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Astha Karki
Writing 10 -29D
Professor Mumford
October 05, 2012
The Hidden Truth
Many students find history boring and tasteless to study. History books do a wonderful
job of putting everyone right to sleep with the exaggerated patriotism, and senseless history facts.
Students as early as elementary schools are being taught inaccurate history using boring history
textbooks. These books do not reveal the full truth and only recover it through the “white eyes”.
In Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James L.
Loewen elaborates on how inexact and dull History textbooks are. He mentions that many events
in American History are sugar coated and made fascinating for the superior race while the rest
fall behind their shadows. One of the biggest inaccuracies the textbooks portray is the Native
Americans. They have been lied about or hidden in every single textbook Loewen analyzes.
Today’s society does not know the true American History and the history textbooks taught in
schools do not educate us of the past but secrete what is real.
In “Red Eyes” Loewen expresses strong views and proofs that the history textbooks do
not credit the Native Americans for their struggles and trials. The chapter talks about the unfair
treatment of the Native Americans; “Native Americans have been the most lied about subset”
(Loewen, pg. 134 ). The Native Americans have been cheated off their history with their
textbooks and deserve more recognition. The textbooks that Loewen analyzed depict the Native
Americans as savages and “war like”. As seen on the YouTube documentary, American
Holocaust of the Native American Indians, the Natives were stripped of their culture and beliefs
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by the whites. The video consist of present day Native Americans talking about their thoughts on
the subject. Many felt their rights and beliefs were taken away from them. The documentary
reveals the hatred and sadness each of the Native Americans felt for what the Europeans did to
their ancestors. Often Native Americans are notes as war-like; if anyone is warlike, it should be
the Europeans for how savage like they treated the Natives which the textbooks fail to cover.
They merely make the Euro-Americans seem heroic. Moreover, many books written before the
1970s even blame the Indians for the violence in the Civil Rights Movement. None of the books
touch on the fact that the Natives were very understanding towards the Europeans although the
Europeans were trying to wipe out their race. The Europeans would have been lost without the
Native Americans to show guide them in new towns, and provide them with medicine during
sickness, which is good example on depicting the Natives as welcoming and helpful. The
textbooks do not consider the real history of the Natives which has gone unrecognized for
centuries and left the present day American Indians scarred with the stories of their ancestors.
The textbooks do not care to give the Native Americans credit for their talents, “members
of Indian nations possessed a variety of sophisticated skills, form the ability to weave watertight
baskets to an understanding of how certain plants can be used to reduce pain” (pg. 121). The
Europeans were clever to persuade the Native Americans to specialize in slave trade. Europeans
traded many goods with the Natives such as the medicine for weapons, food, etc. Many
considered that everyone’s lives were getting easier and did not consider the Natives victims
(Loewen). This explains how high and mighty Europeans made themselves out to be and saw the
Natives as worthless. The textbooks do not care to mention the intentions Europeans had coming
to America, the textbooks only care to show that the white Americans conquered. Due to the
textbooks careless interpretation of history our generation is completely oblivious to our history.
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To test this out, a group of eighteen people were asked few questions to test their knowledge of
Native American history. Upon asked what comes to mind when hearing the name, Native
American, many of the interviewees said “Thanksgiving” or “Casinos”. Many of the
interviewees had no idea of the journey Native Americans had. Many knew they were treated
unfairly but did not know up to what extent. Some did not even care to know how Native
American’s lives were affected by the colonists. When asked how they think Native American
culture influences today’s generation, all eighteen out of the eighteen thought fashion and
gambling were the biggest influences Native Americans’ culture on our culture. Nonetheless,
“Red Eyes” teaches us that the democratic government we have in the United States today is
directly influenced by the democratic government that the Natives followed years ago. People
are blinded by the facts provided by the media and the textbooks they learn “the truth” from.
Media has been one of the biggest factors after textbooks to hide the truth about Native
American History. Both are very influential to our lives and many intend to digest most of the
information fed to them via media. Media interprets the history just as the textbooks do, Natives
are savages and they are uncivilized. What they fail to show is they were only protecting their
culture, people and land. Although, Indians had enslaved each other long before Europeans,
Europeans expanded Indian slavery. Loewen continues with the idea of how little we are taught
in the textbooks, American History points out that few Indians were enslaved and twelve of the
textbooks are silent on the topic of slavery. Many Native Americans were taken advantage of by
the white settlers in many ways; and students do not learn this in school because the textbooks
only show the students that the Indians were appalling. “White southerners used the expulsion of
Indians…to obscure the continuing presence of native people in the South, to fuse their own lost
cause to that of the Indians..” (Perdue). Facts like these are opt out by the textbooks because they
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do not want kids to learn that America was “founded” by savages and racists, the settlers who did
not think twice before killing the natives on their own land. The French-Indian war during the
1800s, had brutal tactics towards the Indians, “The threat-of-war tactic was itself a four-stage
process: (1) white encroachment and atrocity against Indians; (2) bloody Indian retaliation; (3)
military invasion of Indian country to protect innocent settlers and punish hostile savages; (4)
and finally a peace treaty that required a cession of Indian land” (Wallace, pg 19-20). These facts
are not pointed out in the books and truths like these are important for us to learn as students in
schools so we have respect for the Indian culture and what they have been through in the past
and what they carry on their shoulders today, just as we do for African Americans and Jews.
Instead the textbooks show Indians sympathy for the struggles they had to go through and
articulate that the Natives would never have changed their way of life without EuropeanAmericans (Loewen pg 133).
“At least today’s textbooks no longer blame the Natives for all the violence…”(Loewen,
pg 115). All of the twelve textbooks that Loewen analyzed failed to give Native Americans
credit for their influences to our own, as well as leave their struggles out completely. The books
fail to mention that the Natives were calm and innocent civilians who look out for each other and
even helped the settles who were attacking their home. Just as the textbooks made Columbus
seem like a hero and failed to mention the gruesome facts that Loewen uncovered, truth about
Native Americans were ignored even more so. There are barely any mentions about how they
were treated by the white settlers let alone about their lifestyles. Students are not learning that the
settlers treated Natives as worthless and didn’t think twice about enslaving them, or even raping
their women and orphaning their children. Illiteracy amongst our generation about our own
nation’s history is widening and history textbooks are not doing a good enough job for them to
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learn it accurately. Students find history tasteless and useless as it is, and sugar coating to make
our country and its settlers look heroic does not make it any interesting to learn about. Students
are not learning accurate history through the available high school textbooks and simple solution
could be to provide better textbooks that reveal actual history that took place emphasizing every
real event that occurred without sugar-coating anything; that way students would not only be
learning the truth but also gaining more respect for all cultures that had a difficult past.
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Work cited
Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your History Textbook Got Wrong.
2nd Edition. New York: Touchstone Trade Paperback, 2007. 93-134. Print.
Romero, Joanelle. American Holocaust of Native American Indians d . N.d. video. YoutubeWeb.
6 Oct 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p52hDh3kp5Y>.
Theda, Perdue. "The Legacy of Indian Removal." Southern Historical Association. n. page. Web.
6.Oct.2012.
Wallace, Anthony F. C. Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans.
Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. Print.
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