2. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me (NYC: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 95–97.
3. I will later argue that peer review can sometimes be a limitation.
4. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me, 96–100, shows how textbooks portray the first settlers as dullards.
5. Homo erectus, an intermediate species between homo sapiens and apes, left stone tools on the island of Flores, in southeastern Indonesia, 750,000 BP. So humans had boats even before humans were fully human! See Boris Weintraub, “A Seagoing Human Ancestor?” National Geographic. 11/98, unpaginated front matter.
6. Walking might have been easier then than now, however, depending on the topography of the coast (now flooded). If a shore route was used, however, boats would have been required to cross rivers. Also, the alleged ice-free corridor went inland.
7. Genetic research summarized by science reporter Steve Olson shows that all male American Indians at one point shared a distinctive Y chromosome found in no other group, stemming from one person, implying that a small number of men made the trip from Siberia. (See Olson, “The Genetic Archaeology of Race,” Atlantic Monthly, 287 #4 (4/2001), 70–71.) Their genetic similarity is an additional reason why so many Native Americans succumbed to the diseases introduced after 1492. Cf. “Gene study suggests Native Americans came from Siberia,” at Yahoo. com, 11/27/2007, news.yahoo.com/, reporting a study in PLoS Genetics; and Malcolm Ritter, “Indian DNA Links to 6 ‘Founding Mothers,’” AP, 3/13/2008, news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080313-AP-native-amer.html.
8. Erich von Däniken, Chariots of the Gods (NYC: Putnam, 1970).
9. Most archaeologists are not well equipped to judge diffusion claims because they are expert only on American cultures. If they can readily dismiss claims of diffusion, then they need not become conversant with the cultures, plants, and technologies of the culture(s) alleged to have influenced the Americas.
10. Jack Forbes, Black Africans and Native Americans (NYC: Blackwell, 1988).
11. Inuit people have been making round trips across the Bering Strait at least since 1000 AD, of course.
12. Andrew Murr, “Who Got Here First?” Newsweek, 11/15/99.
13. “Comet theory collides with Clovis research, may explain disappearance of ancient people,” U of SC website, www.sc.edu, 6/28/2007; Colin Nickerson, “Cosmic blast may have killed off megafauna,” Boston Globe, 9/25/2007, boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/09/25/cosmic_blast_may_have_killed_off_megafauna/
14. Charles C. Mann, “The Pristine Myth,” Atlantic Monthly (3/2002), theatlantic.com/doc/200203u/int2002-03-07; Clark Erickson, sas.upenn.edu/~cerickso/, 5/2008.
15. Egypt was construed as “white,” even part of Mediterranean Europe in a way, overlooking its “mixed-race” people and the elements of its culture that came down the Nile from Sudan.
16. Simon G. Southerton, “How DNA Divides LDS Apologists,” Signature Books, signaturebooks.com/dna.htm, 5/2008.
17. By not disclosing my current religious membership or theology, I am modeling how I suggest teachers should handle this query.
18. Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” in Leaves of Grass (NYC: Doubleday, Page, 1927), 50. Another Whitman poem, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” 230–31, specifically addresses the issue of two very different ways of perceiving and understanding the world.
19. Psychologist Steven Pinker asserts, “Today no honest and informed person can maintain that the universe came into being a few thousand years ago and assumed its current form in six days.” He is right. His statement does not negate religious ways of explaining and understanding the world, however. The John Templeton Foundation, which solicited Pinker’s comment, offers many views on the relationship between science and religion at templeton.org/belief.
20. Las Casas is justly criticized for suggesting African slaves be brought in to replace Indian slaves. See Chapter 8 regarding how he recanted this proposal. Of course, no Native American had a chance to be the first historian, since the Spaniards destroyed almost every Mayan book they found in the Americas.
21. At this point, a note on these three terms may be helpful. Presentism is letting our present time’s concerns and ways of thought distort our understanding of the past. Whig history and chronological ethnocentrism are near synonyms. They are examples of presentism, a larger category. (Other examples include some religious beliefs, assumptions built into capitalism, white supremacy, and the desire not to be racist or condescending toward Native Americans.) Whig history portrays the past so as to make the present seem foreordained, legitimate, even “natural.” Chronological ethnocentrism views today’s society and culture as better than past ones. By their very nature, Whig history and chronological ethnocentrism build allegiance to society, whether deserved or not.
22. Sarah Palin would be an exception.
23. Loewen, Lies Across America (NYC: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
24. Robin Clarke and Geoffrey Hindley, The Challenge of the Primitives (London, J. Cape, 1975), especially 9–22.
25. Hobbs, Leviathan, Part I, “Of Man,” Ch. 13 at bartleby.com/34/5/13.html
26. I did not put quotation marks around “primitive” because I meant it in its anthropological sense: rudimentary division of labor.
27. Colin Turnbull, The Human Cycle (NYC: Simon & Schuster, 1983), 34–35.
28. Geoffrey M. Anderson, “Making Sense of Rising Caesarean Section Rates: Time to Change Our Goals,” British Medical Journal, 9/25/2004, at bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/329/7468/696, 5/2008.
29. Since about 1970, “natural childbirth” has gained adherents in the U.S. Such births are still very artificial compared to “primitive” societies but do let fathers be present and let babies stay with their mothers rather than in a large nursery. At the same time, Caesareans continue to increase.
30. Colin Turnbull, The Human Cycle (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), 21; cf. Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2005).
31. Richard Lee and Irven DeVore, “Problems in the Study of Hunters and Gatherers,” in Lee, DeVore, and J. Nash, eds., Man the Hunter (Chicago: Aldine, 1968), 3.
32. Russell Means, “Fighting Words on the Future of the Earth,” Mother Jones (12/1980), 24–32.
33. Louis H. Sullivan, Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings (NYC: Dover, 1979 [1918]), 151.
Chapter 6
1. It is interesting to ask students for the exceptions. Many will say “China,” but China was controlled by France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and to a degree, the United States. Japan, Thailand, and Ethiopia governed themselves in 1892. So did two small kingdoms high in the Himalayas, Nepal and Bhutan, although both were close allies of the United Kingdom, which might have subordinated them had they not been. Morocco and fragmented forerunners of Saudi Arabia also governed themselves, though with European interventions.
2. At least, they had better be secular. If teachers give sacred answers, then they are imposing their religious beliefs in the classroom.
3. Actually, this conflict is not so deep as the clash between religious and scientific views of evolution, human origins, and the spread of people around the globe, as discussed in the last chapter. Parents and students can retain their belief that Christianity (or Islam, for that matter) is right, and that it spread (and continues to spread) because God (or Allah) willed (and wills) it. The teacher is merely teaching the worldly reasons why (and how) it “won.”
4. Whether Christianity is right or wrong is by definition a religious, not historical, question. Whether, how, and why it is winning are historical questions. Allowing the notion that Christianity is winning because it is right to go unchallenged amounts to religious teaching. Such thinking is religious partly because it is nonempirical. That is, God’s will can be invoked to explain anything, not just the happy (to most Christians) fact that Christianity is expanding. Some Fundamentalist Christian ministers claim that God sent Hurricane Katrina to devastate New Orleans because of that city’s notorious red
light district, tolerance of gays, and other alleged sins. Other ministers have even explained the Holocaust as part of God’s plan, since it resulted in the concentration of many surviving Jews in Palestine, in line with one interpretation of Biblical prophecies. Muslims are another group that can claim their religion is still spreading in influence. (Perhaps Buddhists can also make that claim.) Most Americans would not tolerate a public school that taught or implied that Islam is winning because it is right. The same must hold about Christianity.
5. R. R. Palmer, A History of the Modern World (NYC: Knopf, 1957), 3.
6. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Millennium (NYC: Scribner, 1995), 35.
7. Hugh Trevor-Roper, “Foreword,” in Marcel Dunan, ed., Larousse Encyclopedia of Modern History (NYC: Crescent, 1987 [1964]), 10. Trevor-Roper was perhaps too Eurasian-centric to mention any civilization in Africa or the Americas.
8. Palmer, A History of the Modern World, 13.
9. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (NYC: Norton, 1997), 16.
10. This item was emailed to me in 2005 by a person who chooses to remain anonymous.
11. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus, originally The Truth About Columbus (NYC: New P, 1992), especially 20–21.
