punching a hole in the big lie

"We didn't land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us."

--Malcolm X

In 1492, there was an Italian explorer who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, hoping to find a route to India (in order to trade for spices). He made a total of four trips to the Caribbean and South America during the years 1492-1504. 
The First Trip:
He sailed for King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella of Spain. On his first trip, he led an expedition with three ships, the Niña , the Pinta, and the Santa Maria , and about 90 crew members. They set sail on Aug. 3, 1492 from Palos, Spain, and on October 11, 1492, spotted the Caribbean islands off southeastern North America. They landed on an island they called Guanahani, but he later renamed it San Salvador. They were met by the local Taino Indians, many of whom were captured by his men and later sold into slavery. He thought he had made it to India, and called this area the Indies, and called its inhabitants Indians.
While exploring the islands in the area and looking for gold to loot, his men traveled to the islands of Hispaniola (now divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Cuba, and many other smaller islands. On the return trip, the Santa Maria was wrecked and the captain of the Pinta sailed off on his own to try to beat him back. He returned to Spain in the Nina, arriving on March 15, 1493. He, who never abandoned the belief that he had reached Asia, led three more expeditions to the Caribbean. But intrigue and his own administrative failings brought disappointment and political obscurity to his final years.
The Second Trip:
On a second, larger expedition (Sept. 25, 1493-June 11, 1496), sailed with 17 ships and 1,200 to 1,500 men to find gold and capture Indians as slaves in the Indies. He established a base in Hispaniola and sailed around Hispaniola and along the length of southern Cuba. He spotted and named the island of Dominica on November 3, 1493.
The Third Trip:
On a third expedition (May 30, 1498-October 1500), he sailed farther south, to Trinidad and Venezuela (including the mouth of the Orinoco River). He was the first European since the Viking to set foot on the mainland of America. 
The Fourth Trip:
On his fourth and last expedition (May 9, 1502-Nov. 7, 1504), he sailed to Mexico, Honduras and Panama (in Central America) and Santiago (Jamaica). He is buried in eastern Hispaniola (now called the Dominican Republic). 
Some additional facts
He “discovered” a place that was already inhabited by Native Americans, those he named Indians (thinking he had landed in India), the idea of which is ludicrous.
Consider what it was that he allegedly discovered: a vast set of lands. Estimates of the pre-Columbian population of these lands vary widely, but numbers proposed in recent years by authorities on New World demographics such as Henry Dobyns suggest some 145 million people lived in the hemisphere in 1492, with some 18 million of those north of Mexico. These estimates are cited by David Stannard in his book American Holocaust as well as by others. Stannard goes on to show that this 145 million figure is roughly equal to the estimated 1492 populations of Europe, Russia, and Africa put together. Clearly, the lands visited by him could not be said to be empty by any stretch of the imagination.
But if they were not empty, could these lands be "discovered"? The American Heritage Dictionary defines "discover" as "To be the first to find, learn of, or observe." How can anyone discover a place which tens of millions already know about? To assert that this can be done is to say that those inhabitants are not human. And in fact this is exactly the attitude many Europeans and early Euroamerican displayed toward indigenous Americans. We know, of course, that this is not true, but to perpetuate the idea of a Columbian discovery is to continue to assign a non-human status to those 145 million people and their descendants.
His name was Christopher Colombus.
Whatever the mystery and controversy may surround the story of Columbus, there can be no doubt about the results of his voyage for both the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas and for the peoples of Africa, and these constitute the most pressing arguments for ending Columbus Day. Most of us are familiar with these results in a general sort of way: we all know that Indian populations were decimated and the remnant peoples pushed westward, and we all know that large numbers of Africans were brought to the Americas involuntarily and enslaved. But few of us are aware of the personal involvement of Columbus in each case.
Columbus was personally and intimately involved in wanton violence against the Native people of the islands of the Caribbean, where he landed. He encouraged his men to rape Native women as young as nine or ten; he punished minor offenses against his domination by cutting off the Natives' noses and ears. Resistance only inspired him to full warfare on the island people, using, among other things, hunting dogs to literally tear the Indians apart. Later Columbus set up a tribute system to get the gold he had been unable to find, forcing the people to bring him gold regularly. Those who failed to do so had their hands cut off. Columbus' men hunted the people for sport and used the bodies for dog food. Soon forced labor was added to the list as well, in a system which led to malnutrition and disease. The Native people of Haiti, where Columbus established a colony in 1493, were almost completely exterminated within one generation, due directly or indirectly to Columbus' actions.
Meanwhile Columbus set in motion the machinery which would lead to so much suffering for African peoples. Unconcerned about the depopulation he had caused on Haiti, he merely imported vast numbers of Native people from other islands to do his work for him, depopulating those islands in turn. He also sent large shipments of these people to Europe as slaves, thus beginning the pattern of transatlantic slave trade. Others followed his example, shipping Natives from various parts of north America both to Europe and to the Caribbean. But so many of these people died that the Spanish turned to Africa as their new source for slaves, reversing the direction of human traffic across the Atlantic. The first Africa-to-Caribbean slave trade was carried out by none other than Columbus' son, in 1505--only twelve years from the founding of Columbus' colony.
The legacy of Columbus' actions has been profound and long-lived. The pattern of genocide against the indigenous peoples of the Americas has been repeated over and over, and continues today in perhaps a more subtle form. The habit of white dominance over African-americans which became so integrated into American society during the centuries of slavery remains a central characteristic of our culture. Yet what is important here is not so much to blame Columbus, but to understand what we are doing when we celebrate such a man. The message being sent to Native Americans and to African-Americans by Columbus Day is not merely one of irrelevance, but one of active, overt hostility. Celebrating the father of genocide and slavery in the Americas tells the groups who were victims of those crimes that we as a nation think those things were good, and that as a nation we neither respect nor value the peoples so victimized.

The Americas will celebrate him and banks and schools will be closed today to commemorate him and his ‘discovery’. 

I am not suggesting that we abandon any of the features that make America the great country it is, or that we cease to celebrate the principles that we value so much. I am asking instead that we take those very principles on which our country and our patriotic pride are based, and apply them. As Americans, we must cease to endorse this holiday which embodies not our highest values, but their very opposites.


--works cited from:
American Heritage Dictionary. 1991. Second College ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. S.v. "discover."
Loewen, James W. 1995. Lies my teacher told me: everything your American History textbook got wrong. New York: New Press. 


Sinovcic, Vincent. 1990. Columbus: debunking of a legend. New York: Rivercross Publishing. 


Stannard, David E. 1992. American Holocaust: Columbus and the conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press. 


A public debate I took part in, in college. My team won.