Columbus: Bold Explorer or Genocidal Asshat?

(In which I suspend snark and translation tales to address marked asshattery. Fine, there's still snark. I wrote this in 2007. I'm surprised every year by requests for it, so ... the debut at the new digs.)

In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Remember that? That little rhyme is probably why 1492 is the one date we actually remember from school. I bet you can name all three ships too: the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María. In third grade, I made miniature versions out of construction paper. I used Popsicle sticks for the masts. It was fun.

Too bad they don't teach you the rest of the story in school.


In fourteen-hundred and ninety-three, Columbus stole all he could see.

What are we really celebrating on Columbus Day? Ask any school kid, and little Johnny's likely to recite, "Columbus discovered America." Except he didn't. He didn't "discover" it, and it wasn't present-day "America". The man thought he had found India by the backdoor. Like some 15th-century Rick Steve tour. He and his crew murdered, raped, and enslaved the people who were already there. Christopher Columbus never even set foot on what we in the United States call "America".

Nevertheless, he has a holiday and a place in every textbook in this country. Textbooks that don't teach us what really happened. At best, you get a watered-down, whitewashed [ahem], quick mention. Like this:

Much controversy exists over Columbus' expeditions and whether or not one can "discover" an already-inhabited land. The natives of the Bahamas and other islands on his journey were peaceful and friendly. Yet many of them were later enslaved by the Spanish. Also, it is known that the Vikings explored the North American coast 500 years before Columbus.

Nevertheless, Columbus' expedition was unique and important in that it resulted in the first intertwining of Europe with the Americas, resulting in the first permanent European colonies in the New World.

Wow, they actually mentioned enslavement, and the land already being inhabited (and therefore, already discovered, asshat). But we quickly move on past that unpleasantness, right on to the "Nevertheless..." bit. After all, his murderous asshattery did lead to the first permanent European colonies in the New World, and that's what's really important.

Because nothing is real until the Europeans say it is, y'all. If you don't believe me, just pick up any US textbook.

History is written by the victors.
 ~Winston Churchill

You got that right, Winston.

the lowdown

In my daughters' History of the Americas class, the instructors taught from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States: 1492 to the Present. If you haven't read it, click it, order it. I'm serious - please get this book. Anyway, they were fortunate. Howard Zinn is not usually found in high school history classrooms. My eldest's instructor also held a mock trial for Columbus, in which my daughter was prosecuting attorney. The kids in the "regular" classes don't get this perspective. They get the regular textbooks. Which could, if I were in the habit of digressing, bring me back to the subject of who is and isn't represented in the IB honors classes, and the system of advantage in our institutions. But I won't digress.

Zinn doesn't gloss over what happened. He presents a very different version of history, using primary sources (What a concept!) that we're going to look at today, such as the journals of Columbus and others who were there. This description of the Taino -- renamed "Indians" behind the faulty navigation -- was penned by the invader himself:

... they are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary they offer to share with anyone . . .

. . . They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. . .

They would make fine servants . . . With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.

~Christopher Columbus, personal journal

Ah, colonizer thinking at its best. Didn't even cross his mind to respect the people already on the land. Shoot, it didn't cross his mind to even see them as people. Because it wasn't really about exploration, it was about ownership. It was about taking whatever the fuck you want, even if someone else was there first. You want gold? Take it. Take it in the name of your Almighty God, because that makes everything all right. Those people already living here? Take them, too. Hell, make them get the gold for you. Less work. If they don't cooperate, kill them. Or cut their hands off.

That'll learn 'em.

Columbus got gold fever when he saw some of the Taino wearing small gold earrings. He brought 500 natives back to Spain as slaves. Well, 200 didn't make it, actually, but no matter; he managed to convince the Spanish royalty that there was gold in them thar hills, and was funded for a second voyage. This time with 17 ships and over 1,200 men to colonize their find.

