This old Indian head nickel (left) reminds
us of the forgotten side of the coin in
American history.
A modest proposal for our Thanksgiving tradition.
The 400th anniversary of the event inspired the first
official Columbus Day holiday in the United States.
President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation
in 1892, “recommending to the people the observance
in all their localities of the 400th anniversary of the
discovery of America…” and describing Columbus as
“the pioneer of progress and enlightenment.”
—The Library of Congress
After the Revolutionary War, our nation needed heroes
and stories for the first chapter of American history,
and what better narrative than the epic one of Christopher
Columbus, the man who braved the unknown
perils of the Atlantic Ocean to discover the New World?
Well, I have that better narrative. It took a few
months for me to find it, but when you consider that
nearly five hundred years passed before the truth was
first made public, cut me some slack. I should also add
that some of the natives are not so happy.
Well, so sorry. I just reread that last line and find
it lacking. I should have written, “The natives who believe
in the fairy tale of Christopher Columbus are not
so happy, but America’s truest natives, that is, the Indians
who lived here before the Europeans, should feel
better for what follows.”
I first learned about Christopher Columbus
during my elementary school years. When the Catholic
nun commanded our class to take out a pad of paper,
we did. When she added, “And write down my exact
words between the thin blue lines on your pads,” we
did that, too.
In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the
ocean blue.
That simple line—the opening verse to an otherwise
forgotten poem—is one of the most remembered
and recognized bits of prose in American history, in the
pantheon of phrases such as “Take me out to the ballgame”
and “Oh say, can you see.”
After our class wrote those words, we listened to
the amazing story of how a man born in Genoa, Italy
grew up to lead three wooden ships, the Niña, Pinta,
and Santa Maria, across the vastness of the Atlantic
Ocean in search of a better trade route to the East.
In those days, we learned, the earth was thought to
be flat, meaning that the crew challenged established
science as they sailed west. I wanted to be Christopher
Columbus.
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, the
monarchy that had sponsored the journey, were delighted
when Columbus returned from his voyage of
discovery, even happier when he lied and reported that
the land had plenty of gold. A return trip was quickly
organized, and then another, but few Americans know
or care what happened on his subsequent journeys.
After all, he discovered our country, and that is enough.
It is not enough.
Christopher Columbus never set foot on the American
mainland. His travels took him to the Bahamas
and the coasts of Central and South America.
Christopher Columbus did not prove the world was
round. By 1492, the educated world already knew the
world was not flat. He proved nothing that the Greeks
had not figured out many centuries before.
On his first day in the New World, he seized six native
people because he thought they would make good
servants. When he returned to Europe after his second
voyage, he did so with over a thousand captives bound
for slave auctions in Cádiz, Spain. When native people
dared to protest their conditions, Columbus killed the
troublemakers and ordered their dismembered bodies
to be paraded through the streets.
But hey! We need American heroes! On October
12, 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt offered,
The courage and the faith and the vision of the
Genoese navigator glorify and enrich the drama
of the early movement of European people
to America. Columbus and his fellow voyagers
were the harbingers of later mighty movements
of people from Spain, from Columbus’s native
Italy, and from every country in Europe. And out
of the fusion of all these national strains was
created the America to which the Old World contributed
so magnificently.
During my early elementary school years, a far
lesser amount of time was spent learning about Native
Indian history. Our focus was on the side of the coin
that featured Christopher Columbus, the Pilgrims, and
George Washington, and not so much the inconvenient
history on the flip side of that same coin. But I do
remember, on one long ago day, a Catholic nun telling
our class about the important role that a group of
upstate New York Indian tribes, the Iroquois Confederacy,
played in the fight between the French and British
for control of North America.
If she said anything more, I remember
nothing, and that
is the story of our Native
Indians.
Most of us
know that European
diseases
decimated the
tribes.
Most of
us know that
we broke many
peace treaties in
our pursuit of land
and wealth. But we
lose our tongues if
asked to describe a single
contribution by our
nation’s first people.
In fairness to the
not-knowing people, it
is difficult to find much in the way of native heritage. Is
this confusing? We destroyed much of it, ignored
nearly all of it, and rewrote what we didn’t like. Hello,
Christopher Columbus! Goodbye to the Last of the Mohicans!
In this past year, I went looking for improved
understanding, but nearly came away empty-handed.
Even a trip to the hard-to-get-to Cherokee Heritage
Center near Tahlequah, Oklahoma yielded little.
But one night, when I thought all hope lost,
I remembered that long-ago mention of the Iroquois
Confederacy.
I kept typing queries, one leading to another, feeling
as I did so that I had turned back to the days my sister
and I would head to the woods near our Poughkeepsie,
New York home in search of Indian arrowheads.
We kept digging until we found what were seeking,
knowing that just a bit of dirt stood between the present
and the past.
In 1988, the United States House of Representatives
passed Resolution 331:
To acknowledge the contribution of the Iroquois
Confederacy of Nations to the development of
the United States Constitution and to reaffirm
the continuing government-to-government relationship
between Indian tribes and the United
States established in the Constitution.
Whereas, the original framers of the constitution,
including most notably, George Washington
and Benjamin Franklin, are known to have greatly
admired the concepts, principles, and government
practices of the Six Nations of the Iroquois
Confederacy; and
Whereas, the Confederation of the original thirteen
colonies into one Republic was explicitly
modeled upon the Iroquois Confederacy as were
many of the democratic principles which were
incorporated into the Constitution itself; and…
Now, therefore be it Resolved by the Senate and
House of Representatives of the United States in
Congress assembled, that:
The Congress, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary
of the signing of the United States
Constitution, acknowledges the historical debt
which this Republic of the United States of
America owes to the Iroquois Confederacy and
other Indian Nations for their demonstration of
enlightened, democratic principles of government
and their example of a free association of
independent Indian Nations…
Several cities in the western parts of the United
States, including Los Angeles, Seattle, Albuquerque and
Denver, have already replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous
Peoples Day. Fair enough, and that is a fine
start to an overdue correction, at least for many of
America’s citizens. But I have a better idea.
The significant role that the Iroquois Confederacy
played in our country’s formation, as beautifully
explained in House Resolution 331, should be part of
our Thanksgiving narrative. Let us ditch the hoary
story of a grateful group of already-decimated Indians
sharing a happy meal with the Pilgrims, for a better
story, one that truly pays tribute to the first nation
tribes, and the great influence they had on our
American heritage.
Americana is a monthly column highlighting the cultural and historical nuances of this land through the rich story-telling of columnist Bill Fitzpatrick, author of the books, Bottoms Up, America and Destination: India, Destiny: Unknown.