirsty gods who required human blood to maintain the equilibrium of the world.
The other great civilizations of the Americas—Olmecs, Toltecs, Maya, Incas—also produced impressive urban centers and political, economic, and social networks. So much so that as archaeologists and others have uncovered the remains of those civilizations estimates of the population of the Americas have soared wildly. Some of the increase is doubtless owing to the desire of some scholars to compensate—overcompensate, say other scholars—for the relatively small numbers once thought accurate. Estimates now range from 8 to almost 120 million inhabitants. Obviously discrepancies of more than an order of magnitude call into question the methods used to produce them. But it is now beyond dispute that large urban centers existed with extensive networks and surrounding areas to feed and supply them.
But it’s also beyond dispute that these cities were not situated in an unsullied earthly paradise. They cultivated, but also depleted, natural resources; fought typical wars of conquest with one another; rose, flourished, declined, and disappeared, just like human habitations in other parts of the world. Most practiced slavery. They changed whole parts of the natural landscape—from the high plain of Mexico City to the riverbanks of the Amazon. That a much more idealized version of native peoples has survived all these discoveries reflects a hunger in postmodern Western culture for something “other” and purer. But projecting your needs onto other peoples, and ignoring their actual lives, dehumanizes them in a sense. No people will long be held in esteem—once real history enters into the picture—if they are held up as an unreal idealization that has never existed since the Garden of Eden, owing to the sinfulness, limited vision, and weakness of our universal human nature.
More Than a Blank Slate
That applies to current critics of the past as well. If you’re going to pull down statues of Columbus because he and the culture out of which he came were imperfect, what ideals will you offer in their place? In a review of 1492 and All That , the great Oxford historian J.H. Elliott suggested that it was regrettable that a book like it even needed to be written. But it did. And still does—now partly re-written and amplified to reflect some of the historical work that has been done in intervening years and to freshen arguments that may prevent us from making rash, destructive judgments about some crucial moments in our historical development.
A remarkable shift in how we view human history has become dominant since my book first appeared. For the past two centuries, there had been a widespread belief in human progress, driven by science, technology, and pragmatic uses of reason. There remained some sense that great men—Columbus, Isaac Newton, and Thomas Jefferson among them—could alter the course of history.
WEB Jul 13, 2021 · People from both categories have spent the past five years giving intellectual succor to Donald Trump. Many of the people associated with Claremont, including several of its most prominent figures, have gone all in for MAGA — some even embracing its most authoritarian, paranoid, and racist strands.
<img src="https://nativephilanthropy.candid.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/56/2019/07/1495_Formalization_Indigenous_Slave_Trade.jpg" alt="Las Casas's " brevisima="" relación="" de="" la="" destrucción="" las="" indias."="" image:="" flemish="" artists="" joos="" vanwinghe="" and="" theodor="" bry"="">
Las Casas's "Brevisima relación de la destrucción de las Indias." Image: Flemish artists Joos vanWinghe and Theodor de Bry
Columbus and his men round up Arawak men, women, and children and enclose 550 of them in pens and four caravels bound for the slave market of southern Spain during his second voyage to the New World. Approximately 200 perish during the passage, and their bodies are cast into the sea. After the survivors are sold as slaves in Spain, Columbus later writes: “Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold” (Resendez, 2016). Additionally, while in Haiti, Columbus orders all Natives 14 years or older to collect a certain amount of gold every three months, an impossible task since there is so little gold there. If Arawak Natives do not collect enough, Columbus has their hands cut off and tortures them. Bartolome de las Casas, a young priest, witnessed many atrocities committed by Spaniards against Native peoples. He later wrote: “I saw here cruelty on a scale no living being has ever seen or expects to see.” Las Casas describes the treatment of Natives thus: “Our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then…. The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians…” (Zinn, 1950). Las Casas also notes that the Spaniards “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.”
But you only view that as morally wrong because of the values brought by Columbus. As Royal wrote: "One of the central things I sought to demonstrate in 1993 is that the radical critique of the West could not have happened without the very values—equality, human dignity, liberty—that spring from the Western tradition itself, and more specifically the Christian understanding that sees every human person as a child of God, a vision that has existed in no other civilization."
The idea that arawarks lives had any value would have been absolutely foreign to their literal predators, the Caribs. They'd "committed genocide" in the modern parlance by ethnically cleansing them from the Antilles immediately before Columbus arrived and continued to hunt them after his arrival.
What this article and many Americans forget is that the Europeans invaded our land with the intent of destroying the Indian people. They brought with them their racism, disease and over the ensuing centuries almost succeeded but failed and now some need to play the “they did it too” and whataboutism game, a losing hand.
What this article and many Americans forget is that the Europeans invaded our land with the intent of destroying the Indian people.
No they didn't. They had no idea that "disease," overwhelmingly the biggest killer of natives, would wreak such havoc. In fact, it was possible it could have have worked the other way.
They brought with them their racism
Natives were just as "racist," towards members of other tribes as europeans ever were. They didn't need europeans to learn that.
Read up on Andrew Jackson, forced relocation, broken treaty after broken treaty. Every comment is only reinforcing the centuries old attempt at justification.
Sure. He was so intent on wiping out the indians that he adopted one as a baby and raised him as his own son. Why did he adopt it? Because he found it after a battle and the women in the tribe refused to care for the baby because his parents were killed. Who cared more for indian life, Jackson or the people in the tribe who refused to care for a toddler?
I suggest you read up on Andrew Jackson and learn the first thing about his motivations towards indians.
orced relocation
Do you understand the purpose of forced relocation? If Jackson wanted to destroy the indians, he would have just done nothing and made Indians subject to American laws. It would have destroyed the tribes then and there. Instead, they were given land so they could live outside the control of white people and preserve their culture.
roken treaty after broken treaty
both sides broke treaties just like treaties have been broken since the dawn of time. There's a reason we aren't governed by treaties signed 2000 years ago.
“President Andrew Jackson, in his fifth annual message, December 3, 1833
They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.”
Yes, thanks for proving my point. From the sentence immediately before and after which you snipped for some reason:
.... That those tribes can not exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens is certain......
....Such has been their fate heretofore, and if it is to be averted -- and it is -- it can only be done by a general removal beyond our boundary
That Jackson thought Indian civilization was inferior is undoubtedly true. That he wanted to protect it and stop it from being consumed by American civilization is just as obviously true. To claim that Jackson wanted it destroyed is ahistorical nonsense.
