Have you ever wondered why, when Attila the Hun and then later Ghenghis Khan "discovered" Europe, their conquests were called "invasions", but when Christopher Columbus led Europeans into an invasion of the Americas, that was called a "discovery"?
          In an ideal world, history would be written by scholars distinguished by their knowledge of the facts and their unquestioned impartiality in reporting them.   But in our unreal world, the history that the masses are taught is what history's victors and their descendants have wanted written.  And contrary to what Darwin may have said about the "survival of the fittest", we don't need to be professional scientists to know that, where human beings are concerned, those who survive and prosper, and who get to write history, are not the "fittest", in any truly human sense of the word, but more often than not, the best armed and most vicious, i.e. the most "unfit", morally speaking.
        Ever since the invasion and the conquest of the Americas, each subsequent generation of white European Christian children who have inherited the lands which their ancestors stole from their rightful Native American owners have been taught that:

• the "discovery" of the Americas by Christopher Columbus on behalf of Spain and the Roman Catholic Church was a triumphal moment in the history of mankind, with a whole day given over to its celebration as a national holiday every year.
• the American continents were vast wildernesses, a vacuum which nature abhorred, just waiting for somebody like the Europeans to discover and fill.
• the rare occupants of these continents were nothing but stone-age uncivilized pagan savages.  What they had built up was worthless compared to what Europeans had built back in the "Old World".
• these lands were free for the taking by whichever ship captain happened to be the first to "discover" them and plant a cross on them to claim them on behalf of their Christian European monarch, because such were the rules of international law laid down by Europe's "Supreme Pontiff", the Christian pope.  The fact that the occupants of these lands and their ancestors had lived on and developed those lands for thousands of years gave the native inhabitants no claim to them whatsoever, and if they didn't hand them over to their rightful owners, they were criminals and savages that needed to be dealt with accordingly.  They themselves were worthless except as slaves to work their own lands and mines for the benefit of their higher class Christian European masters.
• What Europeans would bring these benighted pagans was infinitely better than what they had, the blessings of Christian salvation and higher civilization.
• Given that the Christian Conquerers were blessed with the one true faith, it was their duty to do whatever it took to "save" these pagan savages, even if they had to torture and/or kill many of them to get them or their survivors at least to see the light.
          As best described by its most famous proponent, the eminent Spanish scholar Juan Gines de Sepulveda, the New World's Indians were 'creatures of a subhuman nature who were intended by God to be placed under the authority of civilized and virtuous princes or nations, so that they may learn, from the might, wisdom, and law of their conquerors, to practice better morals, worthier customs and a more civilized way of life.'  {p.64}

        To see how terribly wrong these views actually are, we urge you to read the masterful book, American Holocaust, by David E. Stannard (or others like it),  excerpts from which are offered on this web site, to give you a taste of what you can learn from reading the entire book.  Is it too much to ask the millions of people who, like myself, are part of the white, Christian, European majority in America today, to admit that we are "in possession of stollen goods"? And that to steal those goods the former owners were killed?

Notes :

1. The first celebration of a "Columbus Day" took place in 1792, but there were no annual celebrations until 1920.  It only became a national holiday in 1937, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Columbus Day a national holiday, largely as a result of intense lobbying by the influential CatholicKnights of Columbus" fraternal benefits organization.
2. This entire website was inspired by the extremely important and interesting book by the accomplished writer, David E. Stannard, called "American Holocaust", and published by Oxford University Press, and timed if I am not mistaken to coincide with the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Columbus. These web pages are meant to make its readers aware of how they have been misinformed by their teachers on this subject and why they need to get and read this momentous book in its entirety.
3. Chapters 2 and 3 of another book, "Lies My Teacher Told Me" , by James W. Loewen do an excellent job of covering the same ground as Stannard's book.
4. It should be obvious to everyone that giving Christopher Columbus the entire credit for discovering America is an overstatement, as he could not have achieved what he did without a great deal of help from a great many other people.  But everybody talks about Columbus because of his unique role in the "discovery", as its leader. He serves as the "poster boy", the "celebrity" for that dramatic development in the history of the world.  By that very token, when we use his name on this site in connection with the holocaust of millions of Native Americans, it is not to suggest that Columbus was personally responsible for the death of every last victim of that holocaust.  He is only given the "blame" in the same way that he is given so much of the "credit" for everything that accompanied his discovery and conquest of the New World.
5. You can read what 50+ ordinary readers like yourself thought of Stannard's book at : ReviewsofColumbusnohero.org.notlong.com
6. Another great source is Native American History,
   by Judith Nies.
7. To all of those who argue that this is all "ancient history" that we ought to just "drop", I say, "Tell that to all of those who promote the erroneous memory of Christopher Columbus as the heroic discoverer of the Americas.
8. Finally, allow me to point out to those who object to people of our day apologizing for the behavior of previous generations, that we who feel compelled to apologize may be moved by shame for the past, but we are proclaiming to the present and the future that we deplore the behavior of our ancestors and promise never to act that way ourselves in the future. A really sincere apology can be proven by the willingness to use the benefits we have inherited from ill-gotten gains, to compensate the descendents of those from whom our ancestors stole those ill-gotten gains.