Core Knowledge social studies fifth grade - part 2

 

Unit 3 “Age of Exploration”

I’ll start with addressing the term of “Age of Exploration.” Naming WORLD HISTORY eras after something exclusive to Europe/Europeans is…*drumroll*…EUROCENTRISM! Unfortunately, this type of Eurocentric naming of time periods is in almost everything. Europeans were actually some of the last people on the planet to “explore” the world. Asians, Africans, Polynesians, and even some Native people of the Americas had already been seafaring and exploring the world for centuries before Europeans stopped being too afraid of leaving site of the shore and going into open ocean (other than the Norse and Danes). And that’s really what it boiled down to…they didn’t sail out of site of the shore for fear of sea monsters until the 1400s while other people had been doing it for hundreds of years or longer. Europeans traveling to parts of the world they hadn’t been to yet, hundreds of years after other people already started doing that, isn’t an “age of exploration.”

Beyond that, Europeans weren’t actually looking to “explore” anything. They had no interest in exploration in and of itself and we can even see this directly in writings of the time including Columbus’s own journal and letters. They were conquerors looking to invade and conquer, they were treasure hunters looking for gold, and they were human traffickers (slave traders) looking to kidnap people to enslave. Those were their motivation. We know this from primary sources. They were never “explorers.”

The non-Eurocentric term for this time period is the Early Modern Era. For Native peoples it is an Age of Invasion. Now that we have that out of the way…

Chapter 1 is about “the spice islands.” It starts by claiming that the US only exists because Europeans liked “spicy food.” They wanted spices yes, but if they were really just interested in trade for spices they would have just sailed here, traded for things, and left and the US wouldn’t exist anyway. Instead, they invaded and committed genocide (which the curriculum calls “settlement”). It wasn’t about spices.

The curriculum calls European travelers “explorers,” “adventurers,” and “dreamers” instead of traders and invaders. There is no need to romanticize travel driven by economics and greed like this. Yet here we are.

Chapter 2 is about “motives and means.” Yet again, we find the false claim that bananas are from the Americas. It seems like a silly detail, but they’ve repeated this inaccuracy multiple times, they obviously didn’t fact check much. This could have been a simple Google search. It then frames the Crusades as simply trying to “capture the holy lands from the Muslims” with absolutely zero discussion about what that actually meant. Yikes. The rest of the chapter is just about Europeans figuring out what the rest of the world already knew and used – navigation. It does at least mention that they were too afraid to leave site of land until this point in time…due to sea monsters.

Chapter 3 is about Portuguese “exploration.” It calls the Portuguese the “pioneers of the sea.” As previously mentioned, they’re the last people on the planet to start doing this, so that doesn’t make them pioneers. It then says they wanted to set up trade routes, spread Christianity, and gain knowledge. They flippantly say “spread Christianity” throughout the curriculum as if that didn’t include extreme violence. Leaving out the violence part is inaccurate (by omission) and Eurocentric bias, another way Eurocentrism shows up in how things are explained. It isn’t incorrect that they, in their minds, wanted to “spread Christianity,” but to accurately tell history you can’t just state someone’s intention without the reality of their actions. You can tell fifth graders that they wanted to spread Christianity, that was one of their motivations, but they did so through violent and deadly means. It makes no sense to leave that out after repeatedly harping in “human sacrifice” in the Americas and describing methods like ripping their hearts out and throwing them down the stairs. If they can tell fifth graders that information, they can tell them the truth about how Christianity was spread.

When talking about the Portuguese in Africa it does acknowledge that they brought back “people, to be sold into slavery,” but then turns around and says those kidnapped people became “servants and laborers.” Again, this may be on its surface true…enslaved people were forced to work as servants and laborers but simply stating that they “became servants and laborers” without including the truth of slavery is an extreme bias and inaccurate telling of history. Again, if they can repeat graphic and racist tropes of “human sacrifice” to this age group, they can tell the truth of slavery in an age-appropriate way as well. It is a deliberate choice not to.

Chapter 4 is about Christopher Columbus…oh boy. Essentially this is an extremely whitewashed version of the story. It largely focuses on the first voyage itself (at sea) and barely says anything at all about interactions with Indigenous peoples. Lies by omission. At the very least, it doesn’t perpetuate the false story about people thinking the world is flat. It acknowledges that “educated” people knew the world was round and that Columbus thought the Earth was smaller than it is (but it says “smaller than people imagined” rather than what scientists had calculated). It does somewhat perpetuate the flat earth story by saying some sailors thought it, but it was a known fact at the time that the world was round. It also says he was Italian, but recent DNA studies have found that he was Spanish. Beyond that, Italy didn’t exist in 1492. People thought he was Genoese, but again, that has been proven incorrect. It is important to update resources as we find out new information.

It does name the Taino by name, which is a good thing. It only mentions that they fished off their coasts. It does nothing to explain who the Taino were, anything about their society, how large their population was, that they were farmers, that they were skilled seafarers. But then it says Columbus “took six Tainos with him” instead of saying “captured” or “enslaved” which would be the truth. Saying “took” makes it sound like they went willingly. It then mentions the islands he went to and renamed and then skips everything and talks about him sailing back to Spain. It says absolutely nothing of his brutality, genocide, destruction, slavery, etc.

The curriculum doesn’t capitalize Indigenous when talking about people. Always capitalize Indigenous and Native when talking about people! It also says the “indigenous” peoples had maintained sophisticated cultures for “hundreds, if not thousands of years.” WOW! The number is TENS OF THOUSANDS of years. Minimizing our civilizations to “hundreds” of years is not only an all-out lie, but a means of discrediting our histories and who we are. This is blatant racism.

It then claims it was Columbus’s brothers, not himself, that “forced the indigenous people” to work in gold mines. The word they’re looking for is “enslaved” and it was Columbus himself. We have significant proof of this through primary sources. Columbus himself was responsible for enslaving people and trafficking people. That’s the only sentence they include about the mistreatment of the Taino. That’s it. The chapter wraps up by saying Columbus had his reputation destroyed with little information about why and then mentions why the Americas are named “America” and not after Columbus. Like I said before, it’s extremely whitewashed and inaccurate.

Chapter 5 is about criticisms of the Spanish as colonizers. It says they Spanish were “ruthless colonists” but then essentially claims Indigenous people died from work in mines and diseases rather than by genocide. This is again, extremely whitewashed and outright false. It says “Indigenous people died in large numbers in gold mines…” This is passive language (they died) that takes the fault off the Spanish who enslaved and killed them. It again does not call it slavery. It does not mention outright slaughter, executions, human sacrifice (Columbus liked to hang 13 men at a time in “honor” of the 12 disciples and Jesus), or genocide. It blames the gold mines and diseases rather than the Spanish themselves, never mind that the Spanish created those conditions. It also says the island of “Hispaniola” (Ayiti) had only hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. It likely had closer to around 1 million. It says by 1531 there were only about 600 “left.” Again, passive language to take the fault off the Spanish. The Taino were murdered. It acknowledges that the people from Africa brought to work on the islands were enslaved, but it makes no such acknowledgement that the Indigenous people were enslaved until a little bit later, and even then, only minimally. They could have called it enslavement from the start; there was no reason not to other than to minimize the evil actions of the colonizers.

It does talk about Bartolome de las Casas and his case against enslavement. It mentions his work against the exploitation of Indigenous peoples. The entire section is about Las Casas, not about Indigenous people where the focus should be. It never mentions genocide. This was a genocide; It should be written as such.

Chapter 6 is about Magellan. In the description of why they went west it says that finding a passage through South America would “make trade and the accumulation of wealth easier for the European explorers, traders, and merchants…” This is framing invasion, conquest, colonization, and genocide as “trade and accumulation of wealth. This is framing the invaders and conquerors who are committing genocide as “explorers, traders, and merchants.” This is Eurocentric and dishonest. This also says he “was killed in a confrontation with local chieftains” in the Philippines. That’s a whitewashed way of saying he was killed when locals rightfully resisted Magellan’s attempt at conquering and forcing Spanish rule…which is, in reality, what happened.

Chapter 7 is about the English. The “big question” of the chapter is “How did European exploration of the Americas lead to settlement and colonization?” The problem is…there was no “European exploration” at all, there was only European invasion and conquest. Early European contact with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas was never about exploration or trade, it was only ever conquest because they believed that they were racially superior and that all non-Christian civilizations were evil and must be destroyed. The more word got back to Europe about the Americas, the more they believed the racist lies, the more they wanted to be part of the conquest. They were mostly slave traders and treasure hunters. This was always an invasion with the intention of full takeover. Eurocentrism in education strikes again.

It says that mapping the east coast of North America set the stage for colonization, but it defines colonization as “the practice of bringing people from a different country to control and settle an area that already has an indigenous population.” This is a whitewashed definition that doesn’t really touch on the violence of colonization. Colonization in and of itself is inherently violent. There is no way around that. A better dictionary definition of colonization is “subjugation of a people or area especially as an extension of state power.” Subjugation is more than just “control,” but the violent act of forcing people to be under one’s control. Also, if they had just asked the Indigenous people along the coast, they would have been able to make much mor accurate maps…because Indigenous people mapped the coast already, just not in the style of European cartography.

In the part about building colonies, they do acknowledge that Spanish colonization was for the purpose of finding gold and silver, but they ignore the violence that requires. They talk about the English wanting to establish permanent settlements where people could hunt, fish, and farm. They make it sound passive and peaceful rather than the violent invasion that it was. They talk about the English monarchs giving land grants to joint-stock companies to colonize, but they leave out the part where the English have absolutely zero rights to grant someone else’s land to these companies. If I were the leader of England, I can’t just grant land in Spain to someone because I have no rights to the land in Spain. They leave out the part where this requires land theft, which requires genocide and dispossession of Indigenous peoples. They leave out the part where Indigenous nations are, in fact, sovereign nations with total legal rights to their own land.

The chapter then barely touches on Roanoke and repeats the mythology that the colony “vanished without a trace” and no one knows what happened to it. We actually do know what happened to it and it’s well established in written English history, oral histories of the Indigenous peoples of the area, and in archaeological records. This was never a “lost colony,” they simply integrated into the Indigenous community on Hatteras Island.

And we see the complete disregard for the sovereignty of Native nations in the next section as they say the Powhatan Confederacy was made up of “Native American groups.” Groups. Not nations, not even “tribes,” but groups. This is like calling England or all of Europe a “group.” Sovereign nations are not “groups,” they are nations. See more thoughts on this here: Native American Curriculum Review: Thoughts on Educational Standards and Textbooks - the word "groups"

The curriculum then states that the Powhatan Confederacy was named for the “chief” who governed it. This is factually incorrect. They called the leader of the Confederacy the Powhatan after the town he was from, not the other way around. Powhatan wasn’t his name and the confederacy wasn’t named after him.

It glosses over the Mayflower, likely because it is taught more in depth in a different grade level. But it claims the Mayflower colonists “wanted religious freedom.” That’s not really why they came to the Americas, as they already had religious freedom in Holland where they had been living for about 11 years prior to 1620. They came to the Americas because they wanted to establish a “holy kingdom” where there was no religious freedom at all, only their religion would be allowed. None of the colonies were established for religious freedom, that is a founding mythology of the US, not a fact.

It then glosses over genocide and dispossession by saying “This land belonged to various Native American groups, who were often forced to find new places to live.” So again, complete disregard for the sovereignty of Native nations as political entities. And a whitewashing of invasion, genocide, and forced removal by saying “often forced to find new places to live.” This was not “often,” it was every single time, and it wasn’t simply finding new places to live, but fleeing for their lives amidst the English attempts at eradication of Native peoples.

Chapter 8 is about the French and fur trade. It says North America was new to Europeans and had not been mapped. It should have said it had not been mapped “by them,” as non-European mapping methods existed in the Americas.

I do find it humorous that they don’t even spell Verrazzano’s name correctly. This curriculum obviously cannot be bothered to be factually accurate.

