Is America Built On A Lie? Columbus Found America!?

Question

When reading a text book it clearly states numerous of times that Comubus found America. From prior knowledge as well as study on the subject I learened that Natives were here first. Now, to me it seems that it's impossible to discover something that has already been inhabbited. We also have the habbit of callin Native Americans's, Indians. Columbus gave Natvie Americans that name becasue they reminded him of people from India. I want your opinions. Is America built on a lie? Please no rude remarks.

This question is important to me becasue I am half Native American and I want the history of my ancestors redifined.

Answer 1

facts: on march 8, 1421 the largest fleet of ships the world has ever seen set sail from china. there misson was to procceed to all ends of the earth to "collect tribute from the barbarians beryond the sea" and unite the whole world in confusian harmony. when it returned in october 1423 the empire had fallen, leaving china in political and economic chaos. the great ships were left to rot at there moorings and records of there journeys were mostly destroyed. lost in chinas long self imposed isolation was the knowledge that chinese ships had reached the americas seventy years before columbus and had circumnavigated the globe a century before magellan. also lost was the knowledge of the chinese implanting crucial economic plants that would later feed the world. they even went as far as to map the coastlines accurately. this all was discovered around 1992.
we also know for a fact that the vikings landed here, 500 years before columbus.
the indians obviously dscovered and claimed and lived here and prospered for a long time.
not fact: beyond that it is speculated that the Irish and the Whelsh among others landed in the americas, but there isnt much to go on.

as for the lie aspect, there were something in the tune of an estimated 20 million - 30 million or more indians living here when columbus landed, now, there are less than a milliojn alive. that didint happen by accident, even after america was founded the slaughter of innocent lives conntinued. andrew jackson ordered the removal of quite a few indian tribes from existance, and yet he is on the 20 dollar bill. african americans have recieved countless "paybacks and settlements" for what was done to them, but the indians who actually had it hard (im not saying that slavery wasnt hard, its wasnt hard compared to having genocide commited against your race in the name of a country such as america, and still not having anyone in the government truely apoligize for what was done and give any kind of a real settlement, some casinos are having to pay taxes now, and more to follow soon.) have still not gotten anything in return for the rape and murder of their nation.
all of the united states attempted genocide was done in the name of manifest destiny.


Even in the initial stages of contact between European Christians and
Native Indian people the stage was set for ethnocentrism, and the
attitude towards the Indians was that of Christian superiority. The
Indians were read a proclamation in Spanish which they had no hope of
understanding, they had no hope of understanding the death sentence they
were being read, and it went something like this:
"We ask and require you to acknowledge the church as the ruler and
superior of the whole world and the high priest called pope and in his
name the king of Spain as lords of this land. If you submit we shall
receive you in all love and charity and shall leave you, your wives and
children and your lands free without servitude, but if you do not submit
we shall powerfully enter into your country and shall make war against
you, we shall take you and your wives and your children and shall make
slaves of them and we shall take away your goods and shall do you all
the harm and damage we can."

we are built on many lies. (i will not get into the vast amount of other reasons, i could but this is already a long post)
the only way to fix it is to accept we are built on blood ground, and pay the consiquence, we stole every bit of this land, whetehr we stole it from the inians directly, or bought the directly stolen land off of a country that had no one living in the land. its a terrible tragedy what was done to the indians, yes we didnt personaly do it, but by not giving them anything in return for the rape of their women and children and the theft and destruction of their land we are only aproving of what was done. how would the jews feel if hitler was on the 20 dollar bill? having andrew jackson on the $20 is a horrible way of saying sorry, but a great way to gloat about the rape and theft and destruction.

Answer 2

America isn't bulit on a lie, rather not an entire truth. yes, your ancestors arrived first but aren't any more or less "native" than anyone else born on this continent. In Canada, they're called First Tribes which I like because it reminds us that everyone immigrated here at some point.