That he wanted to protect it and stop it from being consumed by American civilization is just as obviously true.
Total nonsense, he wanted them to assimilate and used those who did to fight those who would not. In the end he had no patience for them and pushed for the Indian Removal Act, the Trail of Tears.
To claim that Jackson wanted it destroyed is a historical nonsense.
Your statement appears to be historical nonsense.
Jackson was a cruel person who gave Lyncoya to Andrew as a pet and in later life Jackson tried to use Lyncoya as a political prop.
That might be the dumbest thing ever written. Seriously. It makes zero logical sense to believe removal was designed to promote assimilation.
Read this again.
That those tribes can not exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens is certain...Such has been their fate heretofore, and if it is to be averted -- and it is -- it can only be done by a general removal beyond our boundary
He's literally spelling out for you that failure to remove Indians will result in the destruction of their tribes.
Jackson was a cruel person who gave Lyncoya
Now we are in bizzarro world. Jackson is cruel for saving the life of an orphan and raising him as his son. And of course, no condemnation for the tribe members who were more than happy to let him die of exposure.
No they didn't. They had no idea that "disease," overwhelmingly the biggest killer of natives, would wreak such havoc. In fact, it was possible it could have have worked the other way.
LOL, you can't be serious...It was the intent of the US government to eliminate the Indians. WTF history do you read? assimilation or killing was the goal of the government.
Natives were just as "racist," towards members of other tribes as europeans ever were. They didn't need europeans to learn that.
are you really that ignorant of the facts? Europeans were colonizers, the poster boys for racism.
Now we are in bizzarro world. Jackson is cruel for saving the life of an orphan and raising him as his son. And of course, no condemnation for the tribe members who were more than happy to let him die of exposure.
He adopted the baby after his mother was killed by US troops during the Creek war.
Tell the whole truth Sean, not the half-truths you're using.
. WTF history do you read? assimilation or killing was the goal of the government.
lol. At least try and be bound by logic.
If "assimilation or killing" was the goal, they wouldn't have moved them west, onto their own land to be governed under their own rules.
All you have to do is read Jackson's own words. IF they government did nothing, the Southern tribes would simply disappear because they "assimilated" and became Americans, like those in the north. To give them the option to avoid this, the removal program was created.
e you really that ignorant of the facts
Are you? Do you not know how tribes treated each other before and after columbus arrived?
During American colonial times , many colonialists and particularly the English felt their civilization to be superior: they were Christians , and they believed their notions of private property to be a superior system of land tenure. Colonial and frontier encroachers inflicted a practice of cultural assimilation, meaning that tribes such as the Cherokee were forced to adopt aspects of white civilization. This acculturation was originally proposed by George Washington and was well underway among the Cherokee and the Choctaw by the beginning of the 19th century. [ 13 ] Native peoples were encouraged to adopt European customs. First, they were forced to convert to Christianity and abandon traditional religious practices. They were also required to learn to speak and read English , although there was interest in creating a writing and printing system for a few Native languages , especially Cherokee , exemplified by Sequoyah's Cherokee syllabary . The Native Americans also had to adopt settler values, such as monogamous marriage and abandon non-marital sex. Finally, they had to accept the concept of individual ownership of land and other property (including, in some instances, African people as slaves). Many Cherokee people adopted all, or some, of these practices, including Cherokee chief John Ross , John Ridge , and Elias Boudinot , as represented by the newspaper he edited, The Cherokee Phoenix .
Assimilation. Like I said It was too slow for Jackson once he became POTUS. After the SCOTUS fiasco Georgia simply expelled different groups piecemeal and other states began to follow suit while asking the Feds for assistance which resulted in the IRA.
It makes zero logical sense to believe removal was designed to promote assimilation.
You must have confused yourself, Jackson originally preferred assimilation but over time came to understand that the only way for white people in the southeast to prosper was to promote farming and the creation of large plantations and removing the Indians would somehow protect both the whites and the Indians.
Now we are in bizzarro world.
At least you admit the BS you are peddling, thank you for that.
Jackson is cruel for saving the life of an orphan and raising him as his son.
Yes, he gave him to his white adopted 4-year-old Andrew as a pet . And he wasn't the only NAI Mrs Jackson attempted to raise, there were at least two others Charley and Theodore. Charley disappeared from history after the move to Hermitage. Jackson was consumed by getting Lyncoda or Theodore into West Point. He even demonstrated 11 year old Lyncoda's intelligence for Van Bueren to no avail. Lyncoda was apprenticed to a saddle maker at age 13 and died from consumption age 16. Theodore allegedly died at Hermitage.
And of course, no condemnation for the tribe members who were more than happy to let him die of exposure.
Can't condemn 80 female and infant prisoners of war for something that didn't happen.
On November 3rd 1813, 1,000 cavalry from the Tennessee militia attacked a village called Tallushatchee, on the orders of future U.S. President Andrew Jackson. The village was Muscogee (sometimes called Creek, as noted by The Muscogee Nation.) By the end of the day, approximately 200 Muscogee people had been killed.
...
As noted by Slate, the soldiers killed all the men who had lived in the village and set houses on fire. One of the soldiers was frontiersman Davy Crockett, who would later briefly describe the massacre, saying only, "We shot them like dogs."
Many children were orphaned in the attack. As described by the National Parks Service, one of the survivors was an infant boy, still holding onto his mother's body. This baby would soon attract the attention of Andrew Jackson.
...
It is believed that Jackson's interest in the child was not due to guilt at having been responsible for Lyncoya's parents' deaths, but because he felt that he had experienced similar trauma.
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Although Jackson wasn't entirely orphaned until his mother died when he was 14, his father and brothers died in the Revolution and he was plagued by feelings for orphans; he collected four white sons of fellow soldiers and named them all Andrew Jackson (fill in parents last name) plus the three Native American Indians orphaned by Jacksons own troops fighting the Creek.
Was bringing home an Indian boy—after slaughtering his family—an act of compassion or of political expedience?
To give them the option to avoid this, the removal program was created.
Bizarro word is an apt description. The Indians were removed to take their land. PERIOD.
Are you? Do you not know how tribes treated each other before and after columbus arrived?