Moving on…Jacques Cartier. It says he visited a “Native American village” in the so-called “St. Lawerence River” (Kaniatarowanenneh is its original name). They don’t call the place by name; they don’t even name what Native nation this was…just generic “Native American village.” The generic usage of terminology is harmful to education, as I have explained multiple times in reviews. There are hundreds of different Native nations, and we are not all the same. This was specifically a Haudenosaunee town called Oscheaga (the French mispronounced it as Hochelaga). It was not a “village,” but a town of around 3000 people with fortified walls. Curricula like this one always diminish the reality of Native civilizations to inaccurate terms like “village” while never using the same language to describe European towns and cities. They call actual European villages “villages,” but they don’t diminish towns and cities in the same way. They only do that to the Americas. This is racist. In fact, I recently saw a social media post that called a Wichita city of 20,000 people a “village.” This kind of thing is everywhere, and it is a direct result of poor education from curricula like Core Knowledge.

 It then says that Cartier and the “Native Americans” had developed a “friendship.” This word annoys the crap out of me in curricula and other educational materials. “Friendship,” “friendly,” “friendly Indians,” etc. No one was making friends during colonization! These were political relationships, plain and simple. The Europeans didn’t trust the Indigenous peoples because they believed racist lies about them. The Indigenous peoples didn’t trust the Europeans because their arrival always meant death and destruction (disease, genocide, warfare, invasion, land theft, etc.) But sometimes Europeans needed to develop political relationships with Native nations for various reasons, usually because they were weak, sick, running out of supplies, etc. Sometimes Native nations needed to develop political relationships with Europeans due to disease and epidemics, attempts to prevent them from taking over, political diplomacy, etc. But none of these were “friendships.”

It tells a story of Cartier and his men getting sick with scurvy and their generic Native American “friends” helped them and cured their scurvy with a tea. Again, they were not “friends,” but beyond that this happened in a different Haudenosaunee town, Stadacona, not Oscheaga. The story makes it seem like it was in Oscheaga. It then says he and his men simply returned to France. The reality is, he and his men kidnapped the leader of Stadacona, named Donnacona, and 9 others and forced them to come to France with them. Donnacona died in France. This negatively impacted French and Haudenosaunee relationships in further contact, which would be an important detail to mention.

Next, we jump to Champlain. Still with the generic “local Native Americans” rather than naming Native nations. This would be like telling European history by simply referring to them all as Europeans and never naming any nations. “the Europeans…” this and “the local Europeans” that. It’s harmful in that it reinforces the stereotype that we’re all the same. I have to teach adults and teachers that we are not all the same and are unique nations because of this type of “education.” It says “the Native Americans” were “eager” to have metal tools and goods. Some of the oldest (possibly the oldest) metal tools in the world were made in the Great Lakes region out of copper. Natives had metals. It could say they wanted “steel” or “iron” goods and tools, but just “metal” isn’t accurate as it makes it seem like Natives didn’t have metal.

When discussing “New France,” it says the French “dealt with” Native Americans differently than the English. “Dealt with” means to “handle a situation or problem.” Native peoples living in their own homelands that you are invading is not a “situation or problem” to “deal with.” The French were the situation or problem, not the other way around. This could say the French “interacted with” the Natives differently, but “dealt with” is a terrible way to say this. It again states the English colonists “pushed Native Americans off land they had lived on for generations.” The English did a lot more than that and this is dishonest. The English killed, attacked, and destroyed Native peoples and communities. They not only dispossessed Native peoples who had lived there for more than generations but for tens of thousands of years, but they also committed genocide.

Then it says the French were “more peaceful” and says they had not tried to “conquer the Native Americans.” Colonization is inherently violent and a form of conquest. It is not and never can be “peaceful.” This ignores the power imbalance of colonization and the consequences of colonialism. While the French and Native nations did become military allies often and the French did focus on trade, the fur trade was not benevolent either. The fur trade caused the extreme over-hunting of the area which forced the Native nations to become dependent on the French instead of their relationship with the land that had always provided for them. The French greatly benefited from this while Native people suffered.

It incorrectly calls North America a “wilderness.” This is one of the most pervasive US founding mythologies, but what I find ironic is if this had actually been a wilderness – none of the colonies would have survived and the US would not exist. So, the US’s existence relies on this NOT having been a wilderness, yet the origin mythologies of the US always make this false claim. This was not a wilderness. It was cultivated, managed, developed, and cared for over tens of thousands of years. Two-thirds of what is now the US was agricultural. There were cities, roads, farms, towns, extensive trade networks, and civilizations that were advancing just like the rest of the world. The colonists took over existing infrastructure, they would not have survived otherwise. How is “Wilderness” a Colonial Construct? — Organeyez | by Naira de Gracia | Medium

Native American Curriculum Review: Not an Untouched Wilderness

Chapter 9 is about the Dutch. It doesn’t say a whole lot about the Americas, but it does talk about Henry Hudson (whom several places in Canada are named for). It claims Hudson “discovered” what is now called the Hudson Bay in Canada and thought it was the Pacific Ocean. You can’t discover something that has been known to people for thousands of years. Hudson Bay was known to Indigenous peoples and widely used. We also see the repeated mythology of “wilderness” here. It claims the Dutch “acquired” Manhattan Island from generic “Native Americans.” Fortunately, it doesn’t perpetuate the mythology that Manhattan was sold for a few trinkets, but it doesn’t tell the truth either. Manhattan was the land of the Lenape people, not just generic “Native Americans.” The Dutch did not “acquire” Manhattan from the Lenape either, they just claimed that they did. The Lenape accepted trade goods in exchange for letting the Dutch use the land, not to sell it to them. The Lenape did not believe in land ownership or buying/selling land. They agreed to essentially lease it to the Dutch. The Dutch claimed they bought it because they didn’t understand the Lenape’s agreement with them. You can read letters from the Dutch in the later 1600s that express their frustration that the Lenape would not leave the land that they had “purchased.” This is historical record of the misunderstanding by the Dutch. The Lenape were eventually forced out of Manhattan even though they never did actually sell it to the Dutch.

Chapter 10 is about slavery. It starts out by trying to minimize slavery by repeating that people around the world had been practicing slavery for thousands of years. This is only ever used as an excuse for what became one of the worst systems of slavery in history – Chattel slavery.  It goes on to say Africans were already engaged in slavery before Europeans and does little to explain why what the Europeans did was so much worse. Colonization plus slavery and inventing chattel slavery is different than what had already existed. There is no need to introduce this topic the way they did. This is actually a horrible way to introduce this topic.

In their section about slavery in the Americas, it starts with talking about how the Spanish “used” Indigenous people in their mines and “used” local people to “work on the plantations.” If we’re talking about slavery, why not call it slavery? The Spanish enslaved the Native people of the islands. They dance around the fact that Indigenous Americans were, in fact, enslaved. This wasn’t isolated to the Caribbean islands either. Millions of Natives (Americas) were enslaved throughout the history of slavery in the colonies and in the United States. Through this, Native people and trafficked African people developed close bonds and shared relationships that helped both. It is an important part of history that is almost always ignored or overlooked. Core Knowledge not calling this slavery is doing exactly that. Teaching the Hard History of Indigenous Slavery

This sentence really rubs me the wrong way: “As had been the case in the Azores and the Canary Islands, enslaved people from Africa provided a cost-effective answer.” It’s not the enslaved people that “provided” this answer, it was the Europeans who trafficked and enslaved people that did. Their wording puts the burden on the enslaved peoples themselves. It should say “trafficking people from Africa provided…” or “enslaving people from Africa provided….” to put the blame where it belongs: on Europeans. It also says things like “trading” and “importing” when talking about people instead of “trafficking.” The language here is gross.

Then it claims that the humans they trafficked to Virginia in 1619 may not have been enslaved at all but may have just been indentured servants. It says it “remains unclear” if they were “indentured servants” or “enslaved workers.” Abso-f-ing-lutely not. These were human trafficking victims that were, in fact, enslaved.

It also makes it sound like indentured servitude and slavery were “necessary” (they use that word) as if they couldn’t just, you know, hire and pay people fairly to work for them or do the work themselves. Again, the wording in this chapter is gross (except that they do say “enslaved person” instead of “slave.” This is the bare minimum, though, and everything else is not worded well).

The summary of the “Age of Exploration” at the end of this chapter is very whitewashed. It’s “trying” to tell “both sides,” but that’s like trying to tell “both sides” of the Holocaust. You can’t do that without lionizing the perpetrators. It says that Indigenous people died in “battles” and of “diseases” while completely ignoring invasion and genocide. It says of Africans that contact with Europeans “meant a lifetime of slavery,” again passive voice without blaming the perpetrators. It ends with “An understanding of the age must include both the heroism of the explorers and the tragedies that resulted from exploration.” There is no “heroism” here and these people were not “explorers.” This is an actively harmful way to tell history.

The teacher guide is full of the same racist, Eurocentric, and inaccurate drivel as the last and repeats the same BS as the student text itself, but more in depth. The books it recommends are all horrible and none of them are from Indigenous authors. It even recommends a Joy Hakim History of US book, which if you’ve read my other reviews, you’ll know exactly how I feel about that. If you’re new here, check out those reviews. The online resources it links to are more of the same junk.

I will end this review with the exact same conclusion as the last one: Overall, this unit is racist, Eurocentric, and historically inaccurate. I recommend staying away from Core Knowledge entirely (I have looked at and reviewed other levels, I will be posting those and have more to review). Core Knowledge is a conservative organization that was founded by a known racist and pushes American Exceptionalism, Eurocentrism, and nationalism. Being free doesn't make it safe to use. 

Not an Untouched Wilderness

One of the biggest US founding mythologies is the idea of an “untouched wilderness.” A core story that almost all of US history is then built upon. The “pilgrims” landed in an untouched wilderness and built something out of nothing. Lewis and Clark “blazed paths” through the “wilderness.” The pioneers went west into a wilderness and “tamed” the wilderness. They shaped the “unused” land the “Indians” had done nothing with and built this “great nation” from the wild. 

You’ll find this story in children's books, chapter books, educational resources, textbooks, documentaries, teacher resources and lesson plans, online resources and articles, etc. It is literally everywhere. I see it in basically every single curriculum that I review, so I decided to post this.

It is completely, 100%, a myth. There is no truth to it. It is a foundational US origin story, but it has absolutely no basis in reality. 

Where did this myth come from? It comes from a mixture of colonial ideology, romanticism, and legal policies created to erase Indigenous stewardship.

Colonial ideologies - after early Spanish contact and genocide, diseases spread throughout North America far beyond first contacts. Many died from genocide as well, which is usually discounted by the disease narrative. Make no mistake, millions of deaths were caused by genocide and conditions created to destroy people - disruption of food systems and subsistence food production, disruption of trade networks, malnutrition, starvation, loss of land and resources, loss of will to live, and enslavement. All of this also helped the diseases kill more people. All of this caused what has been called the “great dying,” in which so many Indigenous people died that the temperature of the earth cooled. By the time the English began invading and committing genocide, they were witnessing the aftermath of this - seeing previous cities, farms, and towns grown over and thought it was the natural state of things. Indigenous societies, politics, and power still had a MASSIVE influence on the colonies and the formation of the US, but the land the English invaded in the 1600s wasn’t the same as what it had been 100 years earlier.

Romanticism - if early invaders had told their families and friends in Europe the truth about Indigenous people, the land, and the colonies…far less people would have come. They had to “hype” it up quite a bit to sell the idea of coming to the Americas. Think about it...if someone wrote home saying "This place is terrible. We're starving, we have no idea how to farm or build adequate housing, the Natives don't want us here but sometimes they trade with us even though we keep stealing from them, everyone is dying...don't come." of course no one would send their families!

