From a young age, students in the United States are taught the nursery rhyme "In 1492 Columbus Sailed the Blue Ocean" to memorize the date the famous Italian colonizer, Christopher Columbus, landed off the coast of America. However, what the school poem does not mention about Christopher Columbus is that in 1492, after sailing the blue ocean, he committed genocide. After arriving in their homeland, Columbus forced the American Indians into slavery and used barbaric punishments against them, including amputation and dismemberment by dogs. In his legacy, diseases carried by settlers and war with colonialists killed millions of indigenous people. Yet despite Columbus' crimes, history largely remembers him. Only one story is told about Native American groups that describes them as “savage” people who, without the intervention of benevolent white colonizers, would have been deprived of virtue or civilization. Isolated stories, like those told about pre-Columbian America, are dangerous. When a place is only assigned one story, one perspective becomes a definition and creates incomplete biases about many people and many very different stories. The madness of this unique story is not limited to the West. For example, history shows precolonial Africa in a uniquely negative light, as a primitive and inexplicable land saved from its inherent darkness by European colonizers. In his novel Things Fall Apart, Achebe questions Africa's unique history by telling the story of Okonkwo, a strong tribesman living in the Igbo clan of Umuofia whose complex life and culture are stereotyped and stigmatized by European colonizers. Throughout Things Fall Apart, the novel challenges the unique history of early Africa by depicting the complexities and advancements that existed without the European influence of an indigenous African group called the Igbo, including the advanced skills of conversation of the Igbo people, their orderly justice system and their strength. egwugwu, or spirits who act as judges in clan legal matters, hear a case of domestic violence between a man and his in-laws, they explain their role in the Umuofian legal system: "We have heard both sides of the matter… our duty is not to blame this man or to praise him, but to settle this dispute” (93). When the author writes the word "rule", he illustrates that the Umuofia justice system is an example of contradiction with the unique history of Africa, because it shows that Umuofians possess the capacity to govern themselves , to manage disputes in a non-violent manner and to deliver justice. within their clan. While history depicts pre-colonial Africa as violent and full of upheaval, the egwugwu's desire to "settle" the matter indicates that they possess civil intentions impossible within the framework of Africa's unique history and that they can effectively manage the government of their clan. Similarly, the word "duty" highlights the idea of ​​a complex society in pre-colonial Africa because it indicates that Umuofians can take responsibility. The fact that Umuofians have a concept of “duty” indicates that they can rely on each other and thus function as a working society with active members. By using the term "both sides" to describe the egwugwu affair, Achebe reminds the reader