Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress

In American currency, a coin has two sides. Likewise in every story, there are two equally important yet different sides. Both sides represent the same event or monetary value, but they are not the same. In the case of Christopher Columbus, he has an encounter with the Arawak Indians. We know the story of Christopher Columbus, but what about the Indians? How can we incorporate them into history without changing everything?
One major problem that historians face is that they side with the winner of the battle, and may stray from an accurate depiction of what actually happened. In the story of the Indians and Columbus there are two distinct sides and unfortunately one side is overrepresented. I have been in school for 12 and half years, and had never learned the magnitude of the near genocide that Columbus enacted on the Indians. I had always known that it wasn’t as pretty as I was told, but I didn’t realize that he reduced a population of ten million people, down to one million. To make things worse, he continually lied to the king for extra resources. All of this was an atrocity, but still, the Columbus side of the coin is overrepresented, and taught to students everyday. Why do we side with Columbus? Why don’t we argue that the world would have been better off without Columbus? Why do we continue to lie to ourselves about who “found” America?
Christopher Columbus is taught as the man who “discovered America”. Yet, it is impossible to find something that someone has already found. If a scientist were to find a cure to cancer that had been in use for years, he would not get credit for the vaccine yet a man “found” land that had been in use for years, and is now considered a hero. Also, he wasn’t looking for America; he was looking for India, and claimed that he had found it! Large oversights such as these should be avoided, and as a people, Americans should incorporate all sides of the story. Although it is impossible to tell a one hundred percent unbiased story, we should do our best to treat our stories like we treat our coins. Always have both sides represented equally; this would in turn lead to a less biased society, and a more truthful one. If we are supposed to be a melting pot, we should at least be able to tell accurate stories to our children.