– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

Ok, let me tell you about Christopher Columbus…

[bleep]

So, I’ve been told you can’t  say any of that on YouTube.

So let’s start here, with the Taíno people.

They were one of the first  tribes to encounter Columbus, 

in what’s now the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Some scholars estimate that there may have been more than three million Taínos in Hispaniola

when Columbus came ashore.

But within a century, they were declared extinct.

A whole people… gone.

Except they’re very much still here.

This historical inaccuracy isn’t the only one in the story of the so-called “New World”.

Far from it.

Hi! I'm Che Jim, and welcome to  Crash Course Native American History.

[THEME MUSIC]

Today, we’re talking about the first contact between Native Americans and European colonists

— the story that’s often  told through this little ditty 

about 1492, the ocean blue, and you-know-who.

First contact is a phrase used to describe the first meeting between two communities.

And to say that there are a lot  of misconceptions around 

the first contact between  Native Americans and Europeans

would be like saying Messi is good at soccer

—major understatement.

You could fill the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria with all that misinformation.

So let’s start off with a quick fact check.

The only thing Columbus set out to “discover” was a better way to get from Spain to Asia.

The trade route known as  the Silk Road was something 

of a schlep between Europe and Central Asia,

and the Ottoman Empire shut it down in 1453, prompting the so-called “Age of Discovery.”

So Columbus proposed a mathematically incorrect plan to sail West across the Atlantic.

He got funding from the King and Queen of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella,

who were pretty psyched for  all the potential riches, 

and the opportunity to spread  Catholicism around the globe.

Columbus and his crew made landfall in 1492 in what’s now the Bahamas,

and he claimed for Spain  what he believed to be India.

Big colonizer energy.

The Bahamas were home to the Lucayans, a branch of the Arawak tribe.

Columbus immediately took six Lucayans as slaves, or “servants” in his words.

So, yeah. We’ve got some  serious myth-busting to do.

[spooky music]

[glass shatters]

In the Americas, the idea of first  contact is described like this:

Columbus shows up in the Bahamas, and boom, Europeans have met Native Americans.

But because neither Europeans nor Native Americans are just one thing,

Columbus was only the first contact between the Spanish empire and the Lucayans.

There were countless initial meetings between Europeans and Native Americans

— both before and after Columbus got lost.

[crash]

Like, there’s evidence that more  than 500 years before Columbus,

the Scandinavian Vikings came to Greenland where they encountered the Native Thule people.

And there were first contacts  in Alaska and Hawaii, too, 

which we’ll get into in a later episode.

First contacts between different  Europeans and Native nations 

continued occurring all the way through the 1800s.

The first encounter the  Salish had with non-Natives 

wasn’t until 1805, when the  Lewis and Clark expedition

wandered into their territory in Montana, looking for horses and directions.

So, “first contact” is kind of a misnomer.

As is the idea of “discovery.”

I mean, Columbus has been celebrated for centuries 

for “discovering” a continent that  millions of people already lived on.

[COLONIAL CARL] Fresh, untamed wilderness. I shall call it –

[CHE] Hey, Buddy. We’re kinda filming here.

This is our studio.

[COLONIAL CARL] – Studiopolis. A name that just came to me

in a divine vision with no outside influence.

[CHE] Again.  

Already here. But, you know what, never mind…

[COLONIAL CARL] I’m going to get a  

holiday named after me for this one.

Someone tell the pope!

[CHE] So…if you’ve ever wondered how colonizers

got away with just showing up  to someone’s home – or studio – 

and claiming it as their  own, you can thank the popes.

In 1493, Pope Alexander the Sixth made a decree — also known as a “papal bull”

— that any land not inhabited by Christians 

could be “discovered” and  claimed by Christian rulers.

“Inter Caetera” was the third  in a trilogy of papal bulls 

that made up what’s called  the Doctrine of Discovery.

And this became the legal basis for Europeans’ claims over Indigenous lands,

and later, Americans’ justification  for Westward Expansion.

You know the old saying:  papal bulls gives you wings.

The point is, this defense held  up in court as recently as…

2005!

