Should Columbus Day be a holiday?
Today is Columbus Day.
It’s a national holiday in America, for some reason. I can’t understand why and ever since I was old enough to begin learning about what actually happened as the Americas were ‘discovered’ by Europeans, I have grown more and more disturbed by the lack of mourning or repentance demonstrated by our nation as a whole toward those whose land we conquered.
This isn’t a post about “white guilt” (though I am a white male and I do believe there is much guilt in our nation’s history); at least it’s not intended to be. I have no romantic notions of Native Americans as idyllic, carefree, wonderful peoples who were in total harmony with nature and one another. I’ll leave such thoughts to movie writers who wish to rehash this trope through future versions of Pocahontas and Avatar.
No, Native Americans were just as sinful as any other people groups in history.
But that IN NO WAY excuses the horrors inflicted upon them by Europeans…ESPECIALLY those carried out in the name of Jesus.
Nor is this an attempt at being the cool, cynical, hipster type who dismisses or disparages anything associated with tradition or “European”…I find those type of diatribes as annoying as you do, I assure you, dear reader. There have been many great and awesome things that come from the Anglo-Euro milieu over the centuries!
However, I believe Columbus and his legacy are not among them.
In thinking about Columbus Day today, I came across the following notes from a book that I admit I have not yet read, but which seem to express very well why I don’t find much to celebrate when it comes to Christopher Colombus:
“Columbus claimed everything he saw right off the boat. When textbooks celebrate this process, they imply that taking the land and dominating the indians was inevitable if not natural” (44).
“Most important, [Columbus’s] prupose from the beginning was not mere exploration or even trade, but conquest and exploitation, for which he used religion as a rationale. If textbooks included these facts, they might induce students to think intelligently about why the West dominates the world today” (45).
Washington Irving created the lie that people thought the earth was flat until Columbus proved that it was round (57).
What is the real significance of Columbus’s reaching the Americas? What made his trip different than the fifteen discoverers who preceded him?
“Christopher Columbus introduced two phenomena that revolutionized race relations and transformed the modern world: the taking of land, wealth, and labor from indigenous peoples, leading to their near extermination, and the transatlantic slave trade, which created a racial underclass” (60).
“When Columbus and his men returned to Haiti in 1493, they demanded food, gold, spun cotton–whatever the Indians had that they wanted, including sex with their women. To ensure cooperation, Columbus used punishment by example. When an Indian committed even a minor offense, the Spanish cut off his ears or nose” (61).
“..attempts at resistance gave Columbus an excuse to make war… For this he chose 200 foot soldiers and 20 cavalry, with many crossbows and small cannon, lances, and swords, and a still more terrible weapon against the Indians, in addition to the horses: this was 20 hunting dogs, who were turned loose and immediately tore the Indians apart” (61).
“Columbus.. initiated a great slave raid. They rounded up 1,500 Arawaks, then selected the 500 best specimines (of whom 200 would die en route to Spain. Another 500 were chosen as slaves for the Spaniards staying on the island” (62).
“Spaniards hunted Indians for sport and murdered them for dog food. Columbus, upset because he could not locate the gold he was certain was on the island, set up a tribute system… The Indians all promised to pay tribute.. every three months… With a fresh token, an Indian was safe for three months, much of which time would be devoted to collecting more gold… the Spanish punished those whose tokens had expired: they cut off their hands” (62).
“Columbus installed the encomienda system, in which he granted or “commended” entire Indian villages to individual colonists or groups of colonists… On Haiti the colonists made the Indians mine gold for them, raise Spanish food, and even carry them everywhere they went” (63). An Spanish observer wrote that “As a result of the sufferings and hard labor they endured [under this virtual slavery], the Indians choose and have chosen suicide. Occasionally a hundred have committed mass suicide. The women, exhausted by labor, have shunned conception and childbirth… Many, when pregnant, have taken something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive slavery”” (63).
“Estimates of Haiti’s pre-Columbian population range as high as 8,000,000 people… a census of Indian adults in 1496.. came up with 1,100,000… “By 1516,” according to Benjamin Keen, “thanks to the sinister Indian slave trade and labor policies initiated by Columbus, only some 12,000 remained.” Las Casas tells us that fewer than 200 Indians were alive in 1542. By 1555, they were all gone” (63).
“.. one of the primary instances of genocide in all human history” (64).
“Columbus not only sent the first slaves across the Atlantic, he probably sent more slaves–about five thousand–than any other individual… other nations rushed to emulate Columbus” (64).
“As soon as the 1493 expedition got to the Caribbean, before it even reached Haiti, Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native women to rape. On Haiti, sex slaves were one more perquisite that the Spaniards enjoyed. Columbus wrote a friend in 1500, “… it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand”” (65).
“Columbus is not a hero in Mexico… Why not? Because Mexico is also much more Indian than the United States, and Mexicans perceive Columbus as white and European. “No sensible Indian person,” wrote George P. Horse Capture, “can celebrate the arrival of Columbus.” Cherishing Columbus is a characteristic of white history, not American history” (70).
“The worshipful biographical vignettes of Columbus in our textbooks serve to indoctrinate students into a mindless endorsement of colonialism… the Columbus myth allows us to accept the contemporary division of the world into developed and underdeveloped spheres as natural and given, rather than a historical product issuing from a process that began with Columbus’s first voyage” (70).
I have not had a chance to verify every one of the claims above, and I invite readers to correct any that may be in error. But as a follower of Jesus, given what I do know about Columbus and the events that transpired as a result of his (and other early colonialist explorers) journey and actions, I cannot see any reason why we as a society should celebrate his life or his voyage.
And when I listen to the stories of my Native American brothers and sisters and what their ancestors suffered as a result of our nation’s origin, I can’t help but shake my head in dismay whenever I hear pleas by various Christians for a return to “our Christian heritage.”
Happy Native Genocide Day,
JM
Categories: Arts and Culture, Blog, Church History, Political/Social issues
http://www.thatvideosite.com/v/4455
by Kamin on Oct 8, 2012 at 7:12 pm
That’s such a great bit, Kamin! Louie nails it. 🙂
by jm on Oct 8, 2012 at 7:22 pm