REAL HISTORY: When Columbus first came ashore and was greeted by the Arawak native Americans with smiles, gifts and food, he wrote in his log:
“They brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things … they willingly traded everything they owned … They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane … They would make fine servants … With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
From the very outset Columbus was writing about conquering and enslaving the natives. Meanwhile the Arawaks, brought gifts, prepared food, and traded everything they owned.
Columbus wrote that the natives,
“are so naïve and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone.”
He also wrote,
“I believe that they would easily be made Christians, because it seemed to me that they had no religion.”
The European settlers took a free society without possessions, property, currency, hierarchy or written religion and replaced it with today’s America – the world’s shining beacon of selfish materialism, where every square inch of land/water/airspace is publicly or privately owned, taxed, and governed through a corrupt hierarchical system of laws and regulations where Mother Nature’s gifts are treated as personal possessions to be bought, sold, owned and defended.
“Columbus wrote:
‘As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts.’
The information that Columbus wanted most was: Where is the gold? … His second expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men. The aim was clear: slaves and gold … They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives … roaming the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor.”
“It was his [Columbus’] avowed aim to ‘convert the heathen Indians to our Holy Faith’ that warranted the enslaving and exporting of thousands of Native Americans. That such treatment resulted in complete genocide did not matter as much as that these natives had been given the opportunity of everlasting life through their exposure to Christianity. The same sort of thinking also gave Westerners license to rape women. In his own words, Columbus described how he himself ‘took [his] pleasure’ with a native woman after whipping her ‘soundly’ with a piece of rope.”
Helen Ellerbe, “The Dark Side of Christian History” (86-88)
By 1496 the settlers were responsible for 34 million native American deaths. We are not talking about some guy who accidentally bumped into America looking for a spice-trade route to India, but that’s what the standardized textbooks continue to tell our children.
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