American kids are now taught that before Christopher Columbus wrecked things, peaceful Native Americans protected the environment.
Hollywood movies feed the narrative. Disney’s “Pocahontas” sings, “I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name.”
Political Science professor Wilfred Reilly says that’s ridiculous. “Native American hunters gave names to every rabbit in the woods around them? That’s not a real thing that happened.”
Reilly’s new book, “Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me,” and my new video, debunk such myths.
“We’ve gone into almost this cult-like romanticization of the Natives,” says Reilly. “They were great warriors and poets, but they hunted buffalo by driving herds of them off 100-foot-tall cliffs!”
A U.S. government guide for teachers says, “Native Americans lived in harmony with nature … There was a love of every form of life. (They) did not kill anything they could not use.”
“Objectively untrue,” says Reilly, “That would mean no young male warrior … ever killed for sport. We just know that’s false.”
Reilly’s book is a response to the hugely popular left-leaning book, “Lies My Teacher Told Me.” It corrected many things history textbooks got wrong about America.
When I grew up, Columbus was portrayed as simply a hero. His brutality and enslavement of Natives was ignored.
But Columbus himself wrote about his slaves, saying, “Indians … make all our food … extract gold from the mines … perform all other … labors.”
“The book was valid, right?” I say to Reilly.
“I don’t necessarily think your focus should be white and Native atrocities against one another in a sixth-grade class. The morality of today didn’t exist anywhere in the world until about 60 years ago.”
I push back: “What’s the harm in sending a counter message?”
“You don’t need a counter message,” Reilly replies. “No one denies that whites and Native Americans killed each other. In 1970, in some Southern schools, people might have been taught a jingoistic view of American history, but the reverse has been true for 40 years.”
He says the old myths don’t justify new ones.
Like the myth that Natives lived in harmony with nature.
In reality, Natives manipulated their environment. To make farming easier, they set big forest fires to clear land.
“Burning alive hundreds of thousands of small animals and slower-running deer,” Reilly says. “Probably killing members of other tribes … modifying the environment more bluntly.”
U.S. government curriculum guides claim Native Americans had “no prejudice” and “no major wars.”
“Nonsensical,” says Reilly. “In the Aztec capital, there were 90-foot towers of human skulls brought back from their defeated enemies.”
Natives also took slaves and considered them “objects of wealth.”
Yet the myth of peaceful Natives lives on.
“When myths persist, despite obvious objective reality,” Reilly explains, “that’s an indicator of a brain virus among people who want the myth to be real. You’re looking at people saying the absolute opposite of reality.”
Why would today’s teachers teach “the opposite of reality”?
“To me it’s just downstream from Marxism,” says Reilly.
Marxism?
Yes! In colleges today, Karl Marx is the most assigned economist!
Despite the murderous failure of his philosophy, American college students are taught that capitalism and Western values are bad.
“Westerners and white people being so evil. Why is it so popular?” I ask.
“I think that a lot of rich people don’t like their father,” Reilly quips. “There is a lot of dislike for our society among people who are pretty near the leadership class.”
I assume the people who teach these myths mean well. They want minorities to feel included.
But they should at least also teach that America’s sins were not unique — that just about every society had slavery, cruel wars and environmental destruction.
The seldom-taught good news is that now, the West leads the world in trying to make things better.
And the much-maligned capitalist countries lead the world in both lifting people out of poverty and protecting the environment.
Schools ought to teach that.
Photo by Doyoun Seo on Unsplash
Many of the Indian tribes Lewis and Clark came across wanted to trade for guns so they could protect themselves from more violent aggressive tribes.
These things probably vary a lot between different tribes.
This myth looks like part of a backhanded compliment. The Aztecs were referenced in one example in this article. But Aztecs, associated with giant stone pyramids, civilization, human sacrifice, and empire building, are often excluded from this myth. We associate Native Americans farther north with tepees, a supposed lack of civilization, and being “close to nature”. We’ve made an excuse to call Native Americans “savages”, as long as we call them “noble savages”.
With the understanding that all cultures, including our own, have faults, looking at Native American faults can help us see more of the wisdom of these peoples. Knowing about the big forest fires mentioned in this article, for example, helps us better see their understanding of more moderate controlled burns, wildlife management, and agriculture. The Native Americans didn’t let everything just grow wild.