Lies My Teacher Told Me by James
Loewen, 1995, Excerpts
The never-ending source of dispute was land. To explain this
constant conflict, half of the textbooks examined rely on the cliché that
Native Americans held some pre-modern understanding of land ownership. Not one
pointed out that the Dutch paid the wrong tribe for Manhattan. Europeans were
forever paying the wrong tribe or paying a small faction within a much larger
nation. Often they didn’t really care; they merely sought justification for
theft. Such fraudulent transactions might even have worked in their favor, for
they frequently set one tribe or faction against another.
The biggest single purchase from the wrong tribe took place
in 1803. All the textbooks tell how Jefferson doubled the size of the United
States by buying Louisiana from France. Not one textbook points out that it was
not France’s land to sell – it was Indian land. The French never consulted with
the Native owners before selling; most Native Americans never even knew of the
sale. Indeed, France did not really sell Louisiana for $15,000,000. France
merely sold its claim to the territory. To treat France as the seller, as all
our textbooks do, is Eurocentric.
Banksy
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