Lesson N°2

Columbus and the First Nations

I - Geographical Boundaries
The North America includes Canada, the United States of America, Alaska, Greenland,
Mexico, Panama and the Caribbean Islands. The United States of America is located
between Canada and Mexico, between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific.

These boundaries weren’t there 2 000 of

years ago. Indeed, those country doesn’t
exist, there were only different nations. These
different nations were living there. So they
existed before the invasion.

Indigenous Nations in Northern America prior

to Invasion. There were Cherokee
(Minnesota), Sioux Nations (Dakota), Iroquois
Confederacy (New York) and the Pequot,
P o w h a t a n p e o p l e ( We s t ) . I n d i g e n o u s
Americans have preferred to be called by
their own tribal names, such as Diné, Lakota,
Navajo or Sioux.

There was a great diversity of social life and

culture among the many Indian peoples. But
there were some common patterns that
distinguished Indian life from European life.

Europeans Paths of Penetrations were numerous into the futur US. Spanish went
through the South, the French’s approach came from the North East, and the British
colonies were located at East. There were some Dutch and Swedish.

The colonies started on the continent of America around XVIe century. Indeed, the
first colonie was by the Spanish (1519). The North America was colonized from the
North to the South. Those different colonies explain the diversity of the America’s
culture. Indeed, it is easy to see the many cultures and peoples who have come
together from all over the world to produce the rich and diverse way of life. The

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 Lesson N°2
peoples of all continents have played crucial roles in the making of America. There
were Indians, Spanish, French, English and Africans.

This map shows the

repartition of the
continent during the
colonization.

II - Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus discovered the America in 1492. He belonged to
Naval emissary for Royal Monarchy of Spain. But he was not the first to set
foot in the Americas. Also, Christopher Columbus leaded the Age of
exploitation, with 4 travels in direction of America between 1492 and 1504.

Between 1492 and 1682, there were lot of Europeans Exploration of the Americas.
There were some others explorers like Jacques Cartier and Ferdinand Magellan.
Portugal, Spain, France, England and the Netherlands were sending these explorers
to discover deeper the America.

The Doctrine of Discovery established a spiritual, political, and legal justification for
colonization and seizure of land not inhabited by Christians. It has been invoked since
Pope Alexander VI issued the Papal Bull “Inter Caetera” in 1493.

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The Papal decree aimed to justify Christian European
explorers’ claims on land and waterways they allegedly
discovered, and promote Christian domination and
superiority, and has been applied in Africa, Asia, Australia,
New Zealand, and the Americas. If an explorer proclaims to
have discovered the land in the name of a Christian
European monarch, plants a flag in its soil, and reports his
“discovery” to the European rulers and returns to occupy it,
the land is now his, even if someone else was there first.
Should the original occupants insist on claiming that the
land is theirs, the “discoverer” can label the occupants’ way
of being on the land inadequate according to European
standards. This ideology supported the dehumanization of
those living on the land and their dispossession, murder, and forced assimilation.
The Doctrine fueled white supremacy insofar as white European settlers claimed they
were instruments of divine design and possessed cultural superiority.
The significance of the Doctrine continues to be debated. According to David Wilkins,
“it is more complicated than just saying the Pope gave European Catholics the rights
to colonize and convert. In reality, the absolute denial of Native land rights was
replaced less than fifty years later when Charles V… sought the advice of Francisco
de Vitoria … as to what the Spanish could legally and morally claim in the New World.
Vitoria, in a clear rebuttal to the Pope and the discovery notion, declared that Native
peoples were the true owners of their lands.”

The Doctrine of Discovery was the inspiration in the 1800s for the Monroe Doctrine,
which declared U.S. hegemony over the Western Hemisphere, and Manifest Destiny,
which justified American expansion westward by propagating the belief that the U.S.
was destined to control all land from the Atlantic to the Pacific and beyond.
In an 1823 Supreme Court case, Johnson v. M'Intosh, the Doctrine of Discovery
became part of U.S. federal law and was used to dispossess Native peoples of their
land. In a unanimous decision, Chief Justice John Marshall writes, “that the principle
of discovery gave European nations an absolute right to New World lands”[1] and
Native peoples certain rights of occupancy.
We study the Doctrine of Discovery to listen to voices that have been silenced and
disregarded for centuries. These voices tell a frequently overlooked story about the
origins of the United States.

