Examples of falsification of history

As to the falsification of history who has not seen a western where the heathen Indians scalp (horrors) white men. It seems that the white men taught them how.

Origins


Scalping in North America

Scalping is believed to have been a tradition in Plains Native Americans, who may have been isolated from European settlers until later in the colonization of the north America [1] (http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/na_034800_scalpsandsca.htm). Another theory is that Native Americans learned the practice of scalping from the Europeans. Although archaeologists have found a few prehistoric human remains in the Americas with show evidence of cut marks on the skulls, they disagree about whether these marks are evidence of scalping. No evidence exists that scalping was a widespread practice in the Americas before European contact. If it was practised, it was done by very few tribes and then very infrequently.


Scalping by Europeans

However, scalping was a well-established tradition for certain groups in Europe at some periods. Herodotus, the Greek historian, wrote of the Scythians in B.C. 440: "The Scythian soldier scrapes the scalp clean of flesh and softening it by rubbing between the hands, uses it thenceforth as a napkin. The Scyth is proud of these scalps and hangs them from his bridle rein; the greater the number of such napkins that a man can show, the more highly is he esteemed among them. Many make themselves cloaks by sewing a quantity of these scalps together."

Records also show that the Earl of Wessex scalped his enemies in 11th century and later the English paid bounties for Irish heads. Because scalps were easier to transport and store than heads, European headhunters sometimes scalped their victims rather than decapitating them.

In 1706 the governor of Pennsylvania offered 130 pieces of eight for the scalp of any Indian male over twelve years of age and 50 pieces of eight for a woman's scalp. Because it was impossible for those who paid the bounty to determine the sex, and sometimes the age, of the victim from the scalp alone, killing women and children became a way to make easy money. See also the British Scalp Proclamation of 1756. [2] (http://www.danielnpaul.com/BritishScalpProclamation-1756.html)

During the French and Indian Wars and later during the war between the British and the Colonists, both the British and the French encouraged their Indian allies to scalp their enemies providing them with metal scalping knives.

The practice of paying bounties for Indian scalps did not end until the 1800s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping

My friend who went to Catholic school was taught that the French Revolution was a religious revolution. That's pretty wrong.

That would depend upon the context. Robspierre's Comité de salut publique made all priests employees of the state, paying them salaries, and requiring them to swear (jurer) an oath of feallty to the state, in an attempt to intervene between them and the control of the church by the Bishop of Rome. Many conservative priests refused to take the oath, and were hence known as "non-juring" priests. They were most common in la Vendée, the heartland of counterrevolution. Priests from other regions sought refuge there.

Napoleon later forced a concordat on the Pope to recognize the revolutionary settlement, but he repudiated it as soon as he escaped captivity.

So, depending upon the context of what your friend was taught, it would not be unreasonable to state that the French revolution entailed, among many other changes, a religioius revolution.

Good to see you here again Setanta!!!

My time is limited, O'George, by vision problems. My eyes are hurting right now, because i've spent too much time here this weekend, but i've enjoyed myself.

Thank you for your kind comment . . .

This forum is about the falsification of history. To the victor the spoils, and also to the victor the privelege of writing history. The the slave-owning Confederate States damn near won that fratricidal war: imagine the history of the US of A fromTHAT standpoint! Falsification? The Yankees wanted only to subdue a huge political faction, and altered enough facts to prove that they were right. WMDs in Iraq?

Merry Andrew, one method of falsification is failing to teach: Tolstoy reminded us that flunking History condemns us to repeat those bitter lessons.

Yes, Good Ol' Abe was a slave-owner, and DNA tests are showing that the Founding Fathers enjoyed hanky-panky with their human posesssions. There is even evidence that Abe was homosexual: a hundred, two hundred years later the truth is coming out. Monika's Bill avoided it nicely, but I wonder if either of the Georges has left a secret DNA-trail...

To the victor the writing of history: in the early 90s Australia's Labour government told us, and it is now writ large in our history books, that we had an economic depression ten years earlier during a Liberal-Country Party (coalition) government. We actually had a small business recession, a tightening of credit. But then, Oz is only one percent of the world economy so who gives a damn!

What is being written now in the US is Shrub Two's version of what's going on; that The People Of The United States want a theocracy; that they have a right to be the world's Policeman (Shrub One told the world that it must learn that "what we say, goes!"); that they are not reducing a whole country to chaos and terrorism just to gain control of oil-fields; and (Back In The States) that kids can remain asexual until marriage so it is wrong to talk about pregnancy and disease control. One expression is "burying your head in the sand".

Fortunately there are people in that great country who see reality. Unfortunately the falsifications may have damaged the Constitution. Will it survive intact? Look at the furore over Professor Wade Churchill and his First Amendment rights.

