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Columbus Day Questions
Many of us will never forget that famous elementary school rhyme: "In fourteen hundred ninety-two / Columbus sailed the ocean blue." At the time, it's not likely that we would have sensed any looming controversy behind those grade school lessons. With Columbus Day just around the corner, however, it's worth asking whether affection for the holiday is really a serious case of misguided nostalgia.
Columbus Day celebrates the "discovery" of the Americas. But it's clear that the continent had already been inhabited by well-established indigenous communities.
The people who already lived in the region welcomed the first European immigrants with curiosity and open hearts and minds. But it soon became clear that the explorers sent by European royalty had come to dominate, defeat, and destroy.
On October 12, 1492, Columbus wrote of the native people he encountered: "They should be good servants…they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them." 
Columbus is credited with forging the first links between American and European civilizations. But whether the manner in which these cultures collided merits commemoration as a federal holiday is doubtful at best.
Throughout most of the Americas, schoolchildren don't remember Columbus Day with cutesy images of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. In fact, it's often called by an entirely different name: Dia de la Raza (Latin American Heritage Day). This is a way to recognize indigenous roots in the Americas. It also serves as a tribute to the lives and civilizations lost in the name of slavery and European expansion — beginning with Columbus' arrival in 1492.
Today, Latin American and Caribbean schoolchildren that migrate to the United States are unlikely to receive a hero's welcome. In fact, they are often forced to live in the shadows as their parents struggle to survive. Presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann recently went so far as to mock Rick Perry's statement that anyone with a "heart" would want to protect the rights of immigrant children to an education — even if they were brought to the United States "through no fault of their own."
Migration across what's now the U.S.-Mexican border has existed for centuries. The reality is that this history was marked by periodic shared interest in promoting immigration. But as economic and anti-narcotic policies initiated by Washington have increased pressure on Latin American people to migrate, immigration has become a hot-button issue for people across the political spectrum.
To many, the flow of immigration seems daunting. Bachmann recently proposed a solution: "Build a barrier, a fence, a wall…every mile, every yard, every foot, every inch will be covered on that southern border."
But spending billions on border militarization hasn't stopped undocumented migration. In fact, one of the only notable outcomes of beefing up the border has been more death, danger, and lives lost in the desert.
Ideally, every October we would celebrate the coming together of the cultures of the Americas. Sadly, the legacy of cultural domination and separation continues with border militarization as a tenet of our foreign policy.
According to President Barack Obama, it is Columbus' "intrepid character and spirit of possibility that has come to define America, and is the reason countless families still journey to our shores."
To whom is Obama referring if not the immigrants who come to the United States for a chance to support their families? On this Columbus Day, let's consider the discrepancy between how newcomers are celebrated in our history but ostracized in our society — and what we can learn from a modern analysis of Columbus' story.
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Show AllColumbus kidnapped the Native Inhabitants he encountered and sent them back to Europe as Slaves.
He forced the native peoples of Hispanolia to work in mines and in forests with punishments like the removal of limbs for shirking inflicted on those people.
He and his men held hunting parties where Native men were let loose in forests and then told to run wherein they were hunted down by men on horseback with packs of dogs and murdered.
His men raped the women of the various villages and executed the males that protested.
So terrible did life become under Christopher Columbus and his men that some 50000 Natives committed mass suicide. The natives of that Island were exterminated to the last man woman and child and when those people all slaughtered, the Spaniards started importing slaves from Africa.
The Europeans arrival in the Americas should be a national day of mourning.
Nice synopsis. Accounts I've read are truly sickening. I would go one step further and say, the day Columbus Day becomes a national day of mourning will be the day the US has finally put away the myth of exceptionalism. I'm not holding my breath.
Good posts. And may I suggest replacing Columbus Day with Native American Day? It would be a nice gesture and a logical springboard to teach gradeschoolers about a more sustainable way of living.
On a side note, just to share an interesting story…Years ago I was in Arizona on vacation. There were two gas stations on a rural corner, one a sprawling all-purpose neon cathedral and the other a run-down sort of place with several Native Americans out front talking. I figured Corporate America had plenty and decided to fill up at the place that clearly needed my business. This was before “pay first” so I put twenty bucks in the tank and then went inside to pay.
