Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus: What Your History Books Got Wrong (7 page)

What is the importance today of these African and Phoenician predecessors of Columbus? Like the Vikings, they provide a fascinating story, one that can hold high school students on the edge oftheir seats. We might also realize another kind of importance by contemplating the particular meaning of Columbus Day. Italian Americans infer something positive about their “national character” from the exploits of their ethnic ancestors. The American sociologist George Homans once quipped, explaining why he had written on his own ancestors in East Anglia, rather than on some larger group elsewhere; “They may be humans, but not Homans!” Similarly, Scandinavians and Scandinavian Americans have always believed the Norse sagas about the Vikings, even when most historians did not, and finally confirmed them by conducting archaeological research in Newfoundland.

If Columbus is especially relevant to western Europeans and the Vikings to Scandinavians, what is the meaning to African Americans of the preColumbian voyagers from Africa? After visiting the Von Wuthenau museum in Mexico City, the Afro-Carib scholar Tiho Narva wrote, “With his unique collection surrounding me, I had an eerie feeling that veils obscuring the past had been torn asunder. . . . Somehow, upon leaving the museum I suddenly felt that I could walk taller for the rest of my days.”19 Von Sertima's book is in its sixteenth printing and he is lionized by black undergraduates across America. Rap music groups chant “but we already had been there” in verses about Columbus.0 Obviously, African Americans want to see positive images of “themselves” in American history. So do we all.

As with the Norse, including the Afro-Phoenicians gives a more complete and complex picture of the past, showing that navigation and exploration did Rock heads nine feet tall face the ocean in southeastern Mexico. Archaeologists call them Olmec heads after their name for the Indians who carved them. According to an archaeologist who helped uncover them, the faces are “amazingly Negroid.” Today some archaeologists believe that the mouth lines resemble jaguar-like expressions Mayan children still make. Others think the statues are of “fat babies” or Indian kings or resemble sculptures in Southeast Asia.

not begin with Europe in the 1400s. Like the Norse, the Afro-Phoenicians illustrate human possibility, in this case black possibility, or, more accurately, the prowess of a multiracial society. Unlike the Norse, the Africans and Phoenicians seem to have made a permanent impact on the Americas. The huge stone statues in Mexico imply as much. It took enormous effort to quarry these basalt blocks, each weighing ten to forty tons, move them from quarries seventy-five miles away, and sculpt them into heads six to ten feet tall. Wherever they were from, the human models for these heads were important people, people to be worshiped or obeyed or at least remembered." However, archaeologists have not agreed that they were Afro-Phoenicians, so including the story opens a window through which students can view an ongoing controversy.

Of the twelve textbooks I surveyed, only two even mention the possibility of African or Phoenician exploration. The American Adventure simply poses two questions: “What similarities are there between the great monuments of the Maya and those of ancient Egypt?” and “Might windblown sailors from Asia, Europe, Africa, or the South Pacific have mingled with the earlier inhabitants of the New World?” The textbook supplies no relevant information and even claims, “You should be able to deal with these questions without doing research.” Nonsense. Most classrooms will simply ignore the questions.32 The United StatesA History ofthe Republic mentions pre-Columbian expeditions only to assure us that we need not concern ourselves with them: “None of these Europeans, Africans, or Asians left lasting traces of their presence in the Americas, nor did they develop any lasting relationships with the first Americans.” Unsatisfactory as these fragments are, they are the entire treatment of the issue in all twelve textbooks.

American history textbooks promote the belief that most important developments in world history are traceable to Europe. To grant too much human potential to pre-Columbian Africans might jar European American sensibilities. As Samuel Marble put it, “The possibility of African discovery of America has never been a tempting one for American historians.” Teachers and curricula that present African history and African Americans in a positive light are often condemned for being Afrocentric. White historians insist that the case for the AfroPhoenicians has not been proven; we must not distort history to improve black children's self-image, they say. They are right that the case hasn't been proven, but textbooks should include the Afro-Phoenicians as a possibility, a controversy.

