Observing
Columbus Day
Written by Dan McDonald
Columbus
Day is now controversial in America. Some think it remains an important part of
the story of our nation, while others wish for a name change to “Indigenous
People’s Day.” I am not sure how much wisdom I can shed on the subject, but
will try to express myself while hoping the best for our shared future.
I think
our memories of Columbus should be complex enough to view his celebrated place
in our history as controversial. On the positive side, he was a man of
conviction willing take on a risk filled venture to prove that the world was
round, and one could reach the Far East by traveling west from the Western lands
of the European continent. He was brave enough to risk his life for his
convictions. The academic world of the day probably generally believed in a
round earth, but there was some doubt upon the matter. So for being a man
willing to test his convictions with a daring expedition, give Columbus that
much credit.
The truth
about Christopher Columbus is much more complex. He proved to be a man, who
yearned for extravagant titles and extreme authority over the inhabitants of
the lands he discovered. The same Spanish government which conducted the
Inquisition came to regard Columbus to be a corrupt and excessively brutal
governor over the areas where he had been allowed to become a governor. He
remarked in his discoveries of the people living on the Caribbean islands that
they would make good servants or slaves because of their friendliness to
Columbus and his crew. Is this the sort of person we wish to describe as a
hero, one who finds the friendliness of a people a good trait as they will be
easier to subject to servants or slavery?
Columbus
was undoubtedly a man of his times. His Europe was emerging from its simpler
times with a sense of an emerging culture that was mandated for an exceptional
work in human history. There was a sense that their advances in science, and
their embrace of Christianity made it proper to believe that their place in the
world was unique and they were meant to govern that world. The reality is that
what Columbus represented would be represented with more or less nuance by many
among the Europeans reaching the newly discovered hemisphere.
It
should be noted that history is full of horrendous results from the boundaries
of differing cultures. In our world Kashmir can be a violent place where Islam
and Hinduism meet. Relationships between Christians and Muslims between Islam
in North Africa and Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa can be brutal. Recent
events show the likelihood of brutality to be set off along the borderlines of
Kurd, Turk, Syrian, and Christian in Syria. When I was younger the boundary
lines between Communist and Capitalist led to wars in East Asia, parts of
Africa, and Latin America. We might think nothing in history had ever taken
place like the conflict between Europeans and the Indigenous peoples. But
unfortunately this is a horribly recurring theme in human history.
The
reality is that no one wishing for good simply wants to let the bad events of
our history to move forward unchanged. We know that the Indigenous people were
suppressed into servitude in their own hemisphere. We know that as white
Americans filled the continent in the United States, the territories of the
indigenous people were reduced and forced to be lived out on small and generally
inferior lands and soils. We know that in addition to the suppression of the
Indigenous people, there were vast numbers of Africans brought via the Atlantic
Passage to slavery and numerous instances of degradation. The history of the
Americas is like that of what a Puritan once said of family trees. A family
tree can be a glorious thing if enough branches are cut off when one is
boasting of his family. Our national accomplishments occurred alongside shameful
acts, as is true among all the nations and families of human history.
My
hope on this Columbus Day is to see the need for an extension of the hope our
Constitution’s preamble expresses. It was a hope, in its writing pretty much
limited to the Europeans who had come to the Americas. The hope was for a more
perfect union. That is the hope we should now yearn to be increasingly realized
for the numerous men and women who were here when the Europeans came to the Americas,
or for all the varied cultures of the varied places from which the varied people
of the Americas came. Our goal should be the flourishing of all men and women
in our lands of North and South America. We should find it deeply disappointing
if one group of our peoples flounder rather than flourish. We can recognize
that many things were gotten wrong since Columbus came. But the reality is that
Columbus came and now whatever blood line flows through our veins we need to
yearn to see all men and women flourish who are the descendants of these varied
tribes, nations, and tongues that have come to call the Americas home.