They needed romanticized stories of “virgin land” and “wilderness” to spread throughout Europe to attract more colonists. Later in the 17 and 1800s, people like John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt sold the idea of “virgin land” as central to an “American Identity.” They used the idea of wilderness to not only displace Indigenous people from their lands to create national parks, but also to create a symbol of purity and national pride. It was also used to reinforce racist ideologies and environmental hierarchies. 

Policies - The Wilderness Act of 1964 then essentially erased thousands of years of Indigenous land management and legally codified the mythology of “untouched wilderness” into US policy. This is just one example of legal policies that perpetuated this myth.

Now we will examine the realities of this land - This was not an “untouched wilderness.”

The number of people living in the Americas was somewhere between 75 to 112 million! This was about one fifth of the world’s population in the 1400s. There were more people living in the Americas than in Europe during Europe’s Middle Ages. Mesoamerica was one of the most densely populated places on Earth. There may have been over 1 million people living on the island of Hispaniola at one point. Estimates say 10 to 18 million people were living north of what is now called Mexico. We may never know how many people were actually living in North America at the time, but we do know that it was very populated.

We often hear that “the Indians lived in harmony with the land” or we simply “lived off the land” as is, with no mention of Indigenous landscape engineering - shaping the land to meet our needs in a way that doesn’t harm the natural systems. It’s always “the Indians lived with what the land gave them” and not “Indigenous people shaped the land to meet their needs." It should be the latter. Indigenous people were and are stewards of the land, not passive like the myths, but active and working within natural systems.

Agricultural practices covered more than ⅔ of what is now the US. The other ⅓ would be areas that don’t support agriculture like the arctic and areas like Death Valley. Many societies were hunter-farmer societies, rather than the often taught “hunter gatherers.” Around ⅔ of the world’s produce was originally cultivated by farmers and scientists in the Americas (North and South). The rest of the world did not have potatoes, tomatoes, corn, squash, chocolate, vanilla, several types of beans, chili peppers, and many more foods before the 1500s. Foods that were originally grown in the Americas have influenced food in all cultures of the world since then. Think about Thai food without chili peppers, Italian food without tomatoes, and French creme brulee without vanilla.

“But indigenous agriculture didn’t look like European agriculture, so colonizers did not recognize it as such. Indigenous agriculture largely was designed to work as a natural system, with the curves and fluctuations of the land. In Europe, agriculture always left scars on the land and was rigid and structured. Colonizers thought the land they encountered was natural. They had no understanding of indigenous practices and technologies that had shaped it, because they did not recognize indigenous people as capable of landscape engineering.”How is “Wilderness” a Colonial Construct? — Organeyez | by Naira de Gracia | Medium 

When the English colonizers invaded the east coast, they noted that they could drive their horse drawn wagons through the forest without obstruction, unlike the untended forests in Europe. They did not recognize the human touch needed to create such conditions due to racism. 

Agroforestry - forest farming - combines agricultural knowledges and practices with forestry technologies and management. One of the most famous examples in the Americas is the Amazon Rainforest - it is literally a man-made food forest. It did not occur naturally. Another great example is the forest gardens/food forests of the Pacific Northwest, in which these deliberately altered and managed forests promoted a much higher biodiversity than surrounding forest areas. Methods included controlled burns of undergrowth and promoting some forests natural fire cycles, soil enhancement, development of forest gardens which mimics natural ecosystems, and alley cropping. Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Farming: Indigenous Agroforestry Success Stories - CSA Farm Directory 

IAN 

Pacific Northwest's ‘forest gardens’ were deliberately planted by Indigenous people | Science | AAAS 

The great grasslands of the west are also man made. Small pockets of grassland existed naturally, they were expanded by humans and carefully managed over thousands of years to benefit the bison and other animals of the region.

“With careful use of fire they could manage wild herds of bison without needing to domesticate them. In other words they managed the bison’s habitat rather than domesticating the bison. In many ways it was a much superior strategy. This because productive habitat then becomes full of a large variety of useful animals and plants. The most significant type of environmental change brought about by Pre-columbian human activity was the modification of vegetation. … Vegetation was primarily altered by the clearing of forest and by intentional burning. Natural fires certainly occurred but varied in frequency and strength in different habitats. The result of clearing and burning was, in many regions, the conversion of forest to grassland, savanna, scrub, open woodland, and forest with grassy openings.” -William M. Denevan, Imperfect balance: landscape transformations in the Precolumbian Americas

By modifying the vegetation and habitat to favor bison, they insured their food supply without needing to domesticate them.

Urban development also altered and shaped the land. Most Native nations were not historically nomadic, which is a common myth. Most stayed in one place and farmed, developed towns and cities, built roads, etc. Many also worked with metals - including copper, gold, silver, tin, bronze, platinum, and even a little iron from meteorites in Alaska.

Some of the largest cities in the world were in the Americas in the 13 and 1400s. These cities were full of culture, learning, and advancements for society. They were centers of trade for entire regions of the Americas. People developed arts, music, dance, and ceremonies. Cities and communities developed economies as well as political and social structures. There were vast trade networks that spanned both continents. Some cities and towns built road systems. Urban development also included agricultural practices, agroforestry, land management, and animal management. Mound builders built large earthen pyramids and effigy mounds which enhanced the natural landscape and also for utilitarian purposes like avoiding annual flooding (as well as religious, ceremonial, social, and political purposes). Ancestral Puebloans built large cities of adobe, consisting of multi-story buildings like apartments, irrigation canals so they could farm in the desert, and road systems.

Water systems - many nations developed advanced irrigation systems - rain catchment systems, step farming, dug canals (can still see some 1000+ yr old canals in the southwest), built aqueducts, etc. The Maya even developed advanced water purification systems. “Native people had running water when Europeans were still pooping in their bedrooms.” - Laura Martinez, MA

Even nomadic nations shaped the land - many practiced a form of flood plain agriculture - planting at certain times of the year in flood planes with rich soil, leaving the area, and coming back months later to ripe crops. Some practiced controlled burning and animal management as mentioned above. 

A few stories from history from a different perspective that show the lack of "wilderness":

After invading Peru, Hernando de Soto decided to invade the southeast part of what is now the United States. He was already known among his men as being a brutal “Indian killer.” In 1539, de Soto came to the area now known as Florida with a fleet of ships and an army of soldiers. Along with soldiers, he brought Catholic priests and average people from Spain. They immediately enslaved people from Timucuan, Muskogean, and Siouan nations. They traveled north through Florida attacking and fighting the nations they came across. De Soto continued to capture people to enslave as he went. They thought that there was gold northeast of where they were, so they traveled up through modern day Georgia. He continued north through South Carolina and North Carolina and then turned west to Tennessee. De Soto came across great mound cities when he invaded the southeast. Some people think that the mound cities had already declined, or been abandoned, before the Europeans came, but de Soto described these cities and the people in his writing. He saw them thriving. These cities did not decline until the 1600s, after Europeans came and did things like De Soto as well as spread diseases. De Soto burnt down whole towns and killed even peaceful people who approached them.

When the English colonized the southeast and created colonies in the 1600-1700s, the area still had many Native nations, but the mound cities were abandoned and the people had dispersed into the Southeastern nations like the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, etc. by that time. What the English saw was what they called "wilderness" because the cities had been forced to disperse before they arrived. 

In 1534 a French invader named Jacques Cartier traveled down the St. Lawrence River from the Atlantic Ocean. He traveled to the area now known as the city of Quebec, Canada. The king of France wanted him to find gold and “precious things,” because the myths of great lands of gold had spread around Europe by this time. Even though it wasn’t true, Europeans believed there was a great land of gold here and were scrambling to get it. As he traveled down the river, he wrote that he saw big towns full of people and large fields of crops and orchards along the river. He saw great societies of healthy, thriving people. He encountered the Mi’kmaq, Montagnais, Algonquin, Huron and Abenaki nations. He said that he “claimed” the area for France without recognizing to the rights of the nations that he was seeing. He didn’t spend a lot of time interacting with the people he saw. He traded with some Mi’kmaq and captured two Haudenosaunee leaders and enslaved them as guides. He made several trips between France and the eastern part of Canada over the next 10 years. Each time, he was taking land and starting colonies and also looking for riches. On his second trip he came to the Haudenosaunee city of Stadacona where he saw a large thriving city. He captured their leader, Donnacona, and several other people. He took them back to France as slaves and they were never able to return to their homelands. They died in France. On his last voyage the nations fought back against him because he had taken captives and been cruel to them before. They fought the French to defend their nations. The French settlements did not last long and they returned to Europe. The French also brought diseases with them which spread and killed many people in the area. Cartier saw massive towns, not wilderness

Decades later in 1603 another Frenchman named Samuel de Champlain came to invade the same area. By this time, disease had killed many Native people and others fled the area because of the disorder left behind by the previous invaders. Champlain saw overgrown riverbanks and abandoned towns instead of the thriving cities and towns that had been there before. He called it a wilderness and spread stories about it being untouched. This fueled myths in Europe that this was a wilderness. 

Jamestown - this colony could not have survived without assistance from the Powhatan Confederacy. They experienced multiple starvation times when they broke promises and Native people cut them off from trade and diplomacy. They resorted to cannibalism during "starving times." If this had been a wilderness, Jamestown would have never survived.

Mayflower - These people were mostly religious extremists (that were NOT called "pilgrims") that came to the Americas to establish their own "holy kingdom" that only allowed one religion. They had already been living in Holland freely with no one persecuting them for over a decade by the time they got on the Mayflower. They were not fleeing persecution, and they were not seeking freedom of religion, as they didn't believe anyone else around them should have different beliefs than them. Patuxet, what they called Plymouth, was their third landing place in the Americas, not the first (and there was no Plymouth Rock). The second was Pamet, or what they called Provincetown Harbor. They sent out an exploratory party to look around the area in November 1620. That party came across an empty farm. It was empty because the Nauset people lived inland in the winter, this was their spring/summer home. The colonizers uncovered buried corn - corn that was in baskets and covered by woven mats, so it obviously belonged to someone and was set aside for a purpose. They stole that corn. Later they came back and stole more corn, pillaged the homes and stole items, and also robbed the nearby graves. You can actually read all of this in their own words, too, they wrote it down.

A month later they decided to move on, got back in the Mayflower, and ended up in Patuxet (Plymouth). Patuxet was empty because of a plague spread by other English people fishing in the area in 1616 to 1619. This plague killed tens of thousands of people and reduced the Wampanoag population by 90%. This is why "Plymouth" was empty when the Mayflower arrived. They colonizers took over existing infrastructure. They took over existing farmland, houses that were already built, traveled paths and roads that already existed, etc. Half of the colony still died that winter because they had no idea what they were doing or how to survive. Had the Wampanoag not stepped in that spring and eventually created a political alliance with them, none of them would have survived. Had this been an actual wilderness, none of them would have survived.

Lewis and Clark - the Corp of Discovery didn't discover anything, and they certainly didn't "blaze" any paths through a "wilderness." This was a military reconnaissance mission with the intention of spying for the purpose of invasion (expansion). They used man-made trails - trails that Indigenous people had used for thousands of years. They didn't make their own. They used maps (yes, Indigenous people had maps!) and detailed directions from Native nations to travel. They would have gotten lost otherwise. They were saved multiple times by different nations because they had no idea what they were doing and would have died without being rescued. Had this been a wilderness, they would not have even made it to the Pacific Ocean.

There are many, many more stories like this, these are just the highlights.

To reiterate - had this actually been an untouched wilderness, NONE of the invaders and colonizers would have survived and there literally would not be a United States. The mythology of wilderness actually negates the existence of the US, and yet stories in US history hinge upon that myth. When teaching about Native peoples it is vital to highlight the development, advancements, and technologies of Indigenous societies. It is also important to discuss these myths openly and honestly to help break down the stereotypes students have learned and internalized and to open their minds to a completely different understanding of history.

Core Knowledge social studies: Fifth Grade - part 1

 Core Knowledge - Fifth Grade social studies - part 1

As the grade levels go up, the amount of material to review also obviously goes up. Therefore, I am splitting the review into parts, focusing on one unit per part. I only reviewed the units that involve Native peoples, though I may do a short review of the other units as well. 

Unit 2: Maya, Aztec, and Inca Civilizations

Student reader: Chapter 1 is about the Maya and starts with the mythology of the “vanishing civilization” and calling it a mystery. This only serves to perpetuate stereotypes and is a completely inaccurate telling of history. There is no mystery, there was no “vanishing.” The curriculum claims that most of their culture “disappeared,” that they mysteriously “abandoned” their cities, and “mysteriously” transformed. It says it sounds like a “science fiction” movie. This is not only false but harmful to education about Native cultures and civilizations. It also claims they only thrived until 900 CE and every mention of dates simply claims it ended in 900 CE. This is false. It also calls the Maya “one of the first great civilizations of the Americas.” This completely ignores thousands of years of history and peoples. The Maya are not one of the first, they’re just one of the most well known.

The Maya simply reorganized politically and culturally. We can call these time periods the Classic period up from 200 CE to around 900 CE and the Post-Classic period from 900 CE up until Spanish invasion. The civilization simply hit its peak around 900 CE. Maya civilization continued to thrive in the Post-Classic period. Just because they moved, dispersed, reorganized, and changed doesn’t mean they “vanished.” There was a major drought, one that hadn’t been seen for thousands of years, that caused the dispersal of people from some of the major cities. However, other Maya cities like Tulum and Chichen Itza, grew and thrived in the Post-Classic period. Environmental, cultural, and political changes happened around the 900-1000 CE time period that led to the reorganization of peoples. No one vanished, nor did their civilization.

This curriculum claims that they vanished after 900 CE but then says that there are still Mayan speaking people in the area today. If they vanished, there wouldn’t still be Maya people today. Not only are the Mayan languages still spoken today by over 7 million people today, but their cultures also still exist. There are intact Maya communities all over Central America today.  They never “vanished.”

The curriculum claims “American explorers” in the 1800s had heard stories about “mysterious” ruins in the rainforest. These were never “mysterious” as the living Maya people always knew they were there and what the history was. Turning common knowledge of a people into something “mysterious” for another culture only exotifies and others the people. It is part of harmful stereotyping.

It claims their pyramids were simply religious rather than also acknowledging the political aspects of these buildings. It calls Mayan writing “mysterious” and a “code” rather than a complex writing system. It calls Maya homes “huts” despite the fact that they built great cities. It says their calendar was “almost as accurate” as modern calendars, but in reality they made calendars that are more accurate. It says that archaeologist “think” the Maya played a ball game. This isn’t something that anyone “thinks,” it is known in history and in the cultural revival of the Mesoamerican Ball Game among Maya, Mexica, and others today. The only sources cited here are western archeologists instead of actually getting information from Maya people themselves. It just keeps saying archaeologists and “experts” THINK things instead of stating the information as known facts. It makes no mention that this game is played today.

Then is the issue of “human sacrifice.” The curriculum brings up human sacrifice as a result of losing the ball game. The problem is – this terminology is used to demonize certain cultures and justify brutal conquest and genocide which killed millions more people than human sacrifice in Mesoamerica. It makes no mention of the idea that it wasn’t common or a large number of people, the people were usually criminals and enemies (death penalty, anyone? executions were common in Medieval Europe), and many religious ceremonies involved only animal sacrifice and ritual bloodletting (consensual) that did not kill the person. Human sacrifice was practiced all over the world but is only ever mentioned in curricula about the Americas at these grade levels and sometimes even at all. It also never mentions human sacrifice when talking about European civilizations or by Euro-Americans despite the fact that it was quite common – just under different names and terms. Is it not human sacrifice to hang, burn, or crucify people in the name of religion? Did the Europeans not carry out brutal executions in the name of their god regularly? Did they not come up with dozens of ways to torture people for entertainment? Is that not "blood thirsty" and "savage?" Only using the term “human sacrifice” when talking about cultures like the Maya and Mexica (Aztec) serves to further the demonization and stereotyping of these cultures as being “uncivilized” and “evil.” It is Eurocentric and harmful. There is no reason to mention this in fifth grade or without careful analysis. Maya Religion, Gods, Cosmos and religious rituals (scroll to the section on human sacrifice.) It's also important to note that almost all information we have about "human sacrifice" in these civilizations comes from the Spanish who had ulterior motives to justify their genocide. Very little comes from these civilizations themselves, and what does come from their art was generally used to intimidate opponents rather than tell history, and from their writing in the 1500s which was heavily influenced by the Spanish. Most resources on this topic are unreliable. 

Another issue here is that they use words like “groups” instead of tribes or nations. You can read more about the issue with that word here: Native American Curriculum Review: Thoughts on Educational Standards and Textbooks - the word "groups"

They also do not capitalize the word “Native” when talking about people. Always capitalize words like Native and Indigenous when talking about people. Another important note – Maya refers to people, civilization, culture, etc. Mayan refers to language. The curriculum does mostly get this correct.

Chapter 2 is supposed to be about scientific achievements but starts with stating that their religious beliefs gave them an “unclear view” of the world. Do all religious beliefs not do that? Core Knowledge doesn’t claim this about Christianity or Europeans. Why say that at all? Again, this just continues to make them appear “uncivilized” and perpetuates stereotypes. It also states “they didn’t even have the wheel.” We need to stop teaching children that the wheel is a measure of advancement in history. It’s not. Different cultures advance in different areas depending on multiple factors including geography, resources, politics, religion, cultural values and concepts, etc. There was no need for wheels in the ancient Maya environment and society, that doesn’t mean they were not advanced. There is absolutely no reason to point out that they didn’t use wheels other than to again make them look “uncivilized.” This is a great example of racism and Eurocentrism – using European metrics of development to evaluate and judge other cultures and civilizations.

It claims they didn’t use “scientific tools” to calculate how many days are in a year. This is false. They used their own scientific tools to do so. It again calls Maya homes “huts” instead of houses. It calls their cultural customs “odd” which is insulting.

Then it goes back to the false claim of “vanishing” or disappearing. It claims the civilization ended in 900 CE, which it did not. It claims Mayan writing “mysteriously stopped” in that time period, which it did not. It says they “left their cities” instead of saying they moved to and built new cities. It claims the Maya had “been gone for years” by the time the Spanish invaded, but that’s actually what caused the decline of the Maya civilization in the first place. It then says no one actually knows what happened, but again…we do know. We do know factors that caused the shift between the Classical and Post-Classical periods, we do know what caused further decline in the 1500s (Spanish invasion), we do know what happened to them since then and that they still exist.

What if British history was told the same way Maya history is told? - Maya Archaeologist - Dr Diane Davies

What if people told European history like they told Native American history? | An Indigenous History of North America

Moving on to the “Aztecs.”

“Aztec” is a term that was popularized by European scholars in the 1800s and has no real meaning. It can refer to the triple alliance (Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan), the people (Mexica), or a language group (Nahuatl). In general it encompasses the Nahuatl speaking peoples of central Mexico and the Mexica people. I will use Mexica when referring to the people rather than “Aztec.”

Chapter 3 refers to the people exclusively as Aztec rather than using historically accurate names. This chapter almost entirely focuses on the mythology of human sacrifice again. Read above for some of my thoughts on “human sacrifice.” This chapter claims sacrifices were “regular and generous.” The population of the cities and the Triple Alliance would not have been able to grow to such significant numbers if sacrifices were “regular and generous.” The only real records about Mexica sacrifices come from the Spanish, who lied and exaggerated to justify invasion and genocide. They even claimed the Mexica sacrificed 1000 people a day and in one ceremony killed 80,000 people in 4 days. Both of these claims are mathematically impossible. The reality is that only relatively few human remains in central Mexico have been identified as having been sacrificed (only 126 in Templo Mayor) which is much lower than numbers sacrificed by Europeans in their own religious rituals. Another perspective is that most sacrifices should considered casualties of war since it was culturally more important to capture an enemy in battle than to kill them. “There is no such thing as ‘Human Sacrifice’” The actual regular and generous offerings to the gods were gifts of jewelry, sacred plants, foods, and the like as well as animal sacrifices and ritual consensual bloodletting, not "human sacrifice."

"Although Aztec political life has been assumed to revolve around...human sacrifice...the annals indicate that this notion was never paramount for them." - Camila Townsend (I know she is not Indigenous, but her work is respected.)

This chapter portrays Mexica society as literally revolving around human sacrifice, warfare, and violence and that's about it. This portrayal is not only completely mythological, but actively harmful. 

Chapter 4 the description of how large the city of Tenochtitlan was isn’t bad here, but the images make it look like the city was small. Tenochtitlan was one of the largest cities in the world in the 1400s. It also doesn’t do justice to the description of the city at all in the “city tour.” It minimizes the chinampas (gardens) despite them being one of the most sophisticated forms of agriculture in history. It makes the education system sound scary and entirely about warfare and even says something about you having “tough teachers” over the years but you’ve "never had one that practices human sacrifices." I rolled my eyes hard here. It minimizes the writing system to “pictographs.” It says the sound of the marketplace is a “ruckus,” but they don’t describe European marketplaces the same way. It inaccurately lists bananas as being a food in Mesoamerica when it’s from Asia and was not in the Americas for hundreds more years. The city tour continues to harp on the mythology of widespread human sacrifice; every section mentions it. It makes no mention of sophisticated water systems and aqueducts, indoor bath houses and toilets, hygiene practices and cleanliness, libraries, medical knowledge and care, scientific knowledge and invention, etc. It makes no mention of how the Spanish marveled at how immaculately clean the city was. In contract, similarly sized cities in Europe, like Paris, were disgusting - raw sewage throw into the streets, animal blood from slaughterhouses mixed in with mud, streets made of literally just mud, sewage, and blood that they had to walk through, and stench so bad it could be smelled for miles...no wonder diseases were rampant in Europe and not in the Americas. It almost entirely focuses on violence, weapons, “fierce warriors,” and human sacrifice as if that’s all that the Mexica ever cared about. It reduces an amazing civilization to a trope of violence.

A note on houses vs huts – houses in the Americas are called "huts" throughout this curriculum, described as being made of mud and straw, or stone "huts" with thatch roofs, etc. In the SAME TIME PERIOD, houses in Europe are called houses and cottages, described as being made with mud and straw, thatched roofs, etc. This is a great illustration of how racism and Eurocentrism show up in this curriculum in an almost “hidden” way if you don’t know what you’re looking for.

Chapter 5 is about the Inca. It starts with a story of violence yet again. There are so many things you could focus on when learning about the Maya, the Mexica, or the Inca, yet this curriculum almost always focuses on violence. This is another example of racism and Eurocentrism.

When talking about daily Incan life it again calls their homes, which were well built and made of stone, “huts” while never describing stone homes in Europe as “huts.” Then for absolutely no reason it says that their homes smelled bad. This reminds me of reading Joy Hakim’s horribly racist opinions in the History of Us curriculum, but I digress.

Chapter 6 focuses on Incan engineering and their amazing road system. However, it commits the typical Eurocentric sin of comparing the development of non-European cultures to European metrics of development. It again points out how the Incans didn’t have wheels or animals to pull carts, despite already mentioning that llamas were used as pack animals. Wheeled carts would made absolutely no sense in the environment of the Andes mountains. They didn’t make wheeled carts because it wouldn’t have worked there, not because they weren’t advanced. They did, in fact, invent the wheel but it was largely used on children’s toys. It then talks about the Incan suspension bridges, which were an engineering marvel and also explain why wheeled carts made no sense in their environment. It does call the bridges engineering marvels, which is nice. But then it claims the suspension bridge over the Apurimac was no longer used by the Inca past 1890. This is incorrect. It is still rebuilt every year by the Quechua people of the region and used to this day. They did not disappear either. They’re not just “the people of Peru” as this curriculum states. I have been to the Andes, I have been in these communities…they’re Indigenous and they still carry their ancestor’s knowledge and pass it down through the generations.

