Columbus Day - a celebration?

It’s still taught in most American schools that Columbus “discovered” America. Columbus Day first became an official state holiday in Colorado in 1906, and became a federal holiday in the United States in 1937. we all know the absurdity of this “fact”.  Columbus could not have “discovered” America, as you can’t discover something that already existed and was populated. Columbus was far from being even the first European to find these shores. That distinction goes to the Vikings. The evidence seems to point to Vikings making contact with American Indians as long ago as the 10th century, as they explored the northeast coast of America, what they called Vinland. And so it was the Vikings, not Columbus, who first made contact with American Indians.


Columbus never forgot that his voyage was not one of exploration, but of economics. His financing came from the hope that he would find a lucrative new trade route. He did nothing of the sort: the people he met had little to trade. Columbus was desperate to turn a profit for his investors, and as an opportunist, he turned to slavery when easy riches weren’t forthcoming and captured some natives to show that they would make good slaves. Even from his first voyage he was envisioning how he could enslave the Natives he encountered: “They should be good servants …. I, our Lord being pleased, will take hence, at the time of my departure, six natives for your Highnesses,” he wrote in his journal on October 11, 1492. . Years later, he would be devastated to learn that Queen Isabela had decided to declare the New World off-limits to slavers. Columbus was a slave trader who heartlessly took men and women away from their families in order to lessen his failure to find a new trade route. He was a despot who kept all profits for himself and his brothers, and was loathed by the colonists whose lives he controlled.

He was also a cheat: after promising a reward to whomever spotted land first on his 1492 voyage, he refused to pay up when sailor Rodrigo de Triana did so, giving the reward to himself instead because he had seen a “glow” the night before. Columbus died a wealthy man in 1506