The Debate Over Columbus

Probably no single journey has changed the world more profoundly than that of Christopher Columbus. For hundreds of years, his story was the stuff of legend. Stories have spread about how the Italian navigator sailed west from Spain in 1492. He's become known as the explorer who braved uncharted seas to “discover” America.

The Founders of the United States often cited Columbus as their inspiration. They based their experiment of a nation dedicated to the idea of freedom on him. In fact, the young country was often referred to as Columbia in honor of the explorer. And generations of Americans have celebrated him on the second Monday in October. That's the day designated as Columbus Day.

But today, many Americans are questioning Columbus’s legacy. The explorer couldn’t “discover” a place where millions of people already lived, they say. Worse, honoring him ignores how he forced the indigenous peoples of the Americas off their land. It also overlooks the waves of European settlers who arrived in his wake to claim a piece of their land.

To professor Leo Killsback of Arizona State University, Columbus Day is not a time of celebration. Instead, it's a reminder of “historic crimes” against Native Americans.

This point of view has inspired a growing trend. Last year, Boulder, Colorado, voted to transform Columbus Day into Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

“The day should not be about the people who came but the people who were already here,” says Mayor Suzanne Jones. More than 30 other cities have similar celebrations. The states of South Dakota and Alaska do too. (Some continue to observe Columbus Day as well.)

But according to Charles C. Mann, a journalist and author of the books 1491 and 1493, Columbus’s contact with the Americas so revolutionized the ecologies, economies, and political systems of Europe, Asia, and Africa that Columbus Day deserves to be observed, even if it isn’t celebrated.

“Columbus is so important,” he says. “The historical changes that stem from European reach into the Americas are just incalculably large.”

So was Columbus someone who should be celebrated? Five hundred and twenty-five years after he set sail, Americans are grappling with that question.

But according to Charles C. Mann, a journalist and author of the books 1491 and 1493, Columbus’s contact with the Americas revolutionized the ecologies, economies, and political systems of Europe, Asia, and Africa. In his view, Columbus Day deserves to be observed, even if it isn’t celebrated.

“Columbus is so important,” he says. “The historical changes that stem from European reach into the Americas are just incalculably large.”

So was Columbus someone who should be celebrated? It's been 525 years since he set sail. Yet, Americans are still grappling with that question. 

Born in the Italian city of Genoa, Columbus was a man of great ambition. In 1492, he persuaded Spain’s king and queen to fund a journey to what Europeans called the Indies. This region included China, Japan, and India.

Columbus was convinced by the ancient writings of travelers that those lands held great treasures of gold, silver, silk, and spices.

At the time, Europeans’ contact with Asia was rare because getting there was so difficult. The trip had to be made by ship around Africa and Asia or over land routes controlled by hostile armies. It was long and dangerous. But Columbus proposed a bold new scheme. He planned to reach Asia by sailing west through open sea.

Like other people of his time, Columbus didn’t know that two continents would be in his way: North and South America. So when he landed in the Bahamas on Oct. 12, 1492, after an 11-week journey from Spain, Columbus thought he had reached the Indies.

That December, Columbus claimed an island in the Caribbean Sea for Spain. He called it Hispaniola. Today, the island is split into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The explorer praised the island’s people, the Taino, for their generosity. But he also let his men loot and kidnap the Taino in search of the tribe’s riches.

Columbus made three other journeys to the New World. That's what Europeans soon began calling the Americas. He never set foot in North America. With each, the Taino suffered. Many were sold into slavery. Countless others died from smallpox and other European diseases to which they had no resistance. Within decades, most of them had been wiped out.

Yet Columbus’s voyages transformed the world. European powers rushed to build settlements in the New World. When the native people got in their way, scholars say, the newcomers pushed them aside.

Later, after the U.S. was founded, it began expanding west across the continent. During that period, Congress repeatedly forced treaties on Native Americans. These stripped them of their ancestral homelands. America was built “on lands which Indians were essentially forbidden to keep,” says Ron Welburn, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Benjamin Railton, a professor at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts, traces this treatment directly to Columbus. “[Columbus saw] this place as open and available for European possession.” U.S. settlers merely continued this treatment, he says.

Still, many Americans continue to admire Columbus. In particular, Italian-Americans take pride in the explorer. They hold Columbus Day parades in New York and other cities.

Historian William Connell of Seton Hall University in New Jersey views Columbus Day as a tribute to an important American trait: diversity. That was an explicit goal of Benjamin Harrison, who in 1892 became the first president to proclaim a celebration of Columbus.

At the time, Italian immigrants “were near the bottom rung in American society,” Connell has written. Harrison intended Columbus Day “to celebrate our land and its many peoples.”

“Columbus was definitely not a saint,” Connell says. Yet Connell believes it’s wrong to blame the explorer for every crime that came after his arrival. In his view, Columbus’s achievement is undeniable. His linking of the New World with the Old was “a world-changing occasion such as has rarely happened in human history.”

Historian William Connell of Seton Hall University in New Jersey views Columbus Day as a tribute to diversity. He says that it's an important American trait. That was an explicit goal of Benjamin Harrison. In 1892, he became the first president to proclaim a celebration of Columbus.

At the time, Italian immigrants “were near the bottom rung in American society,” Connell has written. Harrison intended Columbus Day “to celebrate our land and its many peoples.”

“Columbus was definitely not a saint,” Connell says. Yet Connell believes it’s wrong to blame the explorer for every crime that came after his arrival. In his view, Columbus’s achievement is undeniable. His linking of the New World with the Old was “a world-changing occasion such as has rarely happened in human history.”    

Today, experts agree that Native Americans are suffering. According to 2014 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, 28 percent live in poverty. That's the highest percentage of any racial group. The overall U.S. poverty rate is about 14 percent.

Railton blames much of this on the “bleak” conditions on Indian reservations. These areas were created by the U.S. government starting in the 19th century. They housed American Indians forced off their lands.

Railton says that reservations have kept Native Americans isolated from other Americans. This has led many in the U.S. to see Indians only as part of a tragic past.

Confronting the present reality is behind the push to establish Indigenous Peoples’ Day. This also highlights the present day connection to the treatment of Native Americans since Europeans arrived in the New World.

But should Columbus Day be eliminated completely in the process? Not everyone who backs Indigenous Peoples’ Day thinks so.

In Railton’s “ideal world,” Americans would address a difficult past by holding celebrations of both Columbus and indigenous peoples. “These back-to-back days could allow us to think in depth about the European and Native American threads throughout the history of the Americas,” he says.

Connell has come to a similar conclusion. The “Columbus Discussion” is a good thing, he writes. “It reminds us—and our students—that history is messy.” It’s absolutely necessary “to have these discussions—to celebrate the good that has come out of [Columbus], while also pondering the bad.”