Every time someone uses the word Indian, it requires clarification. Does it refer to a person from India, or a Native American? The problem stems from what I call "Columbus' stupid mistake."
As every schoolboy knows, when Columbus reached the New World, he thought he had reached India, which was what he had set out to get to. (At some point he realized, "This is not India." I don't know how long the realization took.)
Well, actually, it may be wrong to accuse Columbus of having been stupid. The ultimate cause of the error was that he had bad information on the size of the Earth. He thought, "It's x number of hours' sailing to India—based on what I know to be the diameter of this planet. I have sailed for about x hours; therefore I must have reached India." But the Earth is bigger than he thought, and he had no way of knowing that there was a very significant land mass between Europe and India (going west). So—maybe a reasonable mistake.
But his naming the New World natives "Indians" has caused a problem for more than 500 years. I imagine the Native Americans never cared for being called (and apparently confused with) Indians from India.
The British get around the problem by using the term "Red Indian." Of course it would also help if we always, or reliably, used Indian only to refer to someone from India and used Native American (or "First Nations," as I believe they say in Canada) for the other meaning. It also works if you use "East Indian" for the Indians from Asia.
Copyright © 2014.
Showing posts with label Columbus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Columbus. Show all posts
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Monday, October 1, 2012
More on the Spanish in the New World
As many people are aware, there were many atrocities, mass murders, and genocides in the twentieth century.
Toward the end of the century there were the genocides in Rwanda and Kosovo. During World War II, cruel treatment of prisoners of war by the Japanese resulted in the famous Bridge on the River Kwai episode, and the Bataan Death March--not even mentioning any of the terrible things, such as experiments with germ warfare, that the Japanese performed on the Chinese in the 1930s. Nor Allied bombings of World War II, which--aside from the casualties of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki--killed 250,000 in Tokyo alone.
Of course there was the Holocaust in which an estimated 6 million Jews, Slavs, clergy, gypsies, and homosexuals perished in the Nazi concentration camps, from being gassed, starved, or worked to death, or from disease.
And, as many an Armenian knows well, early in the twentieth century an undetermined number—but believed to be a 7-figure number—of Armenians perished due to actions of the Turks.
The last two examples are among the larger and more egregious examples of modern times. But there is one story not as well known.
It all started when the Spanish conquerors of the New World learned of silver deposits at Potosi, in Bolivia. This turned out to be a fabulously rich silver mine; but it was high in the Andes, at 13,000 feet. Spanish workers were unwilling or unable to work at that altitude. Similarly for African slaves. So the King of Spain, Philip II, issued an order permitting native peoples to be enslaved to work in the mines.
By 1800, enough silver had been mined to form a string of ingots stretching from Potosi to Spain. Also, unfortunately, 4 million people died in those mines by 1800, again enough corpses to form a chain stretching all the way back to Spain.
So that has to count as one of the largest mass murders of the last 500 years. Of course all over the New World, once the Spanish arrived, an uncertain number of Native Americans died—through being deliberately killed, through disease, and through being overworked as literally or virtually slave labor—starting, in fact, with Columbus himself.
With Columbus Day coming shortly, it might be time to contemplate some of these facts and consider that maybe Columbus' arrival in the New World is not unequivocally an event to be celebrated.
© 2012 by Richard Stein
Toward the end of the century there were the genocides in Rwanda and Kosovo. During World War II, cruel treatment of prisoners of war by the Japanese resulted in the famous Bridge on the River Kwai episode, and the Bataan Death March--not even mentioning any of the terrible things, such as experiments with germ warfare, that the Japanese performed on the Chinese in the 1930s. Nor Allied bombings of World War II, which--aside from the casualties of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki--killed 250,000 in Tokyo alone.
Of course there was the Holocaust in which an estimated 6 million Jews, Slavs, clergy, gypsies, and homosexuals perished in the Nazi concentration camps, from being gassed, starved, or worked to death, or from disease.
And, as many an Armenian knows well, early in the twentieth century an undetermined number—but believed to be a 7-figure number—of Armenians perished due to actions of the Turks.
The last two examples are among the larger and more egregious examples of modern times. But there is one story not as well known.
It all started when the Spanish conquerors of the New World learned of silver deposits at Potosi, in Bolivia. This turned out to be a fabulously rich silver mine; but it was high in the Andes, at 13,000 feet. Spanish workers were unwilling or unable to work at that altitude. Similarly for African slaves. So the King of Spain, Philip II, issued an order permitting native peoples to be enslaved to work in the mines.
By 1800, enough silver had been mined to form a string of ingots stretching from Potosi to Spain. Also, unfortunately, 4 million people died in those mines by 1800, again enough corpses to form a chain stretching all the way back to Spain.
So that has to count as one of the largest mass murders of the last 500 years. Of course all over the New World, once the Spanish arrived, an uncertain number of Native Americans died—through being deliberately killed, through disease, and through being overworked as literally or virtually slave labor—starting, in fact, with Columbus himself.
With Columbus Day coming shortly, it might be time to contemplate some of these facts and consider that maybe Columbus' arrival in the New World is not unequivocally an event to be celebrated.
© 2012 by Richard Stein
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