Chapter 7 is the final chapter in this unit and is about the Spanish invasion in the 1500s. It starts with a racist story about the “Aztec” being amazed by Spanish ships sailing in on the coast and calling them “floating mountains.” It also says they “knew nothing of sailing ships.” This makes no sense. The Caribbean and Mesoamerica were one of the most densely populated places on Earth in the 1400s. The Caribbean, the Gulf coast, and the coast of Central America were full of Indigenous port towns and cities, seafaring cultures, and had a vast economic trade network throughout the ocean. Boats were coming and going from the coast constantly. These boats were not “canoes.” They were ocean going vessels. Some Indigenous peoples of the coastal regions made sails even. The Maya had boats as large as Viking long ships. Spanish described these ships as holding around 50 people, because yes, the Maya still existed when the Spanish came, unlike what this curriculum says. The Spanish encountered the Maya. Tulum and other Maya port cities continued to exist throughout the 1500s. Boats of various sizes, including large boats, were common in the region. The Mexica knew what large boats looked like. The Mexica described the Spanish ships as “floating houses” (not “mountains”) because they were a different kind of ship than they were familiar with, not because they didn't know what a sailing ship was. 

The curriculum then also repeats the completely debunked racist story that the Mexica thought the Spanish were gods and that they brought gifts to the Spanish to please them and worship them. This has been disproven multiple times over. Repeating this in history texts is not only historically inaccurate, it’s racist. It is used to make the Mexica look ignorant and backwards. The Mexica Didn't Believe the Conquistadors Were Gods - JSTOR Daily

The story at the beginning of this chapter is just racist, plain and simple.

It calls Cortes a Spanish “explorer,” but as I have discussed in blog posts previously, the early Europeans that came to the Americas were not “explorers” at all, but slave traders and treasure hunters. They came to conquer, not explore. The curriculum uses terms like “conquistador,” “conquest,” and “conqueror” without ever explaining that this means to invade, kill, and destroy. They use those words as if they’re just normal nice sailors. It says he wanted to spread Catholicism and get rich. That may be true, but this is an extremely whitewashed way of saying invade, commit genocide, and take over. It then says Cortes “found” a Native woman to serve as a translator. He did not “find her,” she was enslaved along with multiple other women.

The story claims the Spanish had superior weapons and that's why they won. Guns in that time were not superior by any means. The Mexica had obsidian swords (obsidian blades embedded into wood) that could cut the head off a horse. The were experts with atlatl (throwing spears). They used bows and arrows. Spanish guns were quite ineffective – they didn’t shoot straight, they were heavy and slow to load, and difficult to fire (and could only fire once at a time). The Spanish mostly used swords and lances. The Mexica used atlatl, macuahuitl (obsidian swords), and arrows. Ultimately it was the fact that the Spanish wore extreme armor and rode horses that gave them some advantage, not their weapons. The curriculum makes no mention of the Spanish having to fight their way out of Tenochtitlan because the Mexica were formidable opponents. It makes the Mexica sound completely weak and ineffective against the Spanish when they weren’t.

It also says that the disease smallpox swept through the city which is ultimately why the Spanish were able to conquer it (that and using Indigenous enemies of the Mexica to help them, which of course they then betrayed and violently conquered as well). This may be true, but it’s also possible that the Spanish intentionally poisoned the people of Tenochtitlan which lead to this downfall. 

The reality is there were only about 1,000 Spanish against a city of 200,000 people. The reason they won is because they had around 200,000 INDIGENOUS warriors from other Native nations around them that fought alongside the Spanish to conquer their enemies, the Mexica. The Native nations that did this essentially thought they would use the Spanish for their political gain and then give them the boot. The whole idea of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" concept. The Spanish could not have ever conquered the Mexica, even with disease (or food poisoning) on their side, by themselves. The Spanish saw the political gain of allying with enemies of the Mexica. This was all politics. Once they did that, they then stabbed their allies in the back by violently conquering them as well (with diseases on their side, which they fully recognized). This is not a story of how great the Spanish were, rather a story of how untrustworthy, greedy, and blood thirsty they were. 

The chapter then basically says the same racist story about the Inca…they didn’t know what ships were, they were scared of the Spanish, etc. It does mention disease spreading through the Incan empire ahead of the Spanish, which is true. And it at least calls Pizzaro’s massacre of the Inca a massacre and not a battle.

To end the chapter it talks about invasion and genocide as if it’s positive because they “ended human sacrifice” and “brought Christianity.” They didn’t end human sacrifice as the Spanish were well known to routinely sacrifice Indigenous people in the name of their god. There is no positive way to spin genocide as this tries to do.

The teacher guide is largely full of the same issues as the student text. When it comes to recommended additional resources, they do not recommend any Own Voices resources or resources by any experts on the subject. All of the recommended books are problematic in the same ways as this curriculum. It does, however, suggest some online resources from the National Museum of the American Indian which is a great resource. They offer some good online resources for the Maya calendar and math. However, they didn’t suggest the NMAI resources on the Inca, which exist and are just as good as the Maya resources.

It also claims that everything we know about these civilizations comes from archaeologists and by studying ancient ruins. This is false. There are Maya, Mexica and other Nahuatl speaking peoples (Aztec), and Quechua (Inca) people that still live today all over Mexico, Central, and South America. They not only maintain languages, but also the rich cultures, traditions, religions, and values of their ancestors. These people are not extinct, as this curriculum and teacher guide claims. We know a lot about their ancestors from THEM. They are the experts on their cultures and peoples, not archaeologists.

Another major issue I want to highlight in the teacher guide – it directly states that ONLY three great civilizations existed in the Americas before European invasion (which they Eurocentrically call the “Age of Exploration,”) and these are the three. There were many great civilizations before these three and at the same time, and not just in Mesoamerica and South America. There were great civilizations in both places BEFORE the Maya, “Aztec,” and Inca, including Caral, Moche, Olmec, Zapotec, and many more. There were great civilizations in various places north of modern-day Mexico, including the Mississippian, Haudenosaunee, Ancestral Puebloan, and many others. To reduce the Americas to only three great civilizations is racist and inaccurate.

Overall, this unit is racist, Eurocentric, and historically inaccurate. I recommend staying away from Core Knowledge entirely (I have looked at and reviewed other levels, I will be posting those and have more to review). Core Knowledge is a conservative organization that was founded by a known racist and pushes American Exceptionalism, Eurocentrism, and nationalism. It being free doesn't make it safe to use. 

I'M BACK!

I am sorry for my absence. I have not had the time or energy to devote to this blog in several years. I have been very busy with many things, among them was working full time for the first time in years and also helping to develop the Texas high school American Indian/Native Studies course. I am one of the primary authors of the course and teacher materials and the author of the custom student materials for the course. Our team has also been fighting an uphill battle against the SBOE to get the course approved as a state TEKS course. 

I am now in a place where I can put time into this blog again. I am now a substitute teacher for a local district and plan to get my Texas teacher certification to become a full-time teacher. I still plan to continue teaching online as well.

So look for new content! I am currently working on a review of a curriculum I have addressed before but only posted one grade level. I have several curricula and educational resources that I would like to address on here, especially as they become more popular. Feel free to request a review of curricula, books, or educational resources. 

Curriculum Review: A History of Us - The New Nation 1789-1850 by Joy Hakim

This whole series is a trainwreck. They’re so horrible, but you can’t stop reading in disgusted awe of how horrifying this woman’s writing can get. To be honest, the only reason I keep reviewing them is so you can know how repulsively racist and inaccurate they are so you can spare your children an extremely damaging “education.” I realize this doesn’t sound very professional and I try to keep these reviews fairly professional, but these books don’t deserve that.

These books cause harm. Period.

So, I’ll just jump into the chapter-by-chapter breakdown. I mostly just pull terrible and inaccurate quotes from the text because these books are so bad. Sometimes there’s too many horrible quotes to pull, so I will try to summarize the best I can.

The cover statement says “Details of the world’s greatest land bargains. News of an expedition to unmapped territory west of the wide Mississippi. And stories of a very powerful Indian leader…”

US history is not “land bargains,” it’s theft. These aren’t “the world’s greatest land bargains,” they’re Europeans buying and selling land that doesn’t even belong to them in the first place. Land that was claimed through violent invasion and colonization. Land that was claimed without the consent of the Native nations whose land it is.

Preface – “Getting a Nation Started.”

This preface is basically all opinion. She inserts her baseless and odd opinions throughout her writing, but this whole thing is her opinions about this time period, not really any history. Honestly, the entire series is largely her opinions, not really history, but the prefaces are just ridiculous in that regard.

Some quotes and commentary:

 “It wasn’t easy getting a country started. Mistakes were made – some big mistakes.” The “mistakes” she is referring to are genocide, land theft, invasion, slavery, etc. These are not “mistakes.” These were intentional actions taken by people who felt it was their right to do so. Chalking up intentional bad decisions as being “mistakes” completely erases the fact that this country was founded on racism, genocide, and slavery.

“No nation has ever had a more impressive group of founders.” Why does she say things like this? These statements make no sense and are ahistorical. There’s no purpose for them except white nationalist propaganda.

“Never before have people written their own constitution. Never before have so many people been able to vote. Never before has a nation offered its citizens complete religious liberty.” These statements simply are not true. She is completely ignoring the history of Indigenous nations in the Americas and likely many other traditional societies around the world. This may be true of EUROPE, but not the whole world.

“Besides, everyone knows that in the United States ordinary people can and do own land. And that is astounding in the 18^th century.” Again, these statements simply are not true. This may be true in Europe, but not the entire world. The "need" to "own" land doesn't exist in most traditional societies. Collectively traditional societies have "owned" land together for thousands of years. This is a completely Eurocentric perspective on world history. 

She calls people that don’t agree with people of all races being represented by “We the people” – “cautious people.” She’s literally saying racist people are simply “cautious.”

It also says, “homes need to be built, forests cleared, and land explored.” Need? There is no “need” for this. This is all stolen land and none of this “needed” to be done.

It states, “farming methods are about the same as they have been for thousands of years.” This is only true of European methods. This not true worldwide and this is not true in the Americas. Indigenous farmers and scientists were always coming up with ways to advance and improve their knowledge and methods.

The preface has a whole rant about how people are used to slavery, it’s been practiced for thousands of years, so why is it a problem? This is supposed to be from the perspectives of colonists, but it ignores the glaring issue of chattel slavery which is very different. THIS TYPE of slavery had NOT been practiced for thousands of years. At least she acknowledges that Natives were also enslaved, but that doesn’t make up for the rest of her blathering.

She uses outdated terminology – “slaves” and “slave owners.” Of course, these were written in the 1990s. Many Euro-Americans hadn’t really thought critically about the language they use in the 90s. But just be aware that this language is used throughout the texts.

“This book is the story of America’s good beginnings, and of the cruelty of slavery that will lead us to war.” Good beginnings?? Excuse me? Invasion, genocide, theft, racism, white supremacy…these are “good beginnings?” Again, this is nationalist propaganda, not history.

Chapter 1 – “The Father of Our Country”

There is no mention of Native Americans in this chapter. It is about George Washington, but Washington had plenty of interaction with Native nations. He was named “town destroyer” by the Haudenosaunee and ever since then the name for “president” in their languages is “town destroyer.” His treatment of Indigenous people/nations is significant. There is no excuse to leave that out. 

This statement is false: “Remember, the birth of the United States was a world-shaking event. We were the first modern nation to form a people’s government, to write our own constitution, and elect our own leaders.”

She continues the trend from the last book of eliminating Native people from the narrative. Oddly enough, this book has more mention of Natives than the last book. There are later chapters that, of course, do include Native people and even a few (inaccurate) chapters about specific Native leaders, but we start to show up less and less in history at this point. She starts to eliminate us sooner than must curricula do. We usually disappear by the 1860s-1900. She starts that process by the mid to late 1700s. This should never happen. We are part of almost every aspect of this history and into modern times. In fact, Native people literally shaped the entirety of US history in the 1700s. You can't really tell that history without us. 

