I was taught...

[SHRED]

...at my elementary, middle, and high schools from the early 1960's to 1974 that the "Conquistadors" like Balboa, Columbus, Cortez, etc.. were benevolent "discovers" of the "new world" and that the Pilgrims were nice people fleeing "religious prosecution" while maintaining a cordial relationship with the Native Americans.

Is this bullshit still taught in school?


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[razors edge]

1. History is

a cruel joke played by the victor upon the vanquished, before an audience who dares not laugh.

(attribution withheld)

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. In the Pilgrim's case, it was true up to a point

in that the Wampanoags kept peace for 50 years with the Pilgrims, until Massasoit's son, Metacon, known as King Philip, took over. Then things got really nasty. Also, realize that a certain number of the so-called Pilgrims (the Strangers, not the religious zealots) hiked out to Cape Cod and lived with the Wampanoags because they couldn't take the restrictions found at Plymouth. What should be taught is King Philip's War, which was a blatant power grab by the settlers, and which resulted in the highest per capita casualty rate of any war fought on American soil.

[pansypoo53219]

3. i have been hitting some conquistador history

in my 1891 encyclopedia britannicas and the spanish history in south america is not pretty. and i understand the pilgrims were intolerant assholes and they were pills and that's why they were prosecuted and made to flee to america.

[flashl]

4. No one probably bothered to acknowledge ...

They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America.

At one point, whenever a scholar makes this point, it is deem 'controversial'. A google of: Mandinka+America will produce several sources.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Even back in the 1960s, I was taught that

the conquistadors were greedy, brutal plunderers, who destroyed great civilizations.