Columbus
Author's Representation
The book the American Story attempts to dispel common notions of the conquest of the New World. According to the author,
"The story recounted first in Europe and then in the United States depicted heroic adventurers, missionaries and soldiers sharing Western civilization with the peoples of the New World and opening a vast virgin land to economic development. The familiar tale celebrated material progress, the inevitable spread of European values and the taming of frontiers." (Divine, 2)
Divine believes this is a grossly distorted version of the truth for many reasons explained below.
First, North America was already a land of great cultural and technological achievement before the Europeans arrived. There are many examples provided, but the one that stands out the most is Chaco Canyon on the San Juan River in present-day New Mexico (Divine, 4). With as many as fifteen thousand people, Chaco Canyon had both a technologically sophisticated network of irrigation canals and roads that connected more than seventy outlying villages. While Native Americans developed different cultural and social practices, they did not live in isolated communities (Divine, 5).
Commerce was nothing new for Native Americans, but they wanted peaceful trade (Divine, 9). Over time, cooperative commerce between the Native Americans and Europeans diminished as the Europeans destroyed their natural resources necessary for subsistence and drew them into debt (Divine, 10). Further, the Native Americans were ravaged by new diseases that the Europeans exposed them to. (Divine, 10).
Ultimately, the Indians rejected European values, wishing instead...
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