When I handed the woman (Native American) a 20 dollar bill, she shook her head and said: “We don’t take $20’s.” That was bewildering, but I paid with two 10’s and left, thinking they must be having a counterfeit problem in the area. Of course, I would later discover that was not uncommon behavior for some of them as Andrew Jackson is on the bill.
In recollection, it was important that she was not hostile about it, but simply matter-of-fact. Nor did she offer any explanations to embarrass me, which I would not have deserved. Moreover, there were at least four other Native Americans standing nearby in the store and I did not get a single hostile look or comment from any of them. In other words, they sent me no hatred, they were just saying…
re: "may I suggest replacing Columbus Day with Native American Day?"
Hear Hear! Columbus Day is a farce. He discovered what? That a 'New World' of easily exploited natives existed which could aid the Spanish crown in their crusader wars?
Indigenous People's Day! We NEED it! The ghosts of America's past will haunt us all until we finally make amends for both the slavery, and genocide which marked, and marred our nation's inception.
Good idea to replace the name of the day. "Day of Mourning" would be good too.
To bad his ship didn't sink before it landed here and the Genocide of the NA .
I was brainwashed as a kid as wwre the millions after. We vilified the Indians who were wiped out by murder and smallpox. Put them on stinking reservations after we stole their lands from them. How many of us watched the Westerns as kids and played Cowboys and Indians?
The US invaded an occupied land and hasn't stopped since. I hear the US has killed over 10 million people in their quest for more lands. It just keeps invading and stealing and murdering innocent people all over this rock.
I am NOT. A proud American. I know what the US really stands for and am ashamed of it.
What Columbus Day stands for is genocide against the indigenous people carried out by European savages and the domination and slimy imperialism which resulted from this.
It's great to be a proud native American. If I was I would be.
In addition to the two great posts above, I would recommend reading the real truth about Columbus in Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States, 1492 to the Present."
According to President Barack Obama, it is Columbus' "intrepid character and spirit of possibility that has come to define America, and is the reason countless families still journey to our shores."
Columbus was a psychopath. Obama is a psychopath. The quote is just so much self-serving and meaningless blather. Likely he is hoping that his own bloody hands will be similarly sanitized and mythologized by the history books.
When Columbus Day rolls around, I always think of, and re-read, this superb historical summary from Kurt Vonnegut's excellent "Breakfast of Champions" (lightly edited for brevity):
__________________________
A lot of the nonsense was the innocent result of playfulness on the part of the founding fathers of the nation...
But some of the nonsense was evil, since it concealed great crimes. For example, teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy: 1492.
The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them.
Here was another piece of evil nonsense which children were taught: that the sea pirates eventually created a government which became a beacon of freedom to human beings everywhere else. There were pictures and statues of this supposed imaginary beacon for children to see. It was sort of an ice-cream cone on fire. [...]
Actually, the sea pirates who had the most to do with the creation of the new government owned human slaves. They used human beings for machinery, and, even after slavery was eliminated, because it was so embarrassing, they and their descendants continued to think of ordinary human beings as machines.
• • •
The sea pirates were white. The people who were already on the continent when the pirates arrived were copper-colored. When slavery was introduced onto the continent, the slaves were black.
Color was everything.
• • •
Here is how the pirates were able to take whatever they wanted from anybody else: they had the best boats in the world, and they were meaner than anybody else, and they had gunpowder... so the pirates could wreck the wiring or the bellows or the plumbing of a stubborn human being, even when he was far, far away.
The chief weapon of the sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was much too late, how heartless and greedy they were. [...]
__________________________
"I have two words for you -- predator drones. (Laughter.) You will never see it coming. (Laughter.) You think I'm joking. (Laughter.)"
-- President Obama at the 2010 White House Correspondents Dinner
Thank you for providing the Vonnegut excerpt and predator drone quote, OS. The latter nicely defines the "intrepid character and spirit of possibility" of BO.
Love Vonnegut.
