Columbus Day

[Miles Teg]

I'm talking about the FIRST Indians. You know, the first people who crossed over the Bering land bridge from Asia. They didn't steal the land they settled on, because there literally wasn't anybody here.

Sorry, I didn't notice the emphasis on "first". Frankly, that's a silly notion. Yes, some tribe had to have settled down on virgin soil once back in the dawn of time, but the chances of that tribe corresponding to any nation or tribe in existence in 1492 are slim to none. All indicators point to pre-Columbian America having a history just as rich and varied and tragically bloody as that of Europe or any other continent.

 

[NovaKart]

Americans have been celebrating it since the beginning of the US, you listed why it became a federal holiday

Isn't that kind of what we're debating? The idea of it being a federal holiday? Sometimes people would celebrate an important anniversary like the 300th and 400th anniversary but that's it really until Italian Americans took it over.

No, it was an invasion as humankind already existed in the Americas.


If I had that power I'd make sure it was done differently, I wouldn't necessarily stop any contact.


Considering the Taino are basicly extinct thanks to the Spanards I'd say it is exactly appropriate.

Well we are talking about Columbus and not all the Spanish and to charge him with genocide technically I don't think there's enough cause to say he was actually trying to exterminate the Taino race.

 

[Tee Kay]

Well we are talking about Columbus and not all the Spanish and to charge him with genocide technically I don't think there's enough cause to say he was actually trying to exterminate the Taino race.

And there's plenty to suggest that genocide was unintentional. Columbus wanted the Taino subjugated, not exterminated, since he needed the manpower. To say that Columbus' people killed all the Tainos is giving them too much credit; most deaths were probably due to epidemic diseases, not straightforward massacres. The deaths of so many Taino slave labourers was a disaster for the Spanish, who started importing slaves from Africa.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

In fact it seems Spaniards began to import black slaves before the extinction of the tainos. There were tow main causes for it: first, it was illegal to enslave indians unless they were proven cannibals; second, the indians were too weak for the hard work. It is somewhat funny how Bartolome de las Casas, universally considered an early Human Rights activist advocated for importing black slaves from Africa to protect indians.

 

[kochman]

Sure. But then you're still left with European invasions, slave taking, destruction of indigenous cultures, so on and so forth. All totally normal for Columbus's day and age, but still bad. And as I mentioned earlier, even the contemporary Spanish thought that that Columbus was a cruel colonial governor.

From a moral perspective, the smallpox epidemics are just the tragic topping on the misery cake.

This is silly. If any other group had the technology, and will, to make it to the new world at the time, the results would have been approximately the same for the indians... look at Africa for proof... it certainly wasn't only the Europeans that exploited Africa. Therefore, blaming Europeans for being of their time, yet more advanced and daring... that's something Europeans should be proud of really.

Honestly the only reason Columbus Day is celebrated in the USA is because some Italian Americans decided to get together and decided to turn it into a "we're so special because our ancestors came from the same penninsula" event. Despite the fact that Columbus was from Genoa and there was no united Italy at the time and he may not have even thought of himself as being Italian and probably would have little in common with some guy from New Jersey who can't speak any Italian.

Uh... yeah... ok. This is utterly wrong. It has been celebrated since before Italians were really coming over in droves, first off...
Doesn't matter if there was no unified Italy, on two counts... 1) There doesn't have to be a nation as we know it today for it to exist... if you want to go that route, there was Italy since the Romans made their empire. It broke into smaller factions, culture remained largely the same... 2) The fact that he was Italian is quite irrelevant to the Holiday... I remember as a kid, we didn't even learn that Columbus was Italian for a long time, only that he sailed for the Spanish Empire...
And, not having much in common with a Jersey Shore Italian... thank God!

 

[NovaKart]

Like I mentioned before, sometimes there was some commemoration of the event at every centennial but that hardly makes it a regular holiday.

Did the culture remain largerly the same after the breakup of the Roman Empire? I'm sure a lot of historians would disagree with that.

The fact that he was Italian is totally relevant to Italian-Americans celebrating it.

 

[luiz]

Oh? Who did the first Indians steal it from? There weren't any humans there

What Miles said. The indians who the Europeans met when they arrived were not the "original indians". Rather, they were from tribes who had kicked the previous inhabitants out (or exterminated them).

Talking about "the indians" as some sort of unified group is silly. There were many "nations", and many tribes, and they fought each other constantly and took land and slaves from one another.

Read what I wrote about southeastern Brazil. When the Portuguese arrived here, virtually all indians belonged to some subgroup of the Tupi nation, which is of Amazonian origin. They came to dominate the Southeast by fighting and wiping out the natives (who probably wiped out other natives, and so on for thousands of years).

The indians were as warlike as Europeans, Asians and Africans. Shocking, no?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

You can say that about anyone from the 16th century.

I would much rather celebrate the day as Amerigo Vespucci Day, since he's the one who actually realized it was another continent and not just India, and wasn't a murderous enslaving cockbag.

 

[timtofly]

Come again? Are you saying that the Iroquois evolved independently from the rest of the human race?

I'm talking about the FIRST Indians. You know, the first people who crossed over the Bering land bridge from Asia. They didn't steal the land they settled on, because there literally wasn't anybody here.

BTW, I did study the North American Indians in my anthropology courses, from the Arctic to Meso-America. I'm quite aware they had vastly differing cultures.

