Columbus: Not a Good Dude
Some mood music before we begin…
Today, throughout most of the country, is Columbus Day. It’s a holiday named after the Italian “explorer” and overall terrible person, Christopher Columbus. If your education was anything like mine then you probably know the story. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He had three ships: the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. On this voyage, he discovered America and proved the Earth wasn’t flat.
Almost none of that is true. Sure, he did have three ships. And he did set sail in 1492. But the rest? Total hogwash. It was common knowledge in the 15th century that the Earth was round. That’s why there are globes from that time! The irony is that Columbus DIDN’T believe the Earth was round. He thought it was pear-shaped and that he could get from Europe to India in a few days. That was the whole reason he was given his mission. He also never set foot in America, instead, he “discovered” the Bahamas and parts of Cuba. Oh and I’m not sure you can “discover” a place where people have lived for centuries. Seems like it’s already a thing. European ignorance doesn’t discredit the lives of millions of people.
OK, so why do we celebrate him on Columbus Day? Good question! The video above got into it a bit but let’s dive into when and why Columbus Day became an official holiday. The first official one was celebrated in 1892 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of his fateful voyage. It was originally intended to be a one-time deal. See, back on March 14th, 1891 in New Orleans, a lynch mob killed 11 Italian-Americans. There was a lot of anti-Italian sentiment at the time for a number of reasons. I won’t get into them here. In an effort to ease the tension, then-President Benjamin Harrison declared October 12th, 1892 to be Columbus Day. And that was supposed to be it. Obviously, that did not happen.
Columbus Day had been an Italian-American tradition going all the way back to the 1830s. And once they were able to gain political power, they were able to slowly roll out Columbus mythology on a larger scale. That brings us to WW2. Remember who we fought in that one? Sure, the Germans get most of the attention and with good reason. But the Fredo of the Axis of Evil was definitely Italy. So there was quite a lot of hate for Italians in America at the time. I mean, not as much as the Japanese and Asian communities faced (we didn’t have Italian Concentration Camps after all) but it was there. To help cut down on those negative feelings, FDR observed Columbus Day by giving citizenship to more than 200,000 elderly Italian immigrants, among other things.
So that’s the story of why we celebrate Columbus Day. Now, let’s talk about why we shouldn’t.
Columbus was far from a hero, a genius, or a good dude. He perpetrated genocide upon the Native people who lived on the islands that he “discovered”. His men raped and murdered women. He kidnapped many of them and sold them into slavery — giving birth to the Atlantic Slave Trade. Here’s what he wrote about the Arawaks who greeted him and cared for his crew after a long journey:
“They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things... They willingly traded everything they owned... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane... . They would make fine servants... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
From the jump, Columbus didn’t see these people as humans. He saw them as the expendable chattel he would turn them into. He reported a number of falsehoods about them, like that they were evil, cannibals, and drank human blood. These lies still persist to this day. Columbus and his crew beat, raped, and killed Native men and women. Here is an account from one of Columbus’ friends, Michele de Cuneo, about his interaction with a Native woman that Columbus had “given” to him as a gift.
“While I was in the boat I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral gave to me, and with whom, having taken her into my cabin, she being naked according to their custom, I conceived desire to take pleasure. I wanted to put my desire into execution but she did not want it and treated me with her finger nails in such a manner that I wished I had never begun. But seeing that (to tell you the end of it all), I took a rope and thrashed her well, for which she raised such unheard of screams that you would not have believed your ears. Finally we came to an agreement in such manner that I can tell you that she seemed to have been brought up in a school of harlots.”
Yikes.
Other recorded accounts from diaries at the time include incidents where Columbus’ crew would test the sharpness of their blades on Natives by stabbing them for no reason. There are others that state that his men would have beheading competitions using Native men. And one particularly bad account of his men stealing infants and throwing them off cliffs to watch them splatter on the rocks below. They would literally feed Natives to their dogs.
Columbus was convinced that there was gold and other natural resources on these islands that he could exploit and bring back to Spain. He was desperate to find something of value, as he’d told the King and Queen that the islands were bountiful. That’s how he convinced them to give him a second voyage, with a bunch more ships (17) and 1,200 men. Of course, while the Caribean is a beautiful place with many wonderful things, it does not have a lot of gold. It also isn’t India (which is where Columbus thought he probably was) so it doesn’t have much in the way of curry spices.
