Truths & Lies
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Native American Truths & Lies Painting: J. Cooday (Tlingit)

   I . Columbus didn't discover anything and wasn't first.                                                

• American Indians were here first.
• Other cultures may have been here before A.D. 1492 ,e.g. Asian, Afro-Phoenician, N. European.

  II. Columbus was not just curious and noble in motive.

• Columbus wanted gold, wealth and power.
• Columbus exploited and exterminated Native Americans.

 III. Columbus and his crew nor Native Americans saw the earth as flat.

• This was started by the American novelist, Washington Irving, in 1828.
• It was and is used to create an image of a bolder and smarter Columbus with a primitive crew and Native Americans.
• Native Americans and the Columbus crew were quite aware of the roundness of the earth as seen when a ship disappears over the horizon.

IV. The population of the Americas was not a few 'roving bands' in a wilderness.

• George Catlin (1840) estimated that North America had 14 million people in 1492; but James Mooney (1921) and other anthropologists concluded that only 1 million Native Americans lived in North America.
• Current figures (A.D. 1492) are:

                                             North America     14 million

                                             Meso-America      46 million

                                             South America      43 million   

 V. Native Americans were not backward and primitive.

• The implication that few Native Americans lived here contributes to

          the'primitive image'.

• Native Americans of the Caribbean were not naked simpletons in awe of

          Columbus.

• When the Santa Maria was wrecked off Haiti, Columbus elicited the aid of

           the nearest native American leader, Guacanagari, who resupplied

          Columbus and unloaded the wrecked Santa Maria before it sank.

• Native Americans made many contributions to Europe and the world  during tha last 500 years. The exchange of ideas and technology is now called the Columbian Exchange.

          Copyright © S.J. Crouthamel

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