I may sound anti-American: I am not. America has contributed much more that it has destroyed in this world: one has only to remember who landed men on the moon and robots on Mars and elsewhere; and who stopped communism from consuming the world. Fabulous stuff, wonderful work; but instead of another brilliant (and blatantly sexy) JFK all we get were "I am not a liar", publicised sneaky-blow-jobs and viciously mean-mouthed God-botherers who "sex-up" evidence to justify another extremely expensive ideological war. What would have happened in Vietnam if LBJ hadn't fallen into power?

I am not anti-American: I am anti-bu115h1t, anti "I-am-holier-than-thou". Maybe that's why I read the New York Times not the Washing-Machine Post.

BTW, the Crusades were invented to get rid of excess population in Europe, especially the younger sons of the ruling classes; and of course, to bring home the treasures of the Mysteriously Wealthy East. Was it the Vatican's Vietnam?

Dare we suggest that the Iraq invasion is another Crusade?

Do you serve canapes with your rant?

Allsix -- I believe it was George Santayana, not Tolstoy, who made the famous comment that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Where do you get your startling information that Lincoln owned slaves? From the Sons of the Confederacy? And that nonsense about his homosexuality was started by the gays, I think. They'd love to have someone of Abe Lincoln's stature be in their camp. Didja know that Bill Clinton is really a homosexual and that the whole Levinsky affair was manufactured for a cover-up?

If Lincoln was, as we might say today, "soft on" slavery, then his election would not have caused southern states to begin to withdraw from the Union.

Lincoln's family was poor: almost as poor as the slaves themselves were. After educating himself, he began to practice law and supported himself and his family as a lawyer, not as a plantation owner.

I was actually aware of Robspiere and whatnot, but to teach it in only a religious context is completely wrong.

Well, you don't provide enough information for anyone here to make a reasonable judgment.

I'm not trying to change anyone's mind by any means. I'm just trying to shed some light on the fact that history books don't shed light on the fact that some of our former forefathers didn't make decisions entirely due to their own beliefs,but maybe to appease the majority of minds. And that some may have called the kettle black. I'm working on locating that text so I can hotsync it or just give a link if it's too long.

You're changing your story as you go along, as well. Previously, you had lumped Lincoln in with the founding fathers, and obvious error, and you had contended that Lincoln was not opposed to slavery, and that there were evidence that he owned slaves, both of which are false.

Many of the "founding fathers" were slave owners, and no one here is likely to dispute that. But when you fling accusations around, especially in these fora, you need to have your facts and their sources marshalled before hand.

Whoa buddy. Correct your position when addressing me. I don't attack so don't attempt to with me. You will not get far. I am simply stating that I have read and heard that Lincoln was partially or fully okay with slavery but he publicly opposed it as political foder. I didn't want to leave your reply unresponded to but I WILL post the contrary statements. See my posts in the "Unpopular" thread and maybe you can understand me better. In the mean time back off. We are entitled to an opinion.

It is not an attack to criticize your rhetorical style. You did indeed arrive in this thread and begin making wild statements about Lincoln and other unspecified "founding fathers." I haven't the faintest notion of what the word "foder" is supposed to mean. Do not tell me what to correct. Don't tell me to back off, either. When you post crap, i will come along and observe that you have posted crap, as is my right, and one of the exercises in debate which one expects here. Certainly everyone is entitled to an opinion; you didn't make your initial remarks statements of opinion, you made vague statements, without attribution or support of any kind, which were therefore statements from authority on your part. No one here has any reason to consider that you have the authority to make such statements. When i criticized what you had written, i provided quotations from Lincoln on the subject and their sources. If you want to launch into an opinionated diatribe against an individual or individuals, as historical figures, that's ok by me, and most everyone else here. If you do not qualify your statement as the expression of opinion, it has to be assumed that you are stating alleged facts, and then the contents are fair game for anyone who wants to lay into them.

Criticing what you've written and how you've written it might not be palatable to you, but i don't know you at all, and have made no comments on you personally, only on what you've written.

The major "evidence" for Lincoln's ambivalence on the slavery question usually cited by the Lincoln bashers is the letter he wrote to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Herald, in which he avowed that if he could preserve the Union without freeing a single slave, he would do so. He went on to say that if he could preserve the Union by freeing some slaves and leaving others servile, he would do that, too. The point he was trying to make was that the question of preserving the Union was paramount in his agenda, was his "prime directive", if you will. Nowhere is there are an implication that he was not solidly against slavery, merely that at this point in the War it was somewhat lower on his agenda than the all-important problem of opposing the secession of the southern states.

To some extent, this was a politically motivated missive. Because Lincoln has been virtually cannonized by later historians, we forget that during his own tenure he was immensly unpopular in some quarters, and I'm not talking about the states of the Confederacy. If there had been popularity polls in his day, his popularity rating would have been zilch in places like New York City. Remember the draft riots? People did not want to go to war for what they perceived as a campaign to end slavery. Quite frankly, they didn't give a damn about slavery or about the plight of the Negroes in North America. Lincoln wrote to Greely to emphasize that the abolition of slavery was not the prime reason for the war. The preservation of the United States was.

