Why honor Columbus and not Hitler ?

[Liberator_Rev]

Anybody who still believes the fairy tales they were taught in grade school about Christopher Columbus being the heroic "discoverer" of America, and who hasn't learned since then about his being a slave trader prior to 1492 and a mass-murderer of Native Americans after 1492, needs to update their education.

If 10 million people died because of Hitler, the author David Stannard explains in American Holocaust that 10 times that many Native Americans may have died as a result of the invasion and destruction of the Americas by Christopher Columbus & Company.

To get a taste of what this monumental and revealing book, produced in time for the 500th year since 1492, has to offer check out:
http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/AmericanHolocaust

[kalashnikov]

1. both were terrible but

most Indians died as a result of diseases introduced by Europeans, not genocide (though that was present). Hitler on the other hand killed the vast majority through outright murder.

[Liberator_Rev]

3. You obviously haven't read the book.

Unless you are a scholar who has researched the subject and have contrary arguments to present, please READ the book before putting out what be nothing but an uninformed opinion to oppose VERY WELL INFORMED AND SUBSTANTIATED RESEARCH.

Until you can get the book, you can a flavor of it at my site, where I have extensive excerpts from American Holocaust, showing how the "civilized" Christian Europeans killed thousands with all the might they could bring to bear on natives who had showered them with nothing but kindness and generosity.

[kalashnikov]

6. I know im just saying

its a matter of degrees, thats all. Hitler killed millions and you say that the Europeans killed thousands. Both equally bad, one is just more extensive and glaring.

[Journeyman]

8. That's a remarkable statement, L_R. . .

what you're saying is, unless someone has read the same books as you and come to the same conclusions, their opinions are worthless, or, at best, have to be explained in full against the sketchy details you've provided. I've no doubt you believe in the truth of this book, but until you provide a richer, more extensive analysis of the argument you propound, you'll get farther in this world if you shed the smug attitude and try to enlighten rather than belittle.

[Liberator_Rev]

15. "until you provide a richer, more extensive analysis"

Journeyman,
You challenge me as follows: "I've no doubt you believe in the truth of this book, but until you provide a richer, more extensive analysis of the argument you propound, you'll get farther in this world if you shed the smug attitude and try to enlighten rather than belittle."

I've taken the trouble to copy and present scores of pages from the book and put them a click away. I couldn't put them all in a post. How much do I have to do to "provide a richer, more extensive analysis of the argument you propound, you'll get farther in this world if you shed the smug attitude and try to enlighten rather than belittle."

If having more respect for a scholar who has spent years researching a particular subject and getting an acclaimed book published on that subject, than for an armchair philosopher who displays "a smug belittling attitude" towards such scholarship, then I plead "guilty as charged"!

[Clete]

9. I really hope you don't believe that.

You need an education about Hernando de Soto to begin with and the rest of Spain's finest.

[kalashnikov]

22. I know all about European massaceres

but more Indians were killed by European diseas than by murder.

[Pontus]

59. And that was unintentional, however...

How many Indians were sacrificed each year on the alters of the Aztec? Ever wonder why so many tribes alligned themselves with numberically insignificant groups of Spaniards to fight the Aztec? They were tired of being used for slavery and sacrifice.

Disease killed 95%+ of the Indían population casualties of European colonization.

I too was once under the impression that Columbus and company did a lot of really awful things until I took some classes in college taught by a Brazilian professor who taught history of South America in a more comprehensive manner than is taught by many schools today in America. I also wonder what the Aztec would have done if they had been the ones with advanced ships and gunpowder and would have sailed to Europe. Wouldn't they have attacked and conquered Europe in much the same manner that Spain attacked them?

[knight_of_the_star]

95. Aztec sacrifice wasn't the reason

The reason the Tlaxcala allied with Spain was because of the old "enemy of mine enemy is mine friend" thing. The Tlaxcala were OLD enemies of the Aztec and unless the Spanish showed up then the Aztec would have kept the upper hand in their relationship. That and if you want to get into how many died on the Aztec altars, maybe I should be asking how many were outright killed by the Inquisition and the Church during the waning years of Rome, the Dark Ages, and the Middle Ages all th way up to the 1600s.

[Runcible Spoon]

100. uhhh, aztecs were MESOamerican NOT SOUTH american

the conquest of the Aztecs is a more politically complex issue than most believe. They WERE expansionistic and engaged with wars and subjugated peoples. But it is ridiculous to compare apples and oranges. What really gets my gall is that Westerners embrace this whole idea of Columbus as some sort of Christian hero.

[roguevalley]

16. Freeper propaganda to say that diseases killed the most.

Rush says there are more Indians now than before Columbus. Freeper
lies.

[DebJ]

23. Rush says there are more Native Americans now?

I guess you can't count well when you are on pain killers!

[Yupster]

37. No where in the piece does the author

attempt to put any population figures to the much more thinly populated land that is now the USA. The figures he uses are all from the Caribbean or Mexico.

[pretzel4gore]

58. why thinly populated?

were the first nations stupid? was the land poorer then? Do we have ANY IDEA what world was like before the bull tore up the china shop?
It's not just a racial thing....there were first nations in Britain france germany etc....all got beaten into the form they take now, and at what horrific cost? Ever heard of the 'enclosure' time when landowners in Britain began fencing in property that GENERATIONS of lil people had called home? How much agony have your own ancestors suffered, to endup and be like georgebushwack?
the bastards lie...all the time, about anything that can benefit them and demoralize the other....it's like good versus evil.

[Liberator_Rev]

62. What a scholar you are,Yupster,

"No where in the piece does the author"
Posted by Yupster
attempt to put any population figures to the much more thinly populated land that is now the USA. The figures he uses are all from the Caribbean or Mexico.

To make that statement, you would HAVE TO READ THE ENTIRE BOOK, (and remember what you read).
Not only is it obvious that you didn't read the book's 344 pages, it's obvious that you didn't read my very much smaller web site where I quote what Stannard says about the population figures of "the much more thinly populated land that is now the USA."

P.S. Maybe what you're remembering is what Rush Limbaugh says on the matter.

[Yupster]

104. I believe I made it clear

in other posts that the "piece" I was referring to is just the piece linked at the top of this site.

[Yupster]

111. That's Ex-scholar to you Rev Al

I am the author of a Sixth Grade history textbook for a major publishing house (teacher's edition only), though that was 15 years ago.

I left the education business 13 years ago, so if I were ever a scholar, I guess it's ex-scholar now.

[Yupster]

35. I read through the whole piece

It doesn't challenge the historical fact that most Indians died of disease. It just makes mention and then glances over the fact again and again. It is a highly biased work.

[NickB79]

57. You believe 50 million were killed by hand?

If there were 100 million people in the New World before Columbus arrived, that would mean that in order for your statement to be true that disease DIDNT kill the majority, the early European colonists would have had to have killed over 50 million Native Americans with swords, muskets and cannons. That number is unbelievable due to the fact that each man, woman and child coming from Europe would have had to kill several Native Americans each to even come close to achieving this goal, since it took almost 2 centuries for the Americas to develop a large colonial population of several million.

Even in Europeans who dealt for millenia with smallpox, plague, and cholera, the death rate was still amazingly high. For Native Americans with no resistance whatsoever, diseases would have been absolutely devastating. If bubonic plague could kill 1/3 of Europe in the Dark Ages, it and a dozen other equally lethal diseases all at once could easily wipe out most of the Native American population.

[Liberator_Rev]

63. If you had AIDS carrier, how many would you infect?

The soldiers and "missionaries" and the European masters of the Church and State that were directing them knew that as they "discovered" America it was no accident that vast populations were being wiped out by the diseases that they were carrying with them, and yet they went on, and on, and on, year after year, invasion after invasion, after invasion.

I can understand Conservatives, for whom GREED is GOOD defending the "Conquistadors", but on what grounds do LIBERALS come to their defense?

[LeahMira]

72. Genocide is more than killing.

First of all, the early explorers and colonists did not kill all the Indians at once. They simply didn't have the numbers to be able to do that.

Secondly, you have to remember that the definition of genocide is not limited to outright killing. It also includes the creation of conditions which make the survival of a people as a people impossible. Why do you think that the buffalo herds of the plains were slaughtered wholesale and the carcasses left to rot? It was to deprive the plains people of food and force them to depend on hand-outs which were given on terms that the U.S. condescended to set. What do you think the Cherokee Trail of Tears was about? No one outright slaughtered those people. They simply marched them to death. What do you think sending the Indian children miles away from their tribes for "education" was all about if not to force those children to assimilate into European-American culture and leave the tribes with no future?

Really, read the Stannard book and then read more... all you can... about what happened. Read about Wounded Knee and Sand Creek. Read over the Native American Rights Fund website to find out how the U.S. government is still trying to make it impossible for the tribes to survive as a people today. Know that there are Indian people on the reservations who will die this coming winter for lack of heat. Know that government commodities are going to cause diabetes among the people whose bodies react badly to a high-fat diet. Know that the government has been stealing money that rightfully belongs to thousands of individual Indians (Cobell v. Norton).

I could go on and on, but I will stop here with the sincere hope that you will learn with an open heart, and that you will do what you can to help the American Indians. Please.

[Yupster]

109. Diseases killed most -- that's pretty much agreed by all

see Rev Al's posts 63 and 76.

I don't think the author of the book would argue with the fact that most Indians died of disease. He just doesn't emphasize the fact. Apparently Rev Al has now conceded that point.

[Hippo_Tron]

140. I think by Indians, Rush means...

All non-white people.

[LeahMira]

69. Diseases that were...

... often deliberately brought to them. Lord Jeffrey Amherst ordered blankets infected with smallpox to be given to the Indians as gifts.

