Samuel clemens comments on the moro massacre summary

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Voices of a People’s History of the United States

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ALSO BY HOWARD ZINN

Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches 1963—2009 (2012) Howard Zinn on Race (2011) The Bomb (2010) The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy, second

edition (2009) A Young People’s History of the United States, adapted by Rebecca

Stefoff (2008, 2009) Readings from Voices of a People’s History of the United States

(audio CD), edited with Anthony Arnove (2007) The Unraveling of the Bush Presidency (2007) A Power Governments Cannot Suppress (2007) The People Speak (2006) Original Zinn: Conversations on History and Politics with David

Barsamian (2006) Artists in Times of War (2003) Passionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice (2003) You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our

Times, second edition (2002) Terrorism and War, with Anthony Arnove (2002) Emma (2002, 2013) A People’s History of the United States: 1492—Present, updated ed.

(2001) Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit

of Labor’s Last Century, with Dana Frank and Robin D. G. Kelley (2001)

Howard Zinn on War (2001, 2011) Howard Zinn on History (2001, 2011) La otra historia de los Estados Unidos (2001) Marx in Soho: A Play on History (1999, 2013) The Future of History: Interviews with David Barsamian (1999)

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Failure to Quit: Reflections of an Optimistic Historian (1993, 2002, 2013)

The Politics of History, 2d ed. (1990) Justice: Eyewitness Accounts (1977, 2002, 2013) Postwar America: 1945–1971 (1973, 2002, 2013) Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fallacies of Law and Order

(1968, 2002, 2013) Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal (1967, 2002, 2013) SNCC: The New Abolitionists (1964, 2002, 2013) The Southern Mystique (1964, 2002, 2013) LaGuardia in Congress (1959)

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Voices of a People’s History of the United

States 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Howard Zinn Anthony Arnove

SEVEN STORIES PRESS New York • Oakland

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Copyright © 2004, 2009 by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove © 2014 by Howard Zinn Revocable Trust and Anthony Arnove

For permissions information see pages 675–684.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, digital, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Seven Stories Press 140 Watts Street

New York, NY 10013 www.sevenstories.com

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION Zinn, Howard, 1922–

Voices of A people’s history of the United States / Howard Zinn, Anthony Arnove. -- 10th anniv. ed.

p. cm. ISBN 978-1-60980-592-0 (pbk.) 1. United States--History--Sources. 2. United States--Biography. I. Arnove,

Anthony, 1969– II. Zinn, Howard, 1922– People’s history of the United States. III. Title. E173.Z564 2009 973--dc22 2009037882

College professors and high school and middle school teachers may order free examination copies of all Seven Stories Press titles. To order, visit www.sevenstories.com/contact, or fax on school letterhead to 212-226-1411.

For a free copy of the teachers’ guide to Voices of a People’s History of the United States visit catalog.sevenstories.com/products/teaching-with-voices.

For additional teaching resources visit www.sevenstories.com/contact; www.zinnedproject.org; and www.peopleshistory.us (see pages 699–701 for more information).

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If there is no struggle there is no progress…. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.

—FREDERICK DOUGLASS1

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TO ROSLYN ZINN (1922–2008)

AND TO THE REBEL VOICES OF THE COMING GENERATION

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Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: COLUMBUS AND LAS CASAS The Diario of Christopher Columbus (October 11–15, 1492) Bartolomé de Las Casas, Two Readings on the Legacy of Columbus

(1542 and 1550) Bartolomé de Las Casas, The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief

Account (1542) Bartolomé de Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians (1550)

Eduardo Galeano, Memory of Fire (1982)

CHAPTER 2: THE FIRST SLAVES Three Documents on Slave Revolts (1720 to 1793)

Anonymous Letter to Mr. Boone in London (June 24, 1720) Letter from Petersburg, Virginia (May 17, 1792) Secret Keeper Richmond (Unknown) to Secret Keeper Norfolk

(Unknown) (1793) Four Petitions Against Slavery (1773 to 1777)

“Felix” (Unknown) Slave Petition for Freedom (January 6, 1773) Peter Bestes and Other Slaves Petition for Freedom (April 20,

1773) “Petition of a Grate Number of Blackes” to Thomas Gage (May

25, 1774) “Petition of a Great Number of Negroes” to the Massachusetts

House of Representatives (January 13, 1777) Benjamin Banneker, Letter to Thomas Jefferson (August 19, 1791)

CHAPTER 3: SERVITUDE AND REBELLION Richard Frethorne on Indentured Servitude (March 20–April 3, 1623) A True Narrative of the Rise, Progresse, and Cessation of the Late

Rebellion in Virginia, Most Humbly and Impartially Reported by

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His Majestyes Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Affaires of the Said Colony (1677)

Proclamation of the New Hampshire Legislature on the Mast Tree Riot (1734)

Letter Written by William Shirley to the Lords of Trade about the Knowles Riot (December 1, 1747)

Gottlieb Mittelberger, Gottlieb Mittelberger's Journey to Pennsylvania in the Year 1750 and Return to Germany in the Year 1754 (1754)

Account of the New York Tenant Riots (July 14, 1766)

CHAPTER 4: PREPARING THE REVOLUTION Thomas Hutchinson Recounts the Reaction to the Stamp Act in

Boston (1765) Samuel Drowne's Testimony on the Boston Massacre (March 16,

1770) George Hewes Recalls the Boston Tea Party (1834) New York Mechanics Declaration of Independence (May 29, 1776) Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

CHAPTER 5: HALF A REVOLUTION Joseph Clarke's Letter about the Rebellion in Springfield (August 30,

1774) Joseph Plumb Martin, A Narrative of Some of the Adventures,

Dangers and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier (1830) Samuel Dewees Recounts the Suppression of Insubordination in the

Continental Army after the Mutinies of 1781 (1844) Henry Knox, Letter to George Washington (October 23, 1786) “Publius” (James Madison), Federalist No. 10 (November 23, 1787)

CHAPTER 6: THE EARLY WOMEN'S MOVEMENT Maria Stewart, “An Address Delivered at the African Masonic Hall,

Boston” (February 27, 1833) Angelina Grimké Weld's Speech at Pennsylvania Hall (May 17,

1838) Harriet Hanson Robinson, “Characteristics of the Early Factory Girls”

(1898)

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S. Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Declaration of Sentiments and