In your opinion, why do the Inuit face east (in worship) and the Inca faced west (in worship)?

On Columbus, I do not think his purpose was to "enslave" anyone. What happened was he did stumble across an unknown culture who did not have the riches of the orient he was searching for, and the inevitable did happen. This less advanced culture succumbed to the social policies of a more advanced tribe, and were a society who did find themselves trying to "play" catch up.

I am not sure that I buy into the "war" theory at all. War is an european and advanced concept. I think the native americans were still in the survival "age". I am not saying that they did not have wars, but that relocating to another spot was probably a better choice than holding an all out war.

Tribal and nomadic people tend to stay small and mobile and are not really territorial in that they "hold" onto land, but they will defend their "rights" to the piece of land they are currently "using". They also tend to be less "consumers" than europeans. These groups were the descendents of people who traveled (without settling) the whole of Asia and the frozen north. For all we know they may have kept on circling the globe, and could have been the first civilization to do so.

@ luiz

They only became that way, when they gave up their nomadic society and developed cities. People who advance out of the survival age and nomadic stages will settle and build cities, defend their territory, and expand. This expansion is done from growth, not society. The longer people survive in cities, the more productive they become. Population explosion happens when people settle down and "dig" in. It usually does not happen when they are nomadic and mobile.

Even Khan and Alexander who were mobile conquerors could not "hold" all they conquered.

 

[NovaKart]

Columbus actually did right away come up with the idea of enslaving the Tainos.

It's hard to make generalizations about the American Indians, even if you leave out the more advanced MesoAmerica and Peru. Some of them practiced agriculture, some didn't. Some were more nomadic, others were not. They also adapted pretty quickly to using European products and trading for them so they did kind of become consumers. This ended up not working out too well for them because they were cosumers of things they themselves didn't know how to make.

 

[kochman]

The fact that he was Italian is totally relevant to Italian-Americans celebrating it.

Yeah, but not to the nation celebrating it.
For decades, the Italians were discriminated against... harshly. Included in that period, the national holiday period.

It was about the man changing the world's course, not some (at the time) imaginary Italo-American lobby group.

 

[NovaKart]

So what? A lot of other groups were discriminated against even more harshly.

I don't see why Italian-Americans have to choose someone of dubious moral character who they really have nothing in common with other than their ancestors come from the same peninsula and then go crying about how someone wouldn't rent an apartment to their great-grandfather.

 

[warpus]

I asked my Italian friend about this last night. His parents were born and raised in Italy and are VERY Italian. Their house is as Italian as they get.

And no, they don't celebrate Columbus at all; he was surprised to hear the question even. On the American "Columbus Day" they celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving, which falls on the same day. Never has he heard of Italians celebrating Columbus Day.

 

[luiz]

Well in Brazil we don't celebrate Columbus either, because it falls on the same day of our patron saint, which is already a national holiday. We do celebrate the discovery of Brazil by Cabral, however. Every now and then some clueless person denounces the celebrations because it was not a discovery but a "large scale theft". Those people are largely considered idiots, however.

 

[Miles Teg]

This is silly. If any other group had the technology, and will, to make it to the new world at the time, the results would have been approximately the same for the indians... look at Africa for proof... it certainly wasn't only the Europeans that exploited Africa. Therefore, blaming Europeans for being of their time, yet more advanced and daring... that's something Europeans should be proud of really.

Maybe you're missing something. I said that invasions, slave taking, and the destruction of indigenous cultures are all bad. They're bad when Europeans do it and when Indians do it and when Middle Easterners do it. They're bad in 1492 and 1942 and 2011.

If I say that I don't like celebrating bullies, the proper response is not "well we should we celebrate the biggest, baddest bully on the playground."

 

[Archbob]

I wonder how the Indians celebrate it.

 

[GhostWriter16]

What's your take on Columbus Day?

Personally I question the very fact that it's still celebrated. What's to celebrate, honestly?

I don't, only since I'm in High School, and like the day off. And personally, I do feel kids should get random days off every now and again, or at least, I like that we do.

But I've never heard of really celebrating it.

I live in the city of Columbus and we don't even make a big deal about it. Class isn't even canceled.

College or High School?

Columbus was a genocidal, slave trading, murderous, plundering scumbag. If Obama had any sack he'd end the holiday.

No, I want my freaking day off!

 

[Linkman226]

Why not a more worthy holiday then?

 

[Icaria909]

I wish I could pull up the recent scientific paper done on the subject, but it has recently been discovered by anthropologists that many of the indigenous people in the Caribbean did not all die from the actions taken by the conquistadors or the diseases that spread through the area. In fact, most our textbooks are just wrong.

A study done in Puerto Rico recently identified that 60% of the population had indigenous blood. Current theories suggest that not only did many Caribbean people live throughout the entire colonial period and intermingled with the white settlers, but there are still native groups living throughout the Caribbean. This study was only done in Puerto Rico and the researchers are asking the other governments in the area to repeat their experiment.

Sorry for a lack of citation. If anyone has heard of this study, I would appreciate it if you would post a link of it.

 

[jtb1127]

Not all the indigenous died off. And different tribes were affected differently. 90% of Massachusetts Indians died from small pox and the likes while only 30% or so of the Chilean Indians died from it.