Celebration of Mass Murderer to Occur For years, Columbus Day has been recognized as a national holiday. Millions of ignorant people go out and celebrate the man who brought about the deaths of millions of Native American people. Many are too perturbed by the thought of that, after all, it was not their ancestors who died. Others would argue that is was not Columbus who killed the Indians, it was smallpox. Though Hitler did not gas, shoot, and work all those Jews himself, he was the man behind the curtain, the reason it all happened. Columbus Day is a day full of lies, deception, and fairy tales to appease the general masses and let them sleep better at night. It’s time they awoke. To begin with, a lie is a lie, no matter how small and/or how harmless it might seem. Columbus did not land in North America, as most Americans are apt to believe. In fact, throughout all of Columbus’ voyages from 1492 to 1504, he never saw or touched anything that later became U.S. soil (p. #58, 1492). Columbus landed on the island called San Salvador, incorrectly believing that he had landed in India, which is why he called the people he saw, ‘Indios’ (p. #59, 1492). Communications were limited to gestures, since neither side knew the others’ language (p. #59, 1492). What is most plausible here, is that Columbus most likely made up whatever he felt like he could, telling his men that the natives thought the men came from Heaven and that there was a king that had great containers of gold (p. #60, 61, 1492). Those who read some more stories about Columbus will probably find out that he was a man who did practically everything on a whim or knew very little about what he was actually doing. Before reaching San Salvador, the captain of the Pinta, Martin Alonso Pinzόn, was thought to have seen land twice before, but in the words of Columbus, it was “nothing more than squall clouds,” and “only an illusion” (p. #55, 1492). According to shipmate that observed Columbus and his peculiar ways of navigation, “Only by looking at a cloud or by night at a star, he knew what was going to happen and whether there would be foul weather,” (p. #54, 1492). What’s more likely than the stars and clouds speaking to Columbus, is that he predicted things on a whim, as per usual. The fairy tales of Columbus Day not only spread into the theory of whom Columbus was, but also all the supposed good he did. Columbus did revolutionize European agriculture, and helped feed thousands of starving people in Africa with his findings, but they’re still starving, and so Columbus did not really do much besides stall the inevitable. Columbus himself was an egomaniacal man, focused solely on how he would look later in life and keeping himself shrouded in mystery. Columbus wanted to be more interesting, because he was in fact not all that interesting. He masked his own story, signing his name in a pyramid of symbols that has yet to be conclusively deciphered (p. #48, 1492). Columbus’ son confides that his father “chose to leave in obscurity” all details of his early life (p. #49, 1492). The story that everyone knows of Columbus, the one so over-publicized, is one that is appealing to Americans: the up-from-nothing striver (p. #49, 1492). In reality, Columbus was a man who knew how to network people, married into nobility, was extremely pompous, promoted the rