essay

Assignment

Writing a historical narrative of the Tainos.  You are going to pretend that you are a historian summoned to write the true history of the natives of the Caribbean  from their perspective ( in other words the history that has not been told) to dispell the myths purpertrated of the so called "discovery").  Also see video clip link  on 500 Nations: https://youtu.be/bY9OU7kuaD0

Bartolome de las Casas,

Chapter 1: Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress” begins with a journal entry by Bartolome de las Casas, a young priest, who participated in

the conquest of Cuba.

Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides … they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation….in this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk … and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile … was depopulated…. My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write….

When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, “there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it….”

Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas. That beginning, when you read Las Casas—even if his figures are exaggerations (were there 3 million Indians to begin with, as he says, or less than a million, as some historians have calculated, or 8 million as others now believe?)—is conquest, slavery, death. When we read the history books given to children in the United States, it all starts with heroic adventure—there is no bloodshed—and Columbus Day is a celebration.

Youtube video on Howard Zinn and Bartolome de las Casas: