More Misconceptions in History
CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY
Chapter 3 begins with an assortment of epigraphs that allude to the inaccurate way the formative years of white European society in the United States is portrayed. According to the 18 history books James W. Loewen analyzed, the United States was settled in 1620 when the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock on the Mayflower. Like the myth that Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas, this origin story isn't true. Native Americans had been settled in villages up and down the East Coast for hundreds of years. Before the arrival of the English Pilgrims, the Spanish had created their own settlements. There was even an English colony in what is now known as Virginia.
Loewen lists several reasons as to why history textbooks credit the Pilgrims for being the first settlers of the United States. Among other things, the Pilgrims were more palatable than their Virginian counterparts. They came to North American with the intent of staying here, unlike the Virginians, who were looking for treasure to take back home. The Pilgrims were generally kind to the natives and even paid them for their assistance. The Virginians enslaved the Native Americans in their area. The second major reason so much emphasis is put on the Pilgrims is the background of the textbook authors themselves. Nearly all the books in Loewen's collection were written by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs). Conversely, the two textbooks written by people with Hispanic surnames are the only ones that provide information about earlier Spanish settlements. Loewen believes writers tell the stories that best reflect their ancestors.
Just because most textbook authors focus on the Pilgrims doesn't mean they get the story right. The Plymouth colonists are often credited with taming North American forests to establish their settlement. In reality, they took over an abandoned native village. They are credited with withstanding the threats of native peoples to create civilization. In reality, there were hardly any native peoples around when the Pilgrims landed. Between 1617 and 1620, more than 90 percent of New England's indigenous peoples died of disease brought to North America by European explorers and settlers. Natives who survived, including Squanto (who was actually in Europe during most of that time), befriended the Pilgrims partly because they no longer had a community who could protect them. Many history textbooks also lavishly praise the Pilgrims for, as one book puts it, being the first to "consciously creat[e] a government where none had existed before." Loewen points out they are overlooking numerous political entities established before 1620, including the Republic of Iceland and the Iroquois Confederacy.
One of the biggest lies told by high school history textbooks is the story of the first Thanksgiving. As the story goes, the Pilgrims invited their Native American neighbors over for an enormous feast to give thanks to God for providing them with such bounty. Everything about this is wrong. If there was indeed a feast, the food was probably brought by the natives. The Pilgrims didn't come up with the idea for an "autumnal harvest celebratio[n]"—that had been a practice of Eastern Native Americans for hundreds of years. In fact, Thanksgiving wasn't celebrated in the United States until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln declared it a national holiday to boost patriotism during the Civil War. The Pilgrims weren't attached to the mythology of the holiday until the 1890s.
Loewen cautions that "glorify[ing] the Pilgrims is dangerous" and likens the practice to the real-life censorship of a Frank James, a Wampanoag Indian who was asked to speak at the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrims' landing in 1970. His speech was called off once the all-white Massachusetts Department of Commerce read his draft, which truthfully described how white Europeans nearly extinguished the Wampanoag tribe. Loewen exhorts the reader to remember that the "'truth should be held sacred, at whatever cost.'"
Analysis
Chapter 3 introduces the concepts of ethnocentrism and American exceptionalism. Ethnocentrism is the belief that one's race, culture, or ethnic group is superior to all others. Similarly, American exceptionalism is the belief that the United States is better than all other nations. Textbooks teach these ideas when they relate the myths about the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving. Historical scholars know these heartwarming stories aren't true, as Loewen indicates by the epigraphs from three historians, despite the importance of the truth, as indicated by the fourth quotation from a 19th-century soldier and diplomat.
The way textbooks tell it, the Pilgrims were pious and moral people who withstood terrible hardship in a foreign land just so they could start their lives anew. Loewen goes to great length and detail to prove that isn't entirely true. The Pilgrims did make a fresh start in a new land, but they did it with enormous help from the local Indians, whom they robbed as soon as they reached land. The Pilgrims didn't have to do the backbreaking work of clearing land for their settlement nor did they have to figure out what to eat or where to grow it. Somebody else did that for them. Textbooks attribute the Pilgrims' good fortune to God, not to the Indians who invited the white strangers into their homes, taught them how to grow food, and even helped them set up fur trading businesses. The ethnocentric portrayal of the Pilgrims completely erases the importance and impact of the local Native American tribes.
So does the story of the first Thanksgiving. In the version found in most history textbooks, the Pilgrims provide the feast for the barely-clothed natives. The white people are the providers for the nonwhites. Loewen points out the same thing happens in most textbooks' descriptions of slavery. The white slave owners are described as providing food, clothing, and shelter for their black slaves when, really, it was the slaves who were growing food and planting, picking, spinning, and weaving cotton for clothing. They built their own homes, as well as those of their owners. Time and time again, white people are cast as heroes in history books while nonwhites are depicted as being entirely dependent on them for survival.
Ethnocentrism in history textbooks is exacerbated by the ideas authors choose to leave out. Students learn about the Pilgrims' voyage to North America and what their lives were like when they got here. They never hear about the lives of Native Americans before the Pilgrims arrived nor how native lives changed after the Pilgrims set foot on shore. Omissions like these imply that the only stories worth telling are white stories. Loewen argues throughout the book that ethnocentric practices like this are incredibly damaging to students who do not identify as white—either they come to believe that because their history isn't important, they aren't important, or they simply give up on history altogether.
One of the main reasons Loewen wrote Lies My Teacher Told Me is to show that history can be fun and interesting for students of every age. Squanto's abduction from his tribe, travel to Europe, life as a slave, and his escape back to the United States is much more interesting than the one line of text history textbooks usually dedicate to him—"He ... learned [the Pilgrims'] language from English fishermen." With every additional fact and anecdote, Loewen proves history can be fun.
It can also be factual without being depressing or anti-American. Loewen isn't advocating for textbook authors to tell only the bad parts of American history or to go out of their way to slander the country's image. He simply wants textbooks to be truthful and inclusive. That means showing the good and the bad, the triumphs and the mistakes. He hypothesizes that the United States would be a much more tolerant place if students were taught the truth about the past. Unfortunately, that hypothesis can't be tested as long as history textbooks maintain the status quo.