Mourning Columbus Day

Why is the great explorer, or great exploiter, smiling? 

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS is revered as the man who claims to have "discovered" America, even though he really thought it was India; even though millions of native people were already living here for eons minding their own business before the Italian navigator stumbled his way into the New World.

Columbus thought he found a route to India so he called the native people "Indians," a misnomer that is still used today, much to the chagrin of the descendants of the indigeous peoples.

Depending on your point of view, today - Oct. 13 - as Post Offices, banks, some schools and federal offices close, Columbus Day marks the beginning, or the end. 

The beginning of an era of European conquest, the beginning of the exploitation of the land and resources; the beginning of the extermination of civilizations and enslavement of peoples; the beginning of lies and broken treaties that took the lands away from people who were living here first; the beginning of our great United States of America.

Or ... 

From the journals of Christopher Columbus.

These native cultures were adapted to a wide array of environments, from the ice-covered Arctic to the fertile valleys of the Andes. Many had developed impressive cities, vast trade networks, and sophisticated agricultural and architectural techniques.

Some scholars estimate that the Americas had a population of 60 million before Columbus' arrival.

      FYI: READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE: Christopher Columbus: hero or villain?

1492 marked the end of a way of life, the end of the civilizations that were thriving on the edge of greatness in Peru, the Yucatan, Mexico and the Confederacies of Indian tribes on the Eastern Seaboard; the end of great forests of North America that spanned from the Mississippi to the Atlantic, the end of the nomadic tribes of the Great Plains, the end of the hunter-gatherer people of the West;

Or ... You can sum it all up to say, it was the beginning of the end of the great native peoples of the Western Hemisphere. In the five to ten years after Columbus arrival, 90% of the indigenous people had died off, most of them by disease brought by the Europeans.
      

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news, views and chismis from an AANHPI perspective, follow me on Threads, on X, BlueSky or at the blog Views From the Edge. 

•