Spent some time with my son this weekend. Here is one of our intellectually stimulating conversations.
Me: "Monday's a holiday."
Z: "What holiday?"
Me: "Columbus Day!"
Z: "Columbus was an ass!"
So I Googled "Columbus was an ass" and it turns out Z was right!
Christopher Columbus Was An Asshole
After reading the book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen a few years back, I compiled a list of reasons that he should in no way have any positive connotations related to him whatsoever.
- His purpose was conquest and exploitation and used religion as a rationale for it (sound familiar?).
- He introduced 2 phenomena that revolutionized race relations and transformed the modern world: taking land, wealth and labor from indigenous peoples, leading to their near extinction and the transatlantic slave trade which created a racial underclass.
- On his first voyage he kidnapped 10-25 Native Americans to take to Spain.
- In 1495 sent 500 Arawaks to Spain, kept 500 slaves at the island of Haiti as well.
- In 1499 Columbus made major gold strikes on Haiti and forced hundreds of thousands of Indians to mine for him.
- Spaniards hunted Native Americans for sport and murdered them for dog food.
- Haiti population before Columbus - 8 million. Indian adults - between 1 and 3 million. In 1516 - 12,000 // In 1542 - fewer than 200 // By 1555 - all gone.
- This death rate led to Spanish importing tens of thousands more slaves from the Bahamas as well as starting a slave trade in Africa, initiated by Columbus' son.
HE DID NOT "DISCOVER" AMERICA.
- Afro-Phoenicians launched from Egypt and are said to have reached Atlantic coast of Mexico in about 750 BCE.
- Organic material associated with colossal heads of basalt on Eastern Coast of Mexico (Olmec heads - where they got the name for the dude on Legends of the Hidden Temple, duh) are dated to about 750 BCE. They are thought to be realistic portraits of West Africans.
- He is also erroneously associated with 'discovering' that the world is round and corrected faulty geography. It was the popular belief at the time and he did not right this wrong.
THANKSGIVING IS THE WHITE MAN'S HOLIDAY.
- The first non-native settlers were African slaves left in South Carolina in 1526 by Spaniards who abandoned a settlement attempt
- British in Virginia took Native American prisoners and forced them to teach the colonists how to farm.
- Squanto, that dude who taught white folk how to farm corn with dead fish, traveled across the Atlantic AT LEAST 6 times. He was part of an early slave trade and was taken to places such as Holland and Africa... how the fuck do you think he just 'knew' English if he never saw a white man before?!
- Early Virginians engaged in bickering, sloth or even cannibalism; they dug random holes in search for gold and were soon starting to dig up putrid Native American corpses to eat or rented themselves out to Native American families as servants.
- All foods mentioned in the original thanksgiving feast are exclusively indigenous to the Americas and had been provided by the local tribe (probably against their will, as well).
- Eastern Indians had observed Autumnal Harvest celebrations for centuries. Washington set aside days for a national thanksgiving but our modern traditions date back only to 1863. Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday during the Civil War. Pilgrims were not included in the tradition until the 1890s and no one used the term 'pilgrims' until the 1870s.
http://crustyriotgrrl.blogspot.com/2008/06/christopher-colombus-was-asshole.html
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Rated for hugs..
Go Chris
It's the same mistreatment that Mr Smothers went through back in the day, when he tried to warn newcomers to the West about pumices in the crevatzes!
Seriously, though, why are we wasting the children's time and attention on crap? They should be able to work as soon as they leave high school, and I don't mean in fast food jobs.
Who strayed content along a sunlit beach
Gathering shells. He heard a sudden strange
Commingled noise: looked up; and gasped for speech.
For in the bay, where nothing was before,
Moved on the sea, by magic, huge canoes,
With bellying cloths on poles, and not one oar,
And fluttering coloured signs and clambering crews.
And he, in fear, this naked man alone,
His fallen hands forgetting all their shells,
His lips gone pale, knelt low behind a stone,
And stared, and saw, and did not understand,
Columbus's doom-burdened caravels
Slant to the shore, and all their seamen land." - J.C. Squire
~Rated
Thanks mawb, fun read.
Of course, I have also read more positive accounts, too.
I think some of the "unpleasantries" are better established.
However, as a minor- league history and anthropology buff, it is my personal opinion that history is always changing. Tomorrow we will look at yesterday through yet another lens, based on what we learned - or failed to learn - today.
I am sometimes curious as to what horrors will be told of us in a few hundred years.
Which oddly enough, makes me quite an optimist concerning our future.
Excellent Post.
K
There's even more! Thanks for stopping by everyone. It was certainly interesting growing up in the 50s and 60s. We were lied to! And now.. WTF is going on in Texas with the text books? My GAWD!
Subjugation and slavery has existed in all recorded history and it wasn't until relatively recently that it was considered quite rude.
Now excuse me while I go grasp around in the dark for the light switch.
I was trying to be humorous but you chose to be offended. However, it wasn't Columbus who introduced the venality of slavery, it is in recorded history on all continents (except perhaps Antarctica) and making a big deal out of Columbus because he was so conveniently white is really absurd. He did a brave thing and acted according to his knowledge and times - he may have been wrong and unpleasant but he isn't any more any object lesson for all of us to laugh about than many other historical figures - except that beating up on Europeans is a so very Progressive thing to do.
I look forward to a column on your part about the slavery that has been perpetuated even up until the 20th century and perhaps even now. Unfortunately that did not occur in the Western World. It is also inconvenient I am sure that it was this same Western World (Europeans) that started and perpetuated the movement for the abolition of human slavery.
You call this humorous? I call it condescending.
And did you catch that I didn't even write this? Thus the link at the bottom...