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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:
They strike open the wretched Indian’s chest with flint knives and hastily tear out the palpitating heart which, with the blood, they present to the idols in whose name they have performed the sacrifice. Then they cut off the arms, thighs, and head, eating the arms and thighs at their ceremonial banquets. The head they hang up on a beam, and the body of the sacrificed man is not eaten but given to the beasts of prey.6
There are paintings of this type of ritual in The American Museum of Natural History; one depicts an Aztec priest cutting the heart from a living victim and offering it to the sun god Tonatiuh. To the beat of a drum, Aztec priests would lead victims up a pyramid to the temple to be sacrificed. Aztecs believed that unless they appeased the state god Huitzilopochtli with human blood, the sun would fall. There were altars drenched in blood and bones strewn everywhere. The Spaniards found 136,000 human skulls at a temple in Mexico City.7
Believe it or not, some radical multiculturalists may call this an idiomatic expression of culture. But what exactly is culture and dare we consider one culture superior over another? What do we deem culturally beneficial to society as a whole and what do we consider evil? Culture is defined as the set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that characterize an institution, organization or society; and the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations.8 What exactly is valuable and transmittable about perpetuating a culture that barbarically destroys human life in order to appease a fictitious god? Or is it a violation of the PC code to call Huitzilopochtli and Quetzalcoatl fictitious gods?
It is difficult today to determine what exactly unites us as a culture in these United States. Is it not permissible to call a nation of people who declares itself as one nation living under God with certain unalienable rights endowed by their Creator superior to a culture of people that consumed human flesh, including children, on a consistent basis and, according to the law of the Incas, cruelly punished its parents and others who displayed grief during human sacrifices? Aside from the Aztecs and Incas, cannibalism was predominant among the Guarani, Iroquois, Caribs, and several other tribes.9 Why do secular historians deem it politically correct to go to war against the Nazis, but find it unacceptable for the Europeans to have stood up to revolting savagery and senseless destroying of human life (which is essentially what we stood up against with regard to the Nazis) 500 years ago in Native America?
Christopher Columbus held a mystical belief that God intended him to sail the Atlantic Ocean in order to spread Christianity. Could it be possible that God’s Divine Plan called for this faithful and valiant Italian explorer to sail unchartered waters in order to spread the Good News to the Native American people? And that maybe God in His Divine foresight chose Columbus, the Spaniards, and the European settlers to inhabit the New World - just as Moses and the Israelites were chosen for the Promised Land - so we could be free to worship Him? For it is written, “We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose”(Romans 8:28). We know that God holds no religious preference, however, He cherishes the freedom and brotherhood of mankind. He desires to save all - that includes Europeans and Native Americans. Moreover, if we consider what was to come and the effects of the Reformation in the 16th century, the timing of Columbus’ discovery could not have been more perfectly positioned in world history. It gave the people somewhere to go and worship freely without the fear of the guillotine for objecting to the religion of the state.
The steps leading up to Columbus' expedition to the New World seem to provide certain preconditions to the timing of his voyage. Was it mere coincidence that Columbus became stranded off the coast of Portugal in 1476 after being attacked while on a convoy from Genoa to England? Was it destiny that brought him among the Portuguese sailors, some of the most expert seamen in the world? And was it fate that his brother Bartholomew had opened a shop that sold charts and nautical instruments there? We will never know.
But we do know that Columbus’ strong faith, and that of his crew, is reflected in his careful selection of his date of departure, August 2, 1492, to align with the fiesta of Our Lady of Angels. He planned to depart on the morrow of the fiesta in order to give his men the opportunity to join their families in prayer and thanksgiving. Our Lady of Angels was also patroness of the Franciscan monastery of Rabida, whose friars, along with the devout King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, fully supported Columbus’ journey.10 So Columbus courageously set sail that day into the vast unknown with a mighty spiritual wind beneath his wings.
Multiculturalist Gary Nash claims that Columbus embodied an eccentric “European quality of arrogance.”11 These elitists have the tendency to misjudge confidence for arrogance and faithful devotion with stupidity. But this is merely an unconscious projection of their character traits onto Columbus and the European settlers. It is pitifully easy for the elitist intellectuals of the 21st century to sit behind their desks in their warm, 10,000 square foot homes revising textbooks and conjuring up the way things should have been done. That in itself is a prime example of unmitigated pretention and arrogance.
The motives for this character assassination of Christopher Columbus are quite clear. We can determine our own character assessment by the words he spoke, the company he kept and the many extreme and unprecedented challenges he had to face. Christopher Columbus kept a scrupulous diary and recorded many painstaking details of his first impressions of the New World and his encounters with the Native Americans. Regrettably, many of his recordings have been boorishly misinterpreted.
We know that he won the respect of the King and Queen of Spain, the Franciscan monks, and countless others during his time and throughout history. Are we going to let a fleeting popular mindset permanently extinguish an historic and significantly patriotic American holiday?
“Weep for me, whoever has charity, truth and justice! I did not come on this voyage for gain, honor, or wealth - that is certain, for then the hope of all such things was dead. I came to Your Highnesses with honest purpose and sincere zeal; and I do not lie. I humbly beseech Your Highnesses that, if it please God to remove me hence, you will help me to go to Rome and on other pilgrimages.”
Christopher Columbus (1451 - 1506)
Footnotes
1 Dinesh D’Souza. “The Crimes of Christopher Columbus.” First Things 57 (November 1995): 26-33.
2Ibid.
3 John J. Newman and John M. Schmalbach. United States History: Preparing for the Advanced Placement Exam. Amsco (2010): 10.
4 Dinesh D’Souza. “The Crimes of Christopher Columbus.” First Things 57 (November 1995): 26-33.
5Ibid.
6 Bernal Diaz del Castillo. The Conquest of New Spain. Penguin Books. (1963): 119.
7 Robert G. Athearn. The American Heritage, Volume 1: The New World, Dell (1963): 29.
8 Webster’s Dictionary
9 Dinesh D’Souza. “The Crimes of Christopher Columbus.” First Things 57 (November 1995): 26-33.
10Ibid.
11 Juan Manzano Manzano. Cristóbal Colón; siete años decisivos de su vida, 1485-1492. (Madrid, 1964). 397-400.
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