truth is: If Christopher Columbus were alive today, he would be put on
trial for crimes against humanity. Columbus' reign of terror, as
documented by noted historians, was so bloody, his legacy so
unspeakably cruel, that Columbus makes a modern villain like Saddam
Hussein look like a pale codfish.
Question: Why do we honor a man who, if he were alive today, would
almost certainly be sitting on Death Row awaiting execution?
If you'd like to know the true story about Christopher Columbus,
please read on. But I warn you, it's not for the faint of heart.
Here's the basics. On the second Monday in October each year, we
celebrate Columbus Day (this year, it's on October 11th). We teach our
school kids a cute little song that goes: "In 1492, Columbus sailed
the ocean blue." It's an American tradition, as American as pizza pie.
Or is it? Surprisingly, the true story of Christopher Columbus has
very little in common with the myth we all learned in school.
Columbus Day, as we know it in the United States, was invented by the
Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal service organization. Back
in the 1930s, they were looking for a Catholic hero as a role-model
their kids could look up to. In 1934, as a result of lobbying by the
Knights of Columbus, Congress and President Franklin Roosevelt signed
Columbus Day into law as a federal holiday to honor this courageous
explorer. Or so we thought.
There are several problems with this. First of all, Columbus wasn't
the first European to discover America. As we all know, the Viking,
Leif Ericson probably founded a Norse village on Newfoundland some 500
years earlier. So, hat's off to Leif. But if you think about it, the
whole concept of discovering America is, well, arrogant. After all,
the Native Americans discovered North America about 14,000 years
before Columbus was even born! Surprisingly, DNA evidence now suggests
that courageous Polynesian adventurers sailed dugout canoes across the
Pacific and settled in South America long before the Vikings.
Second, Columbus wasn't a hero. When he set foot on that sandy beach
in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, Columbus discovered that the
islands were inhabited by friendly, peaceful people called the
Lucayans, Taínos and Arawaks. Writing in his diary, Columbus said they
were a handsome, smart and kind people. He noted that the gentle
Arawaks were remarkable for their hospitality. "They offered to share
with anyone and when you ask for something, they never say no," he
said. The Arawaks had no weapons; their society had neither criminals,
prisons nor prisoners. They were so kind-hearted that Columbus noted
in his diary that on the day the Santa Maria was shipwrecked, the
Arawaks labored for hours to save his crew and cargo. The native
people were so honest that not one thing was missing.
Columbus was so impressed with the hard work of these gentle
islanders, that he immediately seized their land for Spain and
enslaved them to work in his brutal gold mines. Within only two years,
125,000 (half of the population) of the original natives on the island
were dead.
If I were a Native American, I would mark October 12, 1492, as a black
day on my calendar.
Shockingly, Columbus supervised the selling of native girls into
sexual slavery. Young girls of the ages 9 to 10 were the most desired
by his men. In 1500, Columbus casually wrote about it in his log. He
said: "A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as
for a farm, and 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."
He forced these peaceful natives work in his gold mines until they
died of exhaustion. If an "Indian" worker did not deliver his full
quota of gold dust by Columbus' deadline, soldiers would cut off the
man's hands and tie them around his neck to send a message. Slavery
was so intolerable for these sweet, gentle island people that at one
point, 100 of them committed mass suicide. Catholic law forbade the
enslavement of Christians, but Columbus solved this problem. He simply
refused to baptize the native people of Hispaniola.
On his second trip to the New World, Columbus brought cannons and
attack dogs. If a native resisted slavery, he would cut off a nose or
an ear. If slaves tried to escape, Columbus had them burned alive.
Other times, he sent attack dogs to hunt them down, and the dogs would
tear off the arms and legs of the screaming natives while they were
still alive. If the Spaniards ran short of meat to feed the dogs,
Arawak babies were killed for dog food.
Columbus' acts of cruelty were so unspeakable and so legendary - even
in his own day - that Governor Francisco De Bobadilla arrested
Columbus and his two brothers, slapped them into chains, and shipped
them off to Spain to answer for their crimes against the Arawaks. But
the King and Queen of Spain, their treasury filling up with gold,
pardoned Columbus and let him go free.
One of Columbus' men, Bartolome De Las Casas, was so mortified by
Columbus' brutal atrocities against the native peoples, that he quit
working for Columbus and became a Catholic priest. He described how
the Spaniards under Columbus' command cut off the legs of children who
ran from them, to test the sharpness of their blades. According to De
Las Casas, the men made bets as to who, with one sweep of his sword,
could cut a person in half. He says that Columbus' men poured people
full of boiling soap. In a single day, De Las Casas was an eye witness
as the Spanish soldiers dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 native
people. "Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight
as no age can parallel," De Las Casas wrote. "My eyes have seen these
acts so foreign to human nature that now I tremble as I write."
De Las Casas spent the rest of his life trying to protect the helpless
native people. But after a while, there were no more natives to
protect. Experts generally agree that before 1492, the population on
the island of Hispaniola probably numbered above 3 million. Within 20
years of Spanish arrival, it was reduced to only 60,000. Within 50
years, not a single original native inhabitant could be found.
In 1516, Spanish historian Peter Martyr wrote: "... a ship without
compass, chart, or guide, but only following the trail of dead Indians
who had been thrown from the ships could find its way from the Bahamas
to Hispaniola."
Christopher Columbus derived most of his income from slavery, De Las
Casas noted. In fact, Columbus was the first slave trader in the
Americas. As the native slaves died off, they were replaced with black
slaves. Columbus' son became the first African slave trader in 1505.
Are you surprised you never learned about any of this in school? I am
too. Why do we have this extraordinary gap in our American ethos?
Columbus himself kept detailed diaries, as did some of his men
including De Las Casas and Michele de Cuneo. (If you don't believe me,
just Google the words Columbus, sex slave, and gold mine.)
Columbus' reign of terror is one of the darkest chapters in our
history. The REAL question is: Why do we celebrate a holiday in honor
of this man? (Take three deep breaths. If you're like me, your stomach
is heaving at this point. I'm sorry. Sometimes the truth hurts. That
said, I'd like to turn in a more positive direction.)
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