Brooklyn Hoods - Prospect Lefferts Gardens

The Case Against Columbus Day
The time has come to rethink this celebration

When my 6-year old daughter told me that she had learned about Columbus, the great man who discovered America, I felt a painful tightening in my stomach. I have a very hard time with historical fairy tales, and the myth of Columbus, the Great Man who Discovered America, is the great, granddaddy of all American myths. It is the very foundation onto which the myriad of false tales we are told about the role of our country in the world are stacked high and deep.

It seemed cruel to tell a child that her teacher had left out a great deal about Christopher Columbus’ encounters with the natives of the Bahamas; for example, the part about Columbus ordering all Arawaks 14 years and older to collect a specific quantity of gold for him every three months. And that, like the tickets her teacher gives for good behavior, Columbus gave the natives copper tokens to wear around their necks for providing him with gold – not having enough tokens meant being summarily executed by having your hands chopped off so that you bled to death.

The fact that the only gold available were the bits of dust sometimes found in the streams meant that their task was impossible from the start - the Arawaks, realizing this, fled into the forest, only to be hunted down like animals and slaughtered.

I could have told Sofia that eventually the Arawaks tried to mount a resistance but, without swords, armor, muskets and horses, they didn’t stand a chance.

When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.

When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates known as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550 there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island. Historian Howard Zinn - A People's History of the United States

Zinn also notes that Bartolomé de las Casas, a young Spanish priest who witnessed what happened following Columbus’ arrival, wrote that the Spaniards “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.” Las Casas describes “two of these so-called Christians (who) met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot, they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys.” Slaves were rounded up and held in guarded pens like animals - hundreds were shipped back to Spain but died in transit; those who survived the voyage were sold off. Columbus’ appetite for atrocities continued when he became Governor of the Spanish Indies:

Francisco de Bobadilla, ... Columbus' successor as Governor from 1500-1502, was charged with investigating Columbus' rule in the name of the Spanish Crown. […] According to his report Columbus was known both by friends and enemies for the atrociously harsh punishments he imposed on his subjects. Columbus ordered a man who was caught stealing corn to have his nose and ears cut off and auctioned off as a slave. A woman who suggested Columbus was of lowly birth was punished by Columbus' brother Bartolomé: she was stripped naked and paraded around the colony on a mule. When Bartolomé had her tongue cut out, Columbus congratulated him for defending the family's honour.
Wikipedia entry on Columbus

All of this, of course, is too much for the tender psyche of a child. For now, Sofia only knows that daddy thinks Columbus’ was “mean” and does not deserve to be celebrated. The rest of us who are not six, however, must one day face the facts and end this yearly celebration of Columbus’ barbarism. Who knows, maybe when you knock down the foundation, some of the many other historical fantasies piled on top of it will begin to crumble as well.

If there is any justice in the world (and that’s a big “if”), the holiday will one day become an occasion for reflecting on the atrocities committed by Europeans and Americans against the native people of the western hemisphere.