COLUMBUS POD e Uren Eba aches, Fl of wonder, Took at the strange big boat. When Christopher Colurnbus and his soldiers came ashore, carrying swords, the Arawak ran to greet them, Columbus later wrote about the Indians in is ships lo: They. rough ala coon ape dy ote ing. ity xg bead and et“The Arawaks lived inthe Babaa Islands. Like Indians on the American mainland, they believed {in hospitality and in sharing. But Columbus the first messenger tothe Americas frm the ciliza tion of western Europe, was hungry for money. AS soon ashe arrived in theislands, he seized some ‘Arawak by fore so thathe could gt information fom them. The information that Columbus wanted ‘was this: Where isthe gud? Columbus had talked the king and queen of ‘Spain into paying for hs expedition. Like other Furopean states, Spain wanted gold. There was, old in the Indies, asthe people of Europe called India and southeastern Asia, The Indies hhad other valuable goods too, suchas silks and spices. But traveling by land from Europe to Asia was a long and dangerous journey, so the nations of Europe were searching fora way to reach the Indies by sea, Spain decided to gamble ‘on Columbus. tn return fr bringing back gold and spices, Columbus would get to percent of the profits. He would be made governor of any newly discovered lands, and he would win the title Admiral of the Ocesn Sea, He set out with three ships, hoping to bscome the frst European to reach Asia by sailing across the ‘Allantic Ocean. ike other informed people of his time, ‘Columb knew that the world was round, This rant that he could sal west from Europe to reach the east. The world Columbus imagined, however, was smal. He would never have made to Asia, which was thousands of miles Farther away than he ‘thought. Bute was lucky. One fourth ofthe way ‘here he came upon an unknown land between Europe and Asia, ‘Thiny-three days after leaving waters known to Europeans, Columbus and his men saw branches floating in the water and locks of beds inthe ait ‘These were signs of land. Then, on October 12, 1492, sailor called Rodrigo saw the moon ing on white sands, and cried out. Ie was an island inthe Bahamas, in the Caribbean Sea. The first ‘man to sight land was supposed to get large ewad, but Rodtgo never got it Columbus claimed that he had seen light the evening before. He got the reward,‘The Arawaks' Impossible Tsk THE ARAWAR INDIANS who greeted Columbus live in villages and practiced agriculture, Unlike the Buropeans, they had no horses or other work animals, and they had no iron, What they did have was tny gold omamnents i their ea Those litle ornaments shaped history. Because of them, Columbus started his relationship with the Indians by taking prisoners, thinking that they could lead im to the source ofthe gold, He sled to several other Caribbean islands, inchuding Hispaniola, an island now divided between two countries, Haiti and the Dominican Republic ‘After one of Columbus's ships ran aground, he used wood fiom the wreck to build a for in Fait ‘Then he sailed back to Spain with news of his dis. cover, leaving thirty-nine crewmen a the fort ‘Their orders were to find and store the god ‘The report Columbus made othe royal Spanish court was part fact, pat fiction. He claimed to have veached Asia, and he called the ‘Arawaks “Indian,” meaning people ofthe Indies, ‘The islands Columbus had visited must be offte {2 Gavtof hia esd Theyre flecks teepani mas Mears il pins and stares a here ei... thro ze ‘uel gpd aa the ae many we sof Wh he jr contan al. Tee ate may ‘pies nd retin gi ander meals the king and queer would give him just lit tie more help, Columbus sai, he would make another voyage. This time he would come back to Spain with “as much gold a they need... and as ‘many slaves a they ask.” Columbus's promises won him seventeen ships and more than 1,00 men for his second ‘expedition. The aim was lear: slaves and god ‘They went from island toisland in the Caribbean, capturing Indians. But as word spread among the Indians the Spaniards feand more and more empiy villages When they got to Hit, they found thatthe solos let behind atthe fat were dead, Te sailors had roamed the island in gangs look ‘ng for gold, taking women and children as slaves, until the Indians had killd them in a battle CColumhne's men searched ait for gold with no success. They had to ll up the ships return: ing to Spain with sometking, so in 1495 they went on a great slave ric. Afterward, they picked five hundeed captives to send to Spain. Two hun- dred ofthe Indians ded on the voyage. The rest strived alive in Spain and were put up forsale by local church offical. Cohumbus, who was full of religious ak, later wrote, “Let us in the name of the Holy Tiity goon sending all the slaves that can be sold” ‘Bt too