The audacity of the pirates reminds me so much of the audacity of the people behind PNAC, the Carlyle Group, the Bush admin and companies like Xe (and many many others). I've read that this was one of the Skull & Bones society's closest held tenets (my paraphrase) —Power is there only for the truly audacious to obtain, and to wield. The secret of the success of the truly audacious rests in their ability to remain by all appearances, -normal men- incapable of acts normal people would consider ego-maniacal, remorseless and incomprehensibly ruthless.
If you're gonna lie murder and steal, do it on a grand scale, and everyone will view it as the irrevocable will of history.
Quote from BANNED IN VERMONT: "Columbus did not discover America. Maybe the people who were here first discovered America."
Nor was Columbus by any means the first European to visit the Americas.
One well-known was Leif Ericson a Scandinavian. Hardly known is Prince Madoc, a Welshman who circa 1177 arrived at Mobile Bay, returned to Europe, then came back and he and his people melded into the indigenous population, not returning to Europe. One legend claims that Prince Madoc had his ships sunk to prevent the return. Their remnant were noted by Lewis and Clark during their travels up The Missouri circa 1804, when they visited for some weeks with the Mandan, some noted as having green eyes and red hair.
Screw Columbus. He was an ambitious barbarian underwritten by a monarchy intent on conquest.
-30-
The Columbus drivel is maintained to assert Catholic land claims to the so-called New World
There is one book which I think covers this subject more comprehensively, and more eloquently, than any of the others I am aware of:
"The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy, by Kirkpatrick Sale.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/342088.The_Conquest_of_Paradise
This is an amazing piece of historical literature, exposing all the lies, myths and legends mentioned in the article and thread (and many many more), plus it does an excellent job of placing 'Cristóbal Colón' (his name, as he spelled it) in the context of his era, and his ongoing legacy in ours. I love this book!
By the way, there is a film of the same name, starring Gérard Depardieu, Armand Assante and Sigourney Weaver, and directed by Ridley Scott... but despite the powerhouse list of talent, this movie is a horrid recapitulation of all the falsehoods exposed in the book and I'm sure would have make Kirkpatrick Sale sickened upon watching. Everything he cautions against believing about the man is depicted as standard facts.
The reality is more complex, and sad, for all involved, including the 'great navigator'.
Do yourself a favor, get this highly-readable, eminently relevant, and thoroughly researched book!
From the back cover:
"The Conquest of Paradise tells the story of Christopher Columbus — his time, his exploits, and his legacy — as it has never been told before, just in time for the quincentennial commemoration of his momentous landfall in the Caribbean.
Based on seven years of exhaustive research, this impressive work offers a stark new portrayal of the Great Discoverer as a rootless, lonely man who never understood the new world he had discovered and never knew how to live with his fellow Europeans or the Indians he had conquered. Kirkpatrick Sale also refutes many of the enduring myths surrounding the Columbian legend — including those of Queen Isabella pawning her jewels to finance the voyage, of mutinous sailors who believed the world was flat, and of Columbus's death in obscure poverty.
Looking through the lens of ecological history, Sale shows Columbus as the product of a sickly and dispirited Europe and its history of environmental despoliation, and reveals how European attitudes toward nature transformed the vast, hitherto unspoiled continents of the New World. This highly original book offers a fascinating treatment of how history is perceived, how myths are manufactured, and how a reassessment of our history helps us understand our civilization today."
It's not just about Columbus either. There is ample discussion of Jamestown and the conquest of North America by the British, French and other Europeans.
I would also recommend "Stolen Continents: 500 Years of Conquest and Resistance in the Americas" (also published as "Stolen Continents: The "New World" Through Indian Eyes") by Ronald Wright. I remember reading it non-stop, day and night, and being impacted by it so much. Later on it occurred to me that while Wright went into some detail as to what the Spanish conquistadors did and what the settlers in the U.S.A. did, he didn't quite elaborate on the British history in North America as much. But nevertheless, I would still recommend this book because he bases his narrative more on the accounts of the native people than on European version, some of which he uses only to corroborate the former.
Thanks for the book referral Alcyon. I'm definitely going to add this to the library, and hope I can get through the stack in front of me, and onto reading it fairly soon. It's got pretty great online reviews.
