Are You Celebrating the Anniversary of White Men Landing on the Americas?

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for… glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned … They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features… They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Every October we honor the venerated author of these lines. As Columbus bravely sailed the ocean blue in 1492, visions of enslaved “savages” danced in his adventurous head. Columbus and the parade of European explorers who followed his lead to this supposedly undiscovered land, marveled at the unparalleled hospitality and open friendliness of these people, their belief in sharing. What self-respecting, normal young sea captain, faced with people who were completely open, would not react as our redoubtable Columbus did?

“As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts.”

Columbus reported back to his Spanish benefactors that “these people are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it.” Finance another voyage, he promised, and he would bring back untold riches: specifically, gold and slaves.

That’s right. He started the whole damn thing. The father of slavery and genocide in the New World, the man who brought us a way life through which we have eradicated whole societies, brought doom to entire races. War, pestilence, famine, disease. And of course death. Lots of death. Las Casas reports that the Spaniards “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test their blades” (see, the Spaniards got a little mad because when they tried to use natives as slaves, they tended to die in captivity from the disease the white folks carried. So they found other uses for them: target practice, knife sharpening… ). The die was cast, and our glorious white heritage of disaster had begun. Las Casas worried that no one would believe the extent of the slaughter: “… from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery and the mines [on the isle of Hispanolia]. Who in future generations will believe this?”

Who indeed? Today, as historian Howard Zinn notes, we celebrate Columbus Day as a holiday: “it all starts with heroic adventure — there is no bloodshed.” Buffy Saint-Marie called it “the genocide basic to this country’s birth” and lamented, “My country, ’tis of thy people you’re dying.” And it all started with Chris.

[reprint of a 1989 editorial from, surprisingly enough, The Alternative Orange. Most of the quotes are hijacked from Zinn’s People’s History of the United States.]