Irony #1
"The textbooks credit Bartolomeu Dias with being the first to round the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa in 1488. Omitting the accomplishments of the Afro-Phoenicians is ironic, because it was Prince Henry's knowledge of their feats that inspired him to replicate them" (36).
In ignoring that Dias' trip was inspired by the Afro-Phoenicians previous trips, the textbook, by trying to heroize Dias, in fact fails to give the fullest account of his journey.
Native Americans' health made them vulnerable
"Their very health proved their undoing, for they had built up no resistance, genetically or through child- hood diseases, to the microbes that Europeans and Africans would bring to them" (70).
It is ironic that the Native Americans were so healthy and lived so long before the Europeans arrived. Because of their healthy lifestyle and the lack of diseases around, they had built up no resistance and were killed easily in the many plagues that the Europeans brought over on their ships.
Europeans as "savages"
Another irony is that the Europeans were in many way more barbaric in their war-waging than the Native Americans. The author makes a point of this, showing that societies with more stratification, like European ones, often are more barbaric because there is more inequality and thus a greater need to preserve one's status at all costs. The more equally-distributed Native American social structure did not have this added pressure, which resulted in less "barbarism."
"Even an appreciative treatment of Native cultures reinforces ethnocentrism so long as it does not challenge the primitive-to-civilized continuum. This continuum inevitably conflates the meaning of civilized in everyday conversation — "refined or enlightened" — with "having a complex division of labor," the only definition that anthropologists defend. When we consider the continuum carefully, it immediately becomes problematic. Was the Third Reich civilized, for instance? Most anthropologists would answer yes. In what ways do we prefer the civilized Third Reich to the more primitive Arawak nation that Columbus encountered? If we refuse to label the Third Reich civilized, are we not using the term to imply a certain comity? If so, we must consider the Arawaks civilized, and we must also consider Columbus and his Spaniards primitive if not savage. Ironically, societies characterized by a complex division of labor are often marked by inequality and capable of supporting large specialized armies. Precisely these 'civilized' societies are likely to resort to savage violence in their attempts to conquer 'primitive' societies" (94).
Europeans as "nomads"
It is ironic that the stereotype of Native Americans as nomadic hunter-gatherers still persists. They were forced to move by the encroachment of Europeans and finally forcibly moved by the US government out to Oklahoma and further west. Their nomadic existence prior to that was mostly from moving to their summer vacation home, much as one might vacation in the Hamptons.
"To Native eyes, Europeans were nomads. As Chief Seattle put it in 1855, 'To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and seemingly without regret.' In contrast, Indian 'roaming' consisted mainly of moving from summer homes to winter homes and back again'" (124).
