Hagiography

HISTORIANS often write about people and events that they are personally interested in, or admire. Therefore a problem arises in which the historian omits mention of anything negative while portraying the subject matter in an unfairly favorable way.

This type of history writing is mockingly called "hagiography" within the profession, the term hagiography originally having meant "holy writing", or the lives of saints. History is inundated in hagiography.

The old testament is a history of the jews, written by jews, which describes the jews in very dramatic, heroic terms, calling them "god's chosen people". This is hagiography.

American history is full of hagiography, and in fact, for generations, up to the present day, american children have been brainwashed with a spoon fed hagiographic version of american history. Recently there has been a movement to start telling the truth, but so far it hasn't gotten anywhere. But, you never know.

In the eighteen fifties waves of white setlers swarmed into what is now minnesota, attracted by the fertile land and plentiful hunting. The native americans resisted their encroachment in vain. Using superior weapons technology, brute force, violence, lies, and deception, forcing treaties on the indians then tearing them up, the united states stole the land from the natives.

It all came to a head in 1862, with a terrible, bloody war, and atrocities on both sides, but mostly committed by the whites. For generatons after this nightmare school children in minnesota were taught that the settlers heroically defeated the bloody violent savages.

 Then, the history was ignored completely for a time, then, the story was changed again but still emphasized the inabliity of the natives to solve problems with words and treaties rather than violence.

We still haven't come to terms with the truely monstrous behavior of the european settlers, the "americans", but, at least we're starting to try a little bit. We were raised to think of westward american expansion as the heroic building of a new nation, rather than the savage destruction of an existing civilization. In telling the truth, we still have far to go.