One of the best references I got out of the Sale book was based on some passages which really stood out to me, taken mostly from Calvin Martin, another author who specializes on indigenous American history and perspectives. I highly recommend his works, "The American Indian and the Problem of History", "In the Spirit of the Earth", and "The Way of the Human Being".
In Conquest of Paradise, Sale discusses Calvin Martin's contention — in relation to Columbus' spiritual quest for salvation and the salvation he failed to ever grasp — that America's great potential gift to Europe (the salvation sadly never received) was its native consciousness, rooted in "the biological outlook on life"...
"In which patterns and concepts and the large teleological constructs of culture are not human-centered but come from the sense of being at one with nature, biocentric, ecocentric, and where there was myth but not history, circular rather than linear time, renewal and restoration but not progress, imaginative apperception far more subtle than science, understanding without words or even ideation, sacred rather than material interpretation of things, and an interpenetration into earth and its life-forms that superceded an identification with self or species."
"The cosmology here is so fundamentally different from Europe's that it is difficult for an observer from that Western tradition, not excluding those with the blood of American ancestors, even to come to terms with it, much less find the European words and concepts to convey it."
" [...] Trying to see from inside the hogan and tepee, we may at least understand how far from the mark the early European observers were in their assumptions that the Indians were "just like us," only darker, and would, occupying the only thought-world those Europeans could imagine, succumb to the same temptations and threats; and how far from the mark have been most subsequent historians down to the present — most unfortunately the Marxist ones, mired in their materialist explanations— in their reluctance to shed preconceptions that prevent them from understanding a biocentric and ecological thought-world of considerable grandeur and pertinence."
From this perspective I have been led ever since to embrace only the reconciled ideas of socialism, ecology and biocentrism within 'Eco-socialism'. Though Marx may have overlooked a "recognition of nature in and for itself", ignoring its "receptivity" and treating nature as "subjected to labor from the start" (from the Wiki on Eco-Socialism), he also "was a main originator of the ecological world-view. [...] Marx's discussion of a "metabolic rift" between man and nature, his statement that "private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite absurd as private ownership of one man by another" and his observation that a society must "hand the planet down to succeeding generations in an improved condition" provide strong evidence for this, and make it clear that ecology and socialism work best in a synergistic combination.
Cheers... and sorry for this getting so long, I just wanted to share 'a quick thought' your post inspired. ; )
Thanks for that excerpt from Sale's book, SS. The one line omitted from your excerpt (perhaps out of length considerations), just before "Trying to see from inside the hogan and tepee..." is also instructive:
>>"But if this too brief delineation of some of the basic ideas of the Indian earth-relationship is inadequate, at least it suggests how innocent what Calvin Martin calls "Indian thought-world" is from a belief in the idea of progress, for example, or the utilitarian view of nature, or the transcendence of material possession, or any view of creation seen only through the eyes of a single large bipedal species."<<
I agree that eco-socialism is a far better framework, given the multiple threats we are facing due to ecological destruction all around. But I think there is a reluctance or outright opposition to taking the worldview any further, even if one does not personally accept these ideas. I can still sense a bit of rigid conditioning by the ideology that scoffs at any "deviation" into anything that even remotely sounds "spiritual". I think I can see the HEAVY conditioning effect of materialism or scientific materialism and, frankly, sometimes it is scary. Because I suspect that it makes some people support or condone or explain away untenable acts of atrocities committed by certain regimes viewed as ideological brethren. Unfortunately, some otherwise well-respected people have also fallen for this ideological trap. I also have to wonder if some people consider the enormity of injustice done to Native Americans as something far, far greater than any other injustices that they may be opposed to today, and whether some of these people are not conditioned by their ideology and a certain European, anthropocentric view of history and reality.
So, no need to worry about your post being long, as it gave me a chance to think about a recurring phenomenon I encounter from time to time. And a reminder to myself to look for areas of agreement and to understand where the few disagreements are coming from.
Wow Alcyon, you blew me away catching that omitted section... Yes, I took it out for brevity, but I'm glad you ended up getting it out there anyway so the thought wasn't at all truncated. Its such a fascinating and important subject, it deserves getting full representation.