Chapter 2 – “About Being President”

Natives are not mentioned in this chapter. I do want to point out that it says Washington “supervised” people at his Mount Vernon home. No, he enslaved people. She is always trying to paint a rosy picture of slavery. It’s always a “both sides” narrative that highly favors the Euro-Americans. It gets so so so much worse in this book.

Chapter 3 – “The Parties Begin”

Native Americans are not mentioned in this chapter. There are a few issues of note, though.

The author calls people “good men” repeatedly. Men that enslaved people/trafficked humans, men that committed genocide, men that were rapists, etc. These are not “good men.”

This chapter makes a claim that people with disagreeing ideals (conservatives and liberals mentioned here) working together “helped make this country great” and “which is what has always happened in America. That is not true in many other nations. In some countries, people who speak out against the government are put in jail or even killed. Members of the losing party are thrown out of the country or even killed. That doesn’t happen in America.” This is entirely false. First of all, the idea that the US is “great” is a moral value judgement, a matter of opinion. This author constantly inserts her opinions (often odd and baseless) into history. And secondly, not only is this greatly exaggerated (and I don’t know anywhere that simply throws people from the “losing” party out of the country??), these types of things have happened in the US. The US holds political prisoners. These types of things happened in the colonies that started the US. The history of US politics is not squeaky clean as this author would want you to believe.

Chapter 4 - No Native Americans mentioned.

Chapter 5 – Counting Noses

Regarding the census, she says “Almost 4 million of us were counted in 1790….” “Six hundred and ninety-seven thousand, six hundred and eighty-one of us were slaves. No one counted the Indians. We do know that half of the land claimed by the U.S. government was held by Indians.” Notice the words “us” and “Indians.” A white author should not be saying “us” when talking about slavery. She also won’t drop the word “Indians.”

Later, regarding the 1800 census: “The census of 1800 counted 5.3 million Americans. One million of us were black, and 9 out of every 10 blacks were slaves.” Again, a white author should not be saying “us” here.  

“The new country was much larger than just the 13 states. When the British lost the Revolutionary War and signed a peace treaty, England gave up land that stretched all the way to the Mississippi River.” There is no mention of whose land it was or that they were “trading” land that wasn’t theirs. There are multiple quotes like this.

Another such example: “(If you crossed the Mississippi, as Daniel Boone did, you were in a foreign land. You were in Spanish territory until 1800. Then the land was taken by France. And then – keep reading and you’ll find out who got it next.)”

She constantly primitivizes Indigenous people. Here is one quote that does this: “On the frontier – beyond the mountains – people often lived in crude huts and wore leather clothes adopted from Indian designs.”

“Boys and girls on the east coast – those with white skins – lived much as their European cousins did. But there was an important difference: people here didn’t have long traditions to guide them (as most people on other continents did). So, Americans learned to think for themselves.” This statement is false. They did have long traditions to “guide them” – EUROPEAN TRADITIONS! US culture is and has always been largely European based. They brought their traditions with them. Also she has this regular theme of claiming USisans are better than the rest of the world because they “think for themselves.” Um, so does the rest of the world? This is nonsense propaganda.

“That was true for black boys and girls, too. Their world was radically different from that of their African cousins. They learned new ways, and, at the same time, hung on to some of their old traditions.” Their world was radically different BECAUSE THEY WERE ENSLAVED AND TRAFFICKED. This statement is gross.

Chapter 6 - No Native Americans mentioned.

Chapter 7 – About President Adams

There are no Native Americans mentioned here, but there are several examples of the authors bazar opinions here that I want to point out.

 “Perhaps he stayed too long in England. He grew fat and vain and peevish there.”

 “John Adams was a good man even when he didn’t have to be.” (Again, with this “good man” theme when the people weren’t actually “good men.”)

“Perhaps Adams was just too independent to be a good politician. Perhaps he had grown lazy by the time he became president.”

“If children acted the way the country’s leaders were acting, their parents would tell them to stop being silly, make up, and be friends.”

Chapter 8 - No Native Americans mentioned.

Chapter 9 - No Native Americans mentioned.

Chapter 10 – Meet Mr. Jefferson

Louisiana Purchase mentioned as if it was a legitimate purchase from France. The problem is - European powers were buying and selling land that they had no right to buy and sell. How did France get that land in the first place? By claiming it without the consent of the people whose land it actually was. Through colonization, which is inherently violent and harmful. She says that Jefferson “sent an expedition to investigate” – the size, where it ends, what it was like, etc. There is no mention of this being a military spy mission…which is what it was. It was always a military reconnaissance mission from the get-go.

Chapter 11 – Meriwether and William – or Lewis and Clark

It says Jefferson “…wanted to train him [Lewis] for an exploring mission. Thomas Jefferson was filled with curiosity about the West. He wanted to know about its land and its plants and animals; he wanted to know about the Indians who lived there.” Again, this wasn’t an “exploring mission,” it was a military reconnaissance mission. Why did Jefferson want to know all of those things? For the purpose of invasion and colonization.

“The West was as unknown in 1803 as much of outer space is now.” Unknown to whom? It certainly wasn’t unknown to the Indigenous people who not only lived there, but managed and cultivated the land there.

Of Lewis it says: “As a soldier he learned the ways of the Indians and how to survive in the wilderness.” As an “Indian,” I’d really like to know what the “ways of the Indians” are because…this doesn’t exist?? There are hundreds of nations, and each nation has their own unique ways. There is no such thing as “ways of the Indians” any more than there are “ways of the Asians” or “ways of the Europeans” as if they’re all the same.

Of Lewis and Clark, it says: “They chose men who were used to living in the wild. They trained them until they were tough and disciplined.” The fact is, they were already soldiers, so no…this isn’t quite accurate. They hired soldiers. Because this was a military mission.

“They explored that big unknown land that the United States had just bought from France…” Hopefully you already know what my thoughts are on statements like this. *eyeroll*

“It was dangerous country, with unexpectedly high mountains, difficult deserts, fierce animals, and wary Indians.” This is a major part of US origin mythology. The “dangerous” west because of “Indians.” Wary? More like Native nations that were defending themselves against foreign invasion.

“Wherever they went they took careful notes, made maps, wrote down vocabulary lists of Indian words, and collected samples of strange plants and animals. They added 200 species to the world’s list of known plants. The Native Americans taught them to use some of those plants as medicines, some as foods.” Emphasis mine. First of all, “Indian words?” Is that like “European words?” As if they all speak the same language?? This is monolithic nonsense. Same with “the Native Americans.” There is no such thing! This is more monolithic nonsense. Also, the people that helped them and taught them these things did so out of pity…because Lewis and Clark would have died otherwise. It was more like “oh these poor children have no idea how to live” rather than just “teaching” them things.

There is a quote from Jefferson as to his instructions to Lewis and Clark. There is no mention that the purpose of such detailed notes was invasion and colonization.

“President Jefferson wanted to know all about the Native Americans who inhabited the land; he wanted Lewis and Clark to establish friendships with the Indians and prepare for trade with them.” Why did Jefferson want to know this? For the purpose of invasion and colonization. It was reconnaissance. He didn’t want Lewis and Clark to establish “friendships” with Natives…he wanted them to spy on them.

It says they might not have been successful if it weren’t for “…an Indian woman named Sacajawea.” With a poor pronunciation guide for her name. It’s just wrong. Then everything else said about her is mythology and not reality. More US origin mythology.

“Sacajawea was 16 and married to a Frenchman. She was about to have a baby. Everyone was excited about that.” No, she was not “married” to a Frenchman, she was purchased by him and was ONE of his Indigenous sex slaves. I’m guessing Sacajawea wasn’t too excited about having her rapist’s baby.

“In the spring, when Lewis and Clark were ready to start out again, they hired Sacajawea’s husband as a translator of Indian languages. Sacajawea came along with her baby strapped to her back. But it was Sacajawea who turned out to be the helpful one; her no-good husband was lazy.” This perpetuates they mythology of her tragic story. She didn’t just “come along,” she was forced to…by the man who purchased her. And he was forced to within only months of having a baby. This is a time she should be resting and healing, instead she is being dragged along to help the initiation of invasion and genocide of her own people.

“When she was a child, Sacajawea had been kidnapped from this very tribe. The white men had brought her home.” This makes it sound as if Lewis, Clark, and her enslaver Charbonneau, were benevolent and bringing her home. They were not. They had no idea this would happen and it’s not like she had the opportunity to STAY home with her family. She was forced to leave them yet again by Lewis, Clark, and Charbonneau.

Chapter 12 – An Orator in a Red Jacket Speaks

This chapter is somewhat sympathetic to Natives, but still written in a racist and Eurocentric way. Eurocentrism is sneaky like this sometimes. It’s the WAY non-European cultures and people are written about.

“The new Americans wanted Indian land and they didn’t know a fair way to share it.” There is no “fair way” to share something that was violently stolen. This is a ridiculous statement.

“The Indians would lose most of their land. No one realized that in 1805, which was when Red Jacket spoke – though perhaps some understood that the Native Americans would not give up their land easily. Terrible Indian wars lay ahead.” They would not “lose” most of their land. This is passive language that puts the blame on Native people. They would have most of their land STOLEN. This is an important distinction. She regularly uses passive language like this as to not speak ill of her precious “founders.” I’m sure by 1805 most people knew this because that was the goal.

Chapter 13 – The Great Tekamthi, Also called Tecumseh

Same as the last chapter, this chapter is somewhat sympathetic to Natives, but still written in a racist and Eurocentric way.

One section ends with “…and leave the hunting lands of the West for the Indians.” These aren’t “hunting lands.” This is Eurocentric language that is used to make themselves feel better about stealing land and displacing Natives. If it wasn’t their homes, just “hunting land,” it’s not so bad, is it? But this was the HOMELANDS of Native nations. This is language that is used to discredit Indigenous claims to land.

“He would make the white men go. He would do it by uniting the Indian tribes.” Wow, so Tecumseh united ALL the “Indian tribes?” Sigh. This is monolithic language that does nothing to educate people about what Tecumseh really did. He united many Native nations in the Ohio Valley area, like the Shawnee, Potawatomi, Kicakapoo, Ho-Chunk, etc. But he didn’t unite “the Indian tribes.” That’s a ridiculous statement.

It says his brother was a “shaman.” The word “shaman” is incorrect. Native nations do not have “shamans.” This word is from eastern religions, not ours.
“They told them to go back to Indian ways and to be proud of their heritage. And the Indians did that, too.” Again, there are no “Indian ways,” there are lifeways that are specific and unique to each nation.

“Most of the Indiana Territory, by treaty, was supposed to be Indian land. But white settlers were moving in. Harrison was afraid that Tecumseh was too powerful, that the Indians would endanger the white settlers.” It wasn’t “supposed” to be “Indian land,” it WAS, by law, their land. White squatters were invading. Native nations were defending themselves against this invasion, not “endangering white settlers.”

Chapter 14 – Osceola

Again, this chapter is somewhat sympathetic to Natives, but still written in a racist and Eurocentric way.

She calls Osceola “the Indian boy” when he was a child. This is disrespectful.

The term “Indian civil war” is used in reference to the war of 1812. This was not an “Indian civil war” any more than any other European war where Native nations joined sides was. This was a European war on stolen land. That’s it. Just because Native nations took sides, doesn’t make it an “Indian civil war.”

“Although many didn’t understand it at the time, it was a disaster for both groups of Indians.” NATIVE NATIONS ARE NOT “GROUPS.”

“The Indians who lived in Florida were called Seminoles. They were a mixture. Many had been Creek, a few were of the old, mostly extinct tribes; some were wanderers and outcasts; some were blacks who had been slaves.” Surprisingly, the mixture of who the Seminole are, is correct. However, they were not simply “the Indians who lived in Florida.” This monolithic language makes it sound like they were the ONLY nation in Florida, which is not correct. The way this is written is problematic.

