In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. “Indians! Indians!” Columbus cried. His heart was filled with joyful pride.
Remember that cute poem you learned in elementary school to help you remember Christopher Columbus? Well, reality wasn’t so poetic. Columbus was a hostile invader who didn’t discover anything, and he isn’t a man we should celebrate today — or ever.
Columbus is described as a terrorizing dictator, rather than an explorer. He arrived on foreign land and enslaved the native people for his personal gain, setting off one of the largest genocides in history. We shouldn’t romanticize Columbus’ actions.
“With 50 men they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them,” Columbus wrote in his journal two days after his arrival in the West Indies. There was never a peaceful moment between Columbus and the Native Americans.
It’s important to understand the context before fully condemning Columbus. Spain’s king and queen promised Columbus 10 percent of his findings and governorship over newly discovered lands. When he arrived in the West Indies, he saw what he believed to be primitive people wearing gold jewelry.
Because Europeans had a terrible territorial complex and Columbus had an incentive to find gold, he took some of the Native Americans as prisoners and forced them to show him where the gold was. After, he brought them back to Spain as slaves, but many of them died on the ship before making it to Europe.
Columbus was also misguided in where he thought he was. He thought he landed in islands around Asia and never knew he was really in the Caribbean Islands. In fact, he thought Cuba was the natives’ word for Japan.
Americans are also misguided about his arrival. We like to say Columbus discovered America, and I understand why we say that phrase. It implies America was an unclaimed
treasure waiting to be discovered, and it sounds much prettier than “Columbus stole America and murdered millions of indigenous people within six years.”
But we’re not comfortable saying that. First off, it’s a mouthful. It takes up 82 of the 140 characters on Twitter, which hardly leaves any room.
Second, it’s easy to pretend Columbus discovered a new world full of primitive people and undeveloped land. We like to think of Columbus as a hero who brought the Native Americans into the modern world. It makes white people look like saviors instead of invaders.
Columbus is an important figure in American history, and we shouldn’t forget or ignore him. But he doesn’t deserve his own holiday. If anything, we need a holiday dedicated to Native Americans and their history.
Some cities around the country already do this, including Seattle, Minneapolis and Berkeley, California. These cities renamed Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day, and it’s time the country as a whole adopted Indigenous People’s Day.
I’m not advocating erasing history, but I am saying we shouldn’t glorify a man who murdered and enslaved Native Americans. So, happy Indigenous People’s Day everyone.
Cody Sibley is a 19-year-old mass communication sophomore from Opelousas, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter at @CodySibley.