Another perspective on Columbus Day

Familiarity breeds contempt. Aesop



I am writing this column on Oct. 12, the day known as Columbus Day. Once upon a time, this would have been the actual date of this holiday, but then someone decided that minor holidays are better if they fall on a Monday, thus giving us a three-day weekend. So we now have two versions of a lot of these holidays, the actual date on which whatever it is we are celebrating took place, and the day on which we choose to celebrate this event.

By the way, minor holidays are the ones that offer a lucky few a day off, in this instance, bankers and federal workers. The rest of us are still expected to show up at the salt mines.

So, as Bugs Bunny might ask “What’s all the hubbub, Bub?” On Columbus Day-and by using my handy dandy calculator, I find that this was 518 years ago-an Italian sailing under the auspices of the Spanish crown “discovered” America.

I can just see it now: Columbus and his men, uncertain as to where they were and not knowing what might happen to them, suddenly see land, and Chris declares “Look! I have discovered a new land!” And one of his men, not seeing what his Captain saw, asks “Where?” “Right there” says Chris, “where all those people are standing. That’s the land I have discovered.”

BTW, indigenous people don’t seem to be as taken with the man the Spanish called Cristobal Colon as those descended from Europeans are. One reason might be that since that day in 1492, they have been misidentified.

A college Professor and member of one of the bands of the original inhabitants of this land was asked on the Phil Donahue show how he preferred to be identified, as an Indian or a Native American. He replied that he didn’t care. One term, he said, was coined by a sociologist in the ‘60’s, and the other came from a lost white man who thought he was in India.

That was the least of Cristobal’s sins, though. For instance, it was Cristobal and the Spanish who unleashed a holocaust on the Caribbean natives known as the Arawak. Cristobal had told the crown, after all, of the great riches to be found in the land that he had discovered, and he was in a lather to prove his claims.

On his second voyage to the island inhabited by them, Cristobal and his men demanded that the Arawak bring them gold; more than existed on their islands. When the Arawak could not meet the unreasonable demand, a slaughter began. These people were shot, hanged or burned to death. Although they tried to resist this invasion, they were greatly outclassed by the Spanish who had, among other weapons, muskets.

When Cristobal first found them, there were 250,000 of the Arawak. The Spanish killed them by the tens of thousands, and within a remarkably short time, the Arawak were gone. There are none of this people left on Earth today.

Naturally, this is not celebrated on this holiday.

Not that the Spanish got by unmolested. Seems that some of his men, when committing the crime of rape, came away with the disease we know today as syphilis. Well, as the old saying goes: "The wheel of justice grinds slow, but it grinds exceeding fine."