A People's History of the United States, 1492-Present Notes

Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress

Arawaks greeted Columbus with hospitality, offering food, water, and gifts.
Columbus noted their willingness to trade everything and their lack of arms.
He saw them as potential servants and considered subjugating them with a small force.
Columbus sought gold, which motivated the Spanish expedition.
Spain, recently unified, aimed to acquire wealth, especially gold, to enhance its power.
Columbus promised Spain 10% of profits, governorship, and the title of Admiral of the Ocean Sea.
Columbus's voyage was lucky, as he encountered the Americas while trying to reach Asia.
On October 12, 1492, land was sighted in the Bahamas.
The Arawaks lived in village communes with developed agriculture but lacked horses, work animals, and iron.
Columbus took Arawaks as prisoners to guide him to gold sources, leading to expeditions to Cuba and Hispaniola.
On Hispaniola, Columbus built Fort Navidad, the first European military base in the Western Hemisphere.
Columbus's report to the Court in Madrid exaggerated the riches of Hispaniola, mixing fact and fiction.
He requested help to bring back gold and slaves, portraying his actions as divinely ordained.
Columbus's second expedition involved seventeen ships and over twelve hundred men with the goal of acquiring slaves and gold.
Europeans' intent became clear, finding empty villages as they advanced. The sailors left behind had been killed by the Indians after mistreating them.
Columbus sent expeditions into the interior, resorting to slave raids when no gold fields were found.
In 1495, fifteen hundred Arawaks were rounded up for slavery, with many dying en route to Spain.
In Cicao, Haiti, a gold quota was imposed on the locals, with mutilation as punishment for non-compliance.
The Arawaks faced resistance but were outmatched by the Spaniards' superior weaponry.
Mass suicides and infanticide occurred among the Arawaks to escape the Spaniards.
The Arawak population on Haiti declined drastically due to murder, mutilation, and suicide.
Indians were forced into slave labor on encomiendas, leading to further deaths.
Bartolome de las Casas, a participant-turned-critic, provided key insights into the events after Columbus's arrival.
Las Casas described the Indians' agility, swimming abilities, and relatively peaceful nature.
Indian societies had relaxed marital customs and casual attitudes towards nudity.
Indians lived in communal buildings, valued natural items, and lacked a commercial system.
Las Casas initially supported replacing Indians with black slaves but later opposed it after witnessing its impact.
Las Casas: Spaniards exasperated, ravaged, killed, and destroyed Indians.
Las Casas said: The admiral was blind and committed irreparable crimes against the Indians.
Spaniards rode on Indians' backs, shaded by large leaves and fanned with goose wings.
Spaniards knifed Indians for sport and beheaded Indian boys.
Indians suffered and died in mines and other labors in desperate silence.
Men were sent to mines, and wives were forced to work the soil, leading to exhaustion and decreased procreation.
Infants died due to lack of milk from overworked mothers and some committed infanticide.
Las Casas: From 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines.
The initial European invasion led to conquest, slavery, and death.
Columbus Day is celebrated, omitting the bloodshed.
Samuel Eliot Morison acknowledged the genocide but viewed Columbus's good qualities as outweighing his faults.
Morison mentioned the truth quickly then focused on other things more important to him.
Facts are stated then buried in a mass of other information.
Historians emphasize certain facts, which supports some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual.
Highlighting Columbus's heroism as a navigator and discoverer de-emphasizes their genocide.
Easy acceptance of atrocities as a necessary price to pay for progress is still with us.
Atrocities are buried in a mass of other facts.
Treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks) and quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress is an aspect of an approach to history.
Henry Kissinger told the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those statesmen's policies.
Nations are not communities, and the history of any country conceals conflicts of interest.
It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.
The author prefers to tell history from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the slaves, of the Cherokees, etc.
The author doesn't want to grieve for the victims and denounce the executioners.
This book will be skeptical of governments. I will try not to overlook the cruelties that victims inflict on one another.
The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is.
If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should emphasize new possibilities.
What Columbus did to the Arawaks of the Bahamas, Cortes did to the Aztecs of Mexico, Pizarro to the Incas of Peru, and the English settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts to the Powhatans and the Pequots.
The Aztec civilization of Mexico came out of the heritage of Mayan, Zapotec, and Toltec cultures.
The Aztecs engaged in the ritual killing of thousands of people as sacrifices to the gods.
When a Spanish armada appeared at Vera Cruz, it was thought that he was the legendary Aztec man-god who had died three hundred years before, with the promise to return-the mysterious Quetzalcoatl.
Hernando Cortes, financed by merchants and landowners and blessed by the deputies of God, with one obsessive goal: to find gold.
Montezuma sent a hundred runners to Cortes, bearing enormous treasures, gold and silver, but at the same time begging him to go back.
Cortes began his march of death from town to town, using deception, turning Aztec against Aztec, killing with the kind of deliberateness that accompanies a strategy.
Cortes invited the headmen of the Cholula nation to the square. Cortes's small army massacred them.
Their cavalcade of murder was over they were in Mexico City, Montezuma was dead, and the Aztec civilization, shattered.
In Peru, Pizarro used the same tactics, and for the same reasons-the frenzy in the early capitalist states of Europe for gold, for slaves, for products of the soil.
These were the violent beginnings of an intricate system of technology, business, politics, and culture that would dominate the world for the next five centuries.
In 1585, Richard Grenville landed there with seven ships. Grenville sacked and burned the whole Indian village.
Jamestown itself was set up inside the territory of an Indian confederacy, led by the chief, Powhatan.
During the