For hundreds of years Indians and settlers did not live together peacefully. But things
have begun to change. In the 1960s people decided to call Indians ‘Native Americans’
because the word ‘Indian’ had been used negatively for so long. Today there are about
2.5 million. Native Americans and another 1.5 million people who are part Native
American in the United States. Less than half of them live on the 300 reservations in
the US. Those who do are often very poor because they do not get a good education
and they cannot find jobs.

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In some places they have made money and even become quite wealthy from casinos:
There are special laws in the United States that give Indian reservations privileges
that non-Indian lands don’t have, e. g. running casinos. Tourism is also an important
way to earn money. But only some Native Americans make money this way. More than
half of the Native American population now lives in big cities because they can have a
better life there. In cities there are often Indian centers that help them find jobs and
organize cultural activities, which are very important to most Native Americans.

Indian reservations are allowed to have their own government, and some people even
feel that they should have their own nation. But Native Americans fight to be part of
the national government, too, so they can protect their lands and their culture.

There is a seizure of Land over time. Prior to invasions, there were 100 million
inhabitants so it represents 2/5 in North America. These indigenous were advanced in
agriculture (mostly corn). Today, Native Americans represent 500 communities or
nations, it means 3 million people out of the 15 million in the current US. Over 300
federally recognized reservations. The territory of Natives Americans had reduce to
less than 3% of its original size and the process of land seizure was completed by
1950s. 1,5 billion acres of land (over 6 million square meters) were taken away. The
Navajo Nation is actually the largest contemporary contiguous land base for native
Americans.

The land of Native Americans had been shrunk and all those people still scattered
today.

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III - The Legacy Of Christopher Columbus

Columbus, a sailor from Genoa, Italy, was hired by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand
of Spain to discover a faster route to Asia’s riches. Columbus and the conquistadors
who came later, were often greedy and brutal. Columbus wrote : « The best thing in
the world is gold ». On one of his tips to the New World, he advised Isabella and
Ferdinand : « Should your majesties command it, all the inhabitants could be made
slaves. »
Many historians argue that Columbus, along with many settlers over the three
centuries that followed his arrival, committed genocide - the systematic attempt to
destroy an entire people for reasons of race, ethnicity, culture, or religion - against the
native peoples of the Americas.
When the Europeans arrived, the population of North, Central, and South America was
about 60 to 70 million people. Between 5 million and 15 million of them were spread
throughout the land that is now Canada and the United States. Over the next four
centuries, that figure fell by more than 90 percent before it began to rise again.
Millions of Indians died in what many scholars, and most Native Americans, consider
the greatest human disaster in all history.

During the Firsts Encounters between Europeans and Natives Americans, Christopher
Columbus had some goals. He had to established colonies for the Spanish Crown, it
means a territorial expansion, a seizure of natural ressources, an enslavement of
indigenous people (the Arawaks or Tainos in the West Indies, Cuba, Haiti, the
Bahamas Islands). But it also means the pursuit of gold (metal and currency for
commercial exchanges).
Those goals lead to consequences as an extermination and an exploitation, the
Arawaks almost completely decimated in a century.
We can find in Columbus’ travel journal « do not bear arms », « fine servants », « we
could subjugate them ».

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Today, in America and around the world, we’ve got a romantic view of the History and
the settlement. Indeed, heroes for us actually were monsters with Indians. In 1892,
Americans celebrated the 400th anniversary of the founding of the United States.
They celebrate also the Columbus Day, which is a national celebration.
There’s some convenient because some believed that Christopher Columbus was
British.
Today some Americans realized that the Columbus Day is unfair. Some states don’t
celebrate the Columbus Day and others have replace it with the Native Americans
Day.

Cultural Landmarks linked to Christopher Columbus :

Columbus Circle, NYC Colombia University Logo

The District of Columbia, WDC The Columbia Motion Pictures Logo