Page 08, The truth about Columbus

Daily Illini Editorial, 10/09/95

Today marks the observation of Columbus Day. But who really was
Christopher Columbus?

Most of us could probably regurgitate some of the facts we learned in
grade school: Columbus was the first person to discover America. He proved
the world was round. Because of Columbus, Europeans were able to colonize
a new, empty continent. Columbus was an all-around nice guy.

Unfortunately, these "facts" are either dead wrong or completely
misconstrued.

James W. Loewen outlines the truth about Columbus in his book, "Lies My
Teacher Told Me." Historians now believe Columbus was not the first to
come to America. Obviously, Native Americans were already here, so America
was not a dark, unexplored wasteland waiting to be developed. There is
evidence that suggests Afro-Phoenicians made it to Central America more
than 2,000 years ago. And Columbus was not even the first European to sail
to America. Historians are fairly confident that Vikings sailed to Canada
or New England around A.D. 1000. Of course, Columbus' expedition was
important because it marked the beginning of the exploitation of America
by European powers.

Columbus is also held up as the man who "discovered" America, and history
reveres him as a founder of an entire hemisphere, just like founders of
ancient cities were revered like gods. But Columbus was not a god.

His first mission to America was to find gold or something valuable to
bring back to the Spanish crown. But Columbus found no vast deposits of
gold in the Carribean to bring back to Ferdinand and Isabella. Instead, he
captured about a dozen Arawak Indains and brought them back to Spain,
institutionalizing the intercontinental slave trade that persisted for
centuries. Over the next several years, Columbus shipped about 5,000
Native American slaves to Europe.

After his initial "success," Columbus sailed back to Caribbean, and began
the subjugation of the Arawak population. Arawaks who did not cooperate
with the Spanish often had their ears or nose cut off to send a message to
the rest of the population. Because the Arawaks were required to work in
gold mines, they often could not grow food.

Within 25 years, almost the entire Arawak population of Haiti, estimated
to be about 3,000,000 people, had been exterminated thanks to disease,
slave trade and the forced labor policies of the Spanish. And of course,
the example set by Columbus lead to the great American land grab by other
European powers eager to colonize. As a result, countless Native American
cultures were wiped out.