John Mohawk

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we would have described as paradise. The temperature varied from
68 degrees to 79 degrees. There was always food, there was always
whatever people needed. You would want to read these accounts
that Christopher Columbus has of his moments of entering this
place, his description of the trees, of the birds, of the people. It is
an incredible world and one of the greatest adventures. In fact, no
one will ever have an adventure like it again. And then you would
want to read the other part in the book called, “The History of the
Caribbean” in which it describes that between 1492 and 1496 two-
thirds to three quarters of the population of Hispanola disappears.
Two-thirds to three quarters of the population! Four to five million
people disappeared in four years! How could that have happened?
Well, it happened!

And Columbus’ arrival is a story that is celebrated in the
West. The West celebrates this as a powerful achievement, as a
positive thing. But, within four years of the Spanish seeking for
gold, we saw the enslavement of the Indians, the incredible cruel-
ty visited upon the Indians by the Conquistadors, the diseases, the
warfare—the population of Hispanola was diminished by five mil-
lion. Cruelty did that. Cruelty that was built around this ideology
which the Spanish brought with them. You will remember the
Spanish were looking for Asia. They were thinking that they were
going to find India. And so they looked at the first peoples who
they saw on the shores and said, these must be Indians,

There were hundreds of different kinds of Indians just on
the east coast of the Americas, from South America along the
Mesoamerican shore, all the way around the Gulf and into Florida
and up the coast. Hundreds of different types of Indians, speaking
different languages, with different personalities, with different cul-
tures. And all of these Indians standing on the shore were lumped
Into one group. They were described by the Europeans as “the
Indians.” And the reason for that was because the Europeans did
not know who the Indians were. They had only just invented the
1dea of Europeans a couple of hundred years before. But at that
EIOment in time the Indians were understood by the Spanish to be

the others.” They were the people who were not Europeans. The
Europeans did not know who the Indians were; they knew who
they were not. And from that time to this the Indians are still a mys-

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