Monday, Oct. 11, will mark the 50th Columbus Day in America since the first official federal holiday of that name in 1971. The explorer from Genoa, Italy, made landfall in the New World on Oct. 12, 1492, which was a Wednesday. But we Americans like three-day weekends, so we celebrate his achievement on the second Monday of October. In Central and South America and in the Caribbean, many nations will also take note of the great event next week.
Extremists among Zinn’s disciples accentuate, exaggerate, and even fabricate the sins of Columbus but never speak of the ugly side of the natives of the region in the 15th century. On the very island where Columbus’s first landing occurred, which he called San Salvador, tribes were slaughtering each other right and left. The Tainos lived in terror of the ferocious Caribs, who rampaged, murdered, plundered, and enslaved on a regular basis. From the Aztecs to the Mayans to the Incas and most other tribes in the Americas at that time, ritual violence often took the form of brutal warfare and subjugation, child sacrifice, and even cannibalism.
Some of the Spanish conquistadors who came to the Americas over the next century were just as cruel as the worst indigenous brutes, but it’s utterly unfair to lump Columbus among them. Columbus executed some of his own crew for acts of cruelty toward the natives.
Some of those charlatans blame Columbus for inaugurating an influx of European explorers who brought devastating diseases with them, centuries before the world even knew of such things as viruses, bacteria, parasites, or sanitation. Diseases among the indigenous peoples were already epidemic and were the leading reasons why few lived beyond the age of 35.
What about the fact that Columbus set sail for Asia and not only never made it, but died in 1506 thinking that, in fact, he had? Can we fault him for not knowing when he headed west from Europe that there were two entire continents in the way (North and South America)? If we do, then we should question the wisdom of the many other fathers of accidental discoveries—from X-rays to quinine to corn flakes and Vaseline.
Therein, I suspect, lies the real motive for denigrating Columbus. If your aim is to delegitimize American liberty or even Western Civilization in general, then Columbus must go, even if it requires lies to get the job done.