Columbus/Indigenous People’s Day

[jayem]

Pres. Biden has officially designated today as “Indigenous Peoples Day,” as well as Columbus Day. Kind of an awkward compromise, but I understand the reasoning. As governor of the island he named San Salvador, he could be brutish and tyrannical towards the native Lucayan people. Even in the late 15th century, his cruelty was too much for the Spanish crown. He was fired from his job, and shipped back to Spain in chains. OTOH, I can also understand Italian-Americans may be upset that their holiday is being co-opted. I’m just curious as to what people think: is cancelling Christopher Columbus justified? Or is it excessive political correctness?

 

[Abaxvahl]

I’m just curious as to what people think: is cancelling Christopher Columbus justified? Or is it excessive political correctness?

The history of what he did and didn't do is complicated and every time I look into it I find differing information or some other nuance in what was happening. I don't know if it's justified or not although I myself wouldn't do that.

 

[spiritfilledjm]

Eh...both.

 

[ViaCrucis]

Pres. Biden has officially designated today as “Indigenous Peoples Day,” as well as Columbus Day. Kind of an awkward compromise, but I understand the reasoning. As governor of the island he named San Salvador, he could be brutish and tyrannical towards the native Lucayan people. Even in the late 15th century, his cruelty was too much for the Spanish crown. He was fired from his job, and shipped back to Spain in chains. OTOH, I can also understand Italian-Americans may be upset that their holiday is being co-opted. I’m just curious as to what people think: is cancelling Christopher Columbus justified? Or is it excessive political correctness?

As far as important Italians in the history of the Americas are concerned, I've never understood why we can't celebrate the guy these continents were named after, Amerigo Vespucci. An important Italian cartographer, and one who doesn't have the sheer history of awful that Columbus has.

I don't understand why Columbus.

There are so many Italians who have done good things and contributed good things--why die on this particular hill? I get how, perhaps in the past when Italian immigrants were treated with hostility by the American mainstream at the time, to find a cultural icon to ground their American identity in.

Maybe it's because I'm not Italian-American and so I don't understand that particular expression of American cultural heritage for myself; but it just seems to me that one doesn't have to cling to one of history's worst dictators and tyrants in order to find historical icons and heroes for one's cultural heritage.

I can't, in good conscience wish anyone a happy Columbus Day, but I'll happily wish everyone a Happy Indigenous People's Day. Because we absolutely SHOULD celebrate and honor the people who have suffered for centuries under the boot heel of oppressors. And to highlight how important fighting for Indigenous rights is.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[A_Thinker]

As governor of the island he named San Salvador, he could be brutish and tyrannical towards the native Lucayan people. Even in the late 15th century, his cruelty was too much for the Spanish crown. He was fired from his job, and shipped back to Spain in chains.

This doesn't sound like something that we want to memorialize ... and it's the first I've heard to this degree ...

 

[jayem]

As far as important Italians in the history of the Americas are concerned, I've never understood why we can't celebrate the guy these continents were named after, Amerigo Vespucci. An important Italian cartographer, and one who doesn't have the sheer history of awful that Columbus has.

Yeah. I was thinking Enrico Fermi. He lived 15 years in the US, where he did his most important work. He was head of the team in Chicago that created the world’s first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. He postulated the existence of the neutrino. He was the #2 man at Los Alamos, supervising theoretical physics. Aside from the Nobel Prize, he has a particle (fermion) and an element named after him (Fermium.) But nuclear physics is associated with bombs, power plant meltdowns, and radioactive contamination. So a Fermi Day won’t happen.

 

[ViaCrucis]

This doesn't sound like something that we want to memorialize ... and it's the first I've heard to this degree ...

One can find contemporary writings by Spanish writers who saw and witnessed first hand the atrocities carried out under the Columbus regime. They were horrified at what was happening, and it horrified the Spanish Crown.

We aren't usually as aware of these things because, unfortunately, most of us grew up with a hyper-sanitized and bowdlerized version of the history of Columbus. And part of the reason for that is in the 19th century a fictionalized version of Columbus' biography was published, and it became a very popular version of Christopher Columbus--this is the fictional story of Columbus about a brave explorer setting out to prove to the ignorant elites in Europe that the earth is actually round, instead of flat.

I think most of us today have come to learn that this wasn't true--that nobody in Europe thought the world was flat, and Columbus didn't sail west to prove the earth was round. Columbus wanted to sail west to reach India because he arrogantly believed that everyone was wrong about the size of the earth, and that the earth was actually a lot smaller. Every educated person in Europe knew that, at least in theory, you could reach Asia by selling west eventually, but the great and mighty ocean was huge--it was suicidal to think that even the best ships Europe had could make such a trip. That's why when Columbus tried to first get the Portuguese to finance his mission, they thought it was insane, plus they already had a route to Asia--by sailing around Africa. Spain didn't want anything to do with Columbus either, it took him harrassing them several times before they gave Columbus the three smallest and cheapest ships. Worst case scenario they would only lose three small ships and Columbus would be done annoying them, best case scenario Columbus finds something out there, who knows. Columbus just got really lucky that there happened to be a gigantic landmass stretching north to south halfway between Europe and Asia.