And its impacts have been felt by Indigenous peoples all over the world for centuries.

We’ll circle back to sketchy land grabs in a bit.

But regardless of first,  second, and thousandth contact,

one thing’s for sure: European arrival was catastrophic for Native American populations.

While exact numbers are hard to pin down because of fragmented historical evidence,

the overall population may have been decreased by as much as ninety percent.

And you can bet that there’s a detail or two missing from that chapter of the history books…

A lot of that population  decline I mentioned gets blamed, 

not on the colonizers themselves,  but on the diseases that they carried,

which led to major outbreaks.

Historians sometimes call these  outbreaks “virgin soil” epidemics

because diseases like measles and smallpox were new to Native American populations,

so their immune systems hadn’t  built up any resistance to them.

Which made the diseases  incredibly deadly and widespread.

And while it is true that  epidemics killed many people, 

the whole truth isn’t quite so straightforward.

Research shows it was disease in combination with all the other fallout from European colonization —

including but not limited to  war, enslavement, and starvation 

— that made Native Americans  especially vulnerable.

And this nuance is important because, 

if we focus primarily on  disease, it obscures the truth:

that colonizers purposefully killed millions of people and harmed many more.

Now, just a warning, I’m about to  get into an example of genocide.

This is some heavy history, and  it’s important to take care.

In 1848, the discovery of gold in California incited a rush of settlers who engaged in

what was literally called “Indian hunting.”

This practice was not only legal but encouraged.

In 1851, Governor Peter Burnett declared that “a war of extermination will continue to be waged

between the races until the  Indian race becomes extinct.”

State and federal governments  spent nearly 2 million dollars 

on what’s referred to today  as the California Genocide.

In all, the Native population  of California dropped 

from around 350,000 at first  contact to about 18,000 by 1880.

And that was very much intentional.

This is hard history to tell just right.

Because when we focus on  all of the horrible things 

that have happened to Native peoples,

it can create the impression that  we were passive throughout it.

That we were, and are, victims.

When in reality, we’re so much more than that.

For starters, not all interactions  between Native Americans 

and Europeans were the same.

Cooperation and exchange did happen —

and I’m not just talking about the Wampanoag teaching the pilgrims how to grow corn.

In many cases, Native American tribes dealt with Europeans using diplomacy or trade,

and created strategic alliances that gave them advantages over other Native nations.

For instance, tribes such  as the Algonquins, the Innu, 

and the Wendat allied with the French,

and many traded furs for valuable  European imports such as guns.

But unlike French fur traders,  British colonists were 

more likely to demand control  over Native people and their land,

which led to some major conflicts.

Sometimes tribes joined  forces to fight off an invasion, 

like in the case of Pontiac’s Rebellion,

named for the Ottawa chief who coordinated a bunch of tribes across the Ohio River Valley

and the Great Lakes region to try to oust the British.

In response to the uprising, King George III signed the Proclamation of 1763,

drawing a boundary around Indigenous lands that European settlers couldn’t cross.

And then you’ve got one of the  most famous military victories 

for Native Americans: the  Battle of the Little Bighorn.

In 1875, the U.S. government was trying to force the Lakota Sioux onto reservations

— and they pushed even harder when gold was discovered in the South Dakota Black Hills,

which are sacred to them.

When the tribe refused to sell,  the U.S. tossed a former treaty 

to the wind and sent in  Last-Stand Custer and his cavalry,

who were met with a prompt defeat.

The story doesn’t  end there: the U.S. retaliated 

by illegally seizing the  Black Hills two years later.

And now, they look like this.

But the story doesn’t end there either.

In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that the land had been wrongfully taken,

and awarded the Sioux Nation  $102 million as compensation.

102 million. Those are some fat stacks!

But the Lakota Sioux pulled a baller move when faced with that offer: they said no.

“We are nothing without the Black Hills,” 

Sicangu Lakota historian Nick Estes  said in a documentary on the subject.

“That’s why the Black Hills are not for sale, because we are not for sale.”

Mic drop.

Native resistance continues today.

And sometimes that looks like  righting the historical record.

Remember when I said that the Taíno population was devastated by Spanish colonization?