Like the Europeans treated each other for ever? Like the Colonies, the French and British and Spanish et al., continued when they invaded North and South America? Do you think "we" were saving them from themselves?
That is the height of white christian nationalist arrogance.
If "assimilation or killing" was the goal, they wouldn't have moved them west, onto their own land to be governed under their own rules.
Land which the government continuously took, while breaking 400 treaties not to mention moving farmers hunters, tradesmen, blacksmiths and ranchers from reasonably fertile lands all over the southeast to the arid plains of Oklahoma before and after the Civil War. Find Gold in the Black Hills?
In the 1868 treaty, signed at Fort Laramie and other military posts in Sioux country, the United States recognized the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation, set aside for exclusive use by the Sioux people. However, after the discovery of gold there in 1874, the United States confiscated the land in 1877 . Exhibit: Black Hills Treaty (archives.gov)
their own land to be governed under their own rules.
Perhaps the most naive statement ever made by a Haole about native American history...
If "assimilation or killing" was the goal, they wouldn't have moved them west, onto their own land to be governed under their own rules.
That is a very ignorant comment. At no time did the native nation live by their rules, they were and still are under the thumb of the US government.
Jackson and his troops killed women and children in that battle and took prisoners. The refusal to care for that child was because most were wounded.
That's the truth. If Jackson simply wanted to destroy Indians he would have left him to die, like his tribe did. That's the truth. If Jackson simply wanted to destroy Indians he would have left him to die, like his tribe did.
LOL, in that battle Jackson and his troops wiped out most of the Creek those that survived were taken prisoners. Is that how bigots and racists saved Indians?
Are you? Do you not know how tribes treated each other before and after columbus arrived?
There you go again with the ''they did it too''.....actuelly I do, you are the one that is lacking in that respect.
both sides broke treaties just like treaties have been broken since the dawn of time. There's a reason we aren't governed by treaties signed 2000 years ago.
Yet SCOTUS calls treaties the highest law of the land.
The Supreme Court case Worcester v. Georgia ruled that states did not have the right to regulate Native American land, but President Andrew Jackson ignored the ruling:
The case
In 1832, the Supreme Court ruled 5–1 that Georgia could not impose laws on the Cherokee Nation, a self-governing nation with a treaty-guaranteed right to its land. The case involved white missionaries who were advising the Cherokee on how to resist Georgia's attempts to impose state laws on them
Jackson's response
Jackson refused to enforce the ruling, and instead called on the Cherokee to relocate or fall under Georgia's jurisdiction. He said, "The decision of the supreme court has fell still born, and they find that it cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate".
The outcome
Georgia ignored the ruling and continued to press the federal government to remove the Cherokees. In 1838, the U.S. Army forcibly removed the remaining Cherokees from Georgia and marched them to Indian Territory, which is now Oklahoma. This event is known as the Trail of Tears.
Article VI, Clause 2 -This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
Think the Constitution sez otherwise 'bout the "highest law in the land" - ya think?
"This Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty. This Court has also repeatedly taken the position that an Act of Congress, which must comply with the Constitution, is on a full parity with a treaty, and that when a statute which is subsequent in time is inconsistent with a treaty, the statute to the extent of conflict renders the treaty null."
Let me make it as simple and direct as possibe, Here's Justice Black making it explicit:
This Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty. This Court has also repeatedly taken the position that an Act of Congress, which must comply with the Constitution, is on a full parity with a treaty, and that when a statute which is subsequent in time is inconsistent with a treaty, the statute to the extent of conflict renders the treaty null."
Federal statute law even trumps treaties. The only thing Treaties have supremacy over is state law.
This Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty. This Court has also repeatedly taken the position that an Act of Congress, which must comply with the Constitution, is on a full parity with a treaty, and that when a statute which is subsequent in time is inconsistent with a treaty, the statute to the extent of conflict renders the treaty null."
How much plainer do I need to make it? It's getting ridiculous.
This Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty
This isn't a debatable question. It's not a gray area. To argue otherwise defies the explicit language of the Supremacy Clause, the unbroken precedent of the Supreme Court and literal common sense.
When I see some of the comments from our friends on the left, I think they would be better off if they just run along and try and find the truth in which they speak.
Incorrect - treaties between the U.S. and Native Nations/Tribes were the Native Nations/Tribes telling the U.S. government what the government must do for the Nations/Tribes to agree with. Basically, the treaties were a form of the Nations/Tribes telling the U.S. what the Nations/Tribes to keep as theirs and theirs alone.
Sovereign contracts
Treaties are legally binding contracts between sovereign nations, and the treaties between the United States and American Indian tribes are considered to be the supreme law of the land.
Trade of rights
Tribes gave up certain rights to land and assets in exchange for protection, services, and payments from the United States.
Reserved rights
Tribes reserved certain lands and rights for themselves and their future generations.
Trust relationship
The trust relationship between Indian tribes and the United States government is well established in law.
Treaties between the United States and American Indian tribes covered a variety of issues, including: land boundaries, hunting and fishing rights, and guarantees of peace.
The practice of treaty-making between the United States and American Indian tribes ended in 1871 when the House of Representatives stopped recognizing individual tribes as independent nations.
Between 1778 and 1871, the US signed approximately 370 treaties with various Native American tribes.
According to historical records, the United States has broken more than 370 treaties with Native American nations, with many experts stating that nearly all of these treaties have been violated in some way by the US government.
Most historians agree that the US government has broken the majority of these treaties, leading to significant land loss and broken promises for Native American nations.
That's neat. Although I'm not sure what Supreme Court case this supposedly overturns. And certainly, in the entire history of our country, the Court has never ruled contrary to what Justice Black wrote, so the Court's ability to overturn itself isn't really relevant. It's been the same principle since 1789.
If you can find a case that is actually relevant to the discussion and gives you even the tiniest bit of a leg to stand on, feel free to get back to me.
Great article. You're about to be put against the wall and shot (metaphorically), as your article goes against the preferred narrative of many in here. Just know, I totally agree with you. Many in here don't actually care what's true. They only care about being able to tear down the West.
I dont think anyone here is interested in tearing down the west. I know I'm not. I just want the truth told. Yes, the Europeans conquered the native Americans, but since Native Americans are Americans and have been since June 2, 1924, why are we celebrating their misfortunes and mistreatment?