Even before that time, consider that Squanto's people had died while he was in Europe, a prisoner of slave traders. Did Europeans not recognize what was happening? They simply wrote it off as some indication that G-d was on their side, killing off the Indians so the Europeans could take over. Such incredible arrogance and coldness of soul!

Hitler did kill through outright murder, but he also permitted conditions in the concentration camps such that the SS had it down to precise days how long any prisoner could possibly live and his value as a worker before he would need to be discarded like a worn-out piece of equipment.

There really isn't much difference. Evil finds many ways to accomplish the same purpose.

[RobinA]

156. See, I Have a Problem

with this "disease on purpose" line of thinking. First of all, in 1692 no one knew a thing about germs as agents of disease transmission, germs weren't invented 'til the mid-1800s.

Second, how long does a smallpox germ live in a blanket? It took MONTHS to cross the ocean blue in those days.

Also, the Europeans would have no knowledge that the Indians would have no immunity to European diseases, because if they didn't know about germs they CERTAINLY wouldn't have know about immunie systems.

I suspect that the immune Europeans unknowingly were infected themselves and thus spread it all over the New World.

And yeah, the Europeans probably did think god was striking down the Indians who came to Europe. They didn't know anything about germs in those days and they attributed disease to all kinds of supernatural and unsupernatural stuff that we now know is nonsence.

[quinnox]

2. Columbus day is monday

But it isn't a solid holiday like Labor Day or New Years day for example. The stock market will be open, and probably a lot of other businesses will be open.

[Liberator_Rev]

5. Yes, but what about the message still being communicated by our

Government and our educational institutions?

[DebJ]

27. education today

I really don't think that is the message going out in classrooms today. I live with a history teacher, and what he teaches is NOT what I was taught (thank God). But then again, he doesn't like to teach much at all from standard classroom texts...there are but an outline of topics....he brings in his own books and presents various ideas....even though this is to but 7th grade special ed students...all teachers need to be like this. Text books are crap. And very wrong on lots of details...

[LeahMira]

73. Teachers...

... learned what they learned in elementary school. I work with teachers and many of them present the Columbus myth to preschool and kindergarteners. Each year I leave printed info available for them to pick up, but sadly few bother. "Why spoil a pretty holiday for the little children?" Bull! It's not a pretty holiday for the American Indian children.

Text books are sometimes crap, but the best of text books means squat unless the teacher follows up. It takes a gutsy teacher to tell the truth to his or her students when that teacher has to watch out for some of their freeper parents.

YOU teach your own children the truth.

Anyhow, if you all are off this Monday, go to a powwow, have fun, eat frybread (yum!), talk to the people, and put some money in the tribes' coffers. It's not much, but do what you can, OK?

[dsc]

108. Most schools are open

I don't know of any around here (save the local Catholic one) which will be closed. I have had Columbus day of only once in over a decade of teaching (in Cleveland Columbus day and Veterans day switch off)

[bhunt70]

88. stock market isnt open

Federal Reserve is closed down.

[rudeboy666]

4. "Why honor Columbus and not Hitler ?"

This type of statement only adds fuel for the reactionaries.

For all his faults, Columbus was no Hitler(unless you have concrete evidence to the contary).

If anything, he was just a product of his times.

That whole 'conquest of paradise' is just a myth. The 'Indians' were(sometimes) just as viscious(especially against their own) as their Euro brethren.

[kalashnikov]

7. Yes

the Indians were constantly fighting and raiding and often times massacering other Indian tribes. While this doesnt justify what the Europeans did, it seems like European on Indian fighting gets talked about much more than Indian on Indian warfare does.

[roguevalley]

17. Indian on Indian warfare was raids and other small time interventions

Show me a historical moment when a tribe came in and forced everyone
in that locality to move or die. Of all the hundreds of treaties made between whites and Indians, no treaty -not one- was ever broken by an
Indian.

They don't compare. There has never been an instance in history where aboriginal people were able to prevail against colonizers from other countries. Ever.

[kalashnikov]

20. ummm

Have you ever heard of the "cliff dwellers" in the southwest who were basically forced to live high up on the walls of canyons in order to escape being massacerd?

[minkyboodle]

36. uuummmm

When you use the ultra informed nomenclature of "cliff dwellers" (very Neolithic) I assume you are speaking of the Anasazi mother culture and the Pueblo culture that followed. You speak of these huge and long lasting civilizations as if they are some poor huddled mass cowering in the cliffs to avoid, as you say, massacres. These people were in fact the dominant civilizations of the times for that area of the Americas (1200 BC to 900 AD including the Pueblo Anasazi). They had a long reaching influence that included trade and commerce extending as far away as the Aztec Empire to their south. Did their style of city building have defensive advantages? Of course they did. They also had environmental and health benefits (wind protection shade location in proximity of fertile land etc etc). To suggest that they were forced to live as "cliff dwellers" cause of their fear of massacre is simply not true. There was no tribe strong enough to massacre the Anasazi during the almost 1000 years of their existence. Did bands raid towns, of course and most of the time food was the main prize not the massacre of the inhabitants. Also you have ignored the spiritual connection that many historians feel drew the Anasazi to live in their particular fashion (do a google search on the Nazca Plane if you are interested in this aspect). What people who either advance the "noble savage" argument or rationalize European actions as you do miss, is that the sheer number of individual cultures in North and South America mandated that all forms of life and culture would be represented. There were cultures where no type of martial imagery or war was represented. There were also civilizations like the Aztec, which were based on a religion and political method that were filled with conflict. However, even in the Aztecs you will find no war waged in the fashion of the Europeans. War was more of a ritual and political tool for the Aztecs. Genocidal wipe em off the face of the earth war was unique to old world culture at the time. The evolution of Native American and European societies were vastly different, therefore it is not surprising that parts of their culture were just as different. Take the Aztec sacrifices for example; in all their brutality it is estimated that up to 20,000 people were executed in a year (this is a high estimate based solely on Spanish estimates who themselves had much to gain by painting the Aztecs as savages worthy for their slaughter). During Cortez's first day in Tenochtitlán his own men place the slaughter of the city's population far higher than that. You will find a constant pattern of Native peoples being shocked at first of European style of warfare. However, they were not stupid and learned quickly how war was to be waged against the Spanish and later European conquerors. Well I went into a lot more detail there than I meant to but in history the real story is in the details. Maybe you should consider these in the future when you try to reply with "duh look at the cliff-dwellers" to a legitimate question.
Scott

[kalashnikov]

45. whoa. major ignorance.

"There was no tribe strong enough to massacre the Anasazi during the almost 1000 years of their existence."

And they stopped existing because a diferent tribe took over their land and dominated them with canibalism.

"War was more of a ritual and political tool for the Aztecs"

What was it to Europeans? And does that make it any less horrific? Nazi germany saw war like that too.

"Genocidal wipe em off the face of the earth war was unique to old world culture at the time."

What about Ghenkis Khan and his destruction of european towns?


"You speak of these huge and long lasting civilizations as if they are some poor huddled mass cowering in the cliffs to avoid, as you say, massacres."

they were not a huge and great civilization when they were living in the cliffs. And they were trying to avoid being eaten.

please do a search on "anasazi canabalism"

[minkyboodle]

49. re: Whoa major ignorance

And they stopped existing because a diferent tribe took over their land and dominated them with canibalism
--- Just because you subscribe to that theory doesn't make it the only view of the end of the Anasazi. Many others believe it was due to over use of the land and mass starvations.. or weather conditions.. or political dissatisfaction. The point is because you've latched onto this theory doesn't make it the only point of view on the issue. My point was you painted the Anasazi as a tribe at the mercy of savages and mine was that these cliff dwellers were in fact the dominant culture of the area for close to 1000 years.

What was it to Europeans? And does that make it any less horrific? Nazi germany saw war like that too
---The simple fact is the war that the Europeans waged on Native populations was far greater and scope and impact than anything waged between native tribes. I never claimed that native wars weren't horrific I said they were ritualistic tools to settle disputes that were usually more about the act of a battle than the ability to inflict the maximum possible destruction and casualties on the opposing side. If you are comparing tribal warfare to the Nazi's final solution I really don't know what to say.

What about Ghenkis Khan and his destruction of european towns?
----When did Ghenkis Khan set foot in the Americas???

please do a search on "anasazi canabalism"
----Please do the same search and look at some of the opposing viewpoints to the theory that you speak of

[kalashnikov]

50. please

"never claimed that native wars weren't horrific I said they were ritualistic tools to settle disputes that were usually more about the act of a battle than the ability to inflict the maximum possible destruction and casualties on the opposing side."

I find that preposterous. go to the link and read about what some indians have done. The only reason that Europeans killed on a greater scope was because they had better technology. Not because there was a fundamental difference between indians and Europeans. Europeans were just better at killing. Just like Hitler was better at killing than old Europe. Only a difference in scale.

[Runcible Spoon]

105. minkyboddle is correct.

Warfare among the Aztecs and the Tlaxcallans was called "flower warfare" and was highly regulated. It was more about testing political boundaries and getting access to trade routes and resources. They were NOT outright killing each other for the sake of killing each other. Captives were taken, sometimes the captives became fodder for sacrifice, sometimes not.

And for the record, Europeans did not win because they had better technology. They did not have enough firepower or manpower for that advantage. Cortes won because he sucessfully exploited the existing political situation between the Tlaxcallans and the Aztecs, and then he fucked EVERYONE over.

