But someone was already here!

A song about Columbus

Hi all,

Thank you for joining me for today’s song, “Columbus Song - 1492”, by Nancy Schimmel. If you’d like to hear the song before you read the background, I’ve included a YouTube video below the article.

Comments and questions are welcome. For Japanese students, vocabulary words in bold are provided in Japanese below. TOEFL (PBT) 450+, Eiken 2, CEFR B1. Download free worksheet here.

(Map created with pampam.city)

(311 words)

Today’s song is about Christopher Columbus. In the U.S., students are taught that he discovered the Americas in 1492. They don’t always learn that he didn’t actually discover it because there were people living there. This song tells that side of the story.

In fourteen hundred ninety-two / Columbus sailed the ocean blue

It was a courageous thing to do / But someone was already here

The song gives the names of some of the indigenous nations that were living in the Americas before Columbus came. The Inuit and Cree live in Canada, the Cherokee live in Oklahoma, the Menominee and Onadaga live in the northern U.S., and the Aztecs lived in Mexico.

The Inuit and Cherokee / The Aztec and the Menominee

Onandaga and the Cree / Columbus sailed across the sea

But someone was already here

(Portrait of a man said to be Christopher Columbus, public domain, Wikimedia Commons)

Most people are familiar with the story of Columbus. He was an Italian explorer. He asked the king and queen of Spain to pay for his voyage. He wanted to find a way to reach China, India, and Japan by sailing to the west. Instead, he reached the islands of the Caribbean and later, parts of North and South America. Columbus thought he had found a new route to Asia, but he actually discovered a continent that Europeans didn’t know existed, which we now call America. 

Columbus knew the world was round / So he looked for the East while westward bound

But he didn’t find what he thought he found / And someone was already here

When Columbus and his men landed, they met people who were called the Carib.

It isn’t like it was empty space / Caribs met him face to face

Could anyone discover the place / When someone was already here?

So tell me, who discovered what? / He thought he was in a different spot

Columbus was lost, the Caribs were not / They were already here

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Questions

1. Current researchers believe that 54 million people lived in the Americas before Columbus landed on the continent. What do you know about Columbus? What do you know about the 54 million people who were already living in the Americas?

2. Does anyone (or any group) benefit from teaching American history (or any history) from one date, ex. 1492, and excluding history before that?

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Vocabulary

courageous 勇気のある

indigenous 先住民族の

explorer 冒険者

voyage 航海

continent 大陸

westward 西へ