Howard zinn chapter 1. Howard Zinn Chapter 1 2022-10-19
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Howard Zinn's Chapter 1 of his book "A People's History of the United States" is titled "Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress." In this chapter, Zinn challenges the traditional narrative of Christopher Columbus as a heroic figure who discovered America and brought civilization to the "savage" natives. Instead, Zinn presents a counter-narrative that exposes the violence and oppression committed by Columbus and other European colonizers against the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
According to Zinn, Columbus and his men were driven by greed and a desire for gold, rather than a desire to spread Christianity as they claimed. They enslaved the native people, forcing them to mine for gold and other resources, and committed brutal acts of violence against them. The Europeans also brought diseases with them that decimated the indigenous populations, killing millions of people.
Zinn argues that the narrative of Columbus as a hero has been perpetuated throughout history in order to justify the conquest and colonization of the Americas by Europeans. This narrative has served to obscure the true history of the indigenous peoples and their suffering at the hands of the colonizers.
In contrast to the traditional narrative, Zinn presents the perspective of the indigenous peoples and their resistance to European colonization. He highlights the efforts of indigenous leaders such as Chief Massasoit and Chief Powhatan to form alliances with the Europeans in order to protect their land and their people. However, these efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, as the Europeans continued to exploit and oppress the native peoples.
Overall, Zinn's Chapter 1 presents a damning critique of Columbus and the European colonizers, and challenges the notion of "human progress" as it has been traditionally understood. Rather than a story of heroic exploration and civilization, Zinn's chapter reveals a history of violence, oppression, and exploitation.
When they broughtit, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Retrieved August 23, 2017. What Is Police Brutality? Instead, he kidnapped more Indians, many of whom died on the voyage back to Europe. And yet, there is some reason to call them Indians, because they did come, perhaps 25,000 yearsago, from Asia, across the land bridge of the Bering Straits later to disappear under water toAlaska. They would make fine servants. But he does something else-he mentions the truth quickly and goes on to other things moreimportant to him. He gives many examples within his book that shows how certain facts are covered up or briefly brought up and dismissed.
The Indians had their own history, laws, and poetry. People in the anti-war movement used it. They lived in greater equality than people in Europe did. All of his deeds are not intentionally harmful to Native American people at that time. The English landed and killed some Indians, but the rest hid in the thick forests of the island andthe English went from one deserted village to the next, destroying crops.
They "rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry" or were carried onhammocks by Indians running in relays. The Pequot tribe lived in southern Connecticut and Rhode Island. They willingly traded everything they owned. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. The Spaniards hunted them down with dogs and killed them.
But this was not the same as hurting the nation, the people. After returning to Hispaniola, he quickly implemented policies of slavery and mass extermination of the Taino population in the Caribbean. Inthe year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women,and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred bestspecimens to load onto ships. Using the gold that explorers stole, European nation-states were able to finance a new form of society: in other words, the conquest of the New World paved the way for the growth of the industrialized world. Most school textbooks paint Columbus as a hero, and either ignore his genocidal crimes altogether or mention them very briefly.
Las Casas transcribed Columbus's journaland, in his fifties, began a multivolume History of the Indies. They brought them gifts and many items. This occurred while Zinn was in Boston. He had left Spain in search of Asia and India. Israel has violated Security Council resolutions every year since 1967. Columbus punished those who committed offenses against him.
What are Zinn's points of argument in Chapter 1 of A People's History of the United States?
They do not bear arms, and donot know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out ofignorance. But the evidence from European travelers in thesixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, put together recently by an American specialist onIndian life, William Brandon, is overwhelmingly supportive of much of that "myth. Retrieved January 30, 2010. The program had been endorsed by the SNCC in December 1963 and was envisioned by Zinn as having a curriculum that ranged from novels to books about "major currents" in 20th-century world history, such as fascism, communism, and anti-colonial movements. It istoo late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. .
Howard Zinn Chapter opportunities.alumdev.columbia.edu
As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives byforce in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in theseparts. The English could not enslave the Indians, and they would not live with them, so they decided to wipe them out. To the north, the Pilgrims settled in New England. I believe that history can help us imagine new possibilities for the future. Later on, Columbus further oppressed the natives because of his determination to find gold and repay his investors.
The aim was clear: slaves and gold. In that first year of the white man in Virginia, 1607, Powhatan had addressed a plea to John Smiththat turned out prophetic. Cortes then began his march of deathfrom town to town, using deception, turning Aztec against Aztec, killing with the kind ofdeliberateness that accompanies a strategy-to paralyze the will of the population by a suddenfrightful deed. Columbus was originally driven to oppress the natives because he saw they could be sent back as slaves for the Spanish. Perhaps a persuasive argument can bemade-as it was made by Stalin when he killed peasants for industrial progress in the Soviet Union,as it was made by Churchill explaining the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, and Trumanexplaining Hiroshima. The quote by W. And since they supplied the moccasins and food for warring expeditions, theyhad some control over military matters.