[Character Assassin]

119. That, however, is not the whole story.

http://mrburnett.mine.nu/GCII/U1/outside/aztec/a-sacjt.html

And for the record, Europeans did not win because they had better technology. They did not have enough firepower or manpower for that advantage. Cortes won because he sucessfully exploited the existing political situation between the Tlaxcallans and the Aztecs, and then he fucked EVERYONE over.

http://www.salon.com/it/feature/1999/01/cov_11feature2.html

That's one part of it. But there appears to be more, as well:

Clendinnen uses structuralist analysis -- in which static, predetermined cultural differences become a template into which all historical actions are squeezed -- to differentiate between Spanish and Indian cultural attitudes toward warfare. Aztec religious ideals, she argues, inhibited unrestrained killing on the battlefield. Indian warriors frowned on ambush or on killing from a distance (arrows and darts were fired only "to weaken and draw blood, not to pierce fatally"), preferring face-to-face combat between equal opponents, which led ideally to capture and the proper ritual sacrifice of opponents. Spaniards, by contrast, preferred ambushes and missile attacks because they allowed warriors to kill with low risk to themselves. Thus the improbable conquest of a city of 200,000 people by a force of 500 Spaniards is explained as the result of a noble warrior's code practiced by the defeated. "Had Indians been as uninhibited as Spaniards in their killing," Clendinnen concludes, "the small Spanish group ... would have been whittled away."

[kalashnikov]

138. i guess guns and armor had

no part in the spaniards ability to conquer the indians. I think you should just say that the spaniards were better at warfare than the inians. It wasnt a question of culture, I dont believe that the Indian culture encouraged letting your enemy conquer you.

[kalashnikov]

139. I would define warfare

differently than you. Warfare is about making your enemy to obey your will through force.

[LeahMira]

74. Don't limit yourself...

please do a search on "anasazi canabalism"

Do a search on "cannibalism" and find out what your own ancestors were doing at about the same point in time.

[Runcible Spoon]

101. there are absolutely NO cultures in the world

that participate in mass cannabalism, and for that matter, NO culture has ever cannabalized its own people for nutrition. There are isolated cases, like the Bolivian rugby players, but culture wise this does not and did not happen. Cannabalism is always highly ritualized and usually relegated solely to religious specialists or liminal participants.

[kalashnikov]

48. heres a link about the wonderful indians of S. America

<http://www.head-hunter.com/warfare.html|[br />apparently it wasnt just Europeans who seemed steeped in religious intolerance and warfare.]

[minkyboodle]

51. like I said

The sheer breadth and number of unique cultures in the Americas warrants that all types would be represented. A question though, DOn't you think that when examining these questions that one should examine the size and scale of these issues. For instance, did the Shuar after killing rival amazonian tribes move on to take down tribe after tribe? empire after empire? Also did they abuse the land taken from these people so extremely that parts of it became almost unlivable? I find the article interesting that so much of the SHuar's violence was religious based though. An Interesting contrast to the way religion was used by Europeans as a rationale and motivating point, while land and resources were the real motivations (basically the opposite of the tribe described on the site, a site you must admit is more interested in the head shrinking than the culture that produced it). I'm sorry I just don't understand your motivations for posting things that are basically saying "see look how bad and savage these guys were" except to rationalize or somehow justify European genocide. Perhaps we could get out of arguing semantics basically and get to the meat of the argument and you could describe your posts motivations.
Scott

[kalashnikov]

52. Iam no more an apologist for the europeans

than you are for the Indian tribes.

Are you saying that religiously motivated violence is somehow better than that motivated by land use issues?
And why should it matter how the land was used after its original inhabitants were wiped off of it?

You should not use these "red herring" arguments to distract from the real issue. We have to realize that apologizing for genocide is wrong no matter who committed it, and that the europeans were not its only pioneers. It had been going along forever among indians in a fashion no better than that seen in Europe(albeit on a smaller scale dictated by their weapon technlogies).
Thus, it seems weird to criticize Europeans for doing to the indians what they had been doing to each other without acknowledging that this is the case.

[LeahMira]

75. Stereotypes?

Thus, it seems weird to criticize Europeans for doing to the indians what they had been doing to each other without acknowledging that this is the case.

You are making the common mistake of lumping all Indians into one group. A few tribes did fight and kill. Most others did not. And a whole lot of the fighting that we know about happened because Europeans were pushing the tribes off their lands and on to the territory of other tribes. But not always, admittedly.

The thing of it is that not all Europeans were killers either. Most of them stayed in Europe and lived their lives. Of the ones who migrated here, however, nearly all were perfectly willing to kill Indians.

The massive scale of European killing of Indians far overshadows anything Indians may have been doing before the settlers arrived.

The horrible part of it is that while indeed we can't change the past, the policies of the present government are hostile to the survival of the tribes that still remain, and 99% of the non-Indian citizens of this nation don't give a damn.

[kalashnikov]

142. iam curious, you say:

"And a whole lot of the fighting that we know about happened because Europeans were pushing the tribes off their lands and on to the territory of other tribes."

I belive a whole lot of the fighting between Europeans and Indians was caused because europeans were being pushed off of their native lands by religious persecution. does that make what they did to the indians any less horrendous? no.

[LeahMira]

147. Some Europeans didn't like anybody very much...

I belive a whole lot of the fighting between Europeans and Indians was caused because europeans were being pushed off of their native lands by religious persecution.

The Pilgrims were not being pushed off their land. They had voluntarily left England and settled in the Netherlands for a while before returning to England and then coming to this land. Nor were they persecuted in Europe. They were the ones who were dissatisfied with their neighbors and felt that their fellow Christians in Europe weren't holy enough.

The settlers in Jamestown were merchants, plain and simple. They came to this land intending to establish colonies, but as bases of operations for trade and money-making.

In fact, there were mostly merchants on the Mayflower also. The Pilgrims were a small group that hitched a ride on what was essentially another in a series of money-making enterprises.

If you are talking about Columbus, he certainly wasn't fleeing religious persecution. If anything, the year 1492 was also the year that Jews were expelled from Spain, so some speculate that there were some Jewish sailors on his first voyage ships who were taking one of the few opportunities to escape Spain and the Inquisition and forced-conversion-or-die thing that was happening there. But if there were Jewish sailors, they didn't settle here. There is no record of any Jewish settlement coming from Columbus' voyages.

Should you wish to find out more about the Pilgrims, you might want to read Bradford's Journal or Mourt's Relation or others of the writings by the Pilgrims themselves. In those journals they say quite honestly that they were a minority on the Mayflower seeking a new home in a new land. You will also find, as you read on, that they became pretty intolerant of one another when they settled here. Some of their more powerful and vitriolic words were directed against others of their group who weren't "observant" enough.

[Runcible Spoon]

102. this is not what I would call

a scholarly peer-reviewed publication.

[Liberator_Rev]

65. Welcome to DU, Minkyboodle, and thanks for bringing so much

knowledge to bear on this subject. Unlike a number here who seem to be posting on the basis of what they've heard on Rush Limbaugh, or the like you obviously know what you are talking about.

Even though you have some negative things to say about my web page, http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/AmericanHolocaust you show that you actually take the time to read what you critique. Thank you very much on all counts.

[Liberator_Rev]

10. I offer DU a choice :

A) You can embrace the opinions of people like rudeboy666, who, I trust will enlighten us with his credentials for proclaiming in this post :
"For all his faults, Columbus was no Hitler(unless you have concrete evidence to the contary).
If anything, he was just a product of his times.
That whole 'conquest of paradise' is just a myth. The 'Indians' were(sometimes) just as viscious(especially against their own) as their Euro brethren."or
B) You can read the well-researched, well-documented, highly regarded scholarship of David Stannard, which shows that people with such views couldn't be more MISTAKEN.

You can either order and wait for the book, or start reading excerpts at http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/AmericanHolocaust .

[Lars39]

12. So we can't offer an opinion

unless we give your site the hits and/or buy the book?

[kalashnikov]

14. summarize it for me

i dont want to read it.

[minkyboodle]

38. that is pretty obvious

[Yupster]

39. For one thing,

I don't think Columbus ever set foot in what is now the 50 United States, nor did he ever send an army to it. I guess you can blame him for anything you want to, but I have trouble blaming him for the death of the Sioux.

[Liberator_Rev]

67. Does the USA honor Columbus?

Posted by Yupster
"I don't think Columbus ever set foot in what is now the 50 United States, nor did he ever send an army to it. I guess you can blame him for anything you want to, but I have trouble blaming him for the death of the Sioux."

Although you are TECHNICALLY correct, if he can get all the CREDIT for "discovering America" as the representative of those who were behind the whole invasion, he can also be the figure head for the blame.

[gate of the sun]

11. product of his times?

please that is well assine... George W. Bush is a product of his time.
we are all products of our time. Please find some other reason to defend ole chris.

not a holiday I ever intend on celerating.
read the people's history of the united states.....howard zinn

were the "euro's" their bretheren?????? Please they were defending their country and their way of life. oh and I see if the indians fought each other it was Ok then for those european invaders to come in.????

[kalashnikov]

18. so its ok if INdians massacre each other

but not if Europeans do so?
Look, the Apaches in the southwest were notorious for their violent raids against other Indian tribes. They were constantly stealing land, food, and horses from their neighbors. They rarely get condemned for this ("its their way of life") but when Europeans do exactly the same thing it is suddenly condemned.

[Runcible Spoon]

110. get this through your head

native american cultures NEVER participated in anything like the grand conquest of the americas by the Europeans. Make excuses all you want, such as they didn't have big enough populations to do such, but if you look at the Aztec and Mayan civilizations, they DID have the manpower to wipe out their competitors and guess what? It didn't happen. Yes, a lot of tribes participated in raids and such, but that could even be biologically motivated, such as the need to capture women to expand the gene pool At no time did any native american group use crafty biological warfare, such as the spreading of diseased blankets. Maybe in time the Aztecs MIGHT have wiped out other civilizations, but that is just a bullshit analogy to what Europeans did. And the Europeans knew exactly what they were doing, under teh false premise of "God's will". Now we have a global colonial legacy where Western powers are STILL subjugating the populations of the world. Now, it is not through diseased blankets or Machiavellian political exploitation, it is through economic domination and cultural propaganda campaigns.

[kalashnikov]

141. The Aztec and Mayan civilizations

A) sacrificed people to the gods.
B)Were often engaged in warfare against other Indian tribes for resources, land, religion etc. and if they didnt wipe them out it was not for a lack of trying.

you write:
"Yes, a lot of tribes participated in raids and such, but that could even be biologically motivated, such as the need to capture women to expand the gene pool At no time did any native american group use crafty biological warfare, such as the spreading of diseased blankets"


Everything is biologiacaly motivated, and by the same token you could argue that genocide is biologically motivated (i.e. eliminating competitors for limited resources, allowing your gene pool to prosper). Also, just because Europeans were "craftier" in their means of warfare does that make the Indians, who only killed with bows and arrows, less culpable for the murder of other Indians?

[LeahMira]

126. Stealing horses?

They were constantly stealing land, food, and horses from their neighbors.

The Spanish brought horses to this continent. Any Indians that were stealing horses were operating after the arrival and influence of the Spanish in Mexico. The Spanish in Mexico, BTW, started the raiding on the tribes for their women... for some obvious reasons.

[DebJ]

21. a product of his times? ???

1) What a blandly lame excuse for anyone's choice of behaviors.

2) What was so different about 'his times' as opposed to any other time in recorded human history?
a) certainly not as regards having one religious group actively attempting to exterminate another, and justifying this by simply saying Thou shalt not kill doesn't apply if they don't convert. That's been sadly very standard human behavior throughout the world in many cultures, many religions, and exists very well today.
b) certainly no different in the greedy pursuits of greedy men, only the specific objective for wealth changed: tea, spices, gold, now 'black gold, Texas tea'..the pursuit of 'gold' has inflamed men throughout all of history.

His times were no more ethnocentrically and greedily barbaric then many other places and times .... Columbus was just another member of the Right Wing, disembowling humanity while claiming they alone have morals. I presume that as a member of DU, these are not the values you have chosen for yourself. But you could, and be a product of the Right wing of OUR times. No, you would be a product of your own choices and spirit and soul.

[Liberator_Rev]

70. Very well said, Debbie !

[DebJ]

29. conquest of paradise myth

then why were New England Puritans so concerned about the many immigrants who 'defected' and lived as one with the Native Americans, enjoying so much less labor and so much more free time, among other things?

[Hippo_Tron]

13. I don't get why they feed grade school kids that bullshit...

I remember being taught that crap, and then later I didn't have much of a hard time learning the fact that he shoved tons of natives off their lands. I wonder how teachers can live with themselves teaching young kids that the guy was a hero.

[minkyboodle]

19. Stannard Endorsement

I would like to just add my opinion that Stannards book is by far the best and most researched I have read on this subject. The endnotes alone are worth a read by themselves. Liberator_Rev posted some very telling exerpts, it might be worth your while to maybe include the endnotes in there as well to further answer any questions. The two things I took from stannards book was a real appreciation for the city of Tenochtitlán (biggest in the world at the time with surronding area included) at its height and a revealing look at what European life was like in the 15th-16th century. I think it is interesting with the way we are taught history, we tend to look at every thing in a strictly linear fashion i.e. dark ages -> middle ages -> renaissance etc.. I never really realized how much life had regressed from the high middle ages to the beginning of the Renaissance (Columbus' period). Of course when you look at it, its obvious why (plague) but when are taught you tend to see a straight line of progress leading from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance when that really wasn't the case. Anyway how is that for a tangent. In summary, great book check out the excerpts but really this one is worth checking out or buying. As far as the Hitler thing of course Columbus wasn't Hitler. He was Columbus which bad enough already. Comparing Hitler to Columbus is pointless, they are both different bastards from different eras.
Scott

[Yupster]

40. The piece linked at the beginning of this site...

Is this piece taken from that book, or is it someone's summary of the book.

It is written in a very un-scholarly manner.

It is advocacy, not scholarship.

[Liberator_Rev]

91. It's a web site, not a doctoral thesis !

Yupster, you complain about http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/AmericanHolocaust :
"It is written in a very un-scholarly manner.
It is advocacy, not scholarship."

It's not meant as an END in itself, it ADVOCATES that people READ THE BOOK -- which I believe is excellent "scholarship", which is very much needed in America today, to reverse 500 years of murder and mahem which our Christian European ancestors visited on land which might otherwise be occupied by Native Americans, rather than you and me. I myself live a mile from the East Coast in an area called "Momauguin", the name of the chief of people who don't live here now because their ancestors were "discovered".

[Liberator_Rev]

83. Is Columbus more like Lincoln than Hitler ?

Scott,
As much as I admire and appreciate your talents and knowledge, when you say, "Comparing Hitler to Columbus is pointless, they are both different bastards from different eras." Are you doing justice to the point I am making in this thread, and the goal of promoting the reading of "American Holocaust"?

Is it not a FACT that the United States of America has been treating Christopher Columbus like Washington and Lincoln for God knows how many years?

Should educated Liberal Americans like ourselves consider it "POINTLESS" to inform and/or remind our fellow Americans that instead of treating Christopher Columbus Washington and Lincoln -which WE ARE NOW DOING - we should compare Christopher Columbus to people like Adolf Hitler, and CHANGE our treatment of him, beginning with the abolition of a holiday, which could better be used as Repentence Day for what we have done and continue to do against the Natives of all of the Americas.

[minkyboodle]

113. We are on the same basic side I think

I agree totally on the issue of Columbus Day celebration. I just don't know if broadly equating him with Hitler will serve the purpose of getting people more interested in the issue and the book. It is true that Stannard delves deeply into the psyche of the European conquerors and draws many chilling resemblences between Nazi attitudes and the attitudes of the "discovers" (the most telling I think is the designation of the victims as sub-human). It seems to me that Stannards main point is that the conquest of the New World is a genocide worthy of the same attention given to the Holocaust of WWII (he also argues for examination of the Armenian Holocaust of the early 20th century as well). I just think that the Columbus Hitler direct comparison is gonna push a lot of people's buttons who might be more receptive to that comparison after reading Stannards analysis of the issue. Anyway, Lib I agree with what you are saying. I guess I'm just not suprised by the angry reactions in this thread and want to say again that a reading of Stannards whole argument is warranted by anyone interested in this issue. Also about the disease issue Stannard does not downplay this issue instead he deals with it in detail. He also examines the European attitudes toward the Native plagues, many welcomed them as the judgement of god and they certainly did little to prevent them and in many cases did much to advance them by the conditions they imposed upon the Native poeple.
Scott

[minkyboodle]

118. off subject

I like the liberals for christ part of you website. Nothing drives me crazy like a rich conservative religious fundamentalist envoking Jesus and his teachings. Seems they like to forget about the whole money changer thing. Good work on the site :)
Scott

[GiovanniC]

24. How is Columbus Personally Like Hitler?

I'm serious. I don't understand.

Yes, Columbus came here, at slaughter ensued. Are you saying that Columbus willfully caused the slaughter of the Native Americans, with malicious intent?

I see Columbus as sort of an Einstein-type figure... the analogy being that Einstein was instrumental in making a discovery (nuclear fission, leading to the atomic bomb) that would have happened one way or another eventually (regardless of his involvement) which had extremely negative consequences. I don't think you should blame Einstein for the deaths of millions in Japan during WW2, and I don't think that the slaughter of all Native Americans should be laid at Columbus's feet.

But please, enlighten me if I am just failing to understand something, or if my American public education did not provide me with all of the facts.

[DebJ]

28. Columbus an Einstein..

I read that Einstein's intention was to avert need for more slaughter with the 'I've got a bigger one then you do' strategy...a Cold war type of strategy. And he enormously regretted his involvement in the bomb, from what I read.
Columbus personally ordered the maiming of Native Americans who did not bring to him their alloted portions of gold, among many other niceties he devoted his life to. Certainly many other explorers and conquistadors did the same, and worse...but we don't celebrate them every year. We hide them, just as standard American history classes have hidden most of the facts from most Americans.
I don't think Columbus discovered America; in fact, I think he was given directions there by predecessors in on this great secret to wealth and power. And these people have reasons to want us to believe Columbus discovered America.
He did not discover it; he just helped Europeanize it and destroy what it once was. He came; he conquered; he stole; he destroyed.

Giovanni, no one can even say for sure if he was Italian, ha!

[LeahMira]

77. Yes!

Are you saying that Columbus willfully caused the slaughter of the Native Americans, with malicious intent?

Rarely do you read about his subsequent voyages to the "New World." Given that then he had a limited number of soldiers and war dogs and etc. to work with, he led them all in the most vicious slaughters imaginable of the native peoples he encountered.

His own writings and reports back to the Spanish crown damn him. He wrote that the native people he found were docile and generous and that there should be no trouble enslaving them.

Reports by the friar Bartolomeo de las Casas who accompanied some of the Spanish in their subsequent voyages indicate that if the enslaved Indians did not bring in their quotas of silver or whatever, their hands were cut off. De las Casas also tells of Indians herded into a house and the house set on fire, and of Indians hung with their feet barely able to touch the ground and fires burned beneath them to slowly torture them to death and of soldiers' "games" to see who could run an Indian through with his sword in one thrust or bashing babies heads up against trees.

Sorry to spoil your breakfast, but please read. It's out there on the internet if you don't care to go book shopping today.

[Liberator_Rev]

86. If you're serious, then read the web site and/or the book

GiovanniC,
when you ask:
"But please, enlighten me if I am just failing to understand something, or if my American public education did not provide me with all of the facts.", the whole point of this thread is to urge people like yourself to read the web site http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/AmericanHolocaust right now and/or the book, which can hopefully buy or get from a library in due course.

[incapsulated]

25. Why honor Columbus and not Ericsson?

Lief was Robbed!!

[JohnKleeb]

30. Youre both wrong it was Saint Brendan lol

http://www.factmonster.com/spot/irishsaints3.html
I believe it was Erikson but my one friend's brothers claims it was Saint Brother lol in reality I discovered America ;).

[Yupster]

42. Because it seems that Erickson's people

didn't leave permanent settlements. Columbus's did.

[BiggJawn]

26. I called it "Lief Ericson Day" for YEARS....

Even in grade school. The teachers HATED that...

Why celebrate either? Columbus Day used to be a holiday. School kids got it off, Post Office and banks were closed, now only Fedeeral workers and bankers (and the courts in Indy) get a holiday.

And Columbus ain't exactly in good aroma anymore...

[kalashnikov]

31. the indians were not so peaceful:

[br />"Our understanding of the Anasazi is exactly parallel to what was thought of the Maya years ago - this advanced society responsible for beautiful things, that now we realize was not a peaceful place," said David Wilcox, curator of the Museum of Northern Arizona.]

[minkyboodle]

44. This excuses and justifies European Genocide How?

Even if you give in to this rogue theory on the Anasazi that they were taken of by a cannibalistic offshoot of the Olmecs (there are many challenges to this theory by the way just google search or group search) I still don't get how pointing out that Native Americans had good and bad sides has to do with the extermination and forced removal of millions upon millions of people. While I don't subscribe to this particular and controversial theory about the Anasazi, I know that some tribes did incorporate cannibalism (Ute). I still don't know what this has to do with the celebration of Columbus as a hero. The simple fact is Europeans made war on a scale and in a fashion unknown in the New World. How does pointing out that some Native People were no saints either justify the lionization and celebration of a man guilty of Columbus' crimes?
Scott

[kalashnikov]

46. it doesnt. its just a commentary

on the idea implied that evil, genocide, massacre, and warfare were introduced by Europeans.

[Name removed]

32. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[AP]

33. Why Columbus and not Genghis Kahn? Personally, I would have expected a lot

more from the 20th Century, especially after the lessons learned from WWI.

[Yupster]

34. Being a history person, I actually read

through the entire piece.

I guess my review is that it lacked any sense of balance.

When I used to be a teacher, I used to read examples of "Yellow Journalism" to the students having to do with the Spanish treatment of Cubans right before the Spanish-American War. This piece reminded me of those old newspaper articles that whipped the American public into supporting the Spanish-American War.

[minkyboodle]

53. The way the book is presented in this post is disjointed

Yupster,
These are excerpts from some of the book presented at the top of the link (some non sequentially to). You are correct the book is part advocacy in the way that People's History of the United States was advocacy, they are both advocacy against the older more traditional views of the subjects. However, the book is very well cited and reading with the end notes lends much more credibility the argument as well as reading the entire book which always Stannards arguements to unfold just like any thesis requires. THe whole Hitler thing is the posters bag and not Stannards. and it is pointless and non-sequitar as well. (the author of the posts self added titles to the excerpts don't really help either).
Scott
Also Stannard discusses the population of the North Americas and how it has grown and evolved over time from the low of the 1950s to todays more convential estimates that range from 6-12 million.

[Yupster]

54. Well, it's not fair of me to render a judgement

of the work having just read excerpts, but I will anyway.

If the author is in anyway associated with academia, he should be ashamed of himself.

My guess is that if the author was here, he would agree that of course most Indians died of disease. Many tribes had their populations devastated before they ever saw a European. Some New England populations were on a steep decline before the Pilgrims even landed just from the occasional interaction with cod fshermen who would dry their catches on the beaches.

However, this most important cause of the decline is brushed past in a few asides, rather than as a main point in the story. Oh he mentions diseases, in fact quite a few times just in these excerpts, but it is always in passing on his way to another lurid account of a massacre.

The author would point out that his sin is certainly not one of ommision because diseases is mentioned quite a bit. It is rather a sin of emphasis, and I believe it is purposely done.

[minkyboodle]

116. well at least you're honest

[Liberator_Rev]

82. Hitler is Stannard's "bag", too.

I really appreciate your critiques, after you have actually read both the book and the web site.

I don't know how long it's been since your read the book, but not surprisingly,when you say "THe whole Hitler thing is the posters http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/AmericanHolocaust site> bag and not Stannards. and it is pointless and non-sequitar as well."
you are showing that like most of us you don't have total recall. If you have access to the book, you can check out pages 153, 246-252, where Stannard demonstrates that Hitler is his bag, too.

Let's keep in mind, shall we, that it's a little much to require that anybody who starts a thread has to squeeze a doctoral thesis into THE TITLE - OR ELSE !!!! - and still attract interest in it!

[minkyboodle]

114. See my earlier response

I didn't mean to imply you made up the Hitler examination. I just felt that Hitler was less the issue personally and Stannards argument was more of a broader comparison of genocide and what constitutes it rather than a direct comparison of Hitler and Columbus.
Scott

[Swede]

41. 100 million natives died!!!!!!!

Get real.

[Liberator_Rev]

94. And you think "Indians" were ALWAYS few in number!

On what information do you express your view, "Get real".

Why not READ http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/AmericanHolocaust and see if the excerpts you'll find there from the book, "American Holocaust" don't persuade you to READ MORE on the subject before spouting off uninformed reactions.

[Character Assassin]

106. That's still quite a controversial population claim. Here's a link

To some history and a rebuttal to the 100,000,000 figure: http://faculty.samford.edu/~twwoolle/WP92798b.html

Consider, for example, the question of the pre-Columbian population of the Americas--one of today's more passionate academic debates.

Europeans, we have been told, wiped out 95 percent of a total hemispheric native population of 100 million, 25 million of whom were in Mexico alone. But what were these figures based on? Up until the mid-20th century, the population of the Americas in 1492 was thought to have been between 4 million and 15 million. Then, in 1948, three researchers at the University of California changed the debate completely. Sherburne Cook, a professor of psychology, Lesley B. Simpson, the historian of Mexico, and Woodrow Borah, a professor of Latin American history, produced new figures, raising the pre-contact population of Central Mexico alone to at least 7 million. Their revision was based on a Spanish census of 1548 called the suma de visitas and on a technique called "carrying capacity," where a long-lost population is estimated according to how much food it might have consumed in a given environment. Using this methodology, the theoretical population of the Americas was suddenly multiplied by 10.

But there was a problem in this sweeping revision. The suma itself revealed a Mexican population of only 1.3 million. The historians, then, had extrapolated backward through time at a rate they set to reflect a pre-assumed rate of death from European diseases such as smallpox. The technique was belatedly denounced as circular and unreliable. The Aztecs didn't produce any census of their own other than incomplete land records. (Indeed, outside of China, Egypt, Moghul India and Western Europe, there are no reliable population records.) The carrying capacity method has also come under attack as an untrustworthy way of estimating populations in the distant, pre-literate past.

Yet Cook and Borah are routinely cited as sources for 100 million vanished Native Americans--while there is little acknowledgment of the fierce controversy that surrounds their techniques. Is that because they told us what we, in some guilt-ridden way, wanted to hear? Or is some number, however inflated, simply better than no number at all?

[Terwilliger]

43. I don't...and this is covered in Howard Zinn's "People's History" as well

Columbus was part of early European colonialism.

Apparently, they didn't have enough room, so they decided they would own more.

[kalashnikov]

47. European Colonialism?

What about the colonialism practiced by the Indians? As in taking over the land of rival tribes to use for themselves. Europeans did not invent the idea of colonialism.

[Terwilliger]

78. Indians? from Delhi? from Bhopal?

If you're referring to Native Americans, they did not expand themselves colonially. Read a book.

[kalashnikov]

143. define colonoialism.

The indians and people throughout history everywhere expanded in population, migrated and often found a choice piece of land that happened to have people living on it. Often the inhabitants would be kicked off forcefully or forced to accomodate the new inhabitants.

[Pontus]

61. Muslims started it all...

When they took over and killed off the inhabitants of Constantenople they then controlled trade between the east and west. Pirating was rampant and heavy taxes were charged by the Muslims. So that's why Isabella commissioned Columbus to find an alternate route to Asia. And we could also thank the Moors who controlled Spain for being the catylist for Spaniards to become tough fighters (to regain their homeland in Spain) as well as connecting them to the Arab practice of slave trading.

[Terwilliger]

80. Arab practice?

Lessee...since all men sprang from northern Africa, are we all Arab?

Funny, you know I got two replies to my post that had nothing to do with what I said.

Don't tell me...white male?

[Supply Side Jesus]

55. Ol' Chris rounded up the indians and gassed them!

give me a friggin break.
There was no intentional act of genocide. What happened was what has happened since humans first threw the bones in the air. What happened was conquest. The Native Americans did not have the technology the europeans did and subsequently got their asses kicked. We could argue that if the shoe was on the other foot, the exact thing would have happened, you know those imperial aztecs and the human sacrifices and all.

[Liberator_Rev]

93. Don't read the book. You know it all, already!

I love your caroon, Supply Side Jesus, is it copyrighted? I'd like to use it on my http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/GODvsGreed page.

As for the contents of your post, the only scholarhip that I know of supporting your views is the Radical Right think tanks, like Dinesh Souza. If that's the company you keep, then have it.