As far as Columbus, it is now generally known or believed that Scandinavians, St. Brendan, and the Chinese were here prior to him. The differences are: none of them ever held a "press conference" nor were they in a position to exploit the discovery. Europe, at the time of Columbus, finally had the technology and will power to immigrate (for lack of a better word) to the Western Hemisphere. That is what makes his "discovery" such a powerful force for Europeans and Aboriginal Americans. It changed both worlds dramatically.

Maybe that will help you determine if saying that Columbus discovered America is a lie or not. Some people demonize him, some idolize him, I've always seen him as just a man. But the United States, its ideals, its goals, weren't based on Columbus. So to say that America the nation is founded on a lie I would have to disagree with. If not Columbus, there were many others out there that would have "discovered" America anyway.

Finally, just to clarify, the people didn't remind Columbus of India, he actually believed he had landed in what we now call the Spice Islands and that the people were related to India Indians.

Answer 3

Is America built on a lie? No.
Did Columbus discover America? No.

While it is ture that Columbus did not discover the Americas first. He can be credited with opening up the New World to Eurpoeans. That is not to say that America is built on a lie, however. American wasn't built on myth of Columbus' discovery. It was built on social and political changes in the New World that took place over close to 300 years culminating the War of Independance.

Answer 4

It's not a lie, Columbus was just lost so the name is off. Hey, that's how nations are formed, not just America. Whether indigenous or not, different tribes, different societies come into conflict and the outcome of those conflicts create or change borders.

Look at the spread of the Roman Empire across Europe. At China across- well, it's all China now... India and Pakistan figured out who owns Kashmir? No area was "discovered" per se, but travellers from some kingdom eventually expanded into some other region, with varying results.

Originally, there was no "Africa" or "Indonesia" or "Europe", just people living in different areas of nameless continental land masses. People give things names.

Answer 5

It's not quite a lie, because many Europeans didn't believe that the world was round at the time, and they had no idea that the America landmasses were there. So in terms of European culture and exploration, it really was a discovery.

It's more like a mistake built upon a mistake. Like you say, Columbus thought he found India. It wasn't until later that they realized it wasn't India. But it wasn't really a lie because they thought they really were somewhere even though they weren't. Never attribute malice where incompetence is a more likely explanation.

Answer 6

Fact: America is not "built" on the idea, right or wrong, that Columbus "found" America (actually, you mean "discovered" (as in, no one had been here before) as he obviously did "find" America (even if he was looking for a place far, far to the east)).

Fact: A noticeable majority of "Native Americans" prefer to be referred to as "Indians" (really - look it up)

Fact: Indians came to the North American continent from Asia via the Bering Land Bridge (i.e., they haven't always been in North America)

Fact: A Caucasian skeleton known as Kennewick Man was found in an Oregon riverbank in 1996. This skeleton is one of the oldest that has been found in North America.

Fact: Before humans were in North America there were animals of many different kinds here.

Answer 7

The books say Columbus 'found' America because the people where he came from didn't know it was there. He was trying to find an alternate route to India. He called them Indians because he thought he had landed on the opposite side of India.

Was he incorrect? You bet. But that doesn't make it a lie. It just makes him incorrect. American was built on a dream.

Answer 8

America was discovered by Amerigos Vespucci.
Columbus founded the West Indies and called the inhabitants
Indian which meant they were in God.
That's what I read, but Columbus is credited with America when it was really Vespucci.
I do however think there were other people here before European colonists came over. The French Basque's were freindly with the Indians and traded with them.

Answer 9

Get over it. Indigenous heathen savages never get credit. The do however, get conquered. They were technologically, numerically, militarily and organizationally well behind the Europeans. With the introduction of European diseases, they were hit hard and their numbers decreased substantially.

Is it a lie? No. To the people of Europe, he did indeed 'find' America. They were not aware of its existance before then. And since it was the Europeans that conquered and prevailed, and who had books and maps and universities and historians, it becomes lodged in their view that they found it.

But that is really just a matter of semantics and point of view. Not a big deal.

Answer 10

You are very perspicacious and right! Saying that Columbus 'discovered' America is a Western centered view of history. It would be more correct to say that Medieval Europeans became aware of America through the voyages of Columbus who was trying to find an alternative route to the East to circumvent the Muslim blockade.