the VIBE one’s interpretation of facts and events. When we remove the “warts” from history, we are sanitizing it and leaving out important perspectives. For example, what happens when you hear American history as told from the perspective of the powerless, those who have little or no social control? How would the revered Thomas Jefferson look through the eyes of his teenage slave, Sally Hemings, with whom he fathered six children? What would westward expansion look like through the eyes of Native Americans whose land was appropriated while they were being told that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian?” How would the story of American history be told through the memories of the Chinese workers who helped build the Transcontinental Railroad, and then were excluded from U.S. citizenship? This brings us back to a reconsideration of Columbus and Thanksgiving, and how this hero and this moment in American history have been interpreted, and taught, and internalized as truth. There is a significant amount of information taken from primary sources, journals and diaries that show a more complex and disturbing view of Columbus’ discovery, and of the events leading to what we celebrate as Thanksgiving, than the superficial presentations most of us have grown up with. For example, I can still recite the children’s rhyme learned in elementary school that fi ed Columbus and the “discovery” of America in my brain forever. The first two lines were: “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…” Like generations of children before and after me, I was taught that Columbus was a brilliantly heroic, courageous and moral man. As I did a bit of research, I found that versions of the song are still being taught to children. For example, the lines from one version of the song are: “‘… Indians! Indians!’ Columbus cried;/His heart was filled with joyful pride…/The Arakawa natives were very nice;/They gave the sailors food and spice…” This sharply contrasts with Columbus’ diary account, which states: “As soon as I arrived on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force” to coerce information from them about where to find gold. Most of the informa-
tion that we now have about Columbus’ exploits comes from Bartolomé de las Casas, a young priest who wrote the three-volume “History of the Indies.” In it, de las Casas describes a different encounter from the one students have been taught. According to de las Casas, although the Arawaks had a peaceful nature, “our work was to exasperate ravage, kill, mangle and destroy … the admiral [Columbus] 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…” I won’t give details about the crimes, but they can only be described as barbaric and inhumane. This information has been available to historians for more than 500 years and yet, for the most part, children are still being told an unbalanced story of heroism and courageous discovery. Similarly, Thanksgiving is entirely about celebration, and if we could detach it from its historical context, that would not be a problem. In some ways, I think that Thanksgiving is the best holiday of the year because the focus is on a joyous coming together of family and friends, and more and more it has become a day that is devoted to public service and selfless giving to those in need. Many Americans plan their year around Thanksgiving, and schools, especially elementary schools, decorate classrooms and hallways with turkeys, corn, pilgrims and happy Indians. And there are re-enactments of what students are led to believe was the first Thanksgiving dinner, celebrated by Native Americans and the pilgrims. School children dress as either Indians or pilgrims, and they come together over a meal. I was invited to such a re-enactment; my granddaughter Jazmin was an Indian (my daughter insisted on this), and I partook of a meal of turkey and other customary dishes at her school. It was pure celebration. The problem is that because of Thanksgiving’s mythic status in American culture, and because it is one of a few national holidays, in an information age it seems indefensible to ignore verifiable facts that document the real story. Like, the Columbus story, the celebration of Thanksgiving romanticizes the
encounters between the early settlers and the people we called Native Indians. The truth is that this encounter begins a pattern of genocide, land theft and cultural extermination. One historian, Edmund Morgan, author of “American Slavery, American Freedom,” a history of early Virginia, wrote: “Since the Indians were better woodsmen than the English and virtually impossible to track down, the method was to feign peaceful intentions, let them settle down and plant their corn wherever they chose, and then, just before harvest, fall upon them killing as many as possible and burning the corn…” One of the greatest ironies is that the pilgrims fervently believed that they had divine sanction for their actions, and quoted Biblical scriptures for support: Psalms 2:8: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” Romans 13:2 justified the appropriation of land: “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.”
More than being ironic, the introduction of religion complicates the issue of history and the question “Whose story is it?” because among other things, it also introduces the issue of morality. Howard Zinn encapsulates the issues perfectly when he argues that rethinking history is not a simple matter of retroactively condemning crimes from the past. Even though Zinn is talking about Columbus, his comments incorporate Thanksgiving and our contemporary response to history in general when he says: “My point is not that we must, in telling history accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress…that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth.” M [Rethinking History: Whose ‘Story’ is it Anyway? Part II will appear in February 2017]
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