Interestingly, a number of the tribes/nations were made "U. S. citizens" through the treaties provided they completely follow the requirements of the treaty.
Should confederate flags fly on public property in the south, or anywhere in the U.S. ?
I'm not talking about legal rights, I am asking should.
The same principle applies to Columbus Day. The writer says societal standards change, slavery was once commonly accepted. Therefore Columbus is worthy of adulation. But society has changed away from admiring "conquerors". Time only goes in one direction.
In the City of Chicago, Columbus Day is an observed holiday. At 11:45 a.m., the 2024 Columbus Day Parade, hosted by by the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, steps off at the corner of State Street and Wacker Drive .
Look up the definition of genocide and a review of history would expand your knowledge of the actions and reactions between the US and NA nations.
I did answer your vague question pointing out that Columbus was the poster boy. If, like Sean you are stuck on whataboutism and they did it too as an excuse for Columbus good luck since that is a losers hand.
They came, camped, explored New England and some say trekked off through Nebraska.
Others say they returned to Iceland, uninterested in returning to 'merica the golden forests in Lief's dreams.
Either way, they respected the land and picked up after themselves leaving almost no traces except for the runes and messages they oft carved in stone.
Remember, those who oppose Columbus Day stand with the KKK.
That's weird. Perhaps they just didn't know enough about him since the facts show he was a kindred spirit with their brand of racism.
" Columbus and his men round up Arawak men, women, and children and enclose 550 of them in pens and four caravels bound for the slave market of southern Spain during his second voyage to the New World. Approximately 200 perish during the passage, and their bodies are cast into the sea. After the survivors are sold as slaves in Spain, Columbus later writes: “Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold” (Resendez, 2016). Additionally, while in Haiti, Columbus orders all Natives 14 years or older to collect a certain amount of gold every three months, an impossible task since there is so little gold there. If Arawak Natives do not collect enough, Columbus has their hands cut off and tortures them. Bartolome de las Casas, a young priest, witnessed many atrocities committed by Spaniards against Native peoples. He later wrote: “I saw here cruelty on a scale no living being has ever seen or expects to see.” Las Casas describes the treatment of Natives thus: “Our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then…. The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians…” (Zinn, 1950). Las Casas also notes that the Spaniards “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.” - Columbus enslaves the Arawak and commits genocide | Investing in Native Communities (candid.org)
It's funny how some worthless bigots are trying to defend Columbus, but their agenda is exposed for all to see and anyone with more than half a brain isn't going to be fooled by this sort of ridiculous tactic.
But please, do go ahead and expose yourself as you defend the guy who displayed " cruelty on a scale no living being has ever seen or expects to see" and "committed irreparable crimes against the Indians" according to a Preist and eyewitness of his crimes and genocide.
So, the facts are:
I guess some people are just so desperate to wrap themselves in the fictional comfort of what they grew up with and simply don't have the brain power to accept that they were given a false history that glorified a racist genocidal maniac. I find it interesting that those same folk seem to be the ones who continue to defend the confederacy and fight to keep up statues to confederate racists.
Damn big city political machines more concerned about Italian American votes than real history.
This article is a classic example of that.
Thanks for providing a post that captures the simplistic, childish view of Columbus that Robert Royal addresses below.
Yes, we get 21 century liberals who live in luxury that Columbus couldn't even dream about hold Columbus to the moral standards of the 21st Century Berkley professor. (no doubt the possibility of him being at least partly Jewish explains some of the hate), instead of a 15th century man, who discovered a land who engaged in all the same behaviors they condemn Columbus for. The interesting thing is why they don't hold the natives to the same standards. Their slavery, genorice and cannibalism is okay but Columbus is a monster? Seems like the soft bigotry of low expectations.
This is a reenactment of the discussion between Colonel Miles and Sitting Bull discussing the myths vs reality of western history.
If the natives Columbus encountered were white he would not have enslaved them , nor would there be a Columbus Day today. For that reason the Columbus expeditions were inherently racist.
So by that logic, why should we have an Indigenous American Day as Native Americans from as far back before written history raped, killed and enslaved other Native Americans....the exact same thing you leftists are saying why there should not be a Colombus Day.?
How you can you possibly claim to know that?
Hyperbole
He was working for the Catholic Spanish Throne and by extension the Pope. That is enough for the KKK to hate them.
They held Catholics in contempt, dead, alive, historical or current.
They didn't consider him white and what is ironic is that Columbus is hated by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) because of his Catholic faith and Genoese origin. The KKK is hated by that purveyor of hate, slavery, murder, sexual abuse, the RCC. Remember the Doctrine of Discovery, which was represented by Pope and good old Chris.
I believe that the KKK tried to uphold the Scottish/Irish moral code by flogging on wayward members.
Rather antagonistic seed.
Reminds me of the great "white pride" days of the 70's. Why is it we don't have a Miss White America ?
Reminds me of the great "white pride" days of the 70's. Why is it we don't have a Miss White America ?
The KKK and many other progressives seem to get very upset over the idea of columbus day. Why is that?
The KKK and many other progressives
Because he didn't discover America and that he was a murderer, slaver, pedophile rapist for starters.
Can you provide verifiable proof?
The KKK was spawned by what became the democrat party.
of what?
No matter how much you think you can gaslight us the right is and owns the KKK.
Well then he fit right in, didn't he. Although I guess he wasn't a cannibal so there were some differences.
[✘]
Lol. One guy, who turned into a Biden voter, vs the Democrats, who held the famous KKK klanbake convention where the KKK worked to elect a progressive nominee.
If the native Americans were white Columbus would not have been credited with "discovering" America and never would have had a holiday named after him.
He did fit right in with many other Europeans, and very well with the RCC.
Of course, but it would be waste of time posting it for you.
backwards as usual?
The Democrats, led the secession from the Union over slavery. All of the founding members were probably Democrats and conservatives that supported slavery.
who is "we" ?
Italians. Columbus day was made a holiday after 11 italians were lynched in New Orleans. Though every American, of course, has benefitted from Columbus's arrival.
Damn NYC’s Tammany Hall and other metropolitan Dem political machines.
So Italians own the concept of America?
In any case no one objects to an Italian pride holiday. Change the name to Basilone Day in honor of the Medal of Honor recipient John Basilone who was a hero at Guadalcanal.