Otherwise, you might explore http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/AmericanHolocaust to see if you don't want to go even further and read the whole book "American Holocaust" (or similar scholarship).

[pretzel4gore]

56. ever heard of this?

apparently the fossil record indicates that in the 16th century the buffalo population began exploding, until by the 18th/19th buffalo formed herds that took days to pass a single point on the prairies., (which the settlers marvelled at)...the reason was that disease did in fact inpact the 'injuns' so that they stopped 'managing' the buffalo herds/populations at that time...
another article in 'Atlantic Monthly' suggest/concludes that the Amazon rainforest appears to be the result of centuries of 'gardening' (or terraforming as freepers like to call it) as it couldn't have existed in nature w/out the savages help....
the fact is you must admit, is the truth is toxic to the bush gangsters right now, and to their antecedents in US and western history.....
hitler wanted same thing as columbus did ie: lotsa stuff for nothing...

[Kamika]

60. Because he discovered america

Hitler didnt

[Liberator_Rev]

79. So, it's OK if somebody rapes you, if they call it "discovering" you!

[Kamika]

85. not posted as debate

I didnt answer his post as a debate, i just gave the explanation why we celebrate columbus and not hitler, and thats because columbus discovered america.


Whether i find it right or not isnt the issue

[Zynx]

64. Actually, you have to blame the 50 million deaths in Europe on Hitler

and not just the 10 million. But still the point is valid that Columbus may be responsible for even more deaths.

[Muddleoftheroad]

66. Disease

You can't blame Columbus for finding a place where people were not resistant to European diseases.

[Liberator_Rev]

76. And if you infect others with AIDS, that's THEIR PROBLEM !

I meant to refer you to post # 63 above

[Character Assassin]

117. Or it the native infect the Europeans with Syphilis

It did originate, after all, in the New World.

[Astarho]

120. That's been disputed

http://www.rahul.net/starwolf/shm/monograph/pugh_mon1.html

[Character Assassin]

122. Indeed. There are several potential sources.

http://www.archaeology.org/9701/newsbriefs/syphilis.html

[oldcoot]

125. Spanish battle tactics made things worse

The Spanish practiced a "scorched-earth policy," which caused starvation. In turn, starvation made Native Americans more vulnerable to small pox (see Rodolfo Acuna's Occupied America).

[ShaneGR]

68. Don't we have better things to do????

Seriously, we've got a shitty president and we're busy talking about whether a 500 year old dead guy was good?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

71. Really

Hitler set out to systematically destruct a people.....


Columbus was just looking for new haunts....



on edit-people on this board are pissed because we are obsessed with Rush.....

[LeahMira]

84. Patterns...

Seriously, we've got a shitty president and we're busy talking about whether a 500 year old dead guy was good?


You could be right, but I think it is important because we, like all people, ignore our bad deeds and even manage to turn some of them into good deeds with the propaganda we feed ourselves.

Several years ago, Don Feder wrote a column dissing the United American Indians of New England for their National Day of Mourning that they hold each Thanksgiving in Plymouth, MA. Among others of his comments, he stated that Europeans brought a bunch of "savages" the greatest civilization the world has ever known and that they should be grateful.

There are plenty of folks who insist that the Japanese would have killed thousands more Americans if not for Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that the U.S. saved lots of Japanese from dying in the fighting that would have happened as well. Besides, we "rebuilt" Japan to the point where they are a major competitor and "Made in Japan" tags aren't indicative of shlock goods these days.

What though does it do to our collective psyche (or whatever you want to call it) when we "justify" atrocity like that?

For your edification, Robert Jay Lifton has written a book on "Hiroshima in America" that examines just that issue. If you can get a copy at your library, do that please.

Yes, we do have a shitty president, and we most definitely should focus on getting rid of him. At the same time, the conditions, or the "frames of mind" that permit people like "Shitty President" to rise to power remain in the right wing conservative folks out there who need to be brought to an understanding of the fact that justifying evil by citing a few positives and ignoring the atrocities is not the way to go.

The ends never justify the means. If this country can't bring its "blessings" to the rest of the world through totally honorable means, then perhaps we aren't as swell or as smart as we'd like to believe.

I don't think we need to beat our breasts to the point that we become immobilized completely, but isn't there a balance? Can't we honestly admit our problems and mistakes while at the same time honoring our real achievements?

[frank frankly]

81. excellent post

fuck columbus

[Liberator_Rev]

87. Happy holiday, Frank!

[bhunt70]

89. not a fan of columbus.

its just another free day from work which I can reflect how few native americans are actually left (of which I am one).

[Liberator_Rev]

90. The "savages" way of viewing and fighting War:

Several posters have referred to the killing of Indians by Indians.
Here's what Stannard learned about Indian warfare as contrasted with the "civilized" way of viewing and fighting war (as quoted at http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/AmericanHolocaust ):
"This probably is seen most dramatically in the comparative Indian and European attitudes toward warfare. We already have observed one consequence of the differing rituals that were conventional to Europe and the Americas in Montezuma's welcoming Cortés into Tenochtitlán in part because Cortés claimed he was on a mission of peace; and one inviolable code of Meso--American warfare was that it was announced, with its causes enumerated, in advance. Cortés's declared intentions of peace, therefore, were supposed by Montezuma to be his true intentions. A similar attitude held among Indians in much of what is now the United States. Thus, as a seventeenth-century Lenape Indian explained in a discussion with a British colonist:
"We are minded to live at peace: If we intend at any time to make war upon you, we will let you know of it, and the reasons why we make war with you; and if you make us satisfaction for the injury done us, for which the war is intended, then we will not make war on you. And if you intend at any time to make war on us, we would have you let us know of it, and the reasons for which you make war on us, and then if we do not make satisfaction for the injury done unto you, then you may make war on us, otherwise you ought not to do it." {p. 109}
"Meso-American political traditions had always dictated that war was to be announced before it was launched, and the reasons for war were always made clear well beforehand. War was a sacred endeavor, and it was sacrilegious to engage in it with treachery or fraud. In fact, as Inga Clendinnen recently has noted: "So important was this notion of fair testing that food and weapons were sent to the selected target city as part of the challenge, there being no virtue in defeating a weakened enemy." { p.76}
The alleged "brutality" of the Aztecs :
"In all their writings on the Aztecs, the Inquisition-loving Spanish -- like most Western writers who have followed them -- expressed indignant horror at their enemies' religious rituals involving human sacrifice. And indeed, the Aztec toll in that regard was great. Perhaps as many as 20,000 enemy warriors, captured in battle, were sacrificed each year during the peak of the Aztecs' brief reign as the lords of central Mexico. (Yet, what one conquistador said of the reports of Inca human sacrifice may hold true here as well: "These and other things are the testimony we Spaniards raise against these Indians," wrote Pedro de Cieza de Leon in 1553, "endeavoring by these things we tell of them to hide our own shortcomings and justify the ill treatment they have suffered at our hands. . . } I am not saying that they did not make sacrifices . . . but it was not as it was told."" Las Casas claimed the same was true of the reports from Mexico -- "the estimate of (his fellow Spaniard) brigands," he claimed, "who wish to find an apology for their own atrocities," -- and modern scholars have begun to support the view that the magnitude of sacrifice was indeed greatly exaggerated by the New World's conquerors, just as it was, for the same reasons, by Western conquerors in other lands.

Even if the annual figure of 20,000 were correct, however, in the siege of Tenochtitlán the invading Spaniards killed twice that many people in a single day -- including (unlike Aztec sacrifice) enormous numbers of innocent women, children, and the aged. And they did it day after day after day, capping off the enterprise, once Tenochtitlán had been razed, by strip-searching their victims, before killing them, for any treasure they may have concealed. . . Lastly, they burned the precious books salvaged by surviving Aztec priests, and then fed the priests to Spanish dogs of war." { p. 79--80 }

Ray's observations:
After millenia of war between "Indians" there were perhaps as many as 100,000,000 "survivors".

After just a few years of Christian European war against relatively unarmed "Indians" the 100,000,000 were very nearly wiped out!

[kalashnikov]

144. Gee, it sounds like the indians treated killing people

like a game. Thats pretty brutal. They wanted warfare to be as fair as possible becaus... they enjoyed it? I dont know, but that is a pretty sick way of looking at killing another human being (they had human sacrifice so maybe they did not have much respect for human life, or at least no more than the spaniards).

Also, your his point that aztecs looked down on suprise attacks and europeans did not is false. Europeans did not believe surprise attacks were right or moral, just because one person does it does not condone a whole culture.

[9215]

92. I'd rather honor Cortez

He stopped the insane slaughter of untold thousands for generations to come by stopping Montezuma.

Look up "Sacrifice to the Sun God".

