![]() ![]() ![]() Nor are students the only people misled by “settle.” One recent Thanksgiving weekend, I listened as a guide at the Statue of Liberty told about European immigrants “populating a wild East Coast.” As we shall see, however, if Indians had not already settled New England, Europeans would have had a much tougher job of it. Part of the problem is the word “settle.” “Settlers” were white. I had hoped that students would suggest 30,000 BC, or some other pre-Columbian date. Surely “we now know as” implies that the original settlement happened before the United States. That is a generous way of putting the question. Over the last few years, I have asked hundreds of college students, “When was the country we now know as the United States first settled?” This version appeared earlier in the Radical Historians Newsletter. (Note: minor updates have been made to the original introduction of this article as it first appeared in the November 1992 issue of Monthly Review, vol. Loewen’s analysis of American history as presented for high school students in Lies My Teacher Told Me (New York: The New Press, 1995). Loewen’s (1942–2021) from his comrades at Monthly Review. Image credit: Teaching for Change, Flickr. Loewen (right) speaking to a standing room only audience at the 2011 National Council for the Social Studies Conference in a session hosted by the Zinn Education Project. ![]()
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