Columbus Day

My office was open on Columbus Day this year, I think it was open last year as well. I can't help but think of this holiday as past its prime. Many states and countries have alternative versions of the holiday at this point and I'd like Florida or the whole country to follow suit. Columbus is like many things, the more you know about it, the less enticing it becomes.

Columbus, or one of his sailors to be more precise, saw an island in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492. Instead of buying some straw hats and going home, Columbus had the motivation to make a second trip and reached Cuba and the island of Hispaniola, where the Santa Maria ran aground. He had failed in his attempt to reach Asia and the gold Spain was hoping India would provide. He believed when he died that Cuba was a promontory of Asia because he failed to circumnavigate the island. He had met some very nice indigenous people and his relationship with them is really the entire problem with Columbus Day. Aside from making them all sick with disease which had not yet been introduced in the New World, he slaughtered them. The Arawaks and other native people were viewed as potential new Christians and slaves, the inquisition in Spain had vanquished or murdered all Jews and Moors from Spain and those policies rang true across the Atlantic. There are numerous texts which identify the horrors tribal people suffered at the hands of Columbus's crew and the first colonists. Those brutal acts are sufficient to taint Columbus in such a way that we should change the way he is celebrated.

First a little history about Columbus Day here at home. The first Columbus Day was in 1792 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Columbus's landing, they celebrated again on the 400th anniversary in 1892. Italian-Americans started celebrating in 1866 (Columbus was Genoese), but the holiday didn't gain in popularity until a lawyer, the son of Genoese immigrants who settled in California, popularized the holiday. They started celebrating in San Francisco in 1869. The lawyer moved to Colorado where the first statewide Columbus Day celebration was held in 1907. Denver, which has the longest running Columbus Day parade, has seen the parade protested by Native American groups for the last two decades. The Knights of Columbus got FDR and Congress to make October 12th, Columbus Day, a Federal holiday in 1934. Since 1971 it's been the second Monday in October. Most businesses are open, mine was.

In light of the gruesome treatment of the natives at the hands of colonists, many locales have altered their observance of the holiday. Berkley, California has changed the day to Indigenous People's Day, they have a pow wow. There is no Columbus Day in Hawaii, some Hawaiians have advocated a Discoverer's Day to include James Cook, but neither holiday is recognized by the state government. Even though State offices are open, there are still protests in Hawaii of any discoverer's holiday with some advocating an Indigenous People Day instead. It's not a holiday in Nevada, and in South Dakota it is a state holiday, Native American Day. In the Virgin Islands they call it Puerto Rico - Virgin Islands Friendship Day, when were they not friends. In Virginia, Columbus Day coincides with Yorktown Victory Day which celebrates, well you can figure it out.

In Latin America, Dia de la Raza is celebrated and it's largely scene as antithesis to Columbus Day and is primarily a way to celebrate the resistance to colonization and the indigenous peoples. Venezuela, under Hugo Chavez, has actually changed the name of their holiday to the Day of Indigenous Resistance. In 2004, activists toppled a statue of Columbus in Caracas. Chavez supporters compared the toppling of the statue to removing the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.

Children are fed myths about Columbus because history is not often pretty. They will not teach in elementary schools that Columbus's first thought upon meeting tribal men and women was that they could be easily subjugated as slaves and that some were immediately transported with Columbus back to Spain, many dying en route. When history has been sweetened and edited for so long that it becomes our reality, the most stalwart people describe any more accurate retelling as revisionist. Teaching history the way it happened is not revisionist, it's a lesson in humility and regret because we should all know the roots of our good fortune and come to terms when the roots are distasteful.

Scroll down and play the video to hear how Columbus discovered Ohio. Also Columbus made it into Dickipedia.

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