Free Essay About More Misconceptions In History

Before reading this chapter I had never really considered the true origins of Thanksgiving. As we grow up we only come to associate the holiday with pilgrims, turkey, and squash and we don’t consider where these traditions came from. Therefore, this lesson was interesting to me because I learned many things that I never knew about our country’s history.
The first interesting thing that I noted in Loewen’s chapter is the significance of the word “settle.” It had never occurred to me that this word was a key factor in the causation of mistaken history that we are aware of as students. It is interesting to note how important the connotation of this word is because we are taught, as Loewen points out, that only white people were settlers. It is also interesting to note that the foundations of cowboy culture were brought to America by the Spanish, when cowboy culture is something that is so closely tied to Americanism and Western culture and history. This is something I am sure many students do not know, because we are so used to seeing Western movies that depict cowboys as true representations of Americans and frontierism. A third interesting point is the fact that the Native Americans were actually so healthy, much more so than the Europeans, that it caused their inability to resist the European diseases. This is very interesting because we are never taught facts like this. These “savages” were actually much healthier and more hygienic than our Western ancestors. A fourth point of interest is the course change of the Mayflower. It is interesting that no one really knows why the ship ended up in Massachusetts instead of its original target, Virginia, and whether this was intentional or not. Perhaps this is another cover-up in the history books, but no one knows for sure. Lastly, it is interesting to learn about the Virginians and their desperate resort to cannibalism due to their greedy scouring of the land for gold instead of crops. This is ironic to me because this is not what heroic founders do.