many slaves died in captiviy, Cohambus vas desperate to show profit on his voyages: Me baad to make good on his promises to fl he ships vith gold. na partof Haiti where Columbus and his men imagined thete was much god, they ordered everyone over the age of thirteen to cellet 0d for them. Indians who didnot give gold tothe ‘Spaniards had ther hands cutoff nd bed to death ‘The Indians ad been given an impossible task, The only gold around was bits of gold dst in streams. So they ran away. The Spaniards hunted them down with dogs and killed them. When they took prisoners, they hanged them or burned them to death, Unable to fight agains the Spanish sol ices’ guna, swords, armor, and horses, the Arawaks began to commit mass suicide with poi- son. When the Spanish search for gold bega there were a quarter of milion Indians on Hait2 Intwo years, through murder or suicide, half ‘hem were dead ‘When it was clear that there was no god le ‘the Indians became slaves on the Spaniaeds' huge estates. They were overworked and misteated, and they died by the thousands By 1550, only five hhundted Indians remained. A century Iter no ‘Arawaks were left onthe island ‘Telling Columbus's Story Caribbean islands after Columbus came because of Bartolomé de Las Casas. He was a young priest who helped the Spanish conquer Cuba. Fora while he ‘owned a plantation where Indian slaves worked ‘But then Las Casas gave up his plantation and spoke out against Spanish cue. ae Cazae made a copy of Columbus's journal, and he also wrote a book called History ofthe Indies In this book, he described the Indians’ sock ety and their customs. He lso told how the Spaniards treated the Indians ‘Afr the newt Borne ica ease tee ers onrmke nd fished rsh a no koma the an fr this son, wie wa in aba 7.000 diden died in thee months Some oes een downed tn abn her dep son, tn the wy ba id nthe ns, rile. My eyesave ne these a 20 og ‘This was the star of the history of Europeans inthe Americas. It was a history of conquest sla ery, and death, But fora long time, the history Dooks given to children in the United Stats told a ferent story—a tale of heroic adventure, not Dloodshed. The way the sory is taught to young people is just beginning to change ‘The story of Columbus and the Ind us something bout how history ges waiten. One ‘ofthe most famous historians to write about ns shows (Columbus was Samuel Eliot Morison, He ever sailed eros the Aantc Ocean himeelf retracing (Columbus's route n 3954 Morison published a ‘popular book aed Christopher Calumbus, Marine. He said that cruel teatment by Columbus ad the 9Europeans who came afer hit caused the “com: plete genocide" ofthe Indians, Genocide i a harsh ‘word. Iie the name ofa eb crime—the deli rate killing of an entite enc or cultural group, “Morison didnot le about Columbus, He did not leave out the mass murder. But he mentioned the truth quickly and then went on to other things. By burying the fact of gerocide in alot of other {nformation, he seemed t be saying that the mass murder wasn't very important in the big picture, By making genocide scem like a small pat of the story he took away ite pover to make us tink dif. feently about Columbus. At the end ofthe book, Morison summed up hisiea of Columbus a a ‘great man. Columbus's most important quai, Moriton sid, was his seamanship. historian must pikand choose among fies deciding which ones to pit into his or her work, ‘which ones to leave out, snd which ones to place atthe center of the story Every historian's own ‘ideas and beliefs go into the way he or she writes history. In turn, the way history ie writen can, shape the ideas and belies ofthe people who read it. A view of history like Morison’, a picture of the ‘past that sees Columbus and others like him as great sailors and discoverers, but says almost nothing about their genocide, can make t seem as though what they did was right. People who write and read history have goten used to seeing terrible things such as conquest and murder a the price of progress. Tie is because many of them think that history isthe story f governments, conquerors, and leaders. In this way of fooking atthe past, history what hap- pens to states, or nations. The ators in history are kings, presidents, and generals. But what about factory workers, farmers, people of color, women, and children? They make history, too. ‘The story of any country inchudes fete con fits between conquerors andthe conquered, masters and saves, people with powe and those without power Writing history is always a matter of taking sides. For example, {choose to tell he story ofthe discovery of America from the point of view ofthe Arawaks. {wil tel the story ofthe US. Constitution frou the point of view of the slaves, and the story ofthe Civil War from the