Recipient, not winner. No one "wins" a Medal of Honor
ok
It's a point of contention for military people
One question . Why didnt Columbus leave these people alone and look for the gold and work on the plantations himself?
hy didnt Columbus leave these people alone and look for the gold and work on the plantations himself?
Why would you ever believe he would have been left alone to do that, even if he wanted to? but of course, he didn't for the same reasons that have been used since the dawn of time across the world. The work sucked. Easiers to have others do it. Again, you know slavery (and all the other things Columbus gets attacked for) existed in the new world before he arrived, right?
And you know that because something happened 530 years ago there is no necessity to honor it today. The only other person from that far back that has a holiday in America named after him is Jesus Christ.
What an insane attitude towards our history.
As Royal wrote below: . "One of the central things I sought to demonstrate in 1993 is that the radical critique of the West could not have happened without the very values—equality, human dignity, liberty—that spring from the Western tradition itself" That is the legacy of Columbus landing in this country and that's what celebrate.
A very good essay that is too long to post in its entirety. The whole thing is worth reading, especially for the implications of the simple minded demonization of Columbus:
It used to be possible to assume that any person who had graduated from high school (even grade school) would be familiar with at least a few real facts about what happened in 1492. That this is no longer the case reflects failing educational institutions, to be sure, but also, it needs to be said, an anti-American—even an anti-Western and often anti-Christian—impulse within the West itself. You don’t need to believe that, say, the French or Communist revolutions, for example, benefitted the human race to take the trouble to know dates like 1789 or 1917 and something about what they mean. Yet the year in which a far greater change came into the world—beginning the colossal process by which the various nations and continents truly became one global, interconnected world —is now, for many, something to be ashamed of, even to denounce.
When the first edition of my book 1492 and All That appeared in 1992, the contrarian view was already starting to take hold. During the 1992 quincentenary of Columbus’s first voyage, many of us who had tried to think through what it meant—both good and bad—found it difficult to say anything positive about it in print, on television and radio, or even in academic settings without being scolded. More than three decades later, scholars have done what they are meant to do: uncover even more of the rich, inspiring, frightening, appalling, glorious, and inglorious features of the Age of Discovery. But there exists something approaching a taboo about saying anything positive about Columbus or any of the other European explorers. People ready to condemn him for every ill that has occurred on these shores, strangely, would never think of crediting him with the many goods that have been achieved as well. And it would not be stretching things to say that the blanket rejection of Columbus has become something of a poorly informed metaphor for the repudiation of virtually all of Western history.
And it doesn’t stop there. As historian Wilfred McClay has observed:
He adds:
Shakespeare’s Hamlet had the old Christian wisdom as well as mere human decency exactly right when he observed: “Use every man after his desert and who shall ’scape whipping?”
These truths have even greater significance if we consider that what is at stake is not merely the historical evaluation of Columbus or Europe or “white privilege,” but the meaning of civilization itself. Given the universal evidence of human sinfulness and imperfection, we put ourselves in the position of preferring to have no cultural roots at all if we demand only to allow into public spaces and permissible discourse what we believe—on unclear grounds—is now the perfection of moral vision. One of the central things I sought to demonstrate in 1993 is that the radical critique of the West could not have happened without the very values—equality, human dignity, liberty—that spring from the Western tradition itself, and more specifically the Christian understanding that sees every human person as a child of God, a vision that has existed in no other civilization.
Slavery, for example, has been a universal in human history from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to China, classical Greece and Rome, as well as Russia, the scattered kingdoms of Central Africa, the First Nations of Canada, various other North American tribes, the great empires of the Mayans and Aztecs, the Ottoman Empire, and the antebellum American South. Chattel slavery—outright “ownership” of other human beings—which is often said to have been invented in the American South, actually can be dated back at least to the Code of Hammurabi (1750 B.C.) and ancient Egypt. Slavery’s elimination, on the other hand, was almost entirely the work of “white” Christians like las Casas, beginning close to the time of the discovery of the Americas, and later British Quakers and Methodists drawing on Biblical sources. It still exists, of course, but in places lacking a Christian sensibility.
I t disturbs some people to learn that slavery, genocide, imperialism, even ritual human sacrifice and cannibalism were present in the Americas long before any European or other outsider ever set foot there. But they were. Slavery was a part of Native American traditions, both before and after the arrival of Europeans. It was, of course, common in the large empires, as in empires on other continents. But it also existed in what is today Canada, particularly the Pacific Northwest, and almost everywhere . As late as the notorious Trail of Tears—the mid-19th-century series of forced relocations of several tribes from the American Southeast to west of the Mississippi—there were black slaves, owned by Native Americans, among those making the trek. A 2018 Smithsonian magazine article, “How Native American Slaveholders Complicate the Trail of Tears Narrative,” recalls how awful that episode was, in which at least 4,000 died. The article also explains:
And there was genocide by Native Americans as well, even among groups for whom any decent person will feel a great deal of sympathy. Amid this year’s July 4th celebrations, controversy erupted over the American presidents represented on Mount Rushmore and even the U.S. government’s ownership of the site. But the history of the place tells a melancholy tale. In 1776, the very year that the American colonies declared their independence, the Lakota Sioux conquered the Black Hills, where Mount Rushmore is located. They wiped out the local Cheyenne who held it previously, and the Cheyenne had taken it themselves from the Kiowa. As one informed historian pointed out:
It’s very difficult to escape the network of human evils that have existed throughout history. The American author Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a highly influential book in 2015 on the history of racism and white supremacy, Between the World and Me , in the form of a kind of message to his son, Samori. The son was named after a late 19th-century African leader, Samori Ture, a devout Muslim who fought French colonialism in West Africa—but who also captured and sold black slaves, in time-honored African tradition, to finance his empire-building.
To recall such things is not to excuse Europeans or Christians who should have behaved better then and still should now. But it is to get a clearer picture of what we as a species have been, rather than the fictional representations of purely good and purely bad actors that have displaced the truth.