Hey, if there's gold to be had, go after it -- you can't expect uncivilized brown folks to manage a valuable commodity like gold. Or oil. (But that's another story.) It's time for some conquering and subjugation, by gawd. Problem was, there really wasn't that much gold to be found.

So they instituted a quota. Zinn writes:

They ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

Taino who didn't meet the gold quota lost their hands.

So if your 14-year-old son couldn't collect his quota of gold because it basically wasn't there to collect, some guy who had just shown up on your land one day would cut off your son's hands. Maybe leave them dangling from his arms. For a laugh. Make you watch.

Think about that.



According to James Loewen in Lies My Teacher Told Me, the Spaniards forced the Taino to work in mines. The ecosystem was affected, and the people suffered from malnutrition on top of the beatings, rapes, and disciplinary amputations. Diseases ran rampant, immunities were low or nonexistent. The Spaniards forced the people to carry them from place to place. Because who wants to waste energy on walking when you've got hands to cut off and people to string up? Those who survived all that were driven to suicide, abortion, even killing their own newborn infants in order to spare them from life in those conditions.

Pre-Columbian population estimates vary, but run as high as 8 million.
-- By 1496, the estimate is about 3 million.
-- By 1516, about 12,000.
-- By 1542, fewer than 200 were left.
-- By 1555, they had been essentially exterminated.

Yeah, that's called genocide. Mass murder at the hands of the bold explorer. But that's not all:

Because the Indians had died, Indian slavery then led to the massive slave trade the other way across the Atlantic, from Africa. This trade also began on Haiti, initiated by Columbus's son in 1505.

~James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me

Whoa, what? Did you all catch that? Because this is important: after Dad and pals decimate the Native populations, Junior heads to Africa to replenish the labor force. The African slave trade. Because they killed off the Native slaves. Way to carry on the family legacy, Junior. Genocide and slavery.

This is what we're celebrating, people. 


A Dominican priest's eyewitness account -- not an opinion, an actual eyewitness account:

Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire gold, and to swell themselves with riches in a very brief time and thus rise to a high estate disproportionate to their merits.

It should be kept in mind that their insatiable greed and ambition, the greatest ever seen in the world, is the cause of their villainies. And also, those lands are so rich and felicitous, the native peoples so meek and patient, so easy to subject, that our Spaniards have no more consideration for them than beasts.

And I say this from my own knowledge of the acts I witnessed. But I should not say "than beasts" for, thanks be to God, they have treated beasts with some respect; I should say instead like excrement on the public squares.

~Bartolomé de las Casas, Dominican priest and settler, personal journal

Damn. That's some greed, right there, folks. That's a serious entitlement complex. And, I'm thinking, it's not too far off from some things going on today, 500 years later.

The Spaniards, in a clever act of rationalization, would read a proclamation -- in Spanish, of course -- informing the Taino that the land and everything on it now belonged to the invaders to do with what they would. If the people chose not to cooperate after hearing the proclamation, well, that's their own fault, isn't it?


More from the Dominican priest -- again, dude was there. He saw this shit (emphasis mine):

They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them, but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house.

They 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 headfirst 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!' Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby.

They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim's feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive.

To others they attached straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and set them afire. With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim's neck, saying, 'Go now, carry the message,' ...

They would cut an Indian's hands and leave them dangling by a shred of skin and they would send him on saying, 'Go now, spread the news to your chiefs.'

They usually dealt with the chieftains and nobles in the following way: they made a rid of rods which they placed on forked sticks, then lashed the victims to the grid and lighted a smoldering fire underneath, so that little by little, as those captives screamed in despair and torment, their souls would leave them...

~Bartolomé de las Casas, Dominican priest and settler, personal journal

Yeah, that's the real story. That's the unpleasantness that our history books left out.

So if you skimmed over that part, go back and read it.

It's one paragraph, people. One minute.

That's what is still being left out of your kids' history books now, and what your kids probably did not learn about last week. On Columbus Day. But hey, maybe they made a paper ship with Popsicle sticks, or a sailing hat. They might have learned about Old World foods and New World foods, or talked about what it might have been like to be on a ship for 69 days.

