COLUMBUS DAY
In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
As holidays go, Columbus Day is a pretty harmless one. The banks close (as they find any excuse to) and some of us go about our merry working way as kindergarteners take the cue to begin making make hand-shaped turkeys and construction paper headdresses.
But why? Why are we celebrating this one man? This murderer and destroyer of worlds — both directly and indirectly — why are we honoring him?
He had three ships and left from Spain; he sailed through sunshine, wind and rain.
Let’s backtrack here and go over what we already know. On October 12, 1492 a Genoan career sailor hired by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain finally made landfall after a months-long …show more content…
In the subsequent four voyages he took to and from the New World to Europe, Columbus and his crew pillaged and plundered the entire West Indies; thinking the whole time that they were, in fact, in India.
The Arakawa natives were very nice; they gave the sailors food and spice.
The most obvious reason to not celebrate Columbus Day is that Columbus did not discover America any more than a person who finds a hip new restaurant is “discovering” it. The area had been settled for tens of thousands of years and other Europeans — think Leif Erikson and Amerigo Vespucci — had beaten him to it.
He ushered in an era that lasted centuries — one of greed and recklessness and above all, one driven by careless disregard for human lives deemed to be below them — it could loosely be called one of the longest and most far-reaching genocides in history. In 1492, there were between ten and fifteen million natives in what is now the contiguous United States — by 1880 there were 300 thousand.
Columbus sailed on to find some gold; to bring back home, as he'd been
In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
As holidays go, Columbus Day is a pretty harmless one. The banks close (as they find any excuse to) and some of us go about our merry working way as kindergarteners take the cue to begin making make hand-shaped turkeys and construction paper headdresses.
But why? Why are we celebrating this one man? This murderer and destroyer of worlds — both directly and indirectly — why are we honoring him?
He had three ships and left from Spain; he sailed through sunshine, wind and rain.
Let’s backtrack here and go over what we already know. On October 12, 1492 a Genoan career sailor hired by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain finally made landfall after a months-long …show more content…
In the subsequent four voyages he took to and from the New World to Europe, Columbus and his crew pillaged and plundered the entire West Indies; thinking the whole time that they were, in fact, in India.
The Arakawa natives were very nice; they gave the sailors food and spice.
The most obvious reason to not celebrate Columbus Day is that Columbus did not discover America any more than a person who finds a hip new restaurant is “discovering” it. The area had been settled for tens of thousands of years and other Europeans — think Leif Erikson and Amerigo Vespucci — had beaten him to it.
He ushered in an era that lasted centuries — one of greed and recklessness and above all, one driven by careless disregard for human lives deemed to be below them — it could loosely be called one of the longest and most far-reaching genocides in history. In 1492, there were between ten and fifteen million natives in what is now the contiguous United States — by 1880 there were 300 thousand.
Columbus sailed on to find some gold; to bring back home, as he'd been