point of view ofthe Ii in New Yor City, "believe that history can help us imagine new possibilities forthe future, One way it can do thisis by letting us see the hidden parts ofthe past, the times when people showed that they could resist ‘he powerful or join together. Maybe our Future can be found in the pas’s moments of kindness and courage rather than its centuries of warfare, ‘That is my approach tothe history ofthe United States, which started withthe meeting between (Columbus and the Arawaks More Meetings, More Fighting ‘The tragedy of Columbus andthe Arawaks hap- pened over and over again. Spanish conquerors Hernan Cortés and Francisco Pizarro destroyed the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of South America. When English settlers reached Virginia and Massachusetts, they di the same thing to the Indians they me Jamestown, Vipin, wa the fist permanent English setlement in the Americas. Iwas bul inside ateritory governed by an Indian chief ‘named Powhatan. He watched the English settle z‘on hie land but did not attack. In 1607, Powhatan spoke to John Smith, one ofthe leaders at Jamestown, The staternest that has come down to us may not truly be Powatan’s words, butt sounds alot like what otter Indians said and wrote at later times. We an read Powhatan'sstate- iment asthe spirit of wha he thought as he ‘watched the white men enter his territory "ith enc bee pesca a beter han ay mannyc Why wou tab ye what your have quit yo! Why wl yu destroy sho youve? Wht yo get yn? Whyte yo jess of? We ae une, an wing oe hut yovade you come in endl manne and to spe sto how ta nich ter tod ret ep comfy. heey wth nerd tilde, ligh and be mer th Engh and rade fer oper il cts han ran ay them and oe ld inthe wot and fon aco, roo andra an bes aed can eer Tn the winter af wing-s6. the Fglish at Jamestown went through a terrible food shortage they called the “starving ime.” They roamed the woods looking for nuts and berries, and they dug ‘up graves to eat the corpses. Out of five hundred colonists, all but say died ‘Some ofthe colonists an off to join the Indians, where they would at least be fed. The next, summer, the governor ofthe colony asked Powhatan to send them back, When he refused, the colonists destroyed an Indian settlement. They kidnapped the queen of the tribe, threw her chil ‘ren into the water and shot them, and then stabbed her, “Twelve years later the Indians tried to get rd of the growing English setlensents, They massacred 347 men, women, and children. From then on it ‘was total war. The English could not enslave the Indians, and they were notable olive with them, 0 they decided to wipe them out. ‘To the north the Plgrizs settled in New England. Like the Jamestown colonists, they came to Indian land, The Pequot tribe lived in southern Connecticut and Rhode Islnd. The colonists wanted this land, othe war withthe Pequots began. Massacres ton laren hath sides: The [English used a form of warfare that Coté had used in Mexico. Toil the enemy with teror, they attacked civilians, people who were not warriors‘They set fire to wigwams, and as the Indians ran ‘ut toescape the Hames, the English eu them to bits with their swords When Columbus care tothe Americas, 10 ‘million Indians lived nerth of what is now Mexico. ‘After the Europeans began setting that land, the numberof tndians fll until in time, fewer than 3 nillion remained, Mans Indians died from dis. eases brought by the whites, ‘Who were these Indians? Who were the people ‘who came out onto the beaches with presents for Columbus and his erew and who peered out ofthe forests atthe fist white setlers of Virginia and Marsachusetts? [AS many as 75 milion Indians lived through- out the Americas before Columbus. They had hundreds of different tral cultures and about two thousand languages. Many tribes were nomads, wanderers who lived by hunting and gathering food. Others, however, were expert farmers and lived in setled communities, Among the Broquoie, the me em tribes and didnot belong to individuals t belonged tothe entre community. People shared the work of farming and hunting, and they also powerful of the northeast shared food. Women were important and respected in Iroquois society, andthe sexes shared over. Children were taught tobe independent, Not only the Iroquois but other Indian tribes behaved in similar ways, ‘So Columbus and the Europeans who fllowed him did not come tan empty wilderness. They came toa word that was, in some places, as crowded as Europe, The Indians had their own, histor, laws, ad poetry. They lived in greater quality than people in Europe di Was progress" enough of reason to wipe out thelr societies? The fate ofthe Indians reminds us to Took at history as something more than just a story ‘of conquerors and leaders