“The women farmed, the men hunted. Because the climate was warm, their houses were simple roofed platforms on stilts that kept them off the moist ground.” While there is nothing “incorrect” about these statements, they’re written in a Eurocentric way that makes them sound primitive. Yes, women were in charge of agriculture and men were hunters in Seminole society, but most other things were not divided by gender. Men and women participated in arts, storytelling, religion, medicine, etc. It is Eurocentric values of patriarchal society and strict gender roles that lead writers like this to focus on such concepts. This isn’t noteworthy unless you’re really diving into the societal structure of Seminole culture. Also calling traditional engineering and architecture “simple” is insulting and primitivizing.

“Like Tecumseh, he stood out among the others. He seemed braver and more truthful.” Why is a non-Native, non-Seminole or Shawnee author making value judgements like this? Not that it’s a bad statement, but her opinions don’t belong here.

There is a small breakout box about stickball, but she keeps calling it “lacrosse” which is a modern game that was based on traditional stickball. Stickball is not the same as Lacrosse. It also says “His [George Caitlin] words here describe Choctaw men playing a similar game; both games were like lacrosse.” This is a caption for a painting, but again, the games were not “like lacrosse.” The games are the origins of modern lacrosse. Lacrosse is like stickball.

Chapter 15 – The Revolutionary War Part II, or the War of 1812

“Capturing ships and holding territory – those are two pretty good reasons for fighting. There was a third reason that wasn’t so good. Many Americans wanted Indian land. But the English and their western forts had become friends and protectors of the Indians.” I would never call reasons for war “good.” But beyond that, they hadn’t become “friends,” they became political allies. Language like “friends” is patronizing and discredits the political nature of Native nations. Then Natives aren’t even mentioned again. She did talk about the Creeks and the Red Sticks in the previous few chapters, but briefly. Even though that was a huge part of the war of 1812, she doesn’t mention it here.

Pg 83 has a story about “the Star-Spangled Banner” but it completely skips the 3^rd stanza. It says “We’re skipping the third stanza – which is not often sung. The fourth stanza…” and then goes into the fourth stanza which is ALSO not often sung, so why completely skip over the 3^rd with the excuse of “it’s not often sung?” probably because it’s racist and she doesn’t want to admit that in the book.

Chapter 16 - No Native Americans mentioned.

Chapter 17 – That Good President Monroe

This chapter goes into the whole Florida taken from Spain, Jackson sent to capture “runaway slaves” and then it says “but he did more than that. He had learned to fight as the Indians fought. He burned villages and destroyed crops. He captured, killed, and humiliated the Seminoles.” This is about the First Seminole War, but seriously she keeps saying things like “learned to fight as the Indians fought.” Not all Native nations fought the same way.

“Lots of people in the United States couldn’t wait to move to Florida. But what about the Seminoles? They had to make way for the white settlers.” They didn’t “have” to “make way” for anyone. They were forced to by greedy violent people. But none of this was a “have to.” It was all choice on the part of the invaders. This language is gross.

“James Monroe and John Quincy Adams decided something needed to be done to keep Europe out of the Americas” This just made me laugh…in a sad disgusted way. THEY ARE EUROPEANS. USians ARE Europeans. They’re the invaders.

Chapter 18 - No Native Americans mentioned.

Chapter 19 - No Native Americans mentioned.

Chapter 20 – Old Hickory

She refers to Andrew Jackson as “Andy.” This is just strange.

“By the time he was 30 he owned two large plantations near Nashville.” As if that’s an accomplishment? These were worked by enslaved people.

“Andrew Jackson was a man of action, a born leader who was already doing things and going places and changing the world he lived in.” As if he was doing all positive, good things. He was a horrible man and president, though. This is Eurocentric glorification of a genocidal maniac.

“Andrew Jackson did change the presidency – it was never the same again. Most people think he made it stronger.” Who are “most people” here?? Whose opinion is she talking about? “It helped that he had good manners, natural manners.” Sorry, not sorry, people with good manners don’t commit genocide.

The entire chapter is positive praise for one of the worst and most horrifying presidents in US history.

Chapter 21 – Yankee Ingenuity: Cotton and Muskets

“People didn’t practice scientific farming. They often destroyed the land by growing the same crops year after year….” In this statement “people” refers to white people only. “People” is not the default for “white!” This type of wording needs to stop. Euro-Americans specifically didn’t practice scientific farming. Indigenous people in the Americas, as well as around the world, DID practice scientific farming. They did NOT destroy the land. They DID practice crop rotation long before Europeans/Euro-Americans understood the concept.

“The south had been having economic problems. Slavery wasn’t as useful as it had been in the early colonial days.” “There wasn’t enough work for the slaves.” “Slaves became very valuable again.” These are all incredibly problematic statements. Unfortunately they’re not the worst this book has to offer.

Native Americans aren’t mentioned here though.

Chapter 22 – Going Places

“Road building was a new science” Really? Because I’m pretty sure Natives in North and South America has been building road systems for thousands of years. What she means here is MODERN road building was a new science. But roads themselves were not.

She keeps calling things “wilderness” and “the wilds” in this chapter. I have addressed this multiple times, so I won’t again. But it’s just wrong.

No Native Americans (sans “two Indian boys”) mentioned in this chapter.

Chapter 23 – Teakettle Power

This chapter praises railroad expansion, which is gross because that was…you guessed it! Invasion and genocide. But what’s even more ridiculous is that she doesn’t even mention Native Americans in this chapter…a chapter about invading more Native land (even land guaranteed by Congress and treaty as being off limits to whites). You literally can’t teach the history of railroad expansion adequately and appropriately without talking about the impact on Native nations and the significant (and powerful) Native resistance.

Chapter 24 – Making Words

This is about Sequoyah. And good heavens, this entire thing is HORRIBLE.

“A white man would take words, turn them into shapes, and scratch them on a slate or draw them on a piece of paper. Then another man could look at those shapes and say the first man’s words. Was it magic? Sequoyah could draw pictures of things he could see. But you can’t see words. You can’t touch words. How can they be pictured? Sequoyah was determined to find out.” This is so racist. Not only did some Native nations already have writing systems or systems of recording information in various forms, not just “white men”, no one thought it was “magic.”

“But no Cherokee could read or write his own language, because reading and writing were unknown to Indian tribes. Indian stories and speeches were remembered and retold by orators, or storytellers, or singers.” No. Reading and writing was not “unknown” to “Indian tribes.” It was not something the Cherokee practices prior to this, but some other Native nations DID. The idea that no Native Americans had writing before Europeans is a racist myth.  

“…some thought the symbols were dangerous witchcraft.” No, they did not. Some Cherokee thought that the practice of writing was too close to being witchcraft, but they didn’t just think his “symbols” were witchcraft themselves.

“The problem with the Indians, said many white men and women, was that they were “savages” and “uncivilized.” By that they meant that the Indians did not do and think as the white people did. But the Cherokees confounded the whites. Many of them did live as the whites did. Some Cherokees married white people. Some combined the two ways of life.” This whole thing is just racist. She loves to call us the S word, which is a racial slur. She uses it a lot. But many Cherokee “did live as the whites did” because they were forced to assimilate. It was essentially assimilate or die. Many people thought assimilation was the only way to survive. This wasn’t a random “choice” people made and making it out to sound like they just did this because they wanted to is dishonest.

There is a big description about how they were super assimilated and how great that was. She writes about it as if it was a wonderful thing. It’s like she actually believes we were “uncivilized” and Europeans saved us from ourselves. It’s disgusting.

“The Cherokees formed a government” Um, they already had one. It’s just that they formed a new, more European style government.  

She uses Eurocentric language to say people came to the “New World” looking for land. Land in the East was “full.” As if it was logical and right to keep invading other peoples land.

“That was when they discovered a problem: most of that frontier belonged to the Indians. ‘Why should the Indians have so much?’ they asked. ‘Isn’t there enough land for everyone?’ So they pushed west. Some of them put up their cabins on Indian lands. Many wanted to live peacefully with the Indians. Some didn’t. In Europe they had read that the Indians were ruthless savages.” Again, she loves calling us the S word. She does it completely unironically as if she really thinks of us that way. But calling our existence a “problem?” That’s gross. The European/Euro-American racist concept of “the Indian problem” can be taught about in a non-racist way. This isn’t it.

“The Cherokees had a warrior tradition. They didn’t know which white people were friendly and which ones weren’t.” Don’t Europeans have a “warrior tradition?” Don’t most cultures in the world? This isn’t unique to the Cherokee or Native nations. But it’s mentioned because we have to be portrayed as “fierce” S words by this author. It’s the only way she writes about us. Again with the patronizing word “friendly.” They were political and engaged in diplomacy. They didn’t know which white people wanted to murder them.

“They just knew their land and lives were being threatened, so they went on raids and killed white people and burned their cabins and farms. The settlers didn’t know which Indians could be trusted and which ones were killers, so they went on raids and killed Indians and burned their homes and fields. Life on the frontier was terrifying – and very dangerous.”  No, they defended themselves the way any other nation would in that situation. This whole “both sides” narrative she pushes is a racist dog whistle. Life on the frontier was only “terrifying and very dangerous” because white people were literally illegally invading other people’s nations with the explicit purpose of killing anyone in their way so they could have what they wanted.

Then she claims that “Some leaders like George Washington and James Madison tried to find ways to protect the Indians.” No...absolutely, no, they did not. George Washington was literally called “town destroyer” by the Haudenosaunee.

“…all Indians should live west of the Mississippi. Most white Americans – including Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson – agreed. They all thought the Indians would be safe there, and could live in peace.” Removal had NOTHING to do with “Indians” being sent to “safety.” This is disgusting and absurd and complete revisionist history. There is nothing correct about this statement at all.

“The Cherokees didn’t want to move. They loved their land.” That’s it??? It’s because they just loved their land?? How about they didn’t want to move because THEY ARE A SOVERIGN NATION with every right to stay exactly where they were without foreign invaders illegally pushing them out.

“The Cherokees had no choice. Even though they had their own nation and were governing themselves, they had to go.” They didn’t “have” to go. They were illegally forced to go. She writes about history as if these things were just inevitable and “had” to happen, but they didn’t.

A picture caption says: “by the time they had to move westward, few Cherokees lived in the old ways as this man did, hunting, fishing, and gathering. Most were farmers and traders.” Wow. Just no. The Cherokee have ALWAYS been farmers and traders!! For thousands of years!  

Chapter 25 – A Time to Weep

This title is not secular. It’s clearly a Christian bible reference.

It claims “As they went they wept, because they didn’t want to go. They didn’t want to leave their homes, their farms, their hunting grounds, the land of their fathers and mothers.” This is NOT why it is called the Trail of Tears. While being illegally forced from their homelands was part of the sadness, this is called the “Trail of Tears” because thousands of people were MURDERED. Because this was a genocide.

Then it says “The people who wept were Native Americans.” Again with the generic “the Native Americans” Which ones?? This chapter is about the Cherokee. It should say “The people who wept were Cherokee.”

It then calls the Cherokee “stubborn” because they refused to move from their homelands as was their sovereign right to refuse. This is not “stubborn.” It’s the law.

“Jackson was popular. He was a man of the people, a man of the frontier, in many ways was a good president.” She really loves to praise Andrew Jackson. Gross.

Then there is a whole page that focuses on a white missionary named Samuel Worcester – “…who had come to the Indian territory to teach school and to preach Christian doctrine.” It’s all written in a very positive way.

 Of John Marshall she says, “He was a man with a mind as straight as an Indian’s arrow.” Is a ridiculous comparison like this really necessary?

Regarding Jackson’s refusal to follow the ruling of the Supreme court “Our American system of checks and balances failed. I am sorry to have to write this. It was a terrible moment in U.S. history. But the truth needs to be told.” – Oh…NOW the truth matters to her? After all this untruthful history??

