Columbus Day is nothing to celebrate
by Debra Utacia Krol

This Columbus Day, many Americans will be marching in parades and giving speeches filled with pride and patriotism. But, in recent years, many of us have shunned Columbus Day celebrations. That’s because we’ve learned the truth about the Italian explorer.

In 1492, as any schoolchild knows, Columbus sailed from Spain with three small ships, searching for a new sea route to the rich countries of India and China. He didn’t find India, but he did stumble upon the Americas. On October 12, his flagship, the Santa Maria, ran aground on a reef just off the coast of the island of Hispaniola. The local chief of the Arawaks, the native inhabitants, rescued Columbus's crew and welcomed them warmly, in accordance with their customs.

The Spanish sailors did not share the Arawak custom of sharing and peaceable coexistence. They spied the tiny gold ornaments the Arawaks were sporting and decided that the region was swimming in riches. Columbus also noticed that the locals had no weapons capable of resisting Spanish rule. As historian Howard Zinn documents in “A People’s History of the United States” (Harper & Row, 1980), Columbus wrote in his journal, "They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane .... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

After King Ferdinand granted him governorship of the region, Columbus and his men captured Arawaks by the thousands, forcing them to procure gold. Those who could not produce the required amounts had their hands cut off and were left to bleed to death. Columbus forced the men to work in Spanish gold mines and the women to grow food. Natives who resisted the new rulers were hunted down with dogs and burned alive or hanged.

Soon the Arawaks, their spirits broken, their bodies starved and racked with the diseases brought by the invaders, began ending their own lives to escape the horror. Starving mothers, lacking the milk to nourish their infants, drowned them to prevent a slower death. The killings for sport and punishment, the deaths from disease and malnutrition and the suicides contributed to a rapid decline in the population. Bartolomeo de las Casas, a young priest who assisted Columbus in the conquest of Cuba, writes in his book “History of the Indies” (reprinted by Harper & Row, 1971) that "from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it."

Despite these horrors, history books commonly portray Columbus as a hero. Historians have long sugarcoated the slaughter, noting Columbus' atrocities only in passing or explaining away his barbarous acts as being "just how things were done in those days."

We have been misled about Christopher Columbus. As the truth emerges, Americans of all ethnic and religious affinities are joining Native Americans in refusing to celebrate Columbus Day. The death and slavery of Indians is nothing to celebrate.

Debra Utacia Krol is a member of the Salinan Nation of central California. She is a free-lance writer and a member of the Native American Journalists Association. She lives in Phoenix.

Copyright 1998, Debra Utacia Krol. Re-print or electronic distribution without permission is prohibited. Call the Progressive Media Project for information, 608-257-4626.