It’s common today to charge Christians with violence or religious bigotry not only toward Native Americans, but even against Muslims. During the 2020 riots one Islamic group called for renaming St. Louis, Missouri, because the French king for whom the city is named—Louis IX of France (1214–1270)—had fought against both Jews and Muslims. In modern pluralistic societies, where large numbers of people with very different beliefs must try to live together in some sort of civic orderliness, such religious tensions obviously need to be avoided. But it’s not so easy to transpose postmodern American concerns into the Middle Ages, let alone the Age of Discovery
If revisionist views of European nations in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance tend to make them look like nothing so much as Game of Thrones , recent scholarship about pre-Columbian America makes much of the New World appear not so very different. Our picture of native peoples in the English-speaking world has been strongly shaped by images of the relatively thinly settled Indian lands that the English colonists encountered (especially after diseases from Europe felled large percentages of native communities). It was from them that we derived the notion of the “noble savage”: physically fit, independent, living lightly on the land. That picture is not entirely wrong—for a rather small segment of indigenous populations. It depends, however, on focusing on small tribes (about 100,000 natives lived in all of what is now New England in the early 1600s, about one sixth the current population of Boston) and ignoring continual tribal warfare with its scalpings, kidnappings, and torture of captives. Most of the native settlements along the New England shores, for example, were protected by ramparts from attacks by warriors of other tribes.
When it comes to the large city-states and even empires that have been uncovered in Meso- and South America in recent decades, the argument for a universal human nature (and not an entirely happy one) across differences of culture, place, and age gains significant support. People who have actually looked into, say, Aztec civilization know that Tenochtitlán—the core of today’s Mexico City—appeared to the earliest Spanish explorers, some of whom had sailed to the most opulent Mediterranean cities, as far richer in buildings, population, foodstuffs, and various cultural achievements than any city in Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. It was also the center of an empire—perhaps containing as many as 5 million people—built by conquest over neighboring peoples and maintained by human sacrifice to bloodthirsty gods who required human blood to maintain the equilibrium of the world.
The other great civilizations of the Americas—Olmecs, Toltecs, Maya, Incas—also produced impressive urban centers and political, economic, and social networks. So much so that as archaeologists and others have uncovered the remains of those civilizations estimates of the population of the Americas have soared wildly. Some of the increase is doubtless owing to the desire of some scholars to compensate—overcompensate, say other scholars—for the relatively small numbers once thought accurate. Estimates now range from 8 to almost 120 million inhabitants. Obviously discrepancies of more than an order of magnitude call into question the methods used to produce them. But it is now beyond dispute that large urban centers existed with extensive networks and surrounding areas to feed and supply them.
But it’s also beyond dispute that these cities were not situated in an unsullied earthly paradise. They cultivated, but also depleted, natural resources; fought typical wars of conquest with one another; rose, flourished, declined, and disappeared, just like human habitations in other parts of the world. Most practiced slavery. They changed whole parts of the natural landscape—from the high plain of Mexico City to the riverbanks of the Amazon. That a much more idealized version of native peoples has survived all these discoveries reflects a hunger in postmodern Western culture for something “other” and purer. But projecting your needs onto other peoples, and ignoring their actual lives, dehumanizes them in a sense. No people will long be held in esteem—once real history enters into the picture—if they are held up as an unreal idealization that has never existed since the Garden of Eden, owing to the sinfulness, limited vision, and weakness of our universal human nature.
More Than a Blank Slate
That applies to current critics of the past as well. If you’re going to pull down statues of Columbus because he and the culture out of which he came were imperfect, what ideals will you offer in their place? In a review of 1492 and All That , the great Oxford historian J.H. Elliott suggested that it was regrettable that a book like it even needed to be written. But it did. And still does—now partly re-written and amplified to reflect some of the historical work that has been done in intervening years and to freshen arguments that may prevent us from making rash, destructive judgments about some crucial moments in our historical development.
A remarkable shift in how we view human history has become dominant since my book first appeared. For the past two centuries, there had been a widespread belief in human progress, driven by science, technology, and pragmatic uses of reason. There remained some sense that great men—Columbus, Isaac Newton, and Thomas Jefferson among them—could alter the course of history.
What the Hell Happened to the Claremont Institute ? - The Bulwark
WEB Jul 13, 2021 · People from both categories have spent the past five years giving intellectual succor to Donald Trump. Many of the people associated with Claremont, including several of its most prominent figures, have gone all in for MAGA — some even embracing its most authoritarian, paranoid, and racist strands.
It's easier to blame it all one Italian explorer. As of yet, no responses to the facts presented in this interesting and informative article.
1495
Columbus enslaves the Arawak and commits genocide
Columbus and his men round up Arawak men, women, and children and enclose 550 of them in pens and four caravels bound for the slave market of southern Spain during his second voyage to the New World. Approximately 200 perish during the passage, and their bodies are cast into the sea. After the survivors are sold as slaves in Spain, Columbus later writes: “Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold” (Resendez, 2016). Additionally, while in Haiti, Columbus orders all Natives 14 years or older to collect a certain amount of gold every three months, an impossible task since there is so little gold there. If Arawak Natives do not collect enough, Columbus has their hands cut off and tortures them. Bartolome de las Casas, a young priest, witnessed many atrocities committed by Spaniards against Native peoples. He later wrote: “I saw here cruelty on a scale no living being has ever seen or expects to see.” Las Casas describes the treatment of Natives thus: “Our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then…. The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians…” (Zinn, 1950). Las Casas also notes that the Spaniards “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.”
But you only view that as morally wrong because of the values brought by Columbus. As Royal wrote: "One of the central things I sought to demonstrate in 1993 is that the radical critique of the West could not have happened without the very values—equality, human dignity, liberty—that spring from the Western tradition itself, and more specifically the Christian understanding that sees every human person as a child of God, a vision that has existed in no other civilization."
The idea that arawarks lives had any value would have been absolutely foreign to their literal predators, the Caribs. They'd "committed genocide" in the modern parlance by ethnically cleansing them from the Antilles immediately before Columbus arrived and continued to hunt them after his arrival.
We have no national American holidays named for the Caribs.
Columbus was like the Kanamits, alien locusts in search of lesser locusts to conquer and strip their world of its riches.
Like the Kamanitz, Columbus believed he came to these lands "To serve Man".
He was profit driven. Full stop. The End.
There cultural imprint, thankfully, is limited. Thus no holidays.
What this article and many Americans forget is that the Europeans invaded our land with the intent of destroying the Indian people. They brought with them their racism, disease and over the ensuing centuries almost succeeded but failed and now some need to play the “they did it too” and whataboutism game, a losing hand.
