The history of humanity is a horrifying tale, filled with every evil one could possibly imagine. Most of human history is poverty, tyranny, and violence — centuries of unbelievable suffering. Today is the rare exception.
For whatever reason, humans have always had the innate thirst to conquer one another. This has been the case for all civilizations throughout history. But today’s leftists want to revise history to fit their agenda. They act as if history began in 1492 and focus solely on incidents in which white people are portrayed as aggressors. They constantly reference slavery but ignore the fact that black people owned slaves in the United States or that the slave trade began in Africa. It’s why you were never taught about the many instances in history in which people of color massacred each other.
They vilify people such as Christopher Columbus for genocide and slavery, as if Native American tribes had not been committing similar atrocities against one another for centuries by the time Columbus arrived. The clash of civilizations on the North American continent merely mirrored many such events throughout the history of humanity.
Long before Columbus, many historians agree that Native American tribes committed atrocities against each other, thirsting for power and land and killing anyone that stood in the way long before any European settler set foot on the continent. Consider the words of Columbus in his journal. Upon arriving at San Salvador, Columbus wrote: “I saw some with scars of wounds upon their bodies … that there came people from the other islands in the neighborhood who endeavored to make prisoners of them, and they defended themselves.”
With the indoctrination that routinely occurs in our schools, even predating such contemporary silliness as critical race theory, our education system seldom touches on this darker side of Native American history. Yet numerous scholars have documented their brutality against one another. Harvard scholar Steven Pinker wrote that indigenous societies were “far more violent than our own.” In War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage, anthropologist Lawrence Keeley wrote, “the dogs of war were seldom on a leash” among Native American societies.
Renowned historian Bernard Bailyn described pre-Columbian America as “not a terribly peaceful world. They were always involved in warfare.” Moreover, Bailyn describes how Native Americans sought to control and exploit Europeans for their own gain and self-interest.
“The Indians had the view they wanted to use [the Europeans],” he writes. “They wanted the English there on the fringe so they would have the benefit of their treasure, their goods, even their advanced weapons. They wanted that, but under their control.”
In other words, many Native Americans viewed European settlers as useful in their broader fight to kill and enslave other Native Americans. Their aims were no better or worse than those of many Europeans.
Humans, always looking to exploit their fellow beings for their own gain — it is a tale as old as time.
Consider the Chippewa. In what could be dubbed the original “trail of tears,” they forced the Sioux from their land in present-day Minnesota. In turn, the Sioux massacred the Omaha, the Kiowa, and the Pawnee, lusting for their resources and territory.
Consider the Aztecs. Schools teach the story of Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes conquering the Aztecs, but they omit the two centuries of Aztec ruthlessness that preceded this and convinced many other tribes to fight alongside Cortes. The Aztecs had an enormous empire with a long history of raping women, pillaging, and enslaving neighboring tribes to build their empire. Historical accounts of the Aztecs alone reveal an “industry of human sacrifice unlike any other in the world.” They punished homosexuality with the death penalty and habitually murdered women.
Some Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebrations are even honoring the Aztecs, even though they make the Spanish look like genuine humanitarians. Such is the level of historical ignorance involved here.
These stories aren’t taught in history classes. They are not offered as a comparison when discussing Columbus or any other European explorer. They are swept under the rug so that the false narrative that Native Americans were a peaceful group, living off the Earth and unnecessarily attacked by the white man and exterminated. And while there are elements of truth to this, it is important to know that Native Americans were doing the same thing to one another.
The narrative promoted in schools that Native Americans were a peaceful society before the appearance of Europeans is a fanciful myth. Civilizations rise and fall. People of all colors and races commit atrocities and deserve equal condemnation. Please, let’s stop demonizing Europeans for historical crimes we all share in common.
