This column isn’t about the Indian Removal Act of 1830, when President Andrew Jackson began forcibly and systematically displacing tens of thousands Southeastern tribal members to lands west of the Mississippi River in a march now known as the Trail of Tears.
It isn’t about trophy hunters and the U.S. government forcing the Native Americans of the Great Plains into submission in the 1870s and 80s by deliberately destroying the millions of buffalo they relied upon for survival.
It isn’t about the fact that, right here in Putnam County, Tennessee, we still have a school with a “Redskins” mascot.
Nope. This column is about the guy who started all the trouble on this side of the world, the man we’ve been “celebrating” with a federal holiday ever since 1934: Christopher Columbus. It wasn’t until the 500th anniversary of Columbus bumping into America drew near that the state of South Dakota—home to a large population of Indigenous peoples—decided to do something about it. In 1990, their legislature renamed the second Monday in October “Native American Day.” Many states eventually followed suit, some calling it “Indigenous Peoples Day.”
The firestorm still hasn’t died down.
Who, exactly, was Christopher Columbus? We know that he was born around 1451 in Italy and spent his early years as a wool weaver while studying sailing and mapmaking. He lived for a while in Portugal before moving to Spain, in the era when fortune-seekers flocked to India and China for gold and spices. Because Muslim states blocked overland trade routes from Europe, finding a water route seemed a better way to access these riches.
In 1492, as anyone who’s been to elementary school knows, Columbus persuaded King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to finance a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, during which he would prove that it made perfect sense to sail west to reach the riches of the east.
A month after the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria departed Europe, they ran into the “West Indies,” islands we now know as the Bahamas, Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The travelers were warmly welcomed by the Arawak people who populated the islands. The rest, as they say, is history. History that included requiring most every schoolchild in the USA to memorize the poem that began, “In fourteen-hundred-and-ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”
That poem leaves out a lot, including the letter Columbus wrote to Spanish authorities. “We can bring you as much gold as you need and as many slaves as you ask,” he promised.
In the early 1500s, a young priest named Bartolome de las Casas found and translated Columbus’s diary. Though he had not been in America with Columbus, he had helped the Spanish conquer Cuba a few years later and had, himself, misused and mistreated the native people. But after learning horrifying details what Columbus had done to the “Indians,” de las Casas had a change of heart and published his findings.
Arawaks who could not find the gold Columbus sought had their hands cut off and bled to death. Or they were hunted down with dogs. Or hanged. Or burned to death. Those enslaved on plantations were starved and beaten. Others succumbed to European diseases from which they had no immunity. Of the millions of Arawak people who inhabited the Caribbean islands when Columbus arrived, none remained a century and a half later.
For almost 500 years, those who knew or even suspected the true story of Christopher Columbus swept it under the rug. He was a brave explorer, they claimed. An outstanding seaman. A devout Christian who opened the New World to “civilization.” Worthy of praise and honor.
Now we know better. That’s why I won’t be celebrating him next Monday. Or ever.
(October 11, 2025)