Christopher Columbus Propaganda

Indeed, The upper Western class' gentle treatment of Columbus abuses speaks to the power of propaganda and how its invocation alone can warp the past and control the future. In the Bahamas islands where Christopher Columbus landed, he and his Spanish compatriots committed grievous wrongs. According to Howard Zinn (pg 90), Columbus' first main interest upon meeting the Native Americans was gold. Hence Columbus ordered that the Native Americans in the Bahamas retrieve a certain quota of gold for his cache. If and when some of the Native Americans did not meet Columbus gold quota, he had them dismembered. Those Native Americans who fled or retaliated were hunted down, starved, became diseased or were killed. Columbus' and his men additionally

This American Columbus and colonization mythistory influences the highest American statesman in Theodore Roosevelt to the lowest American marine to preface the Native American genocide as excusable for the sake of Western society. As Zin notes, an American officer in the Phillipines drew the aforementioned parallel between American Native and Filipino colonization:
“There is no use in mincing words..We exterminated the American Indians and I guess most of us are proud of it..and we must have no scruples about exterminating this other race standing in the way of progress and enlightenment, if it is necessary…”
Indeed, as the American officer spoke of “progress and enlightenment” in exterminating the Natives and Filipinos, so Chauncey DePew spoke in reference to Columbus’ colonial triumph as marking American progress in terms of wealth and power. Suffice to say, the American officer’s account of the Native American colonization and genocide is replete with similar glowing and progress-driven terminology as present Chauncey DePew’s account. The mythistory propagated by the American intelligentsia in both periods led to the misrepresentation of the past and perpetuation of wrongs in the future.