Resolutions,” Seneca Falls Convention (July 19, 1848) Sojourner Truth, “Ain't I a Woman?” (1851) Marriage Protest of Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell (May 1,

1855) Susan B. Anthony Addresses Judge Ward Hunt in The United States

of America v. Susan B. Anthony (June 19, 1873)

CHAPTER 7: INDIAN REMOVAL Tecumseh's Speech to the Osages (Winter 1811–12) Two Documents on the Cherokee Removal (1829 and 1830)

Cherokee Nation, “Memorial of the Cherokee Indians” (December 1829)

Lewis Ross et al., Address of the Committee and Council of the Cherokee Nation, in General Council Convened, to the People of the United States (July 17, 1830)

Black Hawk's Surrender Speech (1832) John G. Burnett, “The Cherokee Removal Through the Eyes of a

Private Soldier” (December 11, 1890) Two Statements by Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé (1877 and 1879)

Chief Joseph's Surrender (October 5, 1877) Chief Joseph Recounts His Trip to Washington, D.C. (1879)

Black Elk, “The End of the Dream” (1932)

CHAPTER 8: THE WAR ON MEXICO The Diary of Colonel Ethan Allen Hitchcock (June 30, 1845–March

26, 1846) Miguel Barragan, Dispatch on Texas Colonists (October 31, 1835) Juan Soto, Desertion Handbill (June 6, 1847) Frederick Douglass, Address to the New England Convention (May

31, 1849) North Star Editorial, “The War with Mexico” (January 21, 1848) Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1849)

CHAPTER 9: SLAVERY AND DEFIANCE

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David Walker's Appeal (1830) Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by

Herself (1861) James Norcom's Runaway Slave Newspaper Advertisement for

Harriet Jacobs (June 30, 1835) James R. Bradley, Letter to Lydia Maria Child (June 3, 1834) Reverend Theodore Parker, Speech of Theodore Parker at the

Faneuil Hall Meeting (May 26, 1854) Two Letters from Slaves to Their Former Masters (1844 to 1860) Henry Bibb, Letter to William Gatewood (March 23, 1844) Jermain Wesley Loguen, Letter to Sarah Logue (March 28, 1860) Frederick Douglass, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (July

5, 1852) John Brown, “John Brown's Last Speech” (November 2, 1859) Osborne P. Anderson, A Voice from Harper's Ferry (1861) Martin Delany's Advice to Former Slaves (July 23, 1865) Henry McNeal Turner, “On the Eligibility of Colored Members to

Seats in the Georgia Legislature” (September 3, 1868)

CHAPTER 10: CIVIL WAR AND CLASS CONFLICT An Eyewitness Account of the Flour Riot in New York (February

1837) Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South (1857) “Mechanic” (Unknown), “Voting by Classes” (October 13, 1863) Joel Tyler Headley, The Great Riots of New York (1873) Four Documents on Disaffection in the South During the Civil War

(1864 to 1865) Report on a Bread Riot in Savannah, Georgia (April 1864) “Exempt” (Unknown), “To Go, Or Not to Go” (June 28, 1864) O.G.G. (Unknown), Letter to the Editor (February 17, 1865) Columbus Sun, “The Class That Suffer” (February 17, 1865)

J. A. Dacus, Annals of the Great Strikes in the United States (1877)

CHAPTER 11: STRIKERS AND POPULISTS IN THE GILDED AGE Henry George, “The Crime of Poverty” (April 1, 1885) August Spies, “Address of August Spies” (October 7, 1886)

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Anonymous, “Red-Handed Murder: Negroes Wantonly Killed at Thibodaux, La.” (November 26, 1887)

Reverend Ernest Lyon et al., Open Letter from the New Orleans Mass Meeting (August 22, 1888)

Two Speeches by Mary Elizabeth Lease (circa 1890) “Wall Street Owns the Country” (circa 1890) Speech to the Women's Christian Temperance Union (1890)

The Omaha Platform of the People's Party of America (1892) Reverend J. L. Moore on the Colored Farmers' Alliance (March 7,

1891) Ida B. Wells-Barnett, “Lynch Law” (1893) Statement from the Pullman Strikers (June 15, 1894) Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (1888)

CHAPTER 12: THE EXPANSION OF THE EMPIRE Calixto Garcia's Letter to General William R. Shafter (July 17, 1898) Three Documents on African-American Opposition to Empire (1898

to 1899) Lewis H. Douglass on Black Opposition to McKinley (November

17, 1899) Missionary Department of the Atlanta, Georgia, A.M.E. Church,

“The Negro Should Not Enter the Army” (May 1, 1899) I. D. Barnett et al., Open Letter to President McKinley by

Colored People of Massachusetts (October 3, 1899) Samuel Clemens, “Comments on the Moro Massacre” (March 12,

1906) Smedley D. Butler, War Is a Racket (1935)

CHAPTER 13: SOCIALISTS AND WOBBLIES Mother Jones, “Agitation: The Greatest Factor for Progress” (March

24, 1903) Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906) W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903) Emma Goldman, “Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty” (1908) “Proclamation of the Striking Textile Workers of Lawrence” (1912) … Arturo Giovannitti's Address to the Jury (November 23, 1912)

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Woody Guthrie, “Ludlow Massacre” (1946) Julia May Courtney, “Remember Ludlow!” (May 1914) Joe Hill, “My Last Will” (November 18, 1915)

CHAPTER 14: PROTESTING THE FIRST WORLD WAR Helen Keller, “Strike Against War” (January 5, 1916) John Reed, “Whose War?” (April 1917) “Why the IWW Is Not Patriotic to the United States” (1918) Emma Goldman, Address to the Jury in U.S. v. Emma Goldman and

Alexander Berkman (July 9, 1917) Two Antiwar Speeches by Eugene Debs (1918)

“The Canton, Ohio, Speech” (June 16, 1918) Statement to the Court (September 18, 1918)

Randolph Bourne, “The State” (1918) e. e. cummings, “i sing of Olaf glad and big” (1931) John Dos Passos, “The Body of an American” (1932) Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun (1939)

CHAPTER 15: FROM THE JAZZ AGE TO THE UPRISINGS OF THE 1930S F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Echoes of the Jazz Age” (1931) Yip Harburg, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” (1932) Paul Y. Anderson, “Tear-Gas, Bayonets, and Votes” (August 17,

