# Tisquantum, Europeans, and the Transformation of New England



## Steerpike (Jun 6, 2012)

I have put an interesting except online from Charles Mann's "1491: A New History of the Americas Before Columbus." It is a fascinating story about New England as the Europeans first arrived (the area was heavily populated when they got there), and features Tisquantum (also called Squanto) who figures in the Thanksgiving stories we traditionally learn in the U.S.

Anyone who is interested in this area should buy and read Mann's excellent book. In the mean time, though the excerpt is not short (but is a tiny portion of the book), I suspect we have a few here who might be interested in the tale.

It's also a good bit of research, so I am putting it in this forum  It impacts the setting of some of my fantasy stories-in-progress.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gNJLKs8_97huDyqtnwhi6sENexhn5aHME31thv75qQc/edit


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## Steerpike (Jun 6, 2012)

Moving into the discussion phase, I'm curious why we don't see a better teaching of this in our public schools in the U.S. If you read Mann's book, you can see that this information has been developing over a few decades. It's not like it is all brand new. But even the current textbooks in use in our school incorporate none of it. 

Text books in other sciences contain information that is much more recent than a lot of what Mann is talking about. 

So is it because those teaching are more comfortable approaching the subject in the way they learned it? Or that those writing the textbooks have been doing so for some time and learned the traditional viewpoint as well? Are we more comfortable as a whole with the simpler, traditional narrative? Do we believe that children won't understand this more complex picture?

Personally, I think most of us would have found this kind of history much more engaging in school. Odd that while Mann is talking about is heavily documented, from contemporary sources forward, it has had little impact on the popular perception of the time period (and largely due to the fact that the public is taught an incorrect view).


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Jun 7, 2012)

Steerpike said:


> Moving into the discussion phase, I'm curious why we don't see a better teaching of this in our public schools in the U.S. If you read Mann's book, you can see that this information has been developing over a few decades. It's not like it is all brand new. But even the current textbooks in use in our school incorporate none of it.
> 
> Text books in other sciences contain information that is much more recent than a lot of what Mann is talking about.
> 
> ...



I can think of two main factors:

1) People get a lot more emotionally attached to history than they do to biology or physics, mainly because history involves people and value judgments. If you're brought up believing that JFK was a white knight, when you ultimately find out that he was really no better than any other politician, it can be very hard. History is to a large degree about story, and people love their stories, and don't like to see them change.

Conversely, if you were brought up thinking that there were 5 kingdoms in biology, to find out now that it's expanded to more than that is sort of like, "Oh, how interesting."

2) History is seen as more of a "well, these things happened, and that can't change" discipline, whereas biology, physics, etc. are considered "sciences," and one of the things everyone learns about science is that our theories and understanding are always changing and evolving. This is also true of history, but the general public doesn't really see it that way. This manifests in things like movies that are based on history; we see the movie and that version of history (which is rarely accurate) becomes embedded in our minds as part of the real story. Very little of pop culture is based heavily on current theories in biology or physics (while some media do _use_ those elements, e.g. how often we see genetic engineering and nanotech in movies these days, those are just plot devices; they're not usually the basis for the story).


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## Jabrosky (Jun 7, 2012)

Steerpike said:


> Moving into the discussion phase, I'm curious why we don't see a better teaching of this in our public schools in the U.S. If you read Mann's book, you can see that this information has been developing over a few decades. It's not like it is all brand new. But even the current textbooks in use in our school incorporate none of it.
> 
> Text books in other sciences contain information that is much more recent than a lot of what Mann is talking about.
> 
> ...


In my experience, the general public stereotypes Native Americans as either dim-witted subhumans or as noble proto-hippies who lived in harmony with nature. The fact that Native societies were larger and more complex and were run by intelligent and fallible human beings is inconvenient for either stereotype.


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