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So ...

That's what happened. And now we have this holiday. Why?  Why, with all this information -- from the actual journals of Columbus and others who were there, no less -- are we still teaching our children that this racist murderer is some great icon of exploration and innovation? Why do we still have a federal holiday, giving the man and his actions the tacit approval of our government?

Well, for one thing, our government still holds him up as an example for us all in the pursuit of our great goals. Read between the lines and weep:

Christopher Columbus not only opened the door to a New World, but also set an example for us all by showing what monumental feats can be accomplished through perseverance and faith.

~George H.W. Bush, 1989 speech

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In 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail on a journey that changed the course of history. On Columbus Day, we celebrate this voyage of discovery and honor an Italian explorer who shaped the destiny of the New World.

Christopher Columbus' bold journey across the Atlantic opened new frontiers of exploration and demonstrated the power of perseverance. His journeys inspired other risk-takers and dreamers to test the bounds of their imagination and gave them the courage to accomplish great feats, whether crossing the world's oceans or walking on the moon.

Today, a new generation of innovators and pioneers continues to uphold the finest values of our country discipline, ingenuity, and unity in the pursuit of great goals.

~George W. Bush, October 8, 2007

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Our Nation is built on the efforts of men and women who possess both the vision to see beyond what is and the desire to pursue what might be. Today, the same passion for discovery that drove Columbus is leading bold visionaries to explore the frontiers of space, find new energy sources, and solve our most difficult medical challenges.

~George W. Bush, October 9, 2006

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Did you catch that bit about finding new energy sources? Wake up, people! How much has really changed? Yesterday's gold is today's oil. Our government, still today, holds Columbus up as an example of the "monumental feats" that can be "accomplished through perseverance and faith."

And to the victors belong the spoils.

Here's the thing:

As long as Columbus is officially held up as a bold explorer, forcible domination of groups who have something we want -- gold, oil, land -- continues to be seen as the norm. Invasion and colonization of groups deemed to be "less civilized" than we are continues to be seen as natural.

If Columbus were to be officially recognized as a mass murderer, if the holiday were no longer sanctioned by our government, then we'd have to examine history through a different lens. We'd have to examine ourselves, as individuals, and as a country.

We'd have to ask ourselves the question:  If forcible invasion and domination was wrong then ... how do we justify it now?

History is indeed written by the victors. And it's perpetuated by those who benefit from that victory.

Carlos Latuff, artist

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- UPDATE - 
I wrote this in 2007. Since then, the city of Seattle voted to observe Indigenous People's Day instead, thanks to a lot of hard work by tribal communities and allies. Other cities have passed similar legislation. Alaska, Oregon, Hawaii, and South Dakota do not recognize Columbus Day. South Dakota, ahead of the curve, has celebrated Native American Day since 1990. Fewer than half of the 50 states still give a day off work for Columbus Day. 

Here in Costa Rica, they celebrate el Día del Encuentro de las Culturas, which is something like "the meeting of the cultures". Right. That was some meeting. Or you could interpret it as "clash of the cultures". Other Latin American countries celebrate Día de la Raza. People here are pretty clear on what old Cristóbal Colón was all about.

I was disappointed to see the annual presidential proclamation confirming Columbus Day for 2015, but heartened (a bit) to see that President Obama did at least talk about the effects on the Native population and the importance of tribal sovereignty. It's something. I guess. I'd hoped he'd step all the way up, though. At least he said "exploration" instead of "discovery". Baby steps. But damn, that baby is taking hella long to walk. 

I hope to update this post one day with a federal proclamation recognizing Indigenous People's Day. 

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For more real info about Christopher Columbus and other assclowns, ditch the textbooks and pick these up. This post is just the tip of the iceberg. Columbus is just one piece of a history that has been, in large part, mistaught.

A People's History of the United States: 1492 to the Present, Howard Zinn

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James Loewen

Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong, James Loewen

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