“People in Georgia wanted Indian land. (I don’t want to pick on just Georgia. The same thing happened in many other states.) So the Indians of the eastern woodlands went west. Some fought before they went. The Sauk and Fox in Illinois fought especially hard, but their cause was hopeless.” All the nations fought to protect themselves, some did it physically, others through the courts, but all fought. Calling the self defense of nations “hopeless” is another baseless opinion she didn’t need to insert.

“The Choctaws were the first, they moved in 1831. Three years later the Chickasaws trudged west.” Emphasis mine. This is passive language. They didn’t “move.” They didn’t just “trudge west.” They were forcibly removed by Euro-Americans. She continuously puts the blame on Native people through passive language like this.

“The government said the new land would be theirs forever. But when the white people moved west they forgot their promises to the Indians.” They did not “forget.” It was intentional. 

Chapter 26 – The Second Seminole War

This chapter is a somewhat inaccurate, but heavily Eurocentric, overview of the second Seminole War.

“Some white settlers were shooting and burning and looting. Some Seminoles were shooting and burning and looting. There was only one way to satisfy the homesteaders and protect the Indians, said most white people. The Seminoles must move.” Again, the “both sides” narrative is racist. The Seminole were defending themselves from violent invaders. They had every right to do so. The white settlers were the invaders that had no right to do so.

In contrast to the assimilated White Stick Creeks, “The Seminoles lived an Indian life. They had black friends. Some were blacks themselves.” Not only is the language regarding Black people outdated, again there is no such thing as “an Indian life.” They lived a SEMINOLE life.

Regarding the leader who was sent to “conquer the Seminoles” – “Dade’s troops were slaughtered.” She doesn’t use the word “slaughtered” to describe what Europeans and Euro-Americans did to Indigenous people. She only uses it to describe what Native people did in rightful self-defense. This is a distortion of history and racist.

Regarding the invading party – “the American soldiers were suffering from heat, disease, and frustration – as well as Indian attack.” No, they were not suffering from “Indian attack,” THEY were the attackers. The Seminole were suffering from white attacks. The Seminole were rightfully defending themselves.

It claims the Seminoles were the ones that raised the white flag of truce, and this is how Osceola was captured. It’s the other way around, the US raised the white flag as a trick. More specifically, General Thomas Jessup raised the white flat as a trick. The idea that the Seminole were the ones who raised a white flag is just a flat out lie.

“Most of the Seminoles who were left went west to the Indian territory.” This is passive language. It places the blame on the Seminole. They didn’t just “go west,” they were forced…by the US. Passive language about these topics are a huge issue throughout these books. And it wasn’t even “most” of the Seminole. Some Seminole went west, some didn’t. Some are still there in Florida.  

“In the end, no one won the Seminole War.” Um yes…the Seminole did. The Seminole won and never signed a peace treaty with the US.

Chapter 27 – History’s Paradox

I can’t really type out quotes of how horrible this chapter is, the whole thing is horrible. It is about slavery. She has extremely warped and racist views about slavery. As I read this chapter, my thoughts ended up being “It just keeps getting worse.” I’ll just leave photographs of the pages so you can see for yourself. 

No Native Americans mentioned (even though Natives were enslaved in the Americas from 1492 to 1865. She briefly mentions this in the preface, but nowhere else). 

Chapter 28 – A Man Who Didn’t Do as His Neighbors Did

The end of the 1700s/beginning of 1800s “It was the Age of Reason. People were using their minds, reading books, and asking questions.” Um…I’m pretty sure people have been doing that for thousands of years. Again, she uses “people” to mean Europeans only. She regularly makes white people the default of the word “people.” It was only the “Age of Reason” in Europe and most of their ideas came from BIPOC people around the world, including ideas from Native nations in the eastern woodlands areas.

Alas, yet again there are no Native Americans mentioned in this chapter and it is not secular either.

Chapter 29 – African Americans

This chapter starts with a weird unnecessary statement about Pangea. Beyond that, this whole chapter is a nightmare. 

“…some of Africa’s children were torn from their roots and transplanted to America.” This is passive language. She loves to not place blame where it belongs.

“Like the people who came here from Europe or Asia, they were changed by the American land.” This is a straight up racist erasure of Indigeneity. Repeatedly just saying we “came from Asia” instead of acknowledging our Indigeneity is inaccurate and harmful. Also, Europeans weren’t “changed by the American land,” they were changed by developed Indigenous civilizations that they invaded and took over the infrastructure that already existed.

“Soon they were different from the brothers and sisters they had left behind. Soon they were no longer Africans. Now they were Americans – African Americans.” Wow no.

“An African may have come to the newly discovered land on the first of Columbus’s voyages. By 1501, Africans were living in the Caribbean. In 1619 they were living in Jamestown, Virginia, and, a few years later, at Plymouth, Massachusetts.” As if it was all voluntary?? This just says they were “living” in these places as if they came here on their own free will. This is extreme erasure of true history.

“Africans cleared the woods, tilled the soil, planted tobacco, and harvested cotton. They were farmers, trailblazers, mountain men, cowhands, and pioneers. They were Americans.” Holy wow, this is so horrible. They were FORCED to do these things. She writes as if this was all a choice. They were not considered “Americans” by white people!

No Native Americans are mentioned. I only mention this because I do for any chapter that doesn't mention us for the main purpose of my reviews. Despite the long history of community building and sharing between African Americans and Natives, I still wouldn't really expect mention of Natives in a chapter like this. 

Chapter 30 – The King and His People

This chapter is entirely passive voice about cotton itself being the cause of chattel slavery and it being a tyrannical king. It’s absurd and full of horrible opinions.

Of the human traffickers/enslavers she says, “They were smart, and lucky, too. Each of them bought a little land, worked it, bought a slave or two, worked them, bought more land, and soon had a whole plantation.” This is said as if this is positive and good. She calls them “smart and lucky”?! For trafficking in kidnapped humans??

“Walk in woods like that and you may see goblins and spooks and little people; soon you’ll think up your own stories.” WOAH. If you don’t know the history of the word “sp**ks” look it up. In this context it is a racial slur.

Then it falsely states that most lynchings in the south between 1840 and 1860 were white people, “There was almost no lynching of slaves – they were worth money.” This completely erases the actual history of lynching Black people (and sometimes other BIPOC as well). Most of those early supposedly “white” people that were lynched were Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, or Indigenous people, not actually white. And just because enslaved people weren’t often lynched because of their “value” to human traffickers, that doesn’t mean free Black people and self-emancipated (“escaped”) Black people weren’t targeted. She is clearly trying to downplay the racial history of lynchings.

“If you want to understand about slavery and the conflict between blacks and whites, you will need to do a lot of reading and thinking. Especially if you want to be fair.” WHAT?? There is no “fairness” on this topic. She is yet again trying to “both sides” this horrific history.

“You will read tales of kind masters and happy slaves…” AGAIN, WHAT?? This is a racist myth created to make white people feel better about the history of slavery in the US.

“…and you will read stories of viciousness, cruelty, and abuse. There is both truth and exaggeration in most of these stories.” WOW. Just racist.

“Yes, there was terrible, brutish, inexcusable meanness in slavery. But most slave owners – even if they were cruel – thought of their slaves as valuable property. They might beat them, but they tried not to do them serious harm. They needed to keep their property healthy.” This is horrifying and disgusting.  

“Yes, there were kind slave owners who cared for the people they owned and treated them well. There was genuine affection between blacks and whites.” I can’t even at this point. Sorry for losing my professionalism here.

Then it goes on to talk about being illegal to teach slaves to read and a woman going to jail for it and said “Whites were losing their freedom, too” as if this is about them?!?!

I am disgusted more and more as these books go on. No Native Americans mentioned.

Chapter 31 – Abolitionists Want to End Slavery

Another disgusting chapter.

“Don’t think this was a case of good Northerners and bad Southerners.” – This starts out correct….

“Many white Southerners hated slavery and treated blacks decently. And many white Northerners didn’t seem to know about the Golden Rule (“Do unto others…”). Northern blacks were rarely given the rights of citizens: in most places they weren’t allowed to vote or serve on juries. In the North, blacks often held the worst jobs, and black children were usually not allowed in white schools.” – and then COMPLETELY misses the mark. No, it’s not because some white Southerners were good, and some white Northerners were bad. It’s because RACISM. That’s literally the answer. Racism and white supremacy. North – bad, South – bad. All bad. It is a white supremacist country. BOTH ARE BAD.

No Native Americans mentioned (again, only saying this for the main purpose of this review, I mention it for any chapter that doesn't).

Chapter 32 – Frederick Douglass

This chapter starts out okayish, but then it says that as a young child he was sent to be a “companion to a little white boy. For a slave, that was a lucky break.” There is absolutely nothing “lucky” about being enslaved. She’s still trying to claim slavery wasn’t “that bad.” The rest of the chapter surprisingly isn’t horrible, but I think that is because it is mostly quotes from Frederick Douglass himself.

There is a section at the end about “Walking Across the Map” in the time of Andrew Jackson’s presidency. It is, of course, very whitewashed and full of passive language. There is very little mention of Natives and all of it is passive and whitewashed. No surprise there.

Of course, I would not expect Natives to be mentioned here, and we're not. 

Chapter 33 – Naming Presidents

This chapter is about presidents 8-15. It’s propaganda mostly. She also claims that all of the first 7 presidents were “outstanding,” including enslavers and Andrew Jackson. Native Americans are essentially not mentioned here (brief reference). 

Chapter 34 - No Native Americans mentioned.

Chapter 35 - No Native Americans mentioned.

Chapter 36 – Liberty for All?

This is the opening: “How do you think the nation is doing? Are you discouraged? After all, there is slavery, some people are being horrible to the Native Americans, and there is much lawlessness in the land. Does it look hopeless for freedom, democracy, and fairness? Well, don’t be discouraged. Actually, the United States is doing amazingly well.” I’d like to know – in what world is invasion, genocide, the chattel slavery, and white supremacy as a national foundation “doing amazingly well?”

And the chapter ends very quickly with more propaganda and baseless opinion of the author.

This is from the last review, but it needs repeating: I want to explain why I point out “there is no mention of Natives in this chapter” instead of just skipping it. Excluding Natives from history is as “American as apple pie.” We disappear from the textbooks and stories and are said to have disappeared ourselves. We become so insignificant in the mentality of modern Euro-Americans that we aren’t included in history as books move through time. We become invisible. 87% of textbooks don’t mention us past 1890. We are still invisible today and this has a massive impact on us and our continued oppression. Erasing us from history is an intentional and vital piece of US propaganda. The reality is that we should be included in pretty much every aspect of US history, because we have been part of it since its beginning, willingly or not. I have taught thousands of US school children about Native peoples over the years. I am regularly confronted with questions of my existence. “Are you a real Indian?” even though I introduce myself as a Native woman. “Are you from India?” because they don’t understand that Natives didn’t all disappear. I have been told by children and adults that they thought we didn’t exist anymore. Reclaiming Native Truth is a project that found that 40% of adults in the US don’t know that we still exist. Hakim actively participates in this propaganda in the way she writes this series. My reviews will most likely get shorter and shorter as I move through the books because we will disappear from them completely. I always point it out because I want you to notice. 

There are obvious chapters, like ones that focus on African Americans or people like Frederick Douglass, where I wouldn't expect Natives to be mentioned, nor do we need to be. This book has several chapters where it is perfectly fine that we are not mentioned due to the nature of the chapter. I only point it out because my main purpose for the review is Native content and where we are or are not mentioned. However, there were several horrible chapters that I had commentary for that are outside of the main scope of this review, only so you can see how racist the books and writer are. I am not an expert on those histories, but I can spot inaccuracies, racism, and Eurocentrism (and her awful opinions) there regardless. 

I continue to recommend staying far, far away from these books and telling others to do the same. They are absolute trash and cause harm.