1932) Mary Licht, “I Remember the Scottsboro Defense” (February 15,

1997) Ned Cobb (“Nate Shaw”), All God's Dangers (1969) Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit” (1937) Two Poems by Langston Hughes (1934 and 1940)

“Ballad of Roosevelt” (1934) “Ballad of the Landlord” (1940)

Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Speech to the Court (April 9, 1927) Vicky Starr (“Stella Nowicki”), “Back of the Yards” (1973) Sylvia Woods, “You Have to Fight for Freedom” (1973) Rose Chernin on Organizing the Unemployed in the Bronx in the

1930s (1949)

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Genora (Johnson) Dollinger, Striking Flint: Genora (Johnson) Dollinger Remembers the 1936–37 GM Sit-Down Strike (February 1995)

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Woody Guthrie, “This Land Is Your Land” (February 1940)

CHAPTER 16: WORLD WAR II AND MCCARTHYISM Paul Fussell, “'Precision Bombing Will Win the War'” (1989) Yuri Kochiyama, “Then Came the War” (1991) Yamaoka Michiko, “Eight Hundred Meters from the Hypocenter”

(1992) United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report (Pacific

War) (July 1, 1946) Admiral Gene Larocque Speaks to Studs Terkel About “The Good

War” (1985) Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) Paul Robeson's Unread Statement before the House Committee on

Un-American Activities (June 12, 1956) Peter Seeger, “Thou Shall Not Sing” (1989) I. F. Stone, “But It's Not Just Joe McCarthy” (March 15, 1954) The Final Letter from Ethel and Julius Rosenberg to Their Children

(June 19, 1953)

CHAPTER 17: THE BLACK UPSURGE AGAINST RACIAL SEGREGATION Richard Wright, 12 Million Black Voices (1941) Langston Hughes, “Montage of a Dream Deferred” (1951) Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968) John Lewis, Original Text of Speech to Be Delivered at the Lincoln

Memorial (August 28, 1963) Malcolm X, “Message to the Grass Roots” (November 10, 1963) Martha Honey, Letter from Mississippi Freedom Summer (August 9,

1964) Testimony of Fannie Lou Hamer (August 22, 1964) Testimony of Rita L. Schwerner (1964) Alice Walker, “Once” (1968)

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Sandra A. West, “Riot!—A Negro Resident's Story” (July 24, 1967) Martin Luther King, Jr., “Where Do We Go from Here?” (August 16,

1967)

CHAPTER 18: VIETNAM AND BEYOND: THE HISTORIC RESISTANCE Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, McComb, Mississippi,

Petition Against the War in Vietnam (July 28, 1965) Martin Luther King, Jr., “Beyond Vietnam” (April 4, 1967) Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Position Paper on

Vietnam (January 6, 1966) Bob Dylan, “Masters of War” (1963) Muhammad Ali Speaks Out Against the Vietnam War (1966) Jonathan Schell, The Village of Ben Suc (1967) Larry Colburn, “They Were Butchering People” (2003) Haywood T. “The Kid” Kirkland, from Bloods: An Oral History of the

Vietnam War by Black Veterans (1984) Loung Ung, “People Just Disappeared and You Didn't Say Anything”

(2003) Tim O'Brien, “The Man I Killed” (1990) Maria Herrera-Sobek, Two Poems on Vietnam (1999) Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon

Papers (2003)

CHAPTER 19: WOMEN, GAYS, AND OTHER VOICES OF RESISTANCE Allen Ginsberg, “America” (January 17, 1956) Martin Duberman, Stonewall (1993) Wamsutta (Frank B.) James, Suppressed Speech on the 350th

Anniversary of the Pilgrim's Landing at Plymouth Rock (September 10, 1970)

Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born (1977) Abbey Lincoln, “Who Will Revere the Black Woman?” (September

1966) Susan Brownmiller, “Abortion Is a Woman's Right” (1999)

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Assata Shakur (Joanne Chesimard), “Women in Prison: How We Are” (April 1978)

Kathleen Neal Cleaver, “Women, Power, and Revolution” (October 16, 1998)

CHAPTER 20: LOSING CONTROL IN THE 1970S Howard Zinn, “The Problem Is Civil Obedience” (November 1970) George Jackson, Soledad Brother (1970) Bob Dylan, “George Jackson” (1971) Angela Davis, “Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation”

(1970) Two Voices of the Attica Uprising (1971 and 2000)

Elliott James (“L. D.”) Barkley (September 9, 1971) Interview with Frank “Big Black” Smith (2000)

Leonard Peltier on the Trail of Broken Treaties Protest (1999) Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect

to Intelligence Activities, Covert Action in Chile 1963–1973 (December 18, 1975)

Noam Chomsky, “COINTELPRO: What the (Deleted) Was It?” (March 12, 1978)

CHAPTER 21: THE CARTER–REAGAN–BUSH CONSENSUS Marian Wright Edelman, Commencement Address at Milton

Academy (June 10, 1983) César Chávez, Address to the Commonwealth Club of California

(November 9, 1984) Testimony of Ismael Guadalupe Ortiz on Vieques, Puerto Rico

(October 2, 1979) Local P-9 Strikers and Supporters on the 1985–1986 Meatpacking

Strike against the Hormel Company in Austin, Minnesota (1991) Douglas A. Fraser, Resignation Letter to the Labor–Management

Group (July 19, 1978) Vito Russo, “Why We Fight” (1988) Abbie Hoffman, “Closing Argument” (April 15, 1987) Public Enemy, “Fight the Power” (1990)

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CHAPTER 22: PANAMA, THE 1991 GULF WAR, AND THE WAR AT HOME Alex Molnar, “If My Marine Son Is Killed …” (August 23, 1990) Eqbal Ahmad, “Roots of the Gulf Crisis” (November 17, 1990) June Jordan Speaks Out Against the 1991 Gulf War (February 21,

1991) Yolanda Huet-Vaughn, Statement Refusing to Serve in the 1991 Gulf

War (January 9, 1991) Interview with Civilian Worker at the Río Hato Military Base in

Panama City (February 23, 1990) Mike Davis, “In L.A., Burning All Illusions” (June 1, 1992) Mumia Abu-Jamal, All Things Censored (2001)

CHAPTER 23: CHALLENGING BILL CLINTON Bruce Springsteen, The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995) Lorell Patterson on the “War Zone” Strikes in Decatur, Illinois (June

