October 5, 2005

There's only one reason to keep Columbus Day on the national calendar: not to continue honoring the sailor as a great explorer, but instead to remember him as a great exploiter.

Christopher Columbus was a man on a journey in search of gold and new land, all in the name of the European Church. Upon landing on island shores in this hemisphere he found some of what he wanted. But in order to lay claim to it, he and his men forced indigenous peoples into helping them carry out their apocalyptic mission.

The day Columbus landed ushered in an era of willful, massive destruction of Native peoples. Those he encountered who refused to give up their lands and religions were exterminated. Genocide and colonization would be the rule across this continent for centuries.

Today the history of slavery and slaughter remains deeply disturbing to Native peoples. Many of us continue to call for an end to the annual homage this country pays to Columbus.

In 1495, after not finding enough gold promised to Spain, Columbus loaded up 500 Indians -- men, women and children -- and shipped them back to Spain to sell as slaves. Columbus and his men themselves took Indians as slave labor on huge estates, where thousands died.

He and his men also cut off the hands of Indians who were unable or unwilling to bring them a certain quantity of gold every few months. Those who fled were hunted down with dogs and were hanged or burned to death, according to historian Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States."

As a young priest, Bartolome de las Casas wrote at the time, the Spaniards "thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades."

Like many Native Americans of my generation, I had history teachers lead me to believe that Columbus was a fearless explorer who bravely discovered a new world. (My teachers never told me that it must have been a shock to my ancestors to learn they had been living in a "new world.")

Americans may have a clearer view of how this nation was created, but too many of us still do not understand that Europeans stole this continent and obliterated whole tribes and cultures.

Columbus Day should remain a national holiday, but one devoted to somber reflection.

Mark Anthony Rolo is a member of the Bad River Band of Ojibwe in Wisconsin. He can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.