While I haven’t really acknowledged Columbus day in any other way than by not checking my mailbox. The anti-white bias at the (as John Cripps calls it) Southern (sic) Poverty (sic) Law (sic) Center’s tolerance.org website deserves a mention.
Remember, this is all literature which they suggest teachers use in the classroom. Unfortunately, for many parents out there, many “teachers” probably do. Tolerance.org presents their materials as two points of view, but (as you might have surmised) only one view is really presented in tolerance.org’s materials.
In the name of tolerance, Columbus is compared to, you guessed it, Adolf Hitler. In a piece promoted as an excellent example of a student essay, a seventeen year old writes.
In some respects, Columbus can be compared to Hitler. Both encouraged racist, violent acts against groups they considered inferior. American Indian activist Russell Means has said, “Columbus makes Hitler look like a juvenile delinquent.” Certainly, Columbus’ ideas killed millions of more people then Hitler’s ever did.
From almost the moment Columbus landed in the New World, he and his men committed horrendous acts against the Native Americans, igniting the beginning of racism in the Americas. In A Short Account Of The Destruction Of the Indies, Bartolome de Las Casas describes the slaughter:
[The Spaniards] forced their way into native settlements, slaughtering everyone they found there, including small children, old men, pregnant women, and even women who had just given birth. They hacked them to pieces, slicing open their bellies with their swords… They even laid wagers on whether they could manage to slice a man in two at a stroke… they grabbed suckling infants by the feet… and dashed them headlong against the rocks.
The way they normally dealt with the native leaders and nobles was to tie them to a kind of griddle…and then grill them over a slow fire, with the result that they howled in agony and despair as they died a lingering death.
The United States should abolish Columbus Day. It is a symbol of ignorance. It is a symbol of racism. And, it is a symbol of Native American genocide….To me, celebrating Columbus Day is like celebrating “Hitler Day.”
de Las Casas did report such things as a first hand observer of incidents in the West Indies, but they are sorely out of context in this essay, and I assert the primary documents do not support the author’s implication of Columbus as the culprit. In fact he is not mentioned at all by de Las Casas in this treatise, and these events, probably occurred (taking his word as true), sometime around 1512.
The words of the Admiral from his journal of the initial voyage are quite different.
As I saw that they were very friendly to us, and perceived that they could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means than by force, I presented them with some red caps, and strings of beads to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value, wherewith they were much delighted, and became wonderfully attached to us. Afterwards they came swimming to the boats, bringing parrots, balls of cotton thread, javelins, and many other things which they exchanged for articles we gave them, such as glass beads, and hawk’s bells; which trade was carried on with the utmost good will. But they seemed on the whole to me, to be a very poor people. They all go completely naked, even the women, though I saw but one girl. All whom I saw were young, not above thirty years of age, well made, with fine shapes and faces; their hair short, and coarse like that of a horse’s tail, combed toward the forehead, except a small portion which they suffer to hang down behind, and never cut. Some paint themselves with black, which makes them appear like those of the Canaries, neither black nor white; others with white, others with red, and others with such colors as they can find. Some paint the face, and some the whole body; others only the eyes, and others the nose. Weapons they have none, nor are acquainted with them, for I showed them swords which they grasped by the blades, and cut themselves through ignorance. They have no iron, their javelins being without it, and nothing more than sticks, though some have fish-bones or other things at the ends. They are all of a good size and stature, and handsomely formed. I saw some with scars of wounds upon their bodies, and demanded by signs the of them; they answered me in the same way, that there came people from the other islands in the neighborhood who endeavored to make prisoners of them, and they defended themselves. I thought then, and still believe, that these were from the continent. It appears to me, that the people are ingenious, and would be good servants and I am of opinion that they would very readily become Christians, as they appear to have no religion. They very quickly learn such words as are spoken to them. If it please our Lord, I intend at my return to carry home six of them to your Highnesses, that they may learn our language. I saw no beasts in the island, nor any sort of animals except parrots.
This hardly sounds like a massacre. The folks at SPLC must really take these island natives for some real idiots if they go swimming out to the Santa Maria looking to trade items with the people who just chopped their friends in half.
They go on in other articles and materials to mock this man’s desire to impart the Gospel of Jesus Christ to these people, thereby following the Great Commission.
“How could he think he could force his language and religion upon these people?”
What were your children taught about Christopher Columbus today?
