The Lies We're Taught in History Class

 Excerpt from Where White Men Fear to Tread

"In the Europe of his time, it was against church law to enslave or murder human beings, although such canon rarely prevented wholesale murder . To enslave Indians for his own enrichment, he had to convince the Church that indigenous people were subhuman, and therefore could be slaughtered or enslaved with impunity.  To persuade the church that they were subhuman, Columbus accused the Indians of such unnatural acts as cannibalism - a lie.  Later,  Cortez accused the Aztecs of human sacrifice- another lie, but my own recent conversations and experiences with Aztec medicine men convinces me that their ancestors, aided by a masterful understanding of plants which temporarily slow the body's functions to near-paralysis, performed open-heart surgery.  This has been partly confirmed by recent archaeological and pharmacological research.  In order to conceal this truth and sell the lie of human sacrifice, the Franciscans who accompanied Cortez burned every Aztec book.  The church policy of genocide was the basis for European colonization of two continents- and as the 1994 revolt in Chiapas illustrated, nothing has changed."