12. Two examples are on my website, http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/
13. A video of a recent total lunar eclipse seen from Spain shows Earth’s shadow. It is readily available on the web, such as at skyandtelescope.com/video-detail/total-lunar-eclipse-february-21-2008/1372835070 and screen.yahoo.com/.
14. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus, 20–21.
15. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus, and Chapter 2 of Lies My Teacher Told Me (NYC: Simon & Schuster, 2007) can help students spot which other items on their inventory of Columbus’s accomplishments may also be problematic.
16. To be sure, conquering had happened before, but not empires on the other side of the world.
17. See the Columbus chapter of Lies My Teacher Told Me for details.
18. The Columbus chapter of Lies My Teacher Told Me goes into greater detail.
19. “New,” of course, depends on the item. Horses were new to the Americas. Potatoes were new to Europe. Also, note that these instructions are meant in the context of post-Columbian trade. For example, gold and silver came from many places, going far back in time; the enormous riches of Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia are the point in this exercise.
20. That short sentence does not do full justice to those two examples. Neither Irish nor Hebrew had quite died out, although very few children were learning either language when the revival efforts began. Nor has the revival of Irish completely succeeded.
21. Jack Weatherford, Indian Givers (New York: Fawcett, 1988), gives a good account of some of the ways American Indian cultures have enriched our society and culture.
22. Note that the North did not initially participate in order to end slavery, but rather to hold the nation together. The South did secede primarily on behalf of slavery, as Chapter 9 shows. By mid-1862, ending slavery was becoming a major Union war aim.
23. David Wallechinsky, “Is America Still No. 1?” Parade, 1/14/2007, 4.
24. Marilyn Vos Savant, column, Parade, 6/8/2008.
25. Wallechinsky, “Is America Still No. 1?,” 5.
26. The CIA World Factbook ranks nations on many interesting dimensions; see cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html, 7/2008. Other sources include NationMaster, at nationmaster.com/index.php, and various published reference books. Sources often disagree, which is cautionary.
27. Wallechinsky, “Is America Still No. 1?”, 5.
28. Cecil Adams, “Does the United States Lead the World in Prison Population?” The Straight Dope column and website, straightdope.com/columns/040206.html 2/6/2004, 8/2008.
29. Wallechinsky, “Is America Still No. 1?”, 5.
Chapter 7
1. That proportion also includes a few immigrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, and other Central American nations.
2. Dorris, quoted in Calvin Martin, ed., The American Indian and the Problem of History (NYC: Oxford UP, 1987), 102. Dorris taught mostly non-Native undergraduates for years at Dartmouth.
3. Quoted in Francis Haines, “How the Indian Got the Horse,” American Heritage, 15 #2 (2/1964), americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1964/2/1964_2_16.shtml, 6/2008.
4. Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World (NYC: Doubleday, 2004), 55–57. Thanks to Jan J. Toof for bringing Shorto to my attention.
5. Lincoln Home National Historic Site, Abraham Lincoln Online, showcase, http://www.nps.gov/liho/index.htm, 6/2008.
6. Although many writers call the Indians who lived on Manhattan Weckquaesgeeks, like most Indians in the East before Europeans arrived, they lived in villages only loosely organized into tribes. Some were called “Manahattans,” variously spelled. Some may have been members of still smaller groups, such as the Reckgawawancs who were tributaries of the Weckquaesgeeks. The latter also lived in what is now the Bronx and Westchester County. No Indians may have been living on the southern tip of the island, for the Dutch moved in with no difficulty and lived there for a year with no treaty with anyone.
7. Absent primary sources, I rely on these secondary sources: Irving Wallace, David Wallechinsky, and Amy Wallace, Significa (NYC: Dutton, 1983), 326; Robert S. Grumet, “American Indians,” in Kenneth T. Jackson, Encyclopedia of NY City (New Haven: Yale UP, 1995), 25–28; Reginald Pelham Bolton, NYC in Indian Possession (NYC: Heye Foundation, 1920), 240–45; Bolton, Indian Life of Long Ago in the City of NY (NYC: Joseph Graham, 1934), 127; Peter Francis Jr., “The Beads That Did Not Buy Manhattan Island,” NY History, 67 #1 (1/1986): 5–20; Robert S. Grumet, Historic Contact (Norman: U of OK P, 1995), 219; James Finch, “Aboriginal Remains on Manhattan Island” (NYC: American Museum of Natural History, 1909 Anthropological Papers, 3), 72; E. M. Ruttenber, History of Indian Tribes of Hudson’s River (Saugerties, NY: Hope Farm P, 1992 [1872]), 71–78; Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World (NYC: Doubleday, 2004), 54–60, 112, 123–127; and Donna Merwick, The Shame and the Sorrow (Philadelphia: U of PA P, 2006).