1995) Winona LaDuke, Acceptance Speech for the Green Party's

Nomination for Vice President of the United States of America (August 29, 1996)

Two Open Letters of Protest to the Clinton Administration Alice Walker, Letter to President Bill Clinton (March 13, 1996) Adrienne Rich, Letter to Jane Alexander Refusing the National

Medal for the Arts (July 3, 1997) Rania Masri, “How Many More Must Die?” (September 17, 2000) Roni Krouzman, “WTO: The Battle in Seattle: An Eyewitness

Account” (December 6, 1999) Anita Cameron, “And the Steps Came Tumbling Down—ADAPT's

Battle with the HBA” (2000) Elizabeth (“Betita”) Martínez, “'Be Down with the Brown!'” (1998) Walter Mosley, Workin’ on the Chain Gang (2000) Julia Butterfly Hill, “Surviving the Storm: Lessons from Nature”

(2001)

CHAPTER 24: BUSH II, OBAMA, AND THE “WAR ON TERROR”

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Michael Moore, “The Presidency—Just Another Perk” (November 14, 2000)

Orlando Rodriguez and Phyllis Rodriguez, “Not In Our Son's Name” (September 15, 2001)

Rita Lasar, “To Avoid Another September 11, U.S. Must Join the World” (September 5, 2002)

Monami Maulik, “Organizing in Our Communities Post–September 11th” (2001)

International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 705, “Resolution Against the War” (October 18, 2002)

Rachel Corrie, Letter from Palestine (February 7, 2003) Danny Glover, Speech During the World Day of Protest Against the

War (February 15, 2003) Amy Goodman, “Independent Media in a Time of War” (2003) Tim Predmore, “How Many More Must Die?” (August 24, 2003) Maritza Castillo et al., Open Letter to Colonel, U.S. Army (Ret.)

Michael G. Jones (September 12, 2003) Kurt Vonnegut, “Cold Turkey” (May 31, 2004) Glenn Greenwald, Speech to the Socialism 2013 Conference (June

27, 2013) Chelsea Manning, “'Sometimes You Have to Pay a Heavy Price to

Live in a Free Society'” (August 21, 2013)

CHAPTER 25: RISING RESISTANCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY Camilo Mejía, “'I Pledge My Allegiance to the Poor and Oppressed'”

(July 3, 2005) Cindy Sheehan, “'It's Time the Antiwar Choir Started Singing'”

(August 5, 2005) Kevin Tillman, “After Pat's Birthday” (October 19, 2006) Evann Orleck-Jetter, Statement on Marriage Equality (March 18,

2009) Gustavo Madrigal-Piña, “Undocumented and Unafraid” (August 22,

2011) Roberto Meneses Marquez, “A Day Laborer” (April 30, 2013) Naomi Klein, “Occupy Wall Street: The Most Important Thing in the

World Now” (October 6, 2011) Phillip Agnew, “#OurMarch” (August 28, 2013)

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Kirstin Roberts, “We Stood Up to the Bullies” (October 9, 2012) Amber Kudla, “518-455-4767” (June 23, 2013) Jesse Hagopian, “After We Scrapped the MAP” (January 30, 2014) Michelle Farber, “We All Have to Be Brave” (May 14, 2014)

EPILOGUE: Patti Smith, “People Have the Power” (1988) NOTES CREDITS AND PERMISSIONS INDEX ABOUT THE AUTHORS ABOUT SEVEN STORIES PRESS OTHER HOWARD ZINN BOOKS AVAILABLE FROM SEVEN STORIES PRESS

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank, first and foremost, Dan Simon, our editor and friend, who not only envisioned this book and made it possible, but who served as the strongest advocate the readers of this book could ever have.

Two skilled and insightful researchers provided invaluable help and deserve special appreciation: Joey Fox, who helped this project in its daunting initial stages, and Jessie Kindig, who assisted us in the final stages. Without either of them, this book would not now be in your hands.

Brenda Coughlin labored long hours in editorial and research assistance, but more significant, kept us from losing sight of the importance of this project when it seemed it might never be completed.

Thanks to Hugh Van Dusen of Harper Collins, who has so ably published and sustained A People’s History of the United States for more than twenty years.

Elaine Bernard of the Harvard Trade Union Program generously facilitated the initial meetings and research that began Voices.

Ray Raphael, Elizabeth Martinez, and David Williams provided invaluable editorial suggestions, recommendations, and guidance.

George Mürer brilliantly handled the enormous task of securing permissions, for which we are profoundly indebted, and Paul Abruzzo undertook some of the early preliminary research for Voices in its first incarnation.

Therese Phillips, Dao X. Tran, Peter Lamphere, Laura Durkay, Monique Jeanne Dols, David Thurston, Chris Peterson, Rosio Gallo, Story Lee Matkin-Rawn, and Meredith Kolodner all contributed

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importantly to our research efforts, logging long hours with old manuscripts and microfilms, as well as lap tops.

Jon Gilbert deserves special appreciation for his work on the laborious production of this book.

Shea Dean offered her excellent editing skills when the manuscript was completed.

Andrew H. Lee, New York University history librarian, provided critical assistance to our research. For research assistance, we would also like to thank: Ryan Nuckel, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University; David Kessler and Amelia Hellam, The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley; The University of Washington Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies in Seattle; Stephen Kiesow, Seattle Public Library; the California Digital Library; the Online Archive of California; Sherri F. Pawson and David G. Horvath, University of Louisville Libraries; Tom Hardin, Louisville Free Public Library; Ann Billesbach, Nebraska State Historical Society; Brian DeShazor, Pacifica Radio Archives; Joseph Ditta, The New York Historical Society; Candace Falk, Emma Goldman Papers Project, University of California at Berkeley; New York Public Library; Ann Bristow, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana; William LeFevre, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan; Toni M. Carter, the Virginia Historical Society; Harry Elkins Widener Library and all the Harvard Libraries; the Boston Public Library; the New York Historical Society; the Chicago Historical Society; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; and all of the other libraries and librarians whose work contributed to our research.

