As Howard Zinn informed his readers of a quote from Columbus in his book A People’s History of the United States, “The Arawak men and women traded everything they owned for beads and bells. They would make fine servants.” The Arawak welcomed the strangers, then were stripped of their freedoms. They were raped, their bodies were mutilated, they were murdered, punished for their beliefs, sold like property, families were split up, and they were forced to live on small reservations, which are still actively binding Native American lives between inequality and disregarded freedoms as citizens in the United States. Several books have been published from the journey written by Las Casas, a priest who pursued the new world with Columbus in the 1500s. In Las Casas’s book History of the Indies, he says “As two Christians saw two Indian boys, each carrying a parrot, they grabbed the parrots from them and for fun, beheaded the young boys.” He describes the peaceful nature of Arawak and how the men of Columbus quickly began taking their lives until the Natives as a people were diminished until there were not anymore Arawak in the Indies. A peaceful people was destroyed for European game. The destruction caused by Europeans began to crack the delicate boarders that held the Natives as a People together. Following the colonization of Westerners on the Natives’ land, laws affecting Natives were set by the United States government to give themselves lawful power over the Native Americans. According to Maureen E. Smith in the book American Indian Thought, policies were set for “limiting the freedom of traditional Native Religions” (Smith 2004). After the power hungry European takeover of Native American rights to spirituality began, Europeans displaced them from their homes and diminished their culture into almost nonexistence, stripping Native Americans from their place, territory, and language. Before the Europeans invaded Native American lands, Natives lived under moral law. For example, to name a few, it was “law” for Native Americans to respect their elders and do as they were told by their mothers, all while respecting Mother Earth. Once Europeans invaded, Native Americans were forced to live under their sense of law which indefinitely was set in place to destroy them as a people because they were different or “dirty”, as described by Europeans. The United States government began negotiating treaties with the Natives in the 19th century. They worked together in an attempt to create what should have been an even playing field between each other, in hopes of creating peace through their differences. However, the philosophy that Native Americans were somehow inferior to white people led to a mindset that the treaties need not be respected. The United States had the power of military force to get their way around these treaties. Anything that gave Native Americans any kind of freedom was a block to Euro-American manifest destiny. Columbus and the colonization is taught as a form of American success in the United States. Europeans found a land with possibility of growth and success and could prosper through trials such as starvation and intense weathers. The United States educational system chooses to shine light on European hardships but the United States fails to educate
As Howard Zinn informed his readers of a quote from Columbus in his book A People’s History of the United States, “The Arawak men and women traded everything they owned for beads and bells. They would make fine servants.” The Arawak welcomed the strangers, then were stripped of their freedoms. They were raped, their bodies were mutilated, they were murdered, punished for their beliefs, sold like property, families were split up, and they were forced to live on small reservations, which are still actively binding Native American lives between inequality and disregarded freedoms as citizens in the United States. Several books have been published from the journey written by Las Casas, a priest who pursued the new world with Columbus in the 1500s. In Las Casas’s book History of the Indies, he says “As two Christians saw two Indian boys, each carrying a parrot, they grabbed the parrots from them and for fun, beheaded the young boys.” He describes the peaceful nature of Arawak and how the men of Columbus quickly began taking their lives until the Natives as a people were diminished until there were not anymore Arawak in the Indies. A peaceful people was destroyed for European game. The destruction caused by Europeans began to crack the delicate boarders that held the Natives as a People together. Following the colonization of Westerners on the Natives’ land, laws affecting Natives were set by the United States government to give themselves lawful power over the Native Americans. According to Maureen E. Smith in the book American Indian Thought, policies were set for “limiting the freedom of traditional Native Religions” (Smith 2004). After the power hungry European takeover of Native American rights to spirituality began, Europeans displaced them from their homes and diminished their culture into almost nonexistence, stripping Native Americans from their place, territory, and language. Before the Europeans invaded Native American lands, Natives lived under moral law. For example, to name a few, it was “law” for Native Americans to respect their elders and do as they were told by their mothers, all while respecting Mother Earth. Once Europeans invaded, Native Americans were forced to live under their sense of law which indefinitely was set in place to destroy them as a people because they were different or “dirty”, as described by Europeans. The United States government began negotiating treaties with the Natives in the 19th century. They worked together in an attempt to create what should have been an even playing field between each other, in hopes of creating peace through their differences. However, the philosophy that Native Americans were somehow inferior to white people led to a mindset that the treaties need not be respected. The United States had the power of military force to get their way around these treaties. Anything that gave Native Americans any kind of freedom was a block to Euro-American manifest destiny. Columbus and the colonization is taught as a form of American success in the United States. Europeans found a land with possibility of growth and success and could prosper through trials such as starvation and intense weathers. The United States educational system chooses to shine light on European hardships but the United States fails to educate