I think there is finally beginning to be a tectonic shift away from materialist inclinations, toward more integral or holistic views of ourselves and nature, existing in synergistic interconnectedness somewhere between matter, mind and biology. All of our human systems are currently in the midst of an upgrade away from the old paradigms, and now into this next paradigm, and so I doubt any type of politics can arise and survive (socialist or capitalist) if doesn't address this shift in consciousness... even unsympathetic and jurassic rightwingers will need to react to this shift and somehow at least incorporate it into their 'existential threat' list. (They might even be forced to embrace environmentalism, as they've been forced to 'embrace' some racial inclusiveness, in their own twisted way of course) .
From my point of view, the question isn't if, or when, it's 'how long will the shift take'? It's already happening, but will we see the manifestation of it in our lifetimes? I hope so, because I've been focused on this shift and hope and agitating for it for almost 2 decades now, and am getting to the point where I am impatient for faster progress. Luckily, I think the people in the OWS movement get it, and this perspective will arise organically from their currently amorphous list of demands (which is how I think it should be for now).
Clearly, if this shift were to take place, a shift in modern perspectives on indigenous Americans and peoples worldwide would also take place. I consider it a top national priority to commit ourselves to powerful gestures and acts of reconciliation — including some reparations where appropriate — but most importantly, to shift our awareness of who we are, and who they are, and who we are all together must occur. In our hearts as Americans a cold wind blows... a wind that speaks of the horrors of our past which we have never properly confronted or addressed. No movement for true justice, socialist or progressive, will find unsullied soil in which to grow until these toxins are removed.
It heartens me to find others who are fully aware of many of my own concerns, and who are familiar with what I consider largely overlooked, but essential material. This is a good sign, like I was stating, that things really are shifting and more people than I probably expect are right on board and waiting with us. Then again, this is CD, and we probably have a pretty strong concentration of very well informed and forward thinkers here, so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised.
Cheers and thank you for a response that gave me even more hope that integral change and awakening are finally on their way!
Many good posts here, and thanks to Sara Joseph for opening this conversation. I'm a little surprised, however, that she seems not to be aware that for years if not decades Indigenous People's Day has been the way many mark this upcoming day. The K. Sale books sounds intriguing. The Zinn chapter is a classic, and very powerful... but it begins with his imagination about how the indigenous people saw Columbus; it's important to note Z took some imaginative license here. From C's own letters, it is clear his central interests were slaves, gold, cultivable land, and good harbors--all cloaked in thick robes of Christian majesty.
"They Came Before Columbus" is another important corrective to the mainstream imperialist brainwashing. Also, a linguistics professor at Harvard self-published (it was so heretical, he could find no publisher, even though his work was impressive--I've seen a copy) in the 1930's a volume on the many linguistic connections between West Africa and the Olmec civilization of around 1000 BCE (I might be off a bit on this date, but the Olmec were before the height of the Maya, and certainly long before the Aztecs). The monumental "Olmec heads" sculptures are famous for their African features, another indicator of contact between these two worlds long before the European Conquest. (Evidence of pre-Columbian connections between the Americas and China is also pointed out by a number of scholars.) What is also significant is that these pre-Columbian contacts do not feature evidence of invasions and warfare, but rather of intellectual, cultural, and perhaps material trade. There's something about the particular mix of late medieval Catholicism and protocapitalism embodied in Columbus that seems to have spawned a very different way of "othering" new Earthly neighbors. I don't think we can begin to stop and eventually heal the Conquest until it is fully and honestly acknowledged and examined.
A THANKSGIVING celebration was held after each defeat and slaughter of a Native American Town, by the Colonists. Thanksgiving is a celebration of GENOCIDE. We Native Peoples have survived the greatest genocide in the World in the last five hundred years. So help us celebrate NATIVE AMERICAN DAY, not Columbus day.
Besides Slavery, don't forget that the much honored Columbus also brought Syphilis and Smallpox to Spain's glorious New World. In that same year of 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella executed, exiled or forced to convert Jews, Muslims and everyone else not a Catholic. Another credit to the Church.
Besides the tale of the Queen hocking her jewels, another one is that Chris was shtupping his benefactor.