Personal essays
On making history simple again
Legends
When I was a kid, history was so much simpler.
George Washington was so honest that at age six he confessed to a childhood episode where he damaged his father’s cherry tree with a hatchet he received as a gift. The legend has it that Washington said, “father, I cannot tell a lie … I did cut it with my hatchet.”
In the mountvernon.org article about the story, it was made up and added to the fifth edition of a Washington biography and later became part of the popular culture.
Of course it was too good to be true but we somehow took it as proof of what a good and special man the first president of our country was.
Then there’s the story of Lincoln who supposedly walked three miles to return six cents that he’d overcharged a customer. Lincoln was known to be honest to a fault, so this could have happened - but that’s almost not the point.
Columbus
What about Columbus? As kids we were told he was the one who discovered America.
Later it was allowed that the Vikings were here first and maybe there were people who came across on a land bridge from Russia.
We asked about the fifty million people that were here when Columbus arrived. Certainly, they didn’t feel they had to be discovered. In fact, once Europeans started arriving, it didn’t go well for the people who were already here.
And then there’s the question of “here”.
We learn about Columbus discovering America in US schools and the teachers treat it as if he arrived on the shores of what are now the United States.
In four voyages, he never made it close.
In fact, he convinced the Spanish monarchy to finance his voyage because the Silk Road was closed to Catholic (actually Christian in general) traders who went in search of spices and other commodities.
It was well known that the earth was round so it seemed natural that instead of traveling east over land, they could just as easily sail west until they reached Asia.
Columbus, however, was not as good at math as he should have been and his calculations were all wrong.
This man who supposedly discovered America, might not even have known where he ended up. There are questions of whether he ever knew that his voyages didn’t take him to some part of Asia.
I remember in school wondering why we lived in the Americas which were named for Amerigo Vespucci and not for Columbus.
Rewriting
And so we rewrite history. You know, from the people who brought you “slaves benefited from slavery - look at all of the skills they got.”
Those people are upset that we’ve realized that Columbus was a bit of a
He mistreated the natives he encountered, enslaving some, and taking others back to Spain as prisoners.
The more we know about Columbus, the less we see to celebrate.
But, of course, last week, our current president decided to issue a proclamation that begins:
“Today our Nation honors the legendary Christopher Columbus — the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization, and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth. This Columbus Day, we honor his life with reverence and gratitude, and we pledge to reclaim his extraordinary legacy of faith, courage, perseverance, and virtue from the left-wing arsonists who have sought to destroy his name and dishonor his memory.”
Sigh. What a … jerk.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 290. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe