Zinn
-Columbus wanted to use the Indians as slaves
-Columbus lied about seeing the land first and took money from his own loyal crew
-Columbus was responsible for 125,000 deaths in two years, by 1650 there were none of the native 250,000 Indians left
-From 1494-1508 over three million people died
-Ten million Indians were reduced to less than one million
-Zinn is trying to present a different side of history separate from the government and politics
-All of the gold that the Spanish took from the Indians went to fund wars that they ended up losing anyway.
-Explained in great detail the differences between the Indians and the Europeans
-Blacks considered inferior for 350 years
-People reduced to cannibalism and digging up graves for food in the winter of 1609-1610
-John Smith had to institute martial law to get people to grow food for their own survival
-There was slavery in Africa before the Americans got there.
-Estimated fifty million slaved died in our early years as a country
-Blacks rebelling was the biggest fear of whites in America so it was dealt with very harsh punishments most of the time ending in death.
-Bacon had many followers many of whom helped him kill lots of Indians
- Colonists oppressed the Indians and the British oppressed the colonists.
-Whites had “indentured servants” before we started shipping blacks over from Africa.
-The indentured servants were treated much the same ways as the blacks were
-Indentured servants had the same rights as their masters and laws protected them from getting oppressed and abused but in court only the masters were allowed to serve so they did not receive a fair trial.
Independent research
-Christopher Columbus was born in 1451 and lived until 1506
-He was a navigator, colonizer, and an explorer
-He was born in Italy
-Columbus greatly underestimated the circumference of the earth and thought