In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, stumbled upon North America and destroyed the lives of countless people. It’s not a cute little rhyme like the one we were taught in grade school but it’s the truth.
The fact that we still commemorate Christopher Columbus as the founder of North America with a full-on official holiday that is pre-printed on calendars and celebrated with parades is insane to me. Not only was he not the first person to see North America (he wasn’t even the first European), he was also a piece of garbage and a complete monster.
When he and his fleet of ships landed in what is now the Bahamas in October of 1492, the unsuspecting Arawaks (the indigenous people of the region) emerged bearing gifts for these intruders who washed up on their land. Any normal person would maybe think “Gosh, these people seem nice despite the fact that we just waltzed onto their land with weapons. Maybe we could make some friends.” But history proves Columbus doesn’t play that way. He wrote the following passage in his journal after the initial encounter with the Arawaks:
“They do not bear arms, they do not know them. For I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They would make fine servants…With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
What? He literally just got here and he’s already twirling his moustache and drumming his fingers together like a James Bond villain.
Columbus didn’t just see financial gain in the Arawaks’ kind nature, he also saw dollar signs when he noticed their gold jewelry. After asking how they came about all that gold, the Arawaks took Columbus and his men to present day Cuba and Haiti.
The crew didn’t find a lot of gold there, but Columbus dressed up a few facts in a letter to Spain and told of “many spices and great mines of gold.” This led to the financing of a second voyage to North America for Columbus. But now Columbus was given a team of twelve hundred men and 13 ships. I can tell you now those ships were not going to be filled with gold.
The army returned to North America in 1495 and immediately captured fifteen hundred Arawak people (children were included). Of those fifteen hundred people, Columbus shipped 500 back to Spain as slaves. So Columbus basically started the transatlantic slave trade! Go Chris! Why don’t we add that to his list of accomplishments when we learn about him in kindergarten?
The rest of the Arawaks were forced to excavate what little gold was around and work at the estates of Columbus and his men.
And when you’re as ruthless and awful as Christopher Columbus was, there is no way you can simply draw your line at enslaving and killing people. You also have to show these people whose boss by raping and torturing women and young girls.
Not only did Columbus rape his fair share of native women and girls, but he also encouraged his men to do the same. He even used the act as a reward. One example is this account from Columbus’ friend Michele de Cuneo, who gives a full account of how he raped a “Carib” woman:
“I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom she said Lord Admiral [Columbus] gave to me, and with whom, having taken her into my cabin, she being naked according to her custom, I conceived desire to take pleasure…but she did not want it and treated me with her finger nails in such a manner that I wish I had never begun…I took a rope and thrashed her well, for which she raised such unheard screams that you would not have believed your ears. Finally we came to an agreement in such a manner that I can tell you that she seemed to have been brought up in a school of whores.”
These men didn’t just reserve this kind of torture for women, they also had their way with little girls. According to Columbus, there were “dealers” who would go around looking for girls. Apparently girls as young as 9 or 10 years old were “in demand.”
These are just a few of the many atrocities Columbus committed. Now, I’m sure there are some people who are thinking “But that was a different time, we can’t judge these guys for their behavior because that was just something that happened.
One, that’s a lame argument – since when was the torture, enslavement and murder of innocent people okay?
Two, it turns out this behavior wasn’t cool even by 15th century standards. When word of what Columbus was getting up to across the Atlantic reached Spain, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand (the people who sent Columbus to the New World to begin with) hired Francisco de Bobadilla to investigate. When de Bobadilla witnessed the dreadful impact of Columbus on the native people, he ordered Columbus be removed from power and sent back to Spain in chains. Unfortunately, even with him gone, the Spaniards continued the enslavement and violence started by Columbus.
Columbus’ presence in North America had lasting consequences. The number of natives dwindled, some tribes disappeared altogether. In the case of the Arawaks alone, their numbers dropped from more than 300,000 to 50,000 between 1492 to 1515. By 1650 there were no more Arawaks left on the islands.
And there is so much more to this story that I haven’t even talked about. But this evidence alone is enough to show Columbus for who he truly was: a disease. Do we really want to celebrate a man who fully admitted to raping, enslaving, torturing and murdering people who had done absolutely noting wrong? I realize few people even notice when it is Columbus Day, but it still matters. There are so many cool and beneficial people out there who deserve a day commemorated to them.
Hey, if we want to remember that fateful day when Columbus washed onto shore, maybe we should spend the day celebrating the Arawak people. We should celebrate the people who walked out of the forest and approached these strange and dangerous men with presents and kindness.
Maybe with a day like that we’ll remember to treat each other like humans.