For help with specific readings and permissions, we would like to thank: David Barsamian of Alternative Radio; Joan Miura; Johanna Lawrenson; Julie Diamond; Yolanda Huet-Vaughn; Wini Breines; Alan Maass of Socialist Worker; Paul D’Amato of International Socialist Review; Bill Roberts of Haymarket Books; Susan Rosenthal; Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!; Denis Moynihan, Outreach Director, Democracy Now!; Bob Seay, WOMR Radio; Chip Berlet, Political Research Associates; Roberto Barreto; Ismael Guadalupe Ortiz; Marian Wright Edelman; Patti Smith; Robert Bills; Michael Smith, Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives; Judy Hicks,

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Librarian, Peoria Journal Star; Sheila Lee, Louisiana Newspaper Project; Nadya Cherup, Detroit Public Library; Michael F. Knight, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Manuscript Division; Ernest J. Emrich, the Joseph L. Rauh Jr. Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division; Lin Fredericksen, Kansas State Historical Society Reference; and Wade Lee, University of Toledo Libraries; Martha Honey; Martin Duberman; Joe Allen; Winona LaDuke; Orlando and Phyllis Rodriguez; Anita Cameron and Colorado ADAPT; Mike Davis; Paul Robeson, Jr.; and Cindy and Craig Corrie.

We would also like to thank: Ana Bautista, Nita Levison, Carole Sue Blemker, Patty Mitchell, James P. Danky, Woody Holton, Robert Gross, Lawrence Goodwyn, Robert Arnove, Ike Arnove, Suzanne Ceresko, Meredith Blake, John Sayles, Maggie Renzi, Rudy Acuna, Jonathan H. Rees, Peter Nabokov, Hans Koning, Paul Riggs, Marlene Martin, Ahmed Shawki, Sharon Smith, Bill Roberts, Julie Fain, Herbert Aptheker, Philip Foner, Eric Foner, Gerda Lerner, Jeremy Brecher, Manning Marable, Richard Hofstadter, Michael Wallace, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Bob Wing, Bob Rabin and the Comite Pro Rescate y Desarrollo de Vieques, Frank Abe, Jim Zwick, Lynne Hollander, Jim Crutchfield, the Hudson Mohawk Independent Media Center, Ruth Baldwin of Nation Books, Maria Herrera-Sobek, Barbara Seaman, Odile Cisneros, Amy Hoffman, Marc Favreau, Andy Coopersmith, Norma Castillo, Maritza Castillo, Lou Plummer, Military Families Speak Out, and Monami Maulik.

Gayle Olson-Raymer wrote the excellent teacher’s guide to this book, with Ray Raphael, Ron Perry, Jack Bareilles, Mike Benbow, Tasha Boettcher-Haller, Robin Pickering, Jennifer Rosebrook, Colby Smart, and Eric Vollmers.

Thanks also to Tara Parmiter, for her efforts promoting the book to historians since its early conception.

We are deeply indebted to all of the people who wrote the texts we drew upon, transcribed them, recorded them, published them, and sustained them for all these years—especially those whose names are not recorded.

And, finally, we are especially grateful to Roz and Brenda. Without your love, we’d be nowhere at all.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FOR THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Howard Zinn passed away January 27, 2010, an incalculable loss to those of us lucky enough to know him and to millions more he inspired and whose struggles he supported. For this third edition, on the tenth anniversary of the initial publication of our book, I have added new voices. My selections were guided by my conversations with Howard since the second edition of Voices of a People’s History of the United States was published in 2009, and my sense of the movements since 2010 that would have most excited him.

For their help with this edition, I would like to thank Brenda Coughlin, Dan Simon, Jon Gilbert, Jesse Ruddock, Ben Rowen, Silvia Stramenga, Andrew Epstein, Rob Urbinati, Rick Balkin, Myla Kabat-Zinn, Dave Zirin, Michael Ratner, David E. Coombs, Alan Maass, Socialist Worker, Jennifer Robinson, Trevor FitzGibbon, Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Fishman, Eric Ruder, Caitlin Sheehan, James Plank, Jesse Hagopian, Amber Kudla, Gustavo Madrigal- Pina, Roberto Meneses Marquez, John Tarleton, The Indypendent, Gustavo Mejias Morales, Kirstin Roberts, the Chicago Teachers Union, Jesse Sharkey, Michelle Farber, Arun Gupta, Naomi Klein, Occupy Wall Street, Avi Lewis, Jackie Joiner, Phillip Agnew, and Dream Defenders.

—Anthony Arnove July 14, 2014

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Introduction

Readers of my book A People’s History of the United States1 almost always point to the wealth of quoted material in it—the words of fugitive slaves, Native Americans, farmers and factory workers, dissenters and dissidents of all kinds. These readers are struck, I must reluctantly admit, more by the words of the people I quote than by my own running commentary on the history of the nation.

I can’t say I blame them. Any historian would have difficulty matching the eloquence of the Native American leader Powhatan, pleading with the white settler in the year 1607: “Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love?”

Or the black scientist Benjamin Banneker, writing to Thomas Jefferson: “I apprehend you will readily embrace every opportunity, to eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas and opinions which so generally prevails with respect to us, and that your Sentiments are concurrent with mine, which are that one universal Father hath given being to us all, and that he hath not only made us all of one flesh, but that he hath also without partiality afforded us all the Same Sensations and [endowed] us all with the same faculties.”

Or Sarah Grimké, a white Southern woman and abolitionist, writing: “I ask no favors for my sex…. All I ask of our brethren, is that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God designed us to occupy.”

Or Henry David Thoreau, protesting the Mexican War, writing on civil disobedience: “A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay,

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against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.”

Or Jermain Wesley Loguen, escaped slave, speaking in Syracuse on the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850: “I received my freedom from Heaven and with it came the command to defend my title to it…. I don’t respect this law—I don’t fear it—I won’t obey it! It outlaws me, and I outlaw it.”

Or the populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease of Kansas: “Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street.”

Or Emma Goldman, speaking to the jury at her trial for opposing World War I: “Verily poor as we are in democracy, how can we give of it to the world? … [A] democracy conceived in the military servitude of the masses, in their economic enslavement, and nurtured in their tears and blood, is not democracy at all.”

Or Mississippi sharecropper Fannie Lou Hamer, testifying in 1964 about the dangers to blacks who tried to register to vote: “[T]he plantation owner came, and said, ‘Fannie Lou…. If you don’t go down and withdraw your registration, you will have to leave … because we are not ready for that in Mississippi.’ And I addressed him and told him and said, ‘I didn’t try to register for you. I tried to register for myself.’”

