“Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492.” We all are taught this rhyme in elementary school, learning that Christopher Columbus was this great guy who discovered America.

Wrong.

We might be taught this, but it is completely wrong. For my high school government class during my senior year, we had to write critical book reviews. We chose a book that interested us that involved the United States government. I chose “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” by Dee Brown. It is about the conflicts that occurred between the Native Americans and the settlers that came to America. I chose the book because I had visited the real Wounded Knee in 2010 and decided it was a subject that interested me.

After reading the book, I realized how skewed our conception of the settling of America is because of the way we are taught in history classes. Indians are played off as these bad people who only caused problems for the white settlers.

Most of the Native Americans were very peaceful about the settlers coming in, until they had to move off their land and were pushed with violence. I can’t believe how rude the settlers were to the native people. The story that struck me the most was when a trader approached a group of Indians who were coming to the settlers because they were having a hard time growing food. The trader said the Indians “should eat grass and their own dung.” Are you kidding me? They’re humans, not animals.

I just wish that our history education curriculum would teach all the things that happened rather than beating around the bush and putting it off until we are older. I would rather have learned that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and then pushed the Indians off their land. Yes, I did eventually learn this, but I think that I speak for a good portion of students when I say we were all a little shocked and felt miseducated when we learned this later in life.

 

Erin Murtaugh is an undergraduate at Bemidji State University studying elementary education. She can be reached at murtaugh.erin@gmail.com.