Celebrating Atrocities: The Columbus Story

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen, Chapter Two (1493: The True Importance of Christopher Columbus)

I always knew that the Columbus story was misrepresented in history textbooks, but I never realized to what extent and how this carries over to other areas. I was baffled to read that "some textbooks even invoke the Protestant Reformation [in leading to the Age of Exploration], although it didn't begin until twenty-five years after 1492!" (Loewens, 32). As I continued to read, I became more horrified. Thankfully, I am reading this chapter before I have ever taught a lesson on Columbus and can now keep myself from perpetuating the myth that most textbooks have written.

My question following reading this chapter of the text is: why are textbooks practicing cognitive dissonance on something that happened over 500 years ago? I argue that it is cognitive dissonance as we have consciously taken a Eurocentric viewpoint in our academics rather than presenting students with the reality that not all of Christopher Columbus' actions - or even the majority of them - were honorable. Why can't we accept our history for what it is and accept that colonialism has a really nasty side to it including racism and treating human beings as if they were commodities or resources?

One thing I want to remember following this reading is that "American history textbooks treat Columbus [in a way that] reinforces the tendency not to think about the process of domination" as they celebrate the domination of Columbus rather than consider if that domination was a good thing for those involved and affected by it (Loewen, 35). Building off of this idea, one quote really stayed with me after reading the chapter:

"American history textbooks promote the belief that most important developments in world history are traceable back to Europe. To grant too much human potential to pre-Columbian Africans might jar European American sensibilities. As Samuel Marble put it, 'the possibility of African discovery of America has never been a tempting one for American histories'" (42).

This quote will be difficult to forget, and I agree with it. I think our textbooks and our traditional teachings have really focused on how discoveries affected Europe and America - but really only white Europe and America who reaped the benefits. We have to stop thinking and teaching in a way that only represents a privileged perspective and present real history. I'm not saying that fifth grade students need to hear about every detail on how Columbus encouraged the rape of native women among his lieutenants, but there certainly are details that should be taught at different levels to show that exploration was not all good (56). We can't hide negative details of events simply because it doesn't fit in with our picture-perfect narrative that we have created. We are not writing narratives and history isn't always pretty, so our textbooks and teaching should reflect that.

I also want to remember that even details that I figured would be standard across textbooks, such as details about Columbus and where he is from, aren't. I never expected this. Loewen outlines how there is disagreement among textbooks on where Columbus is from, what the weather was like for the travel, how long the exploration took, etc. simply because there isn't any evidence. So, how can we really know what happened with any degree of certainty on areas of the exploration that have no evidence or writing about them? If I am ever going to teach something out of a textbook, it would be important to research which aspects are disputed that way I don't give students the impression that something is absolutely true if it may not be.

Rather than discuss things that I disagree with or I find controversial, I want to leave a couple of quotes that hit home. They either had to do with the punishment and brutality that natives faced from the Spaniards, or the effect that the Spaniards had upon their population.


"When Columbus and his men returned to Haiti in 1493, they demanded food, gold, spun cotton—whatever the Indians had that they wanted, including; sex with their women. To ensure cooperation, Columbus used punishment by example. When an Indian committed even a minor offense, the Spanish cut off his ears or nose. Disfigured, the person was sent back to his village as living evidence of the brutality the Spaniards were capable of" (51).

"Spaniards hunted Indians for sport and murdered them for dog food. Columbus, upset because he could not locate the gold he was certain was on the island, set up a tribute system." (53). Likewise, they would cut off the hands of those who were not productive enough. Many turned to suicide, women turned to abortion so they wouldn't bring children into the world under such conditions. This is not a history that I ever read about in my history textbooks and was never taught in my classroom.

Their effect upon the population: "estimate of Haiti's pre-Columbian population range as high as 8,000,000 people. When Christopher Columbus returned to Spain ... took a census of Indian adults in 1496 and came up with 1,100,000" (54). Including children and those who escaped to the mountains, the population was more likely around 3,000,000 (55). Slave trade and labor policies that Columbus put into effect left about only 12,000 natives by 1516, less than 200 in 1542, and  they were gone by 1555 (55).  All of these atrocities are ignored by the textbooks that Loewen evaluated.

These quotes and this information presents the reality of the Columbus story. There were positive outcomes for Europe and those can certainly still be mentioned in classrooms and in textbooks, but we should also acknowledge the negative aspects of European exploration and exploitation as well.