Replies

Ya know, I have no problem with people celebrating the achievements of Columbus - it's their right to do so. However, I also believe that people have the right to point out his flaws - and they were many - if they so choose.

The bottom line is, I am interested in truth, not a whitewash of history one way or another.

It's an interesting and difficult position, being who and what I am, when the Columbus issue comes up. I can understand the feelings that Columbus invokes in my fellow American Indians, as he really did change things for us and not really in a good way. He was a cruel greedy man that caused a lot of destruction... By the same token, however, I also find that if it wasn't for him and his voyages, there probably never would have been a United States of America - the greatest nation on Earth - and the world would be a far worse place without the U.S.

It's a difficult question. However, I stand by what I said - the truth, no matter how brutal it is, is better than lies, embellishments, and leaving things out...

By the way, on a completely unrelated note (or is it?) - regarding The Bush Doctrine? The Iroquois used to have that doctrine, too - "You are either allied with us, or you are against us" - no middle ground, no neutrality. Period. It's a great policy, and am glad to see President Bush going back to historical ideas in the modern world ;0)

By the way, on a completely unrelated note (or is it?) - regarding The Bush Doctrine? The Iroquois used to have that doctrine, too - "You are either allied with us, or you are against us" - no middle ground, no neutrality. Period. It's a great policy, and am glad to see President Bush going back to historical ideas in the modern world ;0)

Not true. The Iroquois had a neutral relationship with the "Neutral" tribe for a long time. Indeed, the great Neutral confederacy was named such by the French because of the strict neutrality they practiced in the decades long wars between their neighbors, the Iroquois and the Huron confederacies. Of couse, that all broke down in the late 1650s when the Iroquois totally overran and destroyed the Neutrals, killing, torturing, and enslaving thousands and casting the rest out of their ancestral lands--the same thing they did to the Hurons a few years prior and would do to the Eries, Algonquins, Montagnais, Susquehannocks, and many others.

As long as we're pointing out flaws...