Should We Celebrate Columbus Day?
Once again, it's time to celebrate Columbus Day.
The Untold Story
The second Monday in October is celebrated across America as Columbus Day. It is a celebration of the man who discovered America. In school, children are taught that Christopher Columbus was a national hero. In actuality, the man was a murderer. It is true that he found a land that was unknown to the “civilized” world, yet in this discovery, he erased the natives inhabiting the land. With slavery, warfare, and inhumane acts, Christopher Columbus and the men who accompanied him completely destroyed a people, a culture, and a land. These are not actions that should be heralded as heroic.
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, navigator, and colonizer, born in the Republic of Genoa, in what is today northwestern Italy.
What we know
The Natives 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 Natives labored for hours to save his crew and cargo.
What really happened
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.
Hero?
Christopher Columbus is in no way a hero. All he did was encounter unknown lands while trying to get to Asia. He did not even manage to complete his initial goal of finding a commercially viable route to Asia by traversing the western oceans. He died feeling a failure because of this, not because of the tragedy he had brought to the Indians. His great accomplishment was the destruction of an entire population. How is that heroic? If Christopher Columbus were alive today, he would be put on trial for crimes against humanity.