Or the young black people in McComb, Mississippi, who, learning of a classmate killed in Vietnam, distributed a leaflet: “No Mississippi Negroes should be fighting in Vietnam for the White Man’s freedom, until all the Negro People are free in Mississippi.”

Or the poet Adrienne Rich, writing in the 1970s: “I know of no woman—virgin, mother, lesbian, married, celibate—whether she earns her keep as a housewife, a cocktail waitress, or a scanner of brain waves—for whom the body is not a fundamental problem: its clouded meanings, its fertility, its desire, its so-called frigidity, its bloody speech, its silences, its changes and mutilations, its rapes and ripenings.”

Or Alex Molnar, whose twenty-one-year-old son was a marine in the Persian Gulf, writing an angry letter to the first President Bush: “Where were you, Mr. President, when Iraq was killing its own people

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with poison gas? … I intend to support my son and his fellow soldiers by doing everything I can to oppose any offensive American military action in the Persian Gulf.”

What is common to all these voices is that they have mostly been shut out of the orthodox histories, the major media, the standard textbooks, the controlled culture. The result of having our history dominated by presidents and generals and other “important” people is to create a passive citizenry, not knowing its own powers, always waiting for some savior on high—God or the next president—to bring peace and justice.

History, looked at under the surface, in the streets and on the farms, in GI barracks and trailer camps, in factories and offices, tells a different story. Whenever injustices have been remedied, wars halted, women and blacks and Native Americans given their due, it has been because “unimportant” people spoke up, organized, protested, and brought democracy alive.

• • •

When I decided, in the late 1970s, to write A People’s History of the United States, I had been teaching history for twenty years. Half of that time I was involved in the civil rights movement in the South, when I was teaching at Spelman College, a black women’s college in Atlanta, Georgia. And then there were ten years of activity against the war in Vietnam. Those experiences were not a recipe for neutrality in the teaching and writing of history.

But my partisanship was undoubtedly shaped even earlier, by my upbringing in a family of working-class immigrants in New York, by my three years as a shipyard worker, starting at the age of eighteen, and then by my experience as an air force bombardier in World War II, flying out of England and bombing targets in various parts of Europe, including the Atlantic coast of France.

After the war I went to college under the GI Bill of Rights. That was a piece of wartime legislation that enabled millions of veterans to go to college without paying any tuition, and so allowed the sons of working-class families who ordinarily would never be able to afford it to get a college education.

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I received my doctorate in history at Columbia University, but my own experience made me aware that the history I learned in the university omitted crucial elements in the history of the country.

From the start of my teaching and writing, I had no illusions about “objectivity,” if that meant avoiding a point of view. I knew that a historian (or a journalist, or anyone telling a story) was forced to choose, from an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian.

There is an insistence, among certain educators and politicians in the United States, that students must learn facts. I am reminded of the character in Charles Dickens’s book Hard Times, Gradgrind, who admonishes a younger teacher: “Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.”

But there is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation. Behind every fact presented to the world—by a teacher, a writer, anyone—is a judgment. The judgment that has been made is that this fact is important, and that other facts are not important and so they are omitted from the presentation.

There were themes of profound importance to me that I found missing in the orthodox histories that dominated American culture. The consequence of these omissions has been not simply to give a distorted view of the past but, more importantly, to mislead us all about the present.

For instance, there is the issue of class. The dominant culture in the United States—in education, among politicians, in the media— pretends that we live in a classless society, with one common interest. The Preamble to the United States Constitution, which declares that “we the people” wrote this document, is a great deception. The Constitution was written in 1787 by fifty-five rich white men—slave owners, bondholders, merchants—who established a strong central government that would serve their class interests.

That use of government for class purposes, to serve the needs of the wealthy and powerful, has continued throughout American history, down to the present day. It is disguised by language that

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suggests all of us, rich and poor and middle class, have a common interest.

Thus, the state of the nation is described in universal terms. When the president declares happily that “our economy is sound,” he will not acknowledge that it is not sound for forty or fifty million people who are struggling to survive, although it may be moderately sound for many in the middle class, and extremely sound for the richest 1 percent of the nation who own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth.

Class interest has always been obscured behind an all- encompassing veil called “the national interest.”

My own war experience, and the history of all those military interventions in which the United States was engaged, made me skeptical when I heard people in high political office invoke “the national interest” or “national security” to justify their policies. It was with such justifications that Harry Truman initiated a “police action” in Korea that killed several million people, that Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon carried out a war in Southeast Asia in which perhaps three million people died, that Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada, that the elder Bush attacked Panama and then Iraq, and that Bill Clinton bombed Iraq again and again.

The claim made in spring of 2003 by the new Bush that invading and bombing Iraq was in the national interest was particularly absurd, and could only be accepted by people in the United States because of a blanket of lies spread across the country by the government and the major organs of public information—lies about “weapons of mass destruction,” lies about Iraq’s connections with Al Qaeda.

When I decided to write A People’s History of the United States, I decided I wanted to tell the story of the nation’s wars not through the eyes of the generals and the political leaders but from the viewpoints of the working-class youngsters who became GIs, or the parents or wives who received the black-bordered telegrams.

I wanted to tell the story of the nation’s wars from the viewpoint of the enemy: the viewpoint of the Mexicans who were invaded in the Mexican War, the Cubans whose country was taken over by the United States in 1898, the Filipinos who suffered a devastating aggressive war at the beginning of the twentieth century, with

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perhaps 600,000 people dead as a result of the determination of the U.S. government to conquer the Philippines.

What struck me as I began to study history, and what I wanted to convey in my own writing of history, was how nationalist fervor— inculcated from childhood by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, waving flags, and militaristic rhetoric—permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own.

I wondered how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or cluster bombs on Afghanistan or Iraq, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children.

When I began to write “people’s history,” I was influenced by my own experience, living in a black community in the South with my family, teaching at a black women’s college, and becoming involved in the movement against racial segregation. I became aware of how badly twisted was the teaching and writing of history by its submersion of nonwhite people. Yes, Native Americans were there in the history, but quickly gone. Black people were visible as slaves, then supposedly free, but invisible. It was a white man’s history.

