Everyone loves a good three-day weekend. If you’re one of the many Americans spending this Monday sleeping in instead of sitting in work or in class, lucky you! You can use this day to reflect on the discovery of our Americas and the great man that led the way, Christopher Columbus.
Christopher Columbus is one of only two people we Americans have honoured by naming a national holiday after them. (The other is Martin Luther King Jr.) Even George Washington and Abraham Lincoln share a day. (President’s Day is both of their birthdays.) So, maybe we should be a little more exclusive when it comes to handing out national holidays to individuals. After all, MLK Jr. led a civil rights movement, but Chris Columbus, well that guy led an entire population into extinction.
Most people know by now that Christopher Columbus and his men were not the greatest guests a group of natives could have. But do you know how shitty they actually were? Here’s a quick summary of what exactly these celebrated heroes did when they “discovered” the Caribbean Islands. (That’s right, Columbus never even saw the mainland of North America. Lucky for those native tribes.)
First, Columbus arrived in Haiti and met the Arawaks, a native group that inhabited most of the Caribbean Islands. After sailing around more of the islands and seeing more of their villages, he wrote about them in his journal: “I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men and govern them as I please.” Well damn, kind of cocky and pretty messed up. He also noted in his journal that the natives had gold. After staying a while, he kidnapped up to 25 Arawaks and took them back to Spain. The 7 that survived the trip were put on display in Europe, like animals in a zoo.
Fast forward a year, Columbus goes back to Haiti. This time he goes fully armed with cannons, crossbows, guns, and of course, attack dogs, just in case the advanced weapons weren’t enough. The plan this trip: acquire the gold. The men demanded that the natives give them anything they asked for; gold, spun cotton, food, and even sex with any of their women. If anyone refused to give the men what they asked for, Columbus and Co. would cut off an ear or a nose and send them back to their village, to live as an example.
After a while of living like this, the Arawaks fought back. And it wasn’t pretty. It pretty much gave the Europeans an excuse to completely take over. Soon, no more gold could be found and the explorers settled for slavery. One of the Europeans even wrote back home that they now “hunted Indians for sport and murdered them for dog food.” Punishment for being a bad slave? Cutting off hands.
Columbus created a system where he gave entire Arawak villages to individuals and groups of the Europeans. He didn’t exactly call it slavery (smart), so this forced labor isn’t always talked about when the topic of Columbus arises. The natives were forced to mine gold, raise crops, and carry around the Europeans on their backs. Everywhere they went !? So at this point, the natives had no gold of their own, had no time to raise their own food, and were basically being used as personal pack mules.
Columbus even sent slaves back home. European nations loved the idea, and some even went overseas to collect some men themselves. While men were used for slave labor, women were often captured and sold as sex slaves. Columbus even rewarded his men by giving them native women to rape.
Columbus wrote in a letter to a friend: “A hundred castellanoes are easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls: those from ninety ten are in demand.” Which pretty much means “it’s easy to capture the native women and a lot of people are looking to buy them. The nine to ten year old girls are the best sellers.” W.T.F.
Life was so horrible, the natives turned to killing themselves. Sometimes as many as 100 committed mass suicide together. Women refused to have children. If they did become pregnant, some tried to self abort. Others gave birth and then killed the baby with their own hands.
Between the suicides, the malnutrition from having no food, and the new European diseases (which everyone learns about in history class) the Arawaks were quickly dying off. One European kept track of the population. In 1496, 4 years after Columbus’ first trip, there were 1.1 million Arawaks. Fifty-five years later, in 1555, there were ZERO. Literally, not one.
Basically, Christopher Columbus was pure evil. I love a Monday off as much as the next person, but I’m a little uncomfortable honouring a man who destroyed an entire civilisation. I don’t know, that’s just me.
