Columbus Day Remains At Sea

Philadelphia Inquirer ^ | 10/10/2011 | Daniel Deagler

[Vigilanteman]

Yes, I mean the hardcover books. If your Dad still has them, someone in the family should treasure them until this idiotic era of political correctness finally ends and truth is once more allowed to see the light of day.

I'm not claiming the older editions are 100% accurate. But at least they made the effort rather than following the PC template prevalent today.

From my own experience, the 1950's and 1960's editions (if you can find them), launched the first efforts to tell accurate history from the Native American point of view.

The same is reflected in popular culture. One of the best Hollywood films was a John Ford movie about the Cheyenne in the early 1960's. I don't recall the title. Little Big Man and Dances With Wolves were pretty good as well, but you could see political correctness start to slip in. By the end of the 1980's, it had pretty much taken over and it has been downhill from there.

[af_vet_rr]

When you really think about it, Most of natives living in the Americas were literally still in the Stone Age when Columbus arrived. They had not even discovered the wheel yet, or discovered basic metallurgy. Eventually the two societies would have to meet each other. If not Columbus, it would have been someone else, and there would be someone else’s name they would be dragging through the mud.

Actually if you've ever visited any of the structures in Central and South America, you wouldn't think they were so primitive. Even here in North America, there were some very complex structures and city-states in existence. Some of the cities were not surpassed in North America by European colonists until later in the 1800s. As for materials, metals, etc., they worked with what they had easily available, and they dealt with the terrain and animals they had available.

They had actually discovered the wheel in the Americas around 1500 B.C., however without beasts of burden, it was pretty useless, given the terrain and what their cultures needed. I take that back, there were bison in the Americas, but hooking up bison to a cart is one of those "HERE HOLD MY BEER AND WATCH THIS" kinds of moments.

[Chuckster]

but I seems to recall that help never acknowledged that help hadn’t found the asia.

It is never a good idea to skip the "Preview" button

[Impy]

I don’t know if kids still get Columbus Day off here (Chicago) but when I was a kid we did. Once my mom mistakenly took me to school that day and I had to spend the whole morning at her office.

[lentulusgracchus]

They had not even discovered the wheel yet, or discovered basic metallurgy.

The Moches and other Indian peoples of South America were good metallurgists, working in copper, silver, and gold (not iron). They were, I suppose, "chalcolithic". That's what brought the Spaniards running. Columbus spotted small gold decorative items in Cuba, that's what started it all.