From elementary school to graduate school, I was given no suggestion that the landing of Christopher Columbus in the New World initiated a genocide, in which the indigenous population of Hispaniola was annihilated. Or that this was the first stage of what was presented as a benign expansion of the new nation, but which involved the violent expulsion of Native Americans, accompanied by unspeakable atrocities, from every square mile of the continent, until there was nothing to do but herd them into reservations.

Every American schoolchild learns about the Boston Massacre, which preceded the Revolutionary War against England. Five colonists were killed by British troops in 1770.

But how many schoolchildren learned about the massacre of six hundred men, women, and children of the Pequot tribe in New England in 1637? Or the massacre, in the midst of the Civil War, of hundreds of Native American families at Sand Creek, Colorado, by U.S. soldiers?

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Nowhere in my history education did I learn about the massacres of black people that took place again and again, amid the silence of a national government pledged by the Constitution to protect equal rights for all.

For instance, in 1917 there occurred in East St. Louis one of the many “race riots” that took place in what our white-oriented history books called the “Progressive Era.” White workers, angered by an influx of black workers, killed perhaps two hundred people, provoking an angry article by the African-American writer W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Massacre of East St. Louis,” and causing the performing artist Josephine Baker to say: “The very idea of America makes me shake and tremble and gives me nightmares.”

I wanted, in writing people’s history, to awaken a great consciousness of class conflict, racial injustice, sexual inequality, and national arrogance.

But I also wanted to bring into the light the hidden resistance of the people against the power of the establishment: the refusal of Native Americans to simply die and disappear; the rebellion of black people in the anti-slavery movement and in the more recent movement against racial segregation; the strikes carried out by working people to improve their lives.

When I began work, five years ago, on what would become the present volume, Voices of a People’s History of the United States, I wanted the voices of struggle, mostly absent in our history books, to be given the place they deserve. I wanted labor history, which has been the battleground, decade after decade, century after century, of an ongoing fight for human dignity, to come to the fore. And I wanted my readers to experience how at key moments in our history some of the bravest and most effective political acts were the sounds of the human voice itself. When John Brown proclaimed at his trial that his insurrection was “not wrong, but right,” when Fannie Lou Hamer testified in 1964 about the dangers to blacks who tried to register to vote, when during the first GulfWar, in 1991, Alex Molnar defied the president on behalf of his son and of all of us, their words influenced and inspired so many people. They were not just words but actions.

To omit or to minimize these voices of resistance is to create the idea that power only rests with those who have the guns, who

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possess the wealth, who own the newspapers and the television stations. I want to point out that people who seem to have no power, whether working people, people of color, or women—once they organize and protest and create movements—have a voice no government can suppress.

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CHAPTER ONE

Columbus and Las Casas

The Diario of Christopher Columbus (October 11–15, 1492) Bartolomé de Las Casas, Two Readings on the Legacy of Columbus (1542 and 1550)

The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account (1542) In Defense of the Indians (1550)

Eduardo Galeano, Memory of Fire (1982)

There is no more glaring distortion in the history learned by generations of Americans—in textbooks, in schools, in the popular culture—than in the story of Christopher Columbus. He is universally portrayed as a heroic figure, a brave adventurer, a skilled seaman who crossed the ocean not knowing what he would find, and stumbled on an unknown continent.

All that is true. But what is missing from that story is that, when he landed in the Bahamas Islands, Columbus and his men, greeted by peaceful and generous natives, set out on a ruthless quest for gold that led to enslavement, misery, and death for that population.

Profit was the driving force behind Columbus’ expedition and behind his actions after he landed. His expedition had been financed by the king and queen of Spain, with the hope that crossing the ocean would bring him to the gold and spices of Asia. There had been overland expeditions to Asia, by Marco Polo and others, but now the Turks, who had conquered the eastern Mediterranean, were a barrier to Asia, and so the Spanish needed a sea route.

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Columbus was promised, if he brought back gold and spices, ten percent of the profits and governorship over newfound lands. He never arrived in Asia, because although he knew the world was round, he thought the circumference of the earth was smaller than it really was. But one fourth of the way to Asia he came unexpectedly on land.

Seeing the natives he encountered, the peaceful Taino Arawak Indians, as less than human (though in his diary he described them as gentle and generous), he tortured them to force them to find gold for him. He kidnapped and enslaved hundreds of them, compelling them to work in the mines, under terrible conditions, in the quest for gold. It was the beginning of the annihilation of the Indians on Hispaniola (the island which is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic). It was the start of the European conquest of the Western Hemisphere.

• • •

We begin the chapter with the diary of Christopher Columbus from his first voyage to the Americas. The only version of the diary of the first voyage that we have is the one transcribed by Bartolomé de Las Casas in the 1530s. “Barring the unlikely discovery of the long-lost original Diario or of the single complete copy ordered for Columbus by Queen Isabella, Las Casas’s partly summarized, partly quoted version is as close to the original as it is possible to come,” note historians Oliver Dunn and James E. Kelley, Jr. The Las Casas manuscript also disappeared, but a single copy was discovered around 1790.

It should be noted that Las Casas is sometimes paraphrasing, rather than quoting, Columbus, and that Columbus often refers to himself in the third person or impersonally as “the Admiral” in his own writing.

The Diario of Christopher Columbus (October 11–15, 1492)1

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THURSDAY 11 OCTOBER [1492]

He steered west-southwest. They took much water aboard, more than they had taken in the whole voyage. They saw petrels and a green bulrush near the ship. The men of the caravel Pinta saw a cane and a stick, and took on board another small stick that appeared to have been worked with iron, and a piece of cane, and other vegetation originating on land, and a small plank. The men of the caravel Nina also saw other signs of land and a small stick loaded with barnacles. With these signs, everyone breathed more easily and cheered up. On this day, up to sunset, they made 27 leagues.

