Editorial: Columbus Doesn’t Deserve His Own Day

 

By the time you read this, most students will be back in school after a long weekend, classes will be in full swing again and the man who allegedly founded America will still be unworthy of having his own day of celebration.

Columbus Day is considered one of the United States’ major holidays. Schools go on break and banks are closed, but what for? The man the entire country is honoring for a day was not America’s original founder, nor did he benefit the lives of the indigenous people in any way.

In fact, Columbus’ arrival was not as benign as taught to children in elementary school. Instead of the image of a friendly explorer who sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and made friends with the indigenous people, Columbus was a murderous maniac who slaughtered the native people and stained their land with their own blood.

Contrary to the stories told to us, historical fact debunks that Columbus discovered America; he did not step foot in North America whatsoever but rather landed on various islands like the Caribbean Islands, or the modern-day Bahamas, as well as the island known now as Hispaniola. He also explored the Central and South American coasts, but North America was not one of them.

The places Columbus did explore ended littered with bodies. A brutal tyrant, Columbus committed numerous atrocities against the native people already inhabiting the island and terrorized Spanish colonists, according to the biography “Columbus” by Laurence Bergreen.

The most notable victims lost to historical inaccuracies were the Taino people. Experts in agriculture, weaving and carving, the Taino greeted Columbus kindly, but for Columbus, greed and gold trumped the Taino’s hospitality. In 1496, the Taino’s population was an estimated 1.1 million; by 1542, it had fallen to below 200, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

With historical records exposing these horrendous flaws, why does the U.S. continue to dedicate an entire day to a man who murdered the innocent and was not the incredible explorer he’s been made out to be?

Columbus exaggerated his travels in his notes and, for a long time, they were forgotten. But in 1828, BackStory reports that Washington Irving, author of works like “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” wrote an English version of Columbus’ biography and distorted the truth even further to sell copies, lying that Columbus discovered America, was benevolent and proved the earth was round.

The first Columbus Day celebration recorded in the U.S. was in New York on Oct. 12, 1792, held to honor Italian-American heritage, according to The Washington Post. Italian-American immigrants, desperately fighting violent discrimination like the lynching of 11 Sicilians falsely accused of murder in 1891 in New Orleans, promoted Irving’s version of Columbus until President Franklin D. Roosevelt made the day into a national holiday, an NPR article found.

Despite the controversy surrounding his holiday, the false story of Columbus is still taught in some schools, his statues and monuments can still be found across America and the holiday is still recognized in more places than they are not. If the celebration of the holiday would stop, it does not seem likely that it would be soon.