This has been often misunderstood and I've seen portions of that letter posted as "proof" that Lincoln didn't have an anti-slavery position. Now that is falsification of history.

There are history books and then there are history books.

When someone uses the word history book, I immediately think they mean school teaching text, and not just a general book written about a period. I may be wrong in thinking that, but, according to my idealect, a history book is a school text book.

I tried to develop something on abuzz and was largely misunderstood -- puposefully, in some quarters -- that there are some subjects that, when taught at the high school level (and certainly the high school level of 50 years ago, when children had a less sophisticated background then they do today) are simplified to the point of error. Chemistry was cited as just such a class when I was in high school and college during the 1960s. Theology is another, as I discovered while a student at a Catholic college.

Now, history needn't be simplified to the point of error. However, a history text, like a book that explores a particular event or period or nation written for the general public, may represent a particular point of view. Hence, there are "revisionist" books.

Others may not necessarily represent a view point but may be sloppy. This sloppiness may be a failure to give a preceding historian his due (plagiarism). It may also be a more serious form of sloppiness. I recently read a book that was fairly good by Constance Brittain on the knightly class in late Medieval France. Immediately afterward, I began reading Georges Duby on the development of the Western European economy. Brittain (that may be the second of her three names and not the third) clearly did not think or research as carefully as Duby. Despite the fact that Brittain wrote for a more general audience than Duby, she could have put a little more time in her reasoning, which tended to be of the shoot-from-the-hip variety.

Anyway, that was said as a piece of advice to participants. Another piece of advice is: Don't challenge Setanta. He's incredibly smart and much better informed than most. And you did call Lincoln both a slave owner and a Founding Father, which no one can chalk up to careless typing.

I found this article in my morning browse, and it occurred to me to post it on this thread.

http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.18526/article_detail.asp

"Revisionist history." In our culture, the label clearly denotes a negative to a position and anyone associated with it. But sometimes, even if unintentionally, I think it's been used in the same vein as "Racism."

It's pretty widely recognized in my country that the statement: "He's a Racist" is used less as a genuine observation and more as a weapon to shut down or shut out unfavorably realities. It's a slur to arouse emotions and bury uncomfortable truths, including the people who might ask for them. Everyone has probably used similar methods (I have, to my regret) or has been a victim of this method before (here too).

"Revisionist Historians" may be abhorred, but nobody believes that History is perfect; it's a human product and subject to all our vagaries. It has to be subject to Darwinian scrutiny. Of course, challenging existing history isn't necessarily a good thing, unless what is challenged is false. But we'll never know if it's true or false unless it can stand up to that challenge (consistently, because later generations will review the previous generation's History).

If a person is a Racist or a Revisionist Historian, that will be self evident while the discussion advances, not when it is simply declared.

The author of the article believes that a large segment of the World and the Media is perpetuating a "revisionist" History. Is this true? Or is it the Media that got the story right? What does everyone remember about the LAPD, Rodney King, LA race riots, OJ and Furhman? Is it the same from what they believe now?

Historiography is the study of the method(s) whereby historical information is accumulated, and the value of evidence ajudged. Contemporary accounts of events tell us things which we might never be able to discover, if we only look at later descriptions of events. Successive investigations turn up documents and accounts which were not available to the contemporary writers. In both cases, the history which gets written reveals as much about the writer and his/her times as it does about the event under consideraton. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. wrote the definitive history of the naval war of 1812--and his jingoistic American patriotism is plain to see within the lines of carefully researched and carefully vetted material. He also wrote a biography of Oliver Cromwell, which once again, reveals as much about Teddy Roosevelt as it does about the Lord Protector.

One of our members who is no longer with us (an historian, a professional teacher of history at the higher education level) cogently observed that all historians are revisionists, if they are doing their job properly. The only way to be certain of one's ground is to check the sources and make an educated judgment as to the value of testimony. Our children don't get that in school, and adults haven't sufficient interest (and little wonder, as poorly as history is taught in our schools) to do that kind of work. It is so much easier to simply buy into the story which is handed out as the prevailing version of history. If that story is completely correct, it is likely due more to chance than intent. Marx became obsessive about history and its "uses" because he well understood that a people use someone's version of history to define themselves. Many people have a stake in how history is written; few seem to have a stake in historical truth. Revisionist has become a slur, and that is because the state of historical knowledge is such in the general population that they can easily be cozened into plunking down their hard earned money for a sensational account which purports to expose historical lies and finally reveal the deep dyed conspiracies about which we were never to know. Most of that is claptrap. Nevertheless, as the Hobbit correctly pointed out, all historians are revisionists, if they are doing their jobs.

I just came upon this fascinating thread today, so my corections are for the first page:

Thok,
....Before the vikings there were the Africans. There are pyramids in South America also. Of course much has been buried and obscured about the rich, and highly developed civilizations of Africa.

Paaskynen,
....Socrates was given HEMLOCK, not wedlock. Although I'm sure wedlock has taken many lives throughout history.
....May I ask, what is the sourse of your name?