Why I Hate Christopher Columbus (Post 1)

I have had a personal vendetta against Christopher Columbus since I was in the third grade.

As an elementary school student, I resented the fact that we were taught that Columbus “discovered” America, when we were simultaneously learning about the Native Americans who had already lived on the continent for thousands of years when he arrived. It seemed clear to me that it was the people who had originally crossed the Bering Land Bridge who actually discovered America, and that Columbus was taking credit for something he hadn’t done.

It became clearer as I went through more history courses that Columbus did not, of course, literally discover America, but rather that he was one of the first Europeans to successfully open trade routes between Europe and the “New World”, even though he was initially looking for a passage to India. I also learned what happened to the Native Americans when Columbus dropped in on them. They died. In large quantities. In my Laurel classes, I have always heard that their deaths were because they were not immune to European diseases, and their bodies could not defend themselves against illness. Which is true. But I have never heard any mention of the more brutal side of Columbus’s voyages to America, and how the Native Americans not only died because of diseases, but also because they were brutally enslaved, tortured, and slaughtered by Columbus and his minions.

“A People’s History of the United States”, by Howard Zinn; “Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil”, by Inga Muscio; and “Lies My Teacher Told Me”, by James Loewen, all draw from primary source documents, such as Columbus’s journal, to expose his horrific treatment of the Arawak people. Columbus captured hundreds of Native Americans and sent them back to Europe to be sold as slaves, and two fifths of them died on the voyage. He forced the remaining Arawaks to search for gold that he could send back to Spain, and those who were not able to meet the quota had their hands cut off and bled to death. According to Zinn, “In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead”, a deed that Noam Chomsky calls “one of the greatest exercises in genocide in human history”.

Inga Muscio also highlights some of the horrors that the Native Americans were subjected to at the hands of the Spaniards. She writes that “People were forced to carry the beastly Spaniards around on their backs, children were beheaded for sport, and bodies were casually sliced to test the sharpness of their beloved Spanish swords” (31). She also protests the celebration of Columbus day, writing that “[it] is a blatant white supremacist racist propaganda community celebration where banks, schools, and post offices are closed, and parades honoring a known rapist/murderer meander down city streets” (54). Muscio makes the interesting point that although Columbus never set foot in the present-day United States, we are the only country in all of the Americas to celebrate his actions.

I have never found information about the brutal treatment of the Arawaks at the hands of Columbus in any textbook I’ve had to read for school. I think it is unfair that, although it is true that many of the Native Americans did die from European diseases, this facet of their downfall is so blatantly ignored. If Christopher Columbus is going to be such a widely-known historical figure in this country, then at the very least people should know the entire truth about him and his self-centered, sadistic exploits. I feel the same way about the fact that Andrew Jackson is on the 20-dollar bill, when he supported the Trail of Tears, or the fact that although we learn about Woodrow Wilson’s involvement in World War I, we rarely learn about his torturous treatment of suffragettes.

But I guess I’ll save those for another entry.