Did this stop Columbus? Nah. When he returned in November 1493, he enslaved the Native people on several islands and forced them to find him his plunder. And when they couldn’t he would beat them, torture them, cut off their hands, and kill them. Mind you, the riches Columbus sought were completely in his head! They didn’t exist. So even if the Native people had willingly cooperated, they still wouldn’t have found anything. Within 50 years of his arrival, the Native populations had been decimated by enslavement, disease, murder, mistreatment, and suicide. Some still exist to this day but the thriving communities on these island nations have never been the same since.
So maybe we shouldn’t celebrate a guy who didn’t really do much good, did a shitload of bad stuff and pretty much lucked into everything he accomplished. He was also a criminal, even by colonizer standards. Instead of Columbus Day, I would encourage you to honor his victims, and the victims of many other atrocities committed by this country, by observing Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
The video above is only a minute long and might not seem like too big a deal, but let me tell you, it is. That’s Deb Haaland. She was in the Full Frontal video too. She’s the first Native American to serve as Secretary of the Interior and only the second Native cabinet member in US history. It’s also a big deal because the Department of the Interior oversees all federal land, our natural resources, and manages the Bureau of Indian affairs, among other departments. It’s the first time that Native Americans actually have a Native person involved in their “affairs”. I am very hopeful that she will make some of the changes we need to address the suffering of our Native American brothers and sisters.
What is Indigenous Peoples’ Day? In short, it’s a day to celebrate and honor Native people, their culture, their history, and for non-Natives to reflect on the debt we owe them. This year is particularly special because President Biden became the first sitting president to acknowledge the day. It sucks that he is doing it alongside celebrating Columbus Day. Small steps, I suppose.
I’ve seen a lot of hateful, dismissive rhetoric from (let’s be honest) white people online about changing Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day. Here are a few of the posts that are dumb, nonsensical, full of lies, or just plain racist. I’ll add a few comments about each.
This is a classic conservative thing where you just say the thing that’s supposedly being canceled or banned or changed. Like “MERRY CHRISTMAS” and the like. It’s meaningless and marginalizes the people he supposedly represents. Again, typical classic conservative nonsense.
Imagine your neighbor comes over to your house, kills your wife, sells your kids into slavery, robs you, and then proclaims your house to be his because he “discovered” it. Celebrating the European ignorance that directly led to genocide and the erasure of culture is nothing to be proud of. And BTW, Europeans probably “discovered” the “New World” about 500 years before Columbus, so maybe slow your roll.
All holidays are “fake”. They’re all made up. And if pointing out that Columbus did terrible things, along with centuries of other terrible things inflicted upon Native people by Americans sows “division” then maybe it’s time to re-evaluate your perspective and understanding of history. How fragile these conservatives are that ONE DAY of recognition for Native people makes them clutch their pearls and weep.
Ummmm Columbus wasn’t American. And he never stepped foot in America. As we covered, he didn’t really do much of anything — aside from genocide and cultural destruction.
This is another classic where the issues with Columbus Day aren’t ever really addressed. “Oh, it’s not a day about genocide and slavery, it’s to HONOR Italian-Americans!” Man, if the best Italian-Americans can do is Columbus then I’m not sure what to tell you.
I’ll end with this one because it’s one of the more repugnant things I’ve seen. It’s wildly inaccurate for starters. There’s no evidence Natives enslaved each other. They also didn’t practice cannibalism or human sacrifice (at least not in regards to the people we’re talking about in relation to Columbus). Remember, that’s all propaganda that Columbus spread about the Natives. This post also plays into the racist stereotypes that Native people were basically animals who lived in filth. They didn’t. They had their own culture, songs, art, technology, economies, language, and yes, ways of being sanitary. They didn’t need white people or Christians to help them with that. Also, the idea that white colonizers “gave” them anything is ludicrous. Any “assimilation” they did to the Native people was done through violence and enslavement.
Today, I’ll be celebrating Indigenous People’s Day by learning more about the people who first called this great land home. If you want to do the same, here are a few videos that I found to be particularly enlightening. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. And listen, if you still want to celebrate Columbus Day after you’ve read all of this, then tell me what would make you stop? Because if rape, murder, genocide, and enslavement aren’t over the line, I don’t think you have one.