Due to pressure over many years from people of Italian descent, in 1968 Lyndon Johnson signed legislation to make Columbus Day a federal holiday effective in 1971. The traditional date for Columbus Day was October 12, but in order to keep federal holidays as part of a long weekend, the date is now observed on the second Monday in October.

The idea is to honor Christophor Columbus because as James W. Loewen puts it in Lies My Teacher Told Me:

Born in Genoa, Italy, of humble parents, Christopher Columbus grew up to become an experienced seafarer. He sailed the Atlantic as far as Iceland and West Africa. His adventures convinced him that the world must be round. Therefore the fabled riches of the Eastspices, silk, and goldcould be had by sailing west, superseding the overland route through the Middle East, which the Turks had closed off to commerce.

To get funding for his enterprise, Columbus beseeched monarch after monarch in western Europe, After at first being dismissed by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Columbus finally got his chance when Queen Isabella decided to underwrite a modest expedition.

Columbus outfitted three pitifully small ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, and set forth from Spain. The journey was difficult. The ships sailed west into the unknown Atlantic for more than two months. The crew almost mutinied and threatened to throw Columbus overboard. Finally they reached the West Indies on October 12, 1492.

Although Columbus made three more voyages to America, he never really knew he had discovered a New World. He died in obscurity, unappreciated and penniless. Yet without his daring American history would have been very different, for in a sense Columbus made it all possible.

Unfortunately, almost everything in this traditional account is either wrong or unverifiable. The authors of history textbooks have taken us on a trip of their own, away from the facts of history, into the realm of myth. They and we have been duped by an outrageous concoction of lies, half-truths, truths, and omissions, that is in large part traceable to the first half of the nineteenth century.

The textbooks’ first mistake is to underplay previous explorers. People from other continents had reached the Americas many times before 1492. Even if Columbus had never sailed, other Europeans would have soon reached the Americas. Indeed, Europeans may already have been fishing off Newfoundland in the 1480s. In a sense Columbus’s voyage was not the first but the last “discovery” of the Americas. It was epoch-making because of the way in which Europe responded. Columbus’s importance is therefore primarily attributable to changing conditions in Europe, not to his having reached a “new” continent.

You probably already know some of the dirt about old Chris. About how he enslaved and tortured the people that he found on the islands where he landed, for example. He was not the best of role models. In fact, he was a totally despicable ass.

And he was stupid. He thought he was going to Asia, but he never would have made it. He believed the world to be much smaller than it was. Had he not stumbled onto an uncharted island when he did, all of his crew would have died within a few days.

I’ll simply quote one more passage:

As you can see, textbooks get the date right, and the names of the ships. Most of the rest that they tell us is untrustworthy. Many aspects of Columbus’s life remain a mystery. He claimed to be from Genoa, Italy, and there is evidence that he was. There is also evidence that he wasn’t: Columbus didn’t seem to be able to write in Italian, even when writing to people in Genoa. Some historians believe he was Jewish, a converso, or convert to Christianity, probably from Spain, (Spain was pressuring its Jews to convert to Christianity or leave the country.) He may have been a Genoese Jew. Still other historians claim he was from Corsica, Portugal, or elsewhere.

It remains a mystery to me why folks of Italian descent get into an uproar over some places renaming Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day. And they want their statue of old Chris back. Even though he may have really been a Jew? And probably not even Italian.

It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of worthy Italians that could be honored instead.

 

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