Standard history textbooks and courses discriminate against students who have been educated by rap songs or by von Sertima. Imagine an eleventhgrade classroom in American history in early fall. The text is Life and Liberty; students are reading Chapter Two, “Exploration and Colonization,” What happens when an African American girl shoots up her hand to challenge the statement “Not until 1497-1499 did the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama sail around Africa”? From rap songs the girl has learned that Afro-Phoenicians beat Da Gama by more than 2,000 years. Does the teacher take time to research the question and find that the student is right, the textbook wrong? More likely, s/he puts down the student's knowledge: “Rap songs aren't appropriate in a history class!” Or s/he humors the child: “Yes, but that was long ago and didn't lead to anything. Vasco da Gama's discovery is the important one.” These responses allow the class to move “forward” to the next topic. They also contain some truth: the Afro-Phoenician circumnavigation didn't lead to any new trade routes or national alliances, because the Afro-Phoenicians were already trading with India through the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Textbooks don't name Vasco da Gama because something came from his “discovery,” however. They name him because he was white. Two pages later, Life and Liberty tells us that Hernando De Soto “discovered [the] Mississippi River.” (Of course, it had been discovered and named Mississippi by ancestors of the Indians who were soon to chase De Soto down it.) Textbooks portray De Soto in armor, not showing that by the time he reached the river, his men and women had lost almost all their clothing in a fire set by Indians in Alabama and were wearing replacements woven from reeds. De Soto's “discovery” had no larger significance and led to no trade or white settlement. His was merely the first white face to gaze upon the Mississippi. That's why ten of the twelve American history textbooks include him. From Erik the Red to Peary at the North Pole to the first man on the moon, we celebrate most discoverers because they were first and because they were white, not because of events ihat flowed or did not flow from their accomplishments. My hypothetical teacher subtly changed the ground rules for Da Gama, but they changed right back for De Soto. In this way students learn that black feats are not considered important while white ones are.

Continuing down the list of likely pre-Columbian explorations, we arrive at an interesting vantage point from which to consider this debate. Let us compare two other possible pre-Columbian expeditions, from the west coasts of Africa and Ireland.

When Columbus reached Haiti, he found the Arawaks in possession of some spear points made of “guanine.” The Indians said they got them from black traders who had come from ihe south and east. Guanine proved to be an alloy of gold, silver, and copper, identical to the gold alloy preferred by West Africans, who also called it “guanine.” Islamic historians have recorded stories of voyages west from Mali in West Africa around 1311, during the reign of Mansa Bakari II. From time to time in ihe fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, shipwrecked African vessels-remnants, presumably, of transatlantic tradewashed up on Cape Verde. From contacts in West Africa, the Portuguese heard that African traders were visiting Brazil in the mid-1400s; this knowledge may have influenced Portugal to insist on moving the pope's “line of demarcation” further west in the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494). Traces of diseases common in Africa have been detected in pre-Columbian corpses in Brazil. Columbus's son Ferdinand, who accompanied the admiral on his third voyage, reports that people they met or heard about in eastern Honduras “are almost black in color, ugly in aspect,” probably Africans. The first Europeans to reach Panama-Balboa and company-reported seeing black slaves in an Indian town. The Indians said they had captured them from a nearby black community. Oral history from Afro-Mexicans contains tales of pre-Columbian crossings from West Africa. In all, then, data from diverse sources suggest that pre-Columbian voyages from West Africa to America were probable.

In contrast, the evidence for an Irish trip to America comes from only one side of the Atlantic. Irish legends written in the ninth or tenth century tell of “an abbot and seventeen monks who journeyed to the 'promised land of the saints' during a seven-year sojourn in a leather boat” centuries earlier. The stories include details that are literally fabulous: each Easter, the priest and his crew supposedly conducted Mass on the back of a whale. They visited a “pillar of crystal” {perhaps an iceberg) and an “island of fire.” We cannot simply dismiss these legends, however. When the Norse first reached Iceland, Irish monks were living on the island, whose volcanoes could have provided the “island of fire.”

