...and which have been written-up as "facts" in American high school history books, are best propaganda, and in truth mostly outright lies.
Excerpts from the book:
"Lies My Teacher Told Me" http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0684818868">by James W. LoewenChapter Three - "
The Truth About The First Thanksgiving"
Page 74 -- Considering that virtually none of the standard fare surrounding Thanksgiving contains an ounce of authenticity, historical accuracy, or cross-cultural perception, why is it so apparently ingrained? Is it necessary to the America psyche to perpetually exploit and debase its victims in order to justify its history? -- Michael Dorris
Page 75 -- The Europeans were able to conquer America not because of their military genius, or their religious motivation, or their ambition, or their greed. They conquered it by unpremeditated biological warfare. -- Howard Simpson
Page 77 -- Starting the story of America's settlement with the Pilgrims leaves out not only the Indians, but the Spanish. The very first non-native settlers in "the country we now know as the United States" were African slaves left in South Carolina in 1526 by Spaniards who abandoned a settlement attempt. In 1565 the Spanish massacred the French Protestants who had settled briefly in St. Augustine, Florida, and established their own fort there. Some later Spanish settlers were our first pilgrims, seeking regions new to them to secure religious liberty: these were Spanish Jews, who settled in New Mexico in the late 1500's.
Few Americans knew that one-third of the United States, from San Francisco to Arkansas to Natchez to Florida, has been Spanish longer than it has been "American," and that Hispanic Americans lived here before the first ancestors of the Daughters of the American Revolution ever left England. Moreover, Spanish culture left an indelible mark on the American West. The Spanish introduced horses, cattle, sheep, pigs and the basic elements of cowboy culture, including its vocabulary: mustang, bronco, rodeo, lariat and so on. Horses that escaped from the Spanish and propagated triggered the rapid flowering of a new culture among the Plains Indians. "How refreshing is would be," wrote James Axtell, "to find a textbook that began on the West Coast before treating the traditional eastern colonies."
- As for "knowing very little about what happened during this event." I suppose that all depends upon whom one asks.....