The real history of Thanksgiving is story of an unsteady peace between the Wampanoag and the Plymouth colony. And the Pilgrims weren’t as thankful as we like to think.
Hans Staden’s True History is a tale of how a German ended up in Portuguese Brazil on a Spanish ship and as a captive of the Tupí-Namba peoples. It’s quite the ride.
After sailing the east coast of South America for years, Amerigo Vespucci and his name became attached to the continent he explored.
Since the beginning, the United States has been an empire. After the founding fathers called for an ‘Empire of Liberty,’ their children did their damndest to bring it to fruition.
Empires, from ancient to modern, have sought to justify their conquests, using buzzwords form ‘Christianity’ to ‘civilization’ to ‘democracy.’
The history of New France and the French empire was dominated by French missionaries, who acted as an arm of the French empire – though perhaps unknowingly.
The Wendat Feast of the Dead was one of the Wendat’s most sacred ceremonies, where they exhumed their dead and celebrated their ancestors.
Jesuits who never met and lived thousands of miles apart described Native American spiritual beliefs in the same way. Jesui-what?!
In an attempt to save their bankrupt kingdom, the Scottish launched the Darien Scheme – a plan to colonize the east coast of Panama. Unfortunately for the Scots, the colony went the same way as Trump Steaks.
The casta system of race evolved in New Spain, invented to keep the colonizing Spanish at the top of an evovling social hierarchy.