8. Here is one source, as of 6/2008: vcdh.virginia.edu/encounter/projects/monacans/Reconstructed_Village/jwhite.html. Part of another White illustration is in Lies My Teacher Told Me (NYC: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 105.
9. Sources for such maps include the website of the American Studies University of Groningen, Netherlands, http://www.rug.nl/, and http://www.oocities.org/ha.historicalsociety/
10. This map is available at Wikipedia in extraordinary detail at upload. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Lewis_and_Clark%27s_Track,_Across_the_Western_Portion_of_North_America,_published_1814.jpg
In passing, we might note that the original “Corps of Discovery” was undertaken on an appropriation of $2,500 and eventually cost a total of $38,000. Between 2003–05, the National Park Service sent a repeat expedition, setting up tents with exhibits about the bicentennial of the journey. Even though it minimized costs by using interstate highways, the total cost of “Corps II,” as it was called, came to just under $13 million (Stephen Adams, Supt., Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, personal communication, 6/2008). This is another demonstration of inflation, of course. Teaching students that $2,500 or $38,000 was the cost of the Lewis and Clark Expedition would be silly—but not as silly as having them learn $24 as the price “we” paid for Manhattan.
11. Helpful resources include Gordon R. Young, The Army Almanac (Harrisburg: Stackpole, 1959), 496–99, 704–07; Robert M. Utley and Wilcomb E. Washburn, American Heritage History of the Indian Wars (NYC: Bonanza, 1982); Utley, The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846–1890 (Albuquerque: U of NM P, 1984).
12. Of course, Miss Elliot was not trained as a historian and surely never thought about the myth she was passing on.
13. Nevertheless, Europeans often then accused them of trespassing and jailed and sometimes
killed them for the offense.
14. Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (NYC: Avon, 1973 [1936], 25.
15. Darden A. Pyron, Southern Daughter (NYC: Oxford UP), 64–85.
16. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic (NYC: Knopf, 2003), 217; Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier (NYC: Oxford UP, 1985), 241; Levitt & Sons, ad taken out after murder of Martin Luther King Jr., 4/1968, in exhibit, “Levittown,” Pennsylvania State Museum, 11/2002; Geoffrey Mohan writing in Newsday, quoted by Kevin Schultz, personal communication, 6/2002.
17. Maya Angelou, “On the Pulse of Morning,” poem for the inauguration of President Clinton, 1/20/1993.
18. In 1995, two high school students in northern Minnesota began a movement that eventually convinced the Minnesota Legislature to eliminate the word “squaw” from geographic and place names in the state. Since then, sometimes again with prodding from students, several other states have followed suit.
19. Fifteen essays in Loewen, Lies Across America (NYC: Simon & Schuster, 2000), discuss problems in the way that historic sites treat Native Americans.
Chapter 8
1. This issue—did they or didn’t they—continues to get undue attention. Whether Jefferson had sexual intercourse with Hemings is not nearly as important as how he allowed slavery to interfere with his foreign policy as president, for example. Ironically, defenders of Jefferson gave the matter its importance. Even before he became president, detractors of Jefferson used his sexual liaisons with Hemings against him. Several later biographers, absent good evidence that anyone else fathered her children, claimed it simply could not have been Jefferson; to do so was “inconsistent with his character.” Aside from the fact that this claim hardly constituted evidence, it magnified the issue, for if Jefferson’s character was a defense against the charge, then proof of the charge ipso facto amounts to a stain on his character. Good overviews of the matter are supplied by Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (Charlottesville: U of VA P, 1998), and Science in Dispute, scienceclarified.com com/dispute/Vol-2/Has-DNA-testing-proved-that-ThomasJefferson-fathered-at-least-one-child-with-one-of-his-slaves-Sally-Hemings.html, 6/2008.
Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History Page 32