They were labeled extinct soon after a 1565 census 

listed only two hundred  Natives living on Hispaniola.

But that doesn’t tell the whole story.

In 1533, the Spanish had freed enslaved Native people—but not enslaved Africans.

So, to keep their enslaved workers, 

many Spanish colonizers  reclassified Taínos as Africans.

Nice loophole, guys.

And in the early 1800s, the Spanish  changed their census categories 

so that Puerto Ricans could identify  themselves only as “white” or “non-white.”

Taínos themselves didn’t  disappear—their label did.

A label that was created by colonizers.

Nevertheless, Taíno culture  persisted for centuries, 

in passed-down stories and traditions

like baking casabe, a type of yuca bread.

And after decades of research, a major shake-up happened in the early 2000s,

when a study out of the University of Puerto Rico revealed that 23 to 30 percent of Dominicans,

33 percent of Cubans, and 61 percent of Puerto Ricans had Indigenous genes.

The research confirmed what  Taíno people already knew

— that they’re still here, despite the efforts of what they call a “paper genocide.”

Meaning a sort of erasure from history through 

what might otherwise seem  like boring old paperwork.

Fortunately, by the 2010  census, Puerto Ricans could 

label themselves as “American  Indian or Alaska Native.”

And awareness of Taíno ancestry continues to grow.

In 2016, a group of  researchers from across Europe, 

the U.S., and Mexico was  able to sequence and analyze

ancient Taíno DNA from a thousand-year-old tooth found on the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas.

It showed even stronger evidence  of a continued Indigenous 

presence in the Caribbean,  especially in Puerto Rico.

Which is so cool!

It makes me think about how important the stories 

we tell are to understanding  ourselves and our history.

All of this goes to show just how  wrong the idea of a single first 

contact between Europeans and  Native Americans really is.

Instead, there were hundreds of  contacts across hundreds of years 

that reshaped the land we now call  the U.S., and the people on it.

But that reshaping isn’t over.

Next time, we’ll  

talk about treaties, and how Native groups have been using them to get their land back.

And I will see you then.

Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Native American History,

which was filmed at our studio  in Indianapolis, Indiana 

and was made with the help  of all these nice people.

If you want to help keep Crash  Course free for everyone, 

forever, you can join our community on Patreon.

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
encounter /ɪnˈkaʊntər/ B1	verb - to meet someone, especially unexpectedly
tribe /traɪb/ A2	noun - a social division in a traditional society
estimate /ˈɛstɪmət/ B1	verb - to calculate approximately
extinct /ɪkˈstɪŋkt/ B2	adjective - no longer in existence
inaccuracy /ɪnˈækyərəsi/ C1	noun - the state of being incorrect
colonist /ˈkɒlənist/ B2	noun - a settler in a new territory
misconception /ˌmɪskənˈsɛpʃən/ C1	noun - a wrong or mistaken idea
scholar /ˈskɒlər/ B2	noun - a person who studies a subject in depth
landfall /ˈlændfɔːl/ C1	noun - the first land reached after a sea voyage
enslavement /ɪnˈsleɪvmənt/ C1	noun - the state of being a slave
genocide /ˈdʒɛnəsaɪd/ C1	noun - the deliberate killing of a large group of people
diplomacy /dɪˈpləməsi/ C1	noun - the profession, activity, or skill of managing international relations
alliance /əˈlaɪəns/ B2	noun - a union or association formed for mutual benefit
rebellion /rɪˈbɛliən/ B2	noun - an act of violent or open resistance to an established government or ruler
sacred /ˈsɛərɪd/ B1	adjective - regarded with great respect and reverence
compensation /ˌkɒmpənˈseɪʃən/ B2	noun - payment given for loss or injury
persistence /pərˈsɪstəns/ C1	noun - the fact of continuing in an opinion or course of action
ancestry /ˈænsɛstri/ C1	noun - a person's family or ethnic descent
sequencing /ˈsiːkwənsiŋ/ C1	noun - the process of determining the order of DNA nucleotides
reshaping /riːˈʃeɪpɪŋ/ C1	noun - the act of giving something a new form