Caution: This article contains graphic content and may be disturbing for some readers
It’s now officially October and that means a few things are about to happen; all things pumpkin spice are going to inundate our stores and restaurants, Halloween season is in full swing, and this nation is once again about to celebrate the most deplorable holiday on our calendar – Columbus Day. As those of us with a first grade education or lower know, Columbus Day is the day we celebrate Christopher Columbus, who sailed the ocean blue in 1492 to discover a “New World.” What those of us with a third grade education or higher know is a much more sinister tale. Columbus’ so-called “discovery” of the “New World” may mark an important time in European colonial history, but for the Indigenous Peoples of this so-called “New World”, this date marks the beginning of a tragedy spanning hundreds of years and has been characterized by genocide, ethnic cleansing, slavery, and the brutal subjection of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.
Though many of the atrocities committed against the Indigenous Peoples of this continent occurred long after Columbus’ death, one need only examine his personal diaries, accounts of his contemporaries, and the archeological record to understand what a despicable, inhumane, and genocidal maniac he truly was. Any reasonable person can recognize many of the same types of twisted tendencies between Columbus and Adolf Hitler.
In an early journal entry while on the island of Hispaniola, Columbus remarked, “With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” And did that he and his men did. Columbus boastfully proclaims in a later journal “While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful Carib woman…I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling…I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly. Eventually we came to terms, I assure you, that would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for whores.”
A priest who accompanied Columbus on one of his journeys named Bartolome de las Casas was horrified by what he witnessed the Spanish Christians doing to the natives of Hispaniola. He wrote, “And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against the natives. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. The Spanish laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers’ breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them head first against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, ‘Boil there, you offspring of the devil.”’
In the end, it was estimated that the pre-contact population of Hispaniola was around 3.5 million people. By the early 1500s, after only about 20 years of Spanish rule, that population dropped to 50,000. By the mid-1500s, less than 100 years after contact, virtually none of the native population was left. By any modern, international standard, that would undoubtedly be classified as a genocide.
And yet year after year, this country continues to push this absurd narrative that we have to celebrate Columbus as the “discoverer” of America. It’s beyond time we stop celebrating this genocidal maniac and begin celebrating the true discoverers of America – its Indigenous Peoples.
Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day!