[Liberator_Rev]

96. So you think Cortes was a HERO !!!

The following are excepts from the book, American Holocaust (which are quoted at http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/AmericanHolocaust:
" Rather than meeting resistance when he approached the great city, (the Spanish leader Hernando) Cortés was greeted in friendship and was welcomed by Montezuma. In retrospect this behavior of the Aztec leader has usually seemed foolish or cowardly or naive to Western historians. But Meso-American political traditions had always dictated that war was to be announced before it was launched, and the reasons for war were always made clear well beforehand. War was a sacred endeavor, and it was sacrilegious to engage in it with treachery or fraud. In fact, as Inga Clendinnen recently has noted: "So important was this notion of fair testing that food and weapons were sent to the selected target city as part of the challenge, there being no virtue in defeating a weakened enemy." In this case, therefore, not only was there no reason for Montezuma to suppose Cortés intended to haunch an invasion (the Tlaxcaltec troops who accompanied him could have been part of an effort to seek political alliance), but Cortés had plainly announced in advance that his purposes were not warlike, that he came as an ambassador of peace."
"Once the Spanish were inside the city's gates, however, it soon became apparent that this was a far from conciliatory mission. {p. 76 } . . .
"Once the disease dissipated -- having devastated the city's residents and killed off most of the Aztec leaders -- Cortés prepared to attack again. First, he had ships constructed that were used to intercept and cut off food supplies to the island capital. Then he destroyed the great aqueduct that brought fresh water to the city. Finally, the Spanish and their Indian allies laid siege to the once brilliant white metropolis and its dwindling population of diseased and starving people. "Siege," as Inga Clendinnen has observed, was for the Aztecs "the antithesis of war." Viewing it as cowardly and dishonorable, "the deliberate and systematic weakening of opposition before engagement, and the deliberate implication of noncombatants in the contest, had no part in their experience." But it had been the European mode of battle for many centuries, deriving its inspiration from the Greek invention of ferocious and massively destructive infantry warfare. To the Spanish, as to all Europeans when committed to battle, victory -- by whatever means -- was all that mattered. On the other side, for reasons equally steeped in ancient tradition, the people of Tenochtitlán had no other option than to resist dishonor and defeat until the very end. The ensuing battle was furious and horrifying, and continued on for months. Tenochtitlán's warriors, though immensely weakened by the deadly bacteria that had been loosed in their midst, and at least initially hobbled by what Clendinnen calls their "inhibition against battleground killing," were still too formidable an army for direct military confrontation. So Cortés extended his martial strategy by destroying not only the Aztecs' food and water supplies, but their very city itself. His soldiers burned magnificent public buildings and marketplaces, and the aviaries with their thousands of wondrous birds; they gutted and laid waste parks and gardens and handsome boulevards. The metropolis that the Spanish had just months earlier described as the most beautiful city on earth, so dazzling and beguiling in its exotic and brilliant variety, became a monotonous pile of rubble, a place of dust and flame and death." { p.78--9}
. . .Recalled Cortés "We now learnt from two wretched creatures who had escaped from the city and come to our camp by night that they were dying of hunger. . . We resolved to enter the next morning shortly before dawn and do all the harm we could. . . and we fell upon a huge number of people. As these were some of the most wretched people and had come in search of food, they were nearly all unarmed, and women and children in the main. We did them so much harm through all the streets in the city that we could reach, that the dead and the prisoners numbered more than eight hundred."

. . ."They moved their forces to another section of the city where they slaughtered and captured more than twelve thousand people. Within a day or two they had another multitude of helpless citizens penned in: "They no longer had nor could find any arrows, javelins or stones with which to attack us." More than forty thousand were killed in that single day, and "so loud was the wailing of the women and children that there was not one man amongst us whose heart did not bleed at the sound." Indeed, because "we could no longer endure the stench of the dead bodies that had lain in those streets for many days, which was the most loathsome thing in all the world," recalled Cortés, "we returned to our camps." But not for long. The next morning the Spanish were in the streets again, mopping up the starving, dehydrated, and disease-wracked Indians who remained. "I intended to attack and slay them all," said Cortés, as he observed that: The people of the city had to walk upon their dead while others swam or drowned in the waters of that wide lake where they had their canoes; indeed, so great was their suffering that it was beyond our understanding how they could endure it. Countless numbers of men, women and children came out toward us, and in their eagerness to escape many were pushed into the water where they drowned amid that multitude of corpses; and it seemed that more than fifty thousand had perished from the salt water they had drunk, their hunger and the vile stench.. . . And so in those streets where they were we came across such piles of the dead that we were forced to walk upon them." {p.80}

[9215]

97. That is what I'm saying

How Cortez destroyed this murderous empire, with strong evidence it practiced cannibalism as a ritual, is irrelevant to me. He got the job done.

Any comments on "Sacrifice to the Sun God"?


PS: Cortez also enlisted the support of other regional tribal groups who were worried were Montezuma's next meal was coming from.

[Astarho]

98. Cortez was worse than Colombus

Cortez was used by Malinche who had her own grudges against the empire. He was also a thug who was looking for gold to steal. He came illegally and had forces coming to arrest him, but he managed to defeat them. While he was gone, his subordinate Alvarado was in charge, and when the Aztec celebrated a ceremony without human sacrifce (as per Cortez' instructions) they were massacred anyway. He also reduced Tenochtitlan from a city his own men decribed as surpassing Rome or Constantinope in beauty to ruins.

But he destroyed a "murderous empire" right? Nevermind he helped institute another "murderous empire" in its place. How many died in the tortures of the Inquisition? The Aztecs were used to a simple cut from an obsidian knife, as opposed to watching the Spaniards burn people alive.

BTW, most of the tribes who allied with the Spanish later regretted it.

[9215]

99. But the Spaniards did not have institutionalized, ritual slaughter

as a cultural mainstay.

These facts are persistently ignored by those indoctrinated with the "Noble Savage" myths.

[Astarho]

115. No, they had the Inquisition,

institutionalized torture. How many people were burnt at the stake over its history? And like the Inquisition, the Aztec religion was a tool of the state to keep people in line.

Also there was more to the Aztec Empire than just human sacrifice. There was art, poetry, and history of which the Mexicans are still proud to this day.

[9215]

127. Pizarro wasn't to bad either.

Several years ago I fell in love with a picture of an ancient child that was found in the mountains of Peru. His petrified little body was discovered much as he was when he was left on that cold mountaintop. Over 500 years ago his innocent life was given as a sacrifice to the Sun God of his people. The picture touched my heart, and I knew that I would one day make a reproduction of him in doll form......

I guess they "kept that child in line".

The Spanish Inquisition, as bad as it was was not the glorification of cannibalistic slaughter. For me the main point is that Western Civilization, by its structure and evolving nature put an end to many of its own barbaric practices. Life in Pre-Columbian America was a brutal struggle for survival with no civil law and order and none in the forecast. With the quantum leap of government for the people we saw a sea change in the attitude toward the rights of mankind. We saw, in a brief 80 years the end of institutionalized slavery, ended with 650,000 lives of the "oppressor race" being spent (Civil War) in the process. That these people, white people, killed each other to free another race is a testament to the power of the ideal of freedom to transcend racial differances.

You can attempt to draw parallels with the shortcoming of Western Civilization today , but you cannot deny that, unlike the Native American scene of few hundred years ago, we have governing systems that strive to create more equality and try to institutionalize human rights and have been successful at it, though with some serious setbacks. Nothing of the kind existed in pre-Columbian America and never would have until they went through the long process Western Civilization had gone through.

I am saddened by the way many Native Americans have been treated by their conquerors. I think things, at least in the later stages, may have been done differantly, but that these people needed conquering, or transforming, or whatever word you want to use is not even a question in my mind. The noble savage myth is just that, a myth.

[Astarho]

131. Well

You obviously don't know anything about Pre-Colombian civilizations, or else you would not have pulled in that example. You bring in the Incas, who were as different from the Aztecs as the Classical Greeks were from the Pharaonic Egyptians. Human sacrifice did happen among the Incas but not nearly to the degree of the Aztecs. BTW Pizarro was a greedy thug who treated his own soldiers with such contempt they murdered him.

Life in Pre-Columbian America was a brutal struggle for survival with no civil law and order and none in the forecast... Nothing of the kind existed in pre-Columbian America and never would have until they went through the long process Western Civilization had gone through.

I suppose you know this because you were there? All Native American societies have their own laws and social order, and have had for centuries.

but that these people needed conquering, or transforming, or whatever word you want to use is not even a question in my mind.
Do you really believe these people needed to be civilized? That's a very 19th century viewpoint. I'm sure they loved being transformed from sovereign nations to the worst off minority in the country.

The noble savage myth is just that, a myth.
I agree, they were no more noble nor savage then anyone else.

[9215]

132. So one has to be there to know?

Did you see what Cortez did? How can you say he did anything if you werent' there.

How can one argue with documented history. The Sacrifice to the Sun God was horrendous. Upwards of 25,000 people would have their hearts torn from their bodies in a few days of "celebration".

What we are arguing about here is something I have seen time and again. This is why the Left stumbles because it does not, unequivocally, support the civilizing of the world. On almost any measure: life expectancy, infant mortality, human rights you name it civilization is superior to primitivism. Most of what I see as counterpoint to this is people who find the idea of primitiveness aesthetically pleasing and give it no more thought.

You think they are a screwed over minority, but you fail to compare that to "minorities" that were conquered in intertribal warfare. They became slaves-- property of their conquerors.

As I said I am saddened by what happens to Native Americans. I know Native Americans. I lived in Alaska and saw how they grappled with the corporate encroachement on their land and stood with them on this. I'm sickened to see what I call the Mafiazation of the tribes today (started by Raygun) with gambling casinos; it is similar to giving the Indians "fire water" in earlier times, IMO. I fear, again the tribes will get the short end of the stick in the long run.

My quarrel was not with the idea of conquering (there isn't any nice way of saying it) for a greater good, though I would like it to be as humane as possible, but the treatment after they were conquered. That needs to be addressed. IMO most Native Americans would probably agree that civilization has brought them good things, though the cost has been high at times.

[LeahMira]

149. Civilizing?

This is why the Left stumbles because it does not, unequivocally, support the civilizing of the world. On almost any measure: life expectancy, infant mortality, human rights you name it civilization is superior to primitivism.

Well, we tend to look at a particular event and place our own cultural interpretation on that event.

Recall, please, that the Old Testament tells us of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his own son. No, he didn't do it, but he was ready to because he believed his G-d demanded it. Apparently the idea wasn't all that strange to Abraham. Some religions insist on gold dishes and pure beeswax candles for their services because they want the finest and purest things to surround their G-d. Some groups offered children because children were pure and unspoiled and virginal and all that.

