Each year, on the second Monday of October, Americans celebrate Columbus Day. It was declared an annual day of celebration in 1934 and is usually observed by parades, department store sales, and a day-off for government employees. In Elementary schools, children cut slivers of black and brown construction paper to fashion their own replicas of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria. Then they repeat that cute rhyme learned by all second-graders: "In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue."
From their history books, elementary and high school students learn that Christopher Columbus discovered America. They are given visions of a brave and valiant hero who challenged the unknown sea. Nowhere in their history books or their curriculum are they taught the real truths: that he did not discover America but the Caribbean, that he spoiled a peaceful land, that he murdered natives in the name of God, and that he tortured, enslaved, and authorized the complete annihilation of the Arawak Indians.
Traditional lessons of Columbus do not include the history of the natives and the land he conquered. Numerous details are removed to give a sanitized version of Columbus as an explorer, navigator, and discoverer. However, there are historical documents, including Columbus' own diary, that reveal a very different person. From his numerous letters and reports, we learn that what Columbus wanted most was gold and he was willing to do anything to seize wealth that belonged to others.
Another historical document that tells a different history is the journal of Bartolome de las Casas, a Spanish missionary who participated in the conquest. His journal entries give numerous eyewitness accounts of how Columbus and his men treated the natives with repeated mass murder and torture. Las Casas tells how the Spaniards "grew more conceited every day" and how they refused to walk any distance, preferring to "ride the backs of Indians" or be carried in hammocks by Indians. "In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them...and fan them with goose wings." Their sense of power over the natives led to absolute cruelty. They "thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades."
The discovery of the New World was not for human progress as students are led to believe. For Columbus, it represented life without limits and unbridled freedom. He lauded himself as the admiral of the ocean sea and unleashed a reign of terror upon the inhabitants of the island that is now Haiti. One day, in front of Las Casas, Columbus and his men dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3,000 people. "Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight," he says, "as no age can parallel..."
Under Columbus's governorship, 50,000 native people died within a matter of months. By 1508, over three million people had perished from Columbus's campaign of brutality and sadism. Some historians, who have an ideological duty to tell the whole truth, see the destruction of the natives as the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world. Samuel Eliot Morison, a Harvard historian and the most distinguished writer on Columbus, tells about the enslavement and the killing: "The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide."
These facts are omitted in the telling of the story of Christopher Columbus. History books given to students in the United States relate the heroic adventure without the massive bloodshed. They celebrate Columbus Day without knowing the path of destruction he led. In Denver, the American Indian Movement of Colorado has been protesting the Columbus day Parade. Its members have gathered support from policy makers to change the curriculum from a sanitized hero-worship version to a more inclusive lesson grounded in research and historical documents. As a result, some Denver public schools are updating its history curriculum to encourage discussion of the competing sides of Columbus's story. In following this example, the nation's largest teachers union, the National Education Association, have also organized protests to make changes in their history curriculum to include the history of the natives.
It is a wonder that in the land of America, where slavery is denounced, human rights are exulted, and equality is in constant check, a slave-trader and genocidal maniac is exulted as the first American hero. Those who take the responsibility to educate themselves and actually delve into the research to uncover the truth about Columbus know better than to celebrate Columbus. To teach Columbus as a hero to students is to justify the atrocities he caused. It allows children to quietly accept the lesson that conquest and murder stand for human progress. To honor Columbus is to celebrate his legacy of greed and arrogance. It shows to the rest of the world that something is amiss in the American value system.
The telling of the history of Columbus must, at the very least, include the true stories that have been ignored for centuries. The discovery of America is not only from the viewpoint of the discoverers but also from the natives who were there first. Their stories are just as important, if not more, in the birth of the New World. Students need to know the disturbing nature of what in truth is being honored on the second Monday of each October.
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