How do American history textbooks treat these two sets of legendary voyagers? Five of the textbooks admit the possibility of an Irish expedition. The Challenge ofFreedom gives the fullest account:

Some people believe that . . . Irish missionaries may have sailed to the Americas hundreds of years before the first voyages of Columbus. According to Irish legends, Irish monks sailed the Atlantic Ocean in order to bring Christianity to the people they met. One Irish legend in particular tells about a land southwest of the Azores. This land was sup posedly discovered by St. Brendan, an Irish missionary, about 500 AD.

Not one textbook mentions the West Africans, however. While leaving out Columbus's predecessors, American history books continue to make mistakes when they get to the last “discoverer.” They present cutand-dried answers, mostly glorifying Columbus, always avoiding uncertainty or controversy. Often their errors seem to be copied from other textbooks. Let me repeat the collective Columbus story they tell, this time italicizing everything in it that we have solid reason to believe is true.

Horn in Genoa, of humble parents, Christopher Columbus grew up to become an experienced seafarer, venturing as far O! Iceland and West Africa. His adventures convinced him that the world must be round and that the fabled riches of the East-spices and goldcould be had by sailing west, superseding the overland routes, which the Turks had closed off to commerce. To get funding for his enterprise, he baeeched monarch after monarch in Western Europe. After at first being dismissed by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Columbus finally got his chance when Isabella decided to underwrite a modest expedition. Columbus outfitted three pitifully small ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, and setforth from Spain. After an arduous journey of more than two months, during which his mutinous crew almost threw him overboard, Columbus discovered the West Indies on October 12, 1492. Unfortunately, although he made three more voyages lo America, he never knew he had discovered a New World. Columbus died in obscurity, unappreciated and penniless. Yet without his daring American history u'ouid have been very different, for in a sense he made it all possible.

As you can see, textbooks get the date right, and the names of the ships. Most of the rest that they tell us is untrustworthy. Many aspects of Columbus's life remain a mystery. He claimed to be from Genoa, Italy, and there is evidence that he was. There is also evidence that he wasn't: Columbus didn't seem to be able to write in Italian, even when writing to people in Genoa. Some historians believe he was Jewish, a converso. or convert to Christianity, probably from Spain, (Spain was pressuring its Jews to convert to Christianity or leave the country.) He may have been a Genoese Jew. Still other historians claim he was from Corsica, Portugal, or elsewhere.

What about Columbus's social class background? One textbook tells us he was poor, “the son of a poor Genoese weaver,” while another assures us he was rich, “the son of a prosperous wool-weaver.” Each is certain, but people who have spent years studying Columbus say we cannot be sure.

We do not even know for certain where Columbus thought he was going. Evidence suggests he was seeking Japan, India, and Indonesia; other evidence indicates he was trying to reach “new” lands to the west. Historians have asserted each viewpoint for centuries. Because “India was known for its great wealth,” Las Casas points out, it was in Columbus's interest “to induce the monarchs, always doubtful about his enterprise, to believe him when he said he was setting out in search of a western route to India.”40 After reviewing the evidence, Columbus's recent biographer Kirkpatrick Sale concluded “we will likely never know for sure.” Sale noted that such a conclusion is “not very satisfactory for those who demand certainty in their historical tales.” Predictably, all our textbooks are of this type: all “know” he was seeking Japan and the East Indies. Thus authors keep their readers from realizing that historians do not know all the answers, hence history is no! just a process of memorizing them.

The extent to which textbooks sometimes disagree, particularly when each seems so certain of what it declares, can be pretty scary. What was the weather like during Columbus's 1492 trip? According to Land ofPromise, his ships were “storm-battered”; but American Adventures says they enjoyed “peaceful seas.” How long was the voyage? “After more than two months at sea,” according to The Challenge of Freedom, the crews saw land; but The American Adventure says the voyage lasted “nearly a month.” What were the Americas like when Columbus arrived? “Thickly peopled,” in one book, quoting Columbus; “thinly spread,” according to another.