BEST OF: Stephen Hawking once said that “if aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.” But this is a gross oversimplification of history. It is a narrative with truly disgusting caricatures that lack context, and therefore cultivate divisiveness and ignorance.

Long before the traditional Pilgrim story, and even before Columbus, white men arrived in the Americas bringing gifts, goods, and new, sometimes similar traditions - these were largely known as the Templars. They were welcomed by many societies who saw them as the return of the white gods who built civilization in parts of the Americas. When the Spanish arrived later they were seen as the same gods, but used this religious belief to commit atrocity against a people themselves engaged in barbaric practices like human sacrifices. Conquistadors do NOT represent all Europeans.

Pilgrims were religious refugees and shared a different motivation from conquistadors, and the later colonizers, settlers, land speculators, etc. Likewise, various Indian tribes welcomed Europeans just as many saw them as savages. For as many Europeans whom saw Indians as savages there were plenty who saw them as business partners, friends, and more. Long before Europeans arrived officially we know that many Indian tribes had destroyed their hunting lands and fishing waters, were at war with one another, and later became dependent on European goods, as much as Europeans were reliant on the same. Red and White men were driven into conflict largely by greed and ignorance, particularly of each others’ cultures and economic systems.

For all the attention focused on Plymouth, it was actually the Spanish admiral Don Pedro Menéndez de Aviles at St. Augustine in the 1860s who invited the local Timucua indigenous tribe to share in celebration and prayer for his safe arrival and the abundance of the new world.