After sunset, he steered his former course to the west. They made up about 12 miles each hour and, until two hours after midnight, made about 90 miles, which is twenty-two leagues and a half. And because the caravel Pinta was a better sailer and went ahead of the Admiral [Columbus] it found land and made the signals the Admiral had ordered. A sailor named Rodrigo de Triana saw this land first, although the Admiral, at the tenth hour of the night, while he was on the sterncastle, saw a light, although it was something so faint that he did not wish to affirm that it was land. But he called Pero Gutierrez, the steward of the King’s dais, and told him that there seemed to be a light, and for him to look: and thus he did and saw it. He also told Rodrigo Sánchez de Segovia, whom the king and queen were sending as veedor [accountant or auditor] of the fleet, who saw nothing because he was not in a place where he could see it. After the Admiral said it, it was seen once or twice; and it was like a small wax candle that rose and lifted up, which to few seemed to be an indication of land. But the admiral was certain that they were near land, because of which when they recited the Salve, which in their own way are accustomed to recite and sing, all being present, the Admiral entreated and admonished them to keep a good lookout on the forecastle and to watch carefully for land; and to the man who first told him that he saw land he would later give a silk jacket in addition to the other rewards that the sovereigns had promised, which were ten thousand maravedís [copper coins] as an annuity to whoever should see it first. At two hours after midnight the land

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appeared, from which they were about two leagues distant. They hauled down all the sails and kept only the treo, which is the mainsail without bonnets, and jogged on and off, passing time until daylight Friday, when they reached an islet of the Lucayos, which was called Guanahani in the language of the Indians. Soon they saw naked people; and the Admiral went ashore in the armed launch, and Martín Alonso Pinzón and his brother Vicente Anes, who was captain of the Nina. The Admiral brought out the royal banner and the captains two flags with the green cross, which the Admiral carried on all the ships as a standard, with an F and a Y [for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella], and over each letter a crown, one on one side of the + and another on the other. Thus put ashore they saw very green trees and many ponds and fruits of various kinds. The Admiral called to the two captains and to the others who had jumped ashore and to Rodrigo Descobedo, the escrivano [clerk] of the whole fleet, and to Rodrigo Sánchez de Segovia; and he said that they should be witnesses that, in the presence of all, he would take, as in fact he did take, possession of the said island for the king and for the queen his lords, making the declarations that were required, and which at more length are contained in the testimonials made there in writing. Soon many people of the island gathered there. What follows are the very words of the Admiral in his book, about his first voyage to, and discovery of, these Indies. I, he says, in order that they would be friendly to us—because I recognized that they were people who would be better freed and converted to our Holy Faith by love than by force—to some of them I gave red caps, and glass beads which they put on their chests, and many other things of small value, in which they took so much pleasure and became so much our friends that it was a marvel. Later they came swimming to the ships’ launches where we were and brought us parrots and cotton thread in balls and javelins and many other things, and they traded them to us for other things which we gave them, such as small glass beads and bells. In sum, they took everything and gave of what they had willingly. But it seemed to me that they were a people very poor in everything. All of them go around as naked as their mother bore them; and the women also, although I did not see more than one quite young girl. And all those

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that I saw were young people, for none did I see of more than 30 years of age. They are all very well formed, with handsome bodies and good faces. Their hair coarse—almost like the tail of a horse— and short. They wear their hair down over their eyebrows except for a little in the back which they wear long and never cut. Some of them paint themselves with black, and they are of the color of the Canarians [Canary Islanders], neither black nor white; and some of them paint themselves with white, and some of them with red, and some of them with whatever they find. And some of them paint their faces, and some the whole body, and some of them only the eyes, and some of them only the nose. They do not carry arms nor are they acquainted with them, because I showed them swords and they took them by the edge and through ignorance cut themselves. They have no iron. Their javelins are shafts without iron and some of them have at the end a fish tooth and others of other things. All of them alike are of good-sized stature and carry themselves well. I saw some who had marks of wounds on their bodies and I made signs to them asking them what they were; and they showed me how people from other islands nearby came there and tried to take them, and how they defended themselves; and I believed and believe that they come here from tierra firme to take them by captive. They should be good and intelligent servants, for I see that they say very quickly everything that is said to them; and I believe they would become Christians very easily, for it seemed to me that they had no religion. Our Lord pleasing, at the time of my departure I will take six of them from here to Your Highness in order that they may learn to speak. No animal of any kind did I see on this island except parrots. All are the Admiral’s words.

SATURDAY 13 OCTOBER [1492]

As soon as it dawned, many of these people came to the beach—all young, as I have said, and all of good stature—very handsome people, with their hair not curly but straight and coarse, like horsehair; and all of them very wide in the forehead and head, more so than any other race that I have seen so far. And their eyes are

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very handsome and not small; and none of them are black, but of the color of the Canary Islanders. Nor should anything else be expected since this island is on an east-west line with the island of Hierro in the Canaries. All alike have very straight legs and no belly but are very well formed. They came to the ship with dugouts [canoes] that are made from the trunk of one tree, like a long boat, and all of one piece, and worked marvelously in the fashion of the land, and so big that in some of them 40 and 45 men came. And others smaller, down to some in which one man came alone. They row with a paddle like that of a baker and go marvelously. And if it capsizes on them then they throw themselves in the water, and they right and empty it with calabashes [hollowed out gourds] that they carry. They brought balls of spun cotton and parrots and javelins and other little things that it would be tiresome to write down, and they gave everything for anything that was given to them. I was attentive and labored to find out if there was any gold; and I saw that some of them wore a little piece hung in a hole that they have in their noses. And by signs I was able to understand that, going to the south or rounding the island to the south, there was there a king who had large vessels of it and had very much gold. I strove to get them to go there and later saw that they had no intention of going. I decided to wait until the afternoon of the morrow and then depart for the southwest, for, as many of them showed me, they said there was land to the south and to the southwest and to the northwest and that these people from the northwest came to fight them many times. And so I will go to the southwest to seek gold and precious stones. This island is quite big and very flat and with very green trees and much water and a very large lake in the middle and without any mountains; and all of it so green that it is a pleasure to look at. And these people are very gentle, and because of their desire to have some of our things, and believing that nothing will be given to them without their giving something, and not having anything, they take what they can and then throw themselves into the water to swim. But everything they have they give for anything given to them, for they traded even pieces for pieces of bowls and broken glass cups, and I even saw 16 balls of cotton given for three Portuguese çeotis [copper coins], which is a Castilian blanca [a copper coin worth half of a maravedí].

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And in them there was probably more than an arroba [around 24 pounds] of spun cotton. This I had forbidden and I did not let anyone take any of it, except that I had ordered it all taken for Your Highnesses if it were in quantity. It grows here on this island, but because of the short time I could not declare this for sure. And also the gold that they wear hung in their noses originates here; but in order not to lose time I want to go see if I can find the island of Cipango. Now, since night had come, all the Indians went ashore in their dugouts.