No they didn't. They had no idea that "disease," overwhelmingly the biggest killer of natives, would wreak such havoc. In fact, it was possible it could have have worked the other way.
They brought with them their racism
Natives were just as "racist," towards members of other tribes as europeans ever were. They didn't need europeans to learn that.
“No they didn't.”
Of course they did.
Read up on Andrew Jackson, forced relocation, broken treaty after broken treaty. Every comment is only reinforcing the centuries old attempt at justification.
Sure. He was so intent on wiping out the indians that he adopted one as a baby and raised him as his own son. Why did he adopt it? Because he found it after a battle and the women in the tribe refused to care for the baby because his parents were killed. Who cared more for indian life, Jackson or the people in the tribe who refused to care for a toddler?
I suggest you read up on Andrew Jackson and learn the first thing about his motivations towards indians.
orced relocation
Do you understand the purpose of forced relocation? If Jackson wanted to destroy the indians, he would have just done nothing and made Indians subject to American laws. It would have destroyed the tribes then and there. Instead, they were given land so they could live outside the control of white people and preserve their culture.
roken treaty after broken treaty
both sides broke treaties just like treaties have been broken since the dawn of time. There's a reason we aren't governed by treaties signed 2000 years ago.
“President Andrew Jackson, in his fifth annual message, December 3, 1833
They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.”
Apologies aside.
Yes, thanks for proving my point. From the sentence immediately before and after which you snipped for some reason:
That Jackson thought Indian civilization was inferior is undoubtedly true. That he wanted to protect it and stop it from being consumed by American civilization is just as obviously true. To claim that Jackson wanted it destroyed is ahistorical nonsense.
They called it nationalism.
Total nonsense, he wanted them to assimilate and used those who did to fight those who would not. In the end he had no patience for them and pushed for the Indian Removal Act, the Trail of Tears.
Your statement appears to be historical nonsense.
Jackson was a cruel person who gave Lyncoya to Andrew as a pet and in later life Jackson tried to use Lyncoya as a political prop.
Lyncoya: The Tragic Story Of Andrew Jackson's Adopted Creek Son (grunge.com)
That might be the dumbest thing ever written. Seriously. It makes zero logical sense to believe removal was designed to promote assimilation.
Read this again.
He's literally spelling out for you that failure to remove Indians will result in the destruction of their tribes.
Jackson was a cruel person who gave Lyncoya
Now we are in bizzarro world. Jackson is cruel for saving the life of an orphan and raising him as his son. And of course, no condemnation for the tribe members who were more than happy to let him die of exposure.
LOL, you can't be serious...It was the intent of the US government to eliminate the Indians. WTF history do you read? assimilation or killing was the goal of the government.
are you really that ignorant of the facts? Europeans were colonizers, the poster boys for racism.
He adopted the baby after his mother was killed by US troops during the Creek war.
Tell the whole truth Sean, not the half-truths you're using.
lol. At least try and be bound by logic.
If "assimilation or killing" was the goal, they wouldn't have moved them west, onto their own land to be governed under their own rules.
All you have to do is read Jackson's own words. IF they government did nothing, the Southern tribes would simply disappear because they "assimilated" and became Americans, like those in the north. To give them the option to avoid this, the removal program was created.
e you really that ignorant of the facts
Are you? Do you not know how tribes treated each other before and after columbus arrived?
No kidding. Again, he found him and took care of him when his own tribe refused to.
That's the truth. If Jackson simply wanted to destroy Indians he would have left him to die, like his tribe did.
Assimilation. Like I said It was too slow for Jackson once he became POTUS. After the SCOTUS fiasco Georgia simply expelled different groups piecemeal and other states began to follow suit while asking the Feds for assistance which resulted in the IRA.
You must have confused yourself, Jackson originally preferred assimilation but over time came to understand that the only way for white people in the southeast to prosper was to promote farming and the creation of large plantations and removing the Indians would somehow protect both the whites and the Indians.
At least you admit the BS you are peddling, thank you for that.
Can't condemn 80 female and infant prisoners of war for something that didn't happen.
Although Jackson wasn't entirely orphaned until his mother died when he was 14, his father and brothers died in the Revolution and he was plagued by feelings for orphans; he collected four white sons of fellow soldiers and named them all Andrew Jackson (fill in parents last name) plus the three Native American Indians orphaned by Jacksons own troops fighting the Creek.
Andrew Jackson’s adopted son Lyncoya: Why did Jackson bring home a Creek Indian? (slate.com)
Bizarro word is an apt description. The Indians were removed to take their land. PERIOD.
Like the Europeans treated each other for ever? Like the Colonies, the French and British and Spanish et al., continued when they invaded North and South America? Do you think "we" were saving them from themselves?
That is the height of white christian nationalist arrogance.
Land which the government continuously took, while breaking 400 treaties not to mention moving farmers hunters, tradesmen, blacksmiths and ranchers from reasonably fertile lands all over the southeast to the arid plains of Oklahoma before and after the Civil War. Find Gold in the Black Hills?
their own land to be governed under their own rules.
Perhaps the most naive statement ever made by a Haole about native American history...
sad.
Since he could not have found the baby after the battle unless he'd been there this hardly needed to be spelled out.
That is a very ignorant comment. At no time did the native nation live by their rules, they were and still are under the thumb of the US government.
Jackson and his troops killed women and children in that battle and took prisoners. The refusal to care for that child was because most were wounded.
LOL, in that battle Jackson and his troops wiped out most of the Creek those that survived were taken prisoners. Is that how bigots and racists saved Indians?
There you go again with the ''they did it too''.....actuelly I do, you are the one that is lacking in that respect.
.
both sides broke treaties just like treaties have been broken since the dawn of time. There's a reason we aren't governed by treaties signed 2000 years ago.
Yet SCOTUS calls treaties the highest law of the land.
The Constitution supersedes treaties. Treaties are not the highest law in the land
So treaties are made to be broken ?
Article VI, Clause 2 -This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
Think the Constitution sez otherwise 'bout the "highest law in the land" - ya think?
Read it again. It's a list. It makes clear that the listed items have supremacy over state and local laws.
It's also common sense. Do you think the government can make a treaty with Canada to get rid of the First Amendment?
