you post: "On one level, Columbus Day honors the explorer himself, for his many virtues. Columbus was a man of independent mind, who steadfastly pursued his bold plan for a westward voyage to the Indies despite powerful opposition--a man of courage, who set sail upon a trackless ocean with no assurance that he would ever reach land--a man of pride, who sought recognition and reward for his achievements.
We need not evade or excuse Columbus’s flaws--his religious zealotry, his enslavement and oppression of natives--to recognize that he made history by finding new territory for a civilization that would soon show mankind how to overcome forever the age-old scourges of slavery, war, and forced religious conversion....."
Well - hate to disagree with a fellow blogger - BUT Columbus didn't discover anything - nor was he virtuos...
I'm a writer - and this was my piece this week:
Columbus Come Lately
Why do still celebrate Columbus Day?
Why do we call America, America?
Why do we still call the Native Peoples of this land, Indians? (Well, we did for generations. Now we call them "Native Americans." But I don't know why. This was not "America" before the advent of the white men. They called themselves "Deni" - The People. I like that. It designates original, having nothing to do with any "foreign" names foisted upon them.)
Why do we think America was "discovered?"
Because we are like dogs with a bone. Even if the bone be only artificially flavored plastic, we won't let go.
We call it America because it was long thought that Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian merchant-explorer, was the "first" to explore on the continent, (South America,) in 1497. He sailed along what we now call Brazil and up the Amazon.
And a hundred years before Vespucci, there was Sir Henry Sinclair, a wealthy Scotsman, who having heard about the "New World," sailed across, in 1398, and spent a year in Nova Scotia and even explored, as a plaque in Massachusetts commemorates, our New England shores. His voyage was also known back in the "Old World."
And even Columbus and Vespucci were Johny-Come-Latelys. The ancient Viking Sagas, and archeological sites, tell us about Eric the Red who settled in Greenland and about his son Leif, who explored down the coast after getting blown off course. The sagas tell that he may have established a winter camping area as far down as the south shore of Cape Cod and explored up the Hudson. They took shiploads of lumber back to the "Old World." They planned on putting up permanent settlements, but had some unpleasant run ins with the natives, who far outnumbered them
Columbus was aware of these voyages. His plan was to sail below North America and across what they then thought was only one ocean and into the back end of the Indies. (It was Vespucci who came back with the astonishing news that there was another ocean, vaster than the Atlantic and another continent below the islands.) Columbus's goal was riches and power, unlike the Vikings who just wanted to establish communities and Vespucci who was more interested in exploring, discovering and charting the world.
Even though Columbus made three separate voyages to this hemisphere, he died never having stepped foot on the mainland’s of North or South America. He set up shop in the islands, thinking they were the back end of the Indies. He also set about slaughtering the native people by the tens of thousands, in barbaric ways that would've made Saddam Hussein proud to call him a son. He was finally hauled back to Spain in chains, not for his barbarous treatment of the People, but for his plans to set himself up as sovereign ruler in the new lands. The Queen did not appreciate that.
He dubbed the natives of these lands "Indians."
It was not the Indies.
It was not even "new" lands to be discovered. Like one Native American said, in the typical tongue-in-cheek way the old chiefs had of putting things: "We did not need to be discovered. We knew we were here."
These continents have been here every bit as long as the "Old World." The "Indians" are descendants of highly evolved cultures that flourished and rivaled, in advancement, any civilization of the old world at that time. The Conquistadors stood in amazement at the vast cities, beautifully laid out, far more beautiful than any they had ever seen. (And within a decade, they destroyed them.)
So why do we still celebrate Columbus Day, in honor of one of the worst explorers to ever come across the Atlantic?
Much as I admire Columbus, I have greater admiration for Hernan Cortes.
Who, pray tell, are "they" who used this name? The tribes of the Western Hemisphere used thousands of different languages.
Why do we think America was "discovered?"
Because we, and our culture, are descended from people who didn't know that America was here, until that fact was discovered.
The "Indians" are descendants of highly evolved cultures that flourished and rivaled, in advancement, any civilization of the old world at that time.
Scintillating nonsense. Some of the societies of the Americas were reasonably advanced. Cahokia was a great city. Tenochtitlan was a great city. The Inca were proficient at mathematics. The Anasazi were proficient architects. But the "flourishing" Aztec culture was a bizarre death-cult of human sacrifice, from which the Spaniards were initially welcomed as liberators. The Iroquois routinely engaged in continent-spanning wars of genocide. And the Amazon basin was home to countless tribes without a culture or society to match the meanest rustic hamlet in 1492 Europe, let alone the Muslim world.