There's a version of American history most of us were taught in school — one where Columbus discovered America, cowboys were white, and Abraham Lincoln went to war to end slavery. As it turns out, a lot of it is either wrong or so oversimplified that it might as well be. While some of these myths were invented by biographers and poets decades after the fact, others were deliberately constructed to soften uncomfortable truths about slavery, dispossession, and how power actually works. In almost every case, however, the real story is more interesting than the textbook version.