We do live longer, but we die of cancers that are horrible to suffer through. Who is to say that pneumonia isn't an easier death? And what of the quality of life we experience in those extra years? Our elders live in nursing homes where they are often neglected by family and mistreated by alleged caregivers, a concept that would be unthinkable to an American Indian family.

What happens is that we impose our own interpretation on events. We never think of asking WHY other peoples do things differently.

We are over in Iraq right now bringing "democracy" but the American Indian tribes had a much better and more direct sort of democracy than anything we have come up with.

Do you really think that if left alone the Indians would not have progressed past the point at which Europeans found them? At the time Europeans came here, they lived in crowded, dirty cities where dumping the family waste into the street was considered SOP. At the same time, Indians were designating spots away from their villages and burying their trash and waste. Not washing for long periods of time and using perfume instead of soap and water was also SOP. At the same time, Indians were bathing daily. Of course you know that the Mayans had a system of math that was far more accurate than anything that Europeans came up with until years after.

I'm not saying that I would care to do without indoor heat and air conditioning and so on. I'm just saying that there are pros and cons to everything. I really would rather make my own clothes and only work four or five hours a day than work eight hours a day in an office in order to earn enough to buy clothes and a car and gas to get to the store and have those clothes wear out or go out of style in a year or two. So, this "civilization" we have is not the best there is. It's just our way of doing things. We like it, but tens of millions of people in other parts of the world don't want a darn thing to do with it and they are doing very well as they are. Can we leave them alone? Or better still, maybe learn from them?

[9215]

150. Thanks for your thoughtful reply

I admit it is a complex issue.

[Liberator_Rev]

123. 9215, What do you think the "Holy Inquisition" was all about?

Read http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/PopesvsChrist or any other book NOT "approved" by the Catholic Church.

[Yupster]

128. The Aztecs made no sacrifices

that story was made up by one of Cortez' backers, a mysterious Jorge de la Pena Bush. If you don't know about the BFEE, then read a book.

[9215]

133. That would be Arbusto?

Gotta link? :bounce: :evilgrin:

[Runcible Spoon]

112. yeah, the Aztecs sacrificed people.

How is that any more barbaric than our death penalty? Also, it was considered a great honor to be selected as a sacrifice, and oftentimes, your place in the afterlife would be one of honor.

[Character Assassin]

121. If you have to ask....

How is that any more barbaric than our death penalty?

You're kidding, right?

[Yupster]

134. Just a personal preference, but

I'll take a lethal injection over having my heart ripped out with a knife, or even worse getting flayed alive and having a priest dance around in my skin while I bled to death.

Actually, I'd like to go quietly in my sleep like my uncle Gus. Not screaming and terrified like the passengers he was driving at the time. (sorry - old joke)

[Yupster]

103. So Rev? What's your opinion of Kennewick Man?

There are now 6-8 sites that seem similar to him.

Perhaps the Indians propagated genocide on the original inhabitants of the New World thousands of years before Columbus was born.

Maybe we need to go back further in history to get to the true root of the evil.

[9215]

107. It's the Orientals fault

They came over that landbridge in the Bering Strait and wrought havoc on the animal population. Some scientists speculate that they caused the extinction of the Wooly Mammoth with the "Clovis point" spear--the Colt Revolver of its day. ;-)

Kennewick Man looks very similar to Jean Luke Picard of Star Trek. Could it be time travel???? :bounce:

[Darranar]

124. Maybe...

the major deaths were due to disease here. The Europeans were extremely cruel to the Native Americans, but they lacked the organization to be Hitlers.

I think comparing the Spaniards to Hitler is a stretch, though many were murderous and vile men.

[Liberator_Rev]

129. So the difference between C & H was "organization" !

Columbus couldn't be as evil as Hitler because he didn't have the access to IBM machines that Hitler did. I'm familiar with the efficiency that Hitler achieved with IBM's help and in fact have a page devoted to that very issue at http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/about/IBMholocaust.html .

But that wouldn't make Columbus less evil than Hitler, just less successful.

[Darranar]

130. No, the difference...

between the conquistadors (and also the Europeans who came after them) and the Nazis were organization and technology. Columbus, and what crimes he may have committed, is just a page in the book of European atrocities against Native Americans.

[scottxyz]

153. I never knew about Hitler and IBM!

I just googled it:

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0213/black.php

Pretty disgusting.

[9215]

135. Welcome to the wonderful world of

Kulturcampf. By design or otherwise.

[TankLV]

136. Where have you been these past few decades?! We already have!

King Georges I & II (thanx to Prescott "trading-with-the-enemy" bush*).

Gov Fuhrer Reichsmarshall Herr Aaaaaanold is now governor.

FDR must be spinning in his grave about now.

[Blue_Chill]

137. I doi'nt know about you guys but I'm celebrating "rush is a druggie" day

30 days rush free! Now that merits a day off!

[Rex]

145. Yup, the statistics are staggering

In all, around 90% of the natives of South America died from the 'Encounter'. Top it off with 20 million slaves being brought through the middle passage (native slaves were almost non-existant because of Spanish/Portuguese conquest and European diseases). I remember reading part of Columbus's journal (his first contacts) in one of my history textbooks; he basically states that the natives are very passive and that the whole area could be conqured with just 20 soldiers.

[9215]

152. So Columbus is responsible for all these deaths?

This has to be the dumbest goddamn thread I have ever seen. How the hell were the Europeans to blame for unintentionally bringing the diseases to the Americas???

By that token we could blame the Chinese for the Black Plague in to in theMiddle Ages as well as the Arabs who transmitted via rats from their trading vessels.

:eyes:

[Fight_n_back]

146. Because all the nations Hitler travelled to

were pretty easy to get to.

When I celebrate Columbus it is the fact that he established a permanent link between Europe and America.

The Natives in America weren't treated any worse than almost anyone in Spain. Then things got better.

[Liberator_Rev]

155. Where'd you learn your history, Yang, a comic book?

Here's just a few excerpts from the book American Holocaust that I quote on http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/Columbus :
As Bartolome de Las Casas, the most famous of the accompanying Spanish missionaries from that trip recalled:
"...Whenever the Spaniards found them, they pitilessly slaughtered everyone like sheep in a corral. It was a general rule among Spaniards to be cruel; not just cruel, but extraordinarily cruel so that harsh and bitter treatment would prevent Indians from daring to think of themselves as human beings or having a minute to think at all. So they would cut an Indian's hands and leave them dangling by a shred of skin and they would send him on saying "Go now, spread the news to your chiefs." They would test their swords and their manly strength on captured Indians and place bets on the slicing off of heads or the cutting of bodies in half with one blow. They burned or hanged captured chiefs"...
Spanish reports of their own murderous sadism during this time are legion. For a lark they "tore babes from their mother's breast by their feet, and dashed their heads against the rocks." The bodies of other infants "they spitted . . . together with their mothers and all who were before them, on their swords." On one famous occasion in Cuba, a troop of a hundred or more Spaniards stopped by the banks of a dry river and sharpened their swords on the whetstones in its bed. Eager to compare the sharpness of their blades, reported an eyewitness to the events, they drew their weapons and "began to rip open the bellies, to cut and kill those lambs -- men, women children, and old folk, all of whom were seated, off guard and frightened, watching the mares and the Spaniards. And within two credos (i.e. the time it takes to recite the "Creed"), not a man of all of them there remained alive. The Spaniards enter the large house nearby, for this was happening at its door, and in the same way, with cuts and stabs, begin to kill as many as they found there, so that a stream of blood was running, as if a great number of cows had perished.. . . To see the wounds which covered the bodies of the dead and dying was a spectacle of horror and dread . This particular slaughter began at the village of Zucayo, where the townsfolk earlier had provided for the conquistadors a feast of cassava fruit and fish. From there it spread. No one knows just how many Indians the Spanish killed in this sadistic spree, but Las Casas put the number a over 20,000 before the soldiers' thirst for horror had been slaked. {p. 71 } . . .
When there were among the prisoners some women who had recently given birth, if the new-born babes happened to cry, they seized them by the legs and hurled them against the rocks, or flung them into the jungle so that they would be certain to die there."
Or, Las Casas again, in another incident he witnessed:
The Spaniards found pleasure in inventing all kinds of odd cruelties, the more cruel the better, with which to spill human blood. They built a long gibbet, low enough for the toes to touch the ground and prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen at a time in honor of Christ Our Saviour and the twelve Apostles. When the Indians were thus still alive and hanging, the Spaniards tested their strength and their blades against them, ripping chests open with one blow and exposing entrails, and there were those who did worse. Then, straw was wrapped around their torn bodies and they were burned alive. {p. 72}

[onebigbadwulf]

148. Because Columbus shoved it in Fundy's faces!!!

I honor columbus for one simple reason - he disproved CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVES!!!

They swore the earth was flat according to God and he pissed on their faces.

GO COLUMBUS.

[Liberator_Rev]

154. You're spouting the kindergarden version of Columbus, Onebbw!

Here's your chance to grow a little. If I'm not mistaken our grade school children are no longer being taught that version of the story which came from a NOVELIST's totally fictictious story, not from historians. It's up to you. You can continue to sound like a grade school child, or read something like http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/Columbus and sound like you went to college.

[9215]

151. Should honoring Montezuma be a crime?

I got this off the wall e-mail today that suggested honoring Columbus should be labeled a crime. It came from Liberator Rev's site he mentions above.

I don't like gibberish like this cluttering up my e-mail box so I sent a nasty reply.

If honoring Columbus is crime then it goes doubly so for the cannibal king.