Columbus' luck became the indigenous people's disaster. And the Spanish Crown only tolerated Columbus for the time they did because he was sending them gold, new world crops, and other goodies--but that alone couldn't make them turn a blind eye from Columbus' atrocities.

And that's really one of the big takeaways here, when people look back and condemn Columbus' actions, it isn't just the clarity of hindsight or our modern sensibilities being offended. Columbus was considered a monster even in his own time, by his own contemporaries. By the standards of Columbus' time Columbus was considered a tyrant, a monster, and evil.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[essentialsaltes]

It has always seemed an odd choice to me for a federal holiday.

TIL: For the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1892, following a lynching in New Orleans where a mob had murdered 11 Italian immigrants, President Benjamin Harrisondeclared Columbus Day as a one-time national celebration.

 

[com7fy8]

Even in the late 15th century, his cruelty was too much for the Spanish crown. He was fired from his job, and shipped back to Spain in chains.

I don't know if it's justified or not although I myself wouldn't do that.

Well, a basic rule of Christianity is that we do not covet what belongs to someone else.

So, if ones coveted the land and the islands of other peoples, and then invaded them and killed local people, in order to take over their lands . . . I would say that is not Christian, at all.

So, it is likely they had no Biblical right to be ruling there, in the first place. Then, Christopher was not justified to do anything to hold on to what he had no right to have.

 

[renniks]

The problem with all these days honoring people is that they are all sinners. If we picked one particular native American he or she would be a sinner too.

It's always amusing how people think everyone of thier race were the good guys.
Truth is, natives were brutal to natives too. But it's currently politically correct to honor native Americans.

 

[bekkilyn]

Just watched this video by Ben Shapiro on this topic because I hadn't heard much from the viewpoint of people who support Columbus Day. It's not really been observed one way or another in my state so I hadn't really had much of an opinion on it, but I do kind of agree with Shapiro about celebrating them on different days rather than forcing it into a big political thing considering that the U.S. probably wouldn't have existed had Columbus not made the voyage.

 

[SoldierOfTheKing]

Pre-Columbian America was a land of cannibalism and human sacrifice. Satan's grip over it was strong before the light of the Gospel appeared...

 

[Desk trauma]

The problem with all these days honoring people is that they are all sinners.

Let he who has not over seen the brutal subjugation, by 1400s standards, of an entire people cast the first stone!

 

[jayem]

Pre-Columbian America was a land of cannibalism and human sacrifice. Satan's grip over it was strong before the light of the Gospel appeared...

Those were practices of mainland Mesoamerican societies, i.e., the Maya, Olmecs, Inca, and especially the Aztecs. In his journals, Columbus described the Lucayans as gentle and peaceful.

 

[Red Gold]

In his journals, Columbus described the Lucayans as gentle and peaceful.

And what has become of the Lucayans?

 

[ViaCrucis]

And what has become of the Lucayans?

They were entirely wiped from the face of the planet.

"Columbus kidnapped several Lucayans on San Salvador and Santa María de la Concepción. Two fled, but Columbus took some Lucayans back to Spain at the end of his first voyage. Vespucci took 232 Lucayans to Spain as slaves in 1500. Spanish exploitation of the labor of the natives of Hispaniola rapidly reduced that population, leading the Governor of Hispaniola to complain to the Spanish crown. After Columbus's death, Ferdinand II of Aragon ordered in 1509 that Indians be imported from nearby islands to make up the population losses in Hispaniola, and the Spanish began capturing Lucayans in the Bahamas for use as laborers in Hispaniola. At first the Lucayans sold for no more than four gold pesos in Hispaniola, but when it was realized that the Lucayans were practiced at diving for conches, the price rose to 100 to 150 gold pesos and the Lucayans were sent to the Isle of Cubagua as pearl divers. Within two years the southern Bahamas were largely depopulated. The Spanish may have carried away as many as 40,000 Lucayans by 1513. Carl O. Sauer described Ponce de León's 1513 expedition in which he "discovered" Florida as simply "an extension of slave hunting beyond the empty islands." When the Spanish decided to traffic the remaining Lucayans to Hispaniola in 1520, they could find only eleven in all of the Bahamas. Thereafter the Bahamas remained uninhabited for 130 years." - Lucayan people - Wikipedia

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Red Gold]

Terrible ....