Candid Concepts
Has anyone noticed the approaching “Fall Break” on many of the school calendars this year? It surrounds the Monday in mid-October previously celebrated in honor of a man named Columbus. He’s also the guy who is getting depicted as this arrogant, genocidal tyrant in our children’s textbooks. It’s quite apparent that Columbus has been under attack and his day of tribute is headed toward extinction. Unless, of course, we Americans consent to uphold this tradition we’ve had since 1792 when New York City celebrated the 300th anniversary of his landing in the New World.
Columbus Day in America has a long and rich history. In 1892 President Harrison called on the people of the United States to celebrate Columbus Day on the 400th anniversary of the event. In fact, the Pledge of Allegiance was written that year in patriotic honor of this anniversary. The United States has long admired Christopher Columbus. As one of America's oldest holidays, it celebrates the beginning of cultural exchange between America and Europe. America has more monuments to Columbus than any country in the world. The statue of Columbus, which stands in Providence, Rhode Island, was cast by the creator of the Statue of Liberty, Frederic Auguste Bertholdi. In 1971 Columbus Day became a federal holiday in all 50 states – a mere 40 years ago – after Congress passed a law designating it the second Monday in October.
So what happened? Why has the tide changed so recently and so suddenly? There seems to be a culture of people who adamantly oppose this honorary day and will stop at nothing until Columbus Day is forever wiped off our calendars. These are a new wave of elitist “intellectuals” who view themselves as the Enlightened Ones and believe that their own personal analysis of history is superior to what has been written in thousands of books in over 500 years. If one examines closely the words chosen in this new wave of textbooks hitting the classrooms, one will see that their problem doesn’t appear to lie with the man himself. Their problem is with what he represents, which is, the spread of Christianity to the West.
Let us consider the mindset of the advocates of multiculturalism currently infiltrating classrooms across the country. Not only are they convinced that Columbus did not discover America, they believe he “invaded and displaced a native population.”1 American Indian activist Mike Anderson insists, “There was a culture here and there were people and there were governments here prior to the arrival of Columbus.”2 One current high school textbook reads, “Europeans of all nationalities viewed Native Americans as inferiors who could be exploited for economic, political, and religious gain.”3
What we don’t read about is how Columbus portrayed the peaceful islanders he encountered when he arrived in the New World. He described them as “the handsomest men and the most beautiful women” he had ever encountered. He also praised their “generosity and lack of guile among the Tainos,” and contrasted their virtues with Spanish vices. Additionally, he expressed that although they were without religion, they were not idolaters and he was confident that their conversion would come through gentle persuasion and not by force.4
Furthermore, what we don’t read about is while the Indian tribes Columbus first encountered were hospitable and friendly, other tribes he later encountered were justifiably reputed for their brutality and inhumanity. After his second voyage Columbus was appalled to find that a number of the sailors he left behind in the West Indies had been killed and possibly eaten by the cannibalistic Arawaks.5 Consider an account by Bernal Diaz generally corroborated by modern scholars:
