Columbus Was A Mass Murderer
By Hans Zeiger (10/15/04)
On Monday, a friend and I spent part of the afternoon at the Gomorrahic compound of the University of Michigan. Crossing an intersection between thriving capitalist shops and diners with anti-Bush signs in the windows, and looming academic monuments to Marxism, my glance was directed toward the massive Angell Building, where written above a colonnaded portico were the forgotten words of the Northwest Ordinance, “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
What University of Michigan student or professor knows or appreciates those words is likely closeted in that gloomy place. But the homosexuals are out in Ann Arbor for this National Coming Out Week. There was to be a lecture Monday by a transgender person in celebration of the occasion.
But few were celebrating Columbus Day when I visited. The crowded sidewalks of the campus were frequently chalked upon in brilliant greens and blues and yellows with the words, “COLUMBUS WAS A MASS MURDERER!” And, “DO MASS MURDERERS DESERVE NATIONAL HOLIDAYS?” Then a word of comparison about Hitler, Manson, and Columbus, and the block letters: “GENOCIDE!”
Not nearly the same as, “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” Posters advertised an anti-Columbus event for Tuesday, co-sponsored by some racial student groups for American Indians and Latinos.
When I was in the eighth grade, my American history class was assigned to put Christopher Columbus on trial for the same accusation as that on the sidewalks of Ann Arbor: “Columbus was a mass murderer.” For over a week, we dressed in costumes and role-played the prosecution and the defense of the man who discovered the Western Hemisphere for the West.
Such dignitaries as Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand; an American Indian; crew members of the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria; and stuck-up latter-day attorneys paid a visit to my junior high school classroom. I was cast as the historian who was to testify of Columbus’ real legacy.
So I read passages from Columbus’ diary in which he displayed himself a man of deeply religious motives who cared sincerely for the temporal and spiritual lives of the West Indians, who understood only partially the amazing and unspeakable significance of his discovery. Indeed, it was the beginning of the New World. But Columbus lost the trial.
And that was only eighth grade. By the time young Americans arrive at institutions of higher education like the University of Michigan, they read socialist “historian” Howard Zinn’s summary of Columbus’ discovery: “Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas.”
But thank God for America. Thank God that He sent Christopher Columbus, literally “Christ-bearer,” to chart a new half of the world. There need not be racism and bigotry attached to our appreciation for Columbus’ accomplishment. We ought rather to consider that America has become the world’s great center for liberty and justice, and that only because Columbus first arrived.
If the part of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 contained on the University of Michigan Angell Building is forgotten, the words that immediately follow in that founding document are known less:
“The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and, in their property, rights, and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity, shall from time to time be made for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.”
The historical distortion would be enormous to pretend that America has always lived within the principles of that statement. And in all likelihood, Christopher Columbus was not innocent of injustice against the inhabitants of Cuba and Haiti. Nor can we presume those Caribbean natives were perfect in their treatment of the first Spanish explorers. That is not the point of Columbus Day.
Just as we do not endorse Washington’s or Jefferson’s slaveholding on Independence Day, so we are not celebrants of whatever wrongdoing Columbus may have executed 512 years ago. We would be fools indeed to forget the sufferings of Indians in the history of America, but we would cheer on the death of Western Civilization to cast shame on the heroic name of Christopher Columbus.
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