The Reality Behind Columbus Day

1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Everyone in America has learned this saying by the time they are in the second grade. We all know the story, right? Poor Columbus fought for years to receive royal funding in order to discover a new route to the Indies (or some variation of this story e.g. sailed to prove the earth wasn’t flat). But how many of us have heard “1493 Columbus stole all he could see”? How many of us really know and understand the significance of Columbus’s “discovery”? Most of us are taught that during the age of exploration, curiosity was on the rise and so set sail Columbus, looking to satisfy his curiosity. How many of us have ever questioned this rationale? Why do we choose to celebrate Columbus’s discovery rather than, say, the Vikings? What are we really celebrating when we honor Columbus Day? The fact is that we are truly honoring conquest and exploitation of indigenous people; however, we are all ignorant to the truth because of the lies and mythologies entrenched in our history textbooks and society as a whole.

Volumes of research have been dedicated to the true history behind Columbus’s motives for sailing and what he set out to accomplish. I will not attempt to cover all of it here, but here’s one well-known fact: he did not set sail to prove the world was round nor is it certain that he set sail to discover a western route to the Indies. The fact is that historians don’t know for sure. Yet our history and our society present these motives as undisputable fact while leaving out the important truths behind Columbus’s voyage to what is now modern-day Haiti. So, if Columbus was not motivated by mere desire for exploration or trade, what indeed was his motive? His motive was purely conquest and exploitation in order to amass more wealth, using Christianity to rationalize his behavior in Haiti. When Columbus arrived in Haiti, he immediately claimed everything he saw right off the boat. As per previous island “discoveries”, the Spaniards would read aloud (in Spanish) to the native peoples what came to be known as “the Requirement”:

“I implore you to recognize the Church as a lady and in the name of the Pope take the king as lord of this land and obey his mandates. If you do not do it, I tell you that with the help of God I will enter powerfully against you all. I will make war everywhere and every way I can. I will subject you to the yoke and obedience to the Church and to his majesty. I will take your women and children and make them slaves….The deaths and injuries that you will receive from here on will be your own fault and not that of his majesty nor of the gentlemen that accompany me.”

After scouting out the island in 1492, Columbus remarked that the island was filled with Indians ripe for subjugation. By 1493, Columbus’s intentions were to plunder the island of Haiti – primary sources from this time frame are very clear about his plans. He returned to Haiti heavily armed on his second voyage. Upon arrival, Columbus and his men demanded food, gold, spun cotton – basically, whatever the Indians had that they wanted, including sex with their women. The Spaniards used sheer terror and torture to subjugate the natives. If an Indian stepped out of line even the slightest bit, his punishment was to have his ears or nose cut off. So began Columbus’s, thus the Spaniards, reign of terror over Haiti for the next 63 years. The primary goal for Columbus was to take what wasn’t his and to destroy those who weren’t like them.

So, why is this important today? What does it really matter that year after year we idolize and hero-worship this man without knowing the truth behind his endeavors? The bubble gum version of his story that we are fed from childhood keeps us from really questioning the basis of our current society in America. The lack of facts keeps people from intelligently thinking about why the West dominates global society today. This story allows our culture to perpetuate social support for American Imperialism by reinforcing the tendency not to think about the process of domination and what this costs us (and those subjugated by us) in the long run. The only difference between Columbus’s motives in Haiti and our motives in Iraq (or substitute any other Third World country) is that today we rationalize our conquest by our doctrines of free market capitalism and democracy rather than Christianity.

Source(s): James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong • Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise