Why do we honor Christopher Columbus?

As long as I can remember, and that’s a long time, Columbus Day has been a holiday.  I never thought much about it.  We were taught in school that Columbus discovered America, so what’s wrong with a holiday for that?  “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. . . “

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt designated Columbus Day a national holiday in 1934. Since 1971, when Columbus Day was designated the second Monday in October, it has been celebrated as a federal holiday.

It wasn’t until I heard that American Indians were objecting to the holiday that I decided to dig down and find out why they found it to be a problem.  

Once again, it seems that what we were taught in school wasn’t exactly the truth. . .

First, and foremost.  Columbus did NOT discover America.   Millions of people lived in the area long before he showed up.  At best, he might be described as the first European to visit the Western Hemisphere.  (If you don’t count Vikings, but that’s a different story.)

Second, Columbus never even came to North America!   Not once.  Not a single time.  He made several voyages to the New World, stumbling upon what we now call Cuba and other Caribbean islands, and once to Central America.   CONTRARY TO EVERYTHING WE’VE BEEN TAUGHT, HE NEVER ONCE CAME TO THE NORTH AMERICAN MAINLAND.  

On December 5, 1492, Columbus anchored off the northern shoreline of what he called Española (Hispaniola) meaning “little Spain.” (Now called Haiti and the Dominican Republic).  He returned in 1493 and established the settlement of La Isabela, the first permanent Spanish settlement in the New World.

Anthropologists and historians estimate that there were some several hundred thousand to over a million Taíno people living there when Columbus arrived, but it is estimated only 32,000 Taíno survived in Hispaniola just 22 years later.  This means that somewhere between 250,000 and 950,000 people were killed in just two decades since Columbus arrived on this one island.   Within 60 years of his arrival, only a few hundred natives were still alive.   

Columbus enslaved many natives, sending thousands back to Spain.  Others were forced to search for gold and work on plantations using extreme violence and brutality.    As Governor, Columbus imposed ruthless and inhumane laws upon the natives.  In 2005, Spanish historians discovered documents which told that Columbus ordered a vicious crackdown in which many natives were killed in response to native unrest and revolt.  To deter further rebellion, Columbus ordered their dismembered bodies to be paraded through the streets. We don’t usually canonize mass murderers and celebrate them with a paid day off work.

Quite accidentally, Europeans brought with them new diseases for which the natives had no immunity.   Over time, many of the native populations were wiped out.   This annihilation of the native peoples, whether by accident or design, ended up killing millions after Columbus first arrived in the New World.   

The bottom line is that Columbus was a man of his time, and inarguably a courageous explorer, so perhaps it’s not fair to judge him by today’s standards.  

But neither is it fair to overlook and excuse what he did.  In his zealous search for gold, he paved the way for the enslavement, execution and/or infection of millions upon millions of native peoples, and brought about an end to a way of life that had existed for ages. 

It’s time to stop honoring a man who never discovered anything, much less America, and simply remember him as another important but infamous part of world history. 

I’m all for abandoning Columbus Day and celebrating Indigenous People’s Day or something like that.