Myths In Ronald Wright's Stolen Continents

“Myth is an arrangement of the past” (Wright 2009) our entire idea of North America’s history is based on stories. Stories of travel, war, treasure hunts, death and appropriation of land. In Ronald Wrights book Stolen Continents, Wright argues that the stories we know are one sided, He in fact calls them myths. These myths reflect one half of the people involved in our history. He argues that the Europeans took the new world in the name of their countries from the indigenous peoples who had discovered it long before them. Ian K. Steele writes on how war shaped the new world. War between indigenous people and European invaders. And European colonists against one another. In this essay I intend to argue that both authors contribute equally important information that leaves readers with a view that is all encompassing of

“Their ancestors had made the same discovery long before. To them the New World was so old that it was the only world” (Wright 2009). North America was not created when the Europeans mistakenly found it. Christopher Columbus along with other European Explores appropriated this land. Wright starts off his book explaining that indigenous peoples inhabited all parts of the continent. Wright states that “by 1492, there were 100 million Native Americans- a fifth, more or less of the human race” (Wright 2009). Both authors account for the fact that the inhabitants were numerous. They use the word invading to explain the first section of their novels, they account for the invasion of the continent. Steele talks about how the explorers fought to claim land and colonize as fast as possible while fighting off other European explorers as well as indigenous peoples. Wright uses the word to account for the invasion by explorers of North American and their claim of all that inhabited the land, food sources, animals and people, as their property to trade and develop