Columbus Day
Two years ago I wrote about Christopher Columbus, whom we Americans have been unofficially celebrating since 1792, and as an official federal holiday since 1937 when it was established as a day for Americans of Italian descent to honor their heritage. I was taught that Columbus discovered America. I didn’t give one thought to the original Americans, the First Peoples, who already lived and thrived here and must have been the folks who actually ‘discovered’ what came to be known as ‘America.’ I doubt that my teachers back then even knew that Columbus never set foot on what came to be known as America. He’d actually ‘discovered’ some Caribbean Islands.
A Columbus Day parade in Union Square, Manhattan, 1892 New York Public Library Digital Collections
But as many Americans now know, the man America has so steadfastly honored for millennia had a cruel streak. On his first voyage, Columbus kidnapped some ten to twenty-five Indians and took them back with him to Spain. Only seven or eight of the Indians arrived alive, but they caused quite a stir in Seville. Ferdinand and Isabella provided Columbus with seventeen ships, 1,200 to 1,500 men, cannons, crossbows, guns, cavalry, and attack dogs for a second voyage.
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. Disfigured, the person was sent back to his village as living evidence of the brutality the Spaniards were capable of.
Native attempts at resistance gave Columbus an excuse to make war. On March 24, 1495, he set out to conquer the Arawaks. Bartolome de Las Casas described the force Columbus assembled to put down the rebellion. "Since the Admiral perceived that daily the people of the land were taking up arms, ridiculous weapons in reality . . . he hastened to proceed to the country and disperse and subdue, by force of arms, the people of the entire island. 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." Naturally, the Spanish won. According to Kirkpatrick Sale, who quotes Ferdinand Columbus's biography of his father: "The soldiers mowed down dozens with point-blank volleys, loosed the dogs to rip open limbs and bellies, chased fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer them on sword and pike, and 'with God's aid soon gained a complete victory, killing many Indians and capturing others who were also killed.' "
Having found no fields of gold, Columbus had to return some kind of dividend to Spain. So in 1495 the Spanish on Haiti initiated a slave raid. They rounded up 1,500 Arawaks, then selected the 500 best specimens - of whom 200 would die enroute to Spain. Another 500 were chosen as slaves for the Spaniards staying on the island. The rest were released. A Spanish eyewitness described the event: "Among them were many women who had infants at the breast. They, in order the better to escape us, since they were afraid we would turn to catch them again, left their infants anywhere on the ground and started to flee like desperate people; and some fled so far that they were removed from our settlement of Isabela seven or eight days beyond mountains and across huge rivers; wherefore from now on scarcely any will be had."
Columbus was excited. "In the name of the Holy Trinity, we can send from here all the slaves and brazil-wood which could be sold," he wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1496. "In Castile, Portugal, Aragon,.. . and the Canary Islands they need many slaves, and I do not think they get enough from Guinea." He viewed the Indian death rate optimistically: "Although they die now, they will not always die. The Negroes and Canary Islanders died at first."
A particularly repulsive aspect of the slave trade was sexual. As soon as the 1493 expedition got to the Caribbean, before it even reached Haiti, Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native women. In Haiti, sex slaves were one more perk that the Spaniards enjoyed. Columbus wrote a friend in 1500, "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."
Columbus Day was first observed as a federal holiday in 1937, initially as a day to celebrate Italian American heritage. At the time, Italian immigrants were experiencing widespread discrimination and xenophobia.
On the next centennial, in 1892, President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation encouraging Americans to celebrate Columbus’ discovery and the four centuries of American life he’d enabled, describing the Renaissance explorer as “the pioneer of progress and enlightenment.” In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt declared Columbus Day a federal holiday.
In 2021, Joe Biden officially added another designation to October’s second Monday: Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The proclamation followed decades of protest against Columbus Day celebrations.
In 1990, South Dakota became the first state to officially recognize Columbus Day as Native American Day.
Photo by AIM, the American Indian Movement
Sources:
https://time.com/6104176/christopher-columbus-italian-american/
My wife and I just spent about 10 days in Spain. What was painful is how they revered Columbus! I did discuss this with a wonderful woman from Atlanta. We both made the same gesture towards Columbus statues, discretely. It did not want others to see, but I wanted to share solidarity with my new friend!