Wrong again.
John - just for shytes and grins - look at the following to get your answer.
Some interesting "stuff" -
I think you should be telling Sean to read that.
"This Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty. This Court has also repeatedly taken the position that an Act of Congress, which must comply with the Constitution, is on a full parity with a treaty, and that when a statute which is subsequent in time is inconsistent with a treaty, the statute to the extent of conflict renders the treaty null."
Wrong again.
Let me make it as simple and direct as possibe, Here's Justice Black making it explicit:
Federal statute law even trumps treaties. The only thing Treaties have supremacy over is state law.
yeah, he should
grasping at straw now?
grasping at straw now?
how many times do I need to post this?
How much plainer do I need to make it? It's getting ridiculous.
Very good. You've confirmed what I've already explained.
You are ridiculous by quoting from a 1957 cased based on a murder on an American airbase in England.
The case was decided on the Bill of Rights.
Native American tribes are not subject to the Bill of Rights because they weren't a party to the Constitution.
I think you will find that Indian Treaties are in a class of their own.
That litterally has nothing to do with anything.
Try reading this again:
This isn't a debatable question. It's not a gray area. To argue otherwise defies the explicit language of the Supremacy Clause, the unbroken precedent of the Supreme Court and literal common sense.
I honestly don't even know why you try sometimes.
I'm shocked by what some people will argue in public, even anonymously.
Indian Treaties with native tribes only describe the Federal governments duties to the tribes.
They supersede state law.
When I see some of the comments from our friends on the left, I think they would be better off if they just run along and try and find the truth in which they speak.
Absolutely. It's the American way apparently. Most Indian treaties were ignored or broken.
Some Presidents simply withdraw from treaties as insignificant as nuclear weapons and testing.
Incorrect - treaties between the U.S. and Native Nations/Tribes were the Native Nations/Tribes telling the U.S. government what the government must do for the Nations/Tribes to agree with. Basically, the treaties were a form of the Nations/Tribes telling the U.S. what the Nations/Tribes to keep as theirs and theirs alone.
Yes and that's never been under dispute. No one, at any point, has suggested otherwise.
Quoting Dead Justices means nadda, nothing, zero,
Just today, SCOTUS overturned another case.
Supreme Court Strikes Down Ruling Protecting Young Adults’ Right to Carry During Emergencies (msn.com)
Our rights, it seems, come and go.
probably not what the FF envisioned.
well, forgive me, I closed the link I took that from and you can easily google it for yourself, right?
If you are reduced to this, why bother?
Just today, SCOTUS overturned another case.
That's neat. Although I'm not sure what Supreme Court case this supposedly overturns. And certainly, in the entire history of our country, the Court has never ruled contrary to what Justice Black wrote, so the Court's ability to overturn itself isn't really relevant. It's been the same principle since 1789.
If you can find a case that is actually relevant to the discussion and gives you even the tiniest bit of a leg to stand on, feel free to get back to me.
Not to Sean.
Is that a meta?
Are Hispanics for Trump self haters.
Making it personal is certainly an infraction, but,.........
First off, Trump was not even mentioned. Can I not oppose bigots and bigotry without MAGA immediately taking it so personally?
Next, are Jews protesting for a cease fire in Gaza antisemitic?
Personally, I consider Minorities For Trump like Jewish Nazis!
Dumb, Misguided, Morally Immature, Narcissistic and Selfish...
Great article. You're about to be put against the wall and shot (metaphorically), as your article goes against the preferred narrative of many in here. Just know, I totally agree with you. Many in here don't actually care what's true. They only care about being able to tear down the West.
I’ve noticed the more people talk about teaching “real history” the less they actually want that to take place.
I dont think anyone here is interested in tearing down the west. I know I'm not. I just want the truth told. Yes, the Europeans conquered the native Americans, but since Native Americans are Americans and have been since June 2, 1924, why are we celebrating their misfortunes and mistreatment?
Many in here don't know actual history, or what's true. Much of our darker history has never been taught, or at best glossed over.
that would certainly diminish the weekly cash flow of the RCC ...
Interestingly, a number of the tribes/nations were made "U. S. citizens" through the treaties provided they completely follow the requirements of the treaty.
Should confederate flags fly on public property in the south, or anywhere in the U.S. ?
I'm not talking about legal rights, I am asking should.
The same principle applies to Columbus Day. The writer says societal standards change, slavery was once commonly accepted. Therefore Columbus is worthy of adulation. But society has changed away from admiring "conquerors". Time only goes in one direction.
Did those racists in Chicago still celebrate with a parade?
Why yes they did...................
.
is there a point buried in there somewhere ?
Did you not state this?...............
Good god. Thirty years ago there wasnt much opposition to Columbus Day, now there is. That is the change.
Chicago has racists that aren’t afraid to demonstrate it in public. Remember, you wanted individuals identified.
In cemeteries and battlefield monuments, yes
There were no others before them?
Columbus stands alone as the poster boy for genocide in the Americas.
So Native American tribes of the past did not try to wipe out other tribes? That is what is called genocide, also.
And you did not answer my question in 7.1.
Generally no, they took horses or slaves, that isn't genocide.
Look up the definition of genocide and a review of history would expand your knowledge of the actions and reactions between the US and NA nations.
I did answer your vague question pointing out that Columbus was the poster boy. If, like Sean you are stuck on whataboutism and they did it too as an excuse for Columbus good luck since that is a losers hand.
The Vikings landed in North America long before Columbus.
And I mean America....Canada
I’m all for another federal holiday, Vikings Day.
I read recently that they conquered Kiev and established the first states in the area of the Ukraine, Belarus and Kursk.
They thrived for 400 years and are the source of modern Russia, their reign ended by the Mongels after 400 years.
maybe that's what's wrong with Russians?
They came, camped, explored New England and some say trekked off through Nebraska.
Others say they returned to Iceland, uninterested in returning to 'merica the golden forests in Lief's dreams.
Either way, they respected the land and picked up after themselves leaving almost no traces except for the runes and messages they oft carved in stone.
What would Jesus say to that ridiculous comment?
I thought that Jesus also loved those we hate.
Not the white Jesus
Of what race do you think Jesus was? Is that important to you?
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If you hate people that's your thing but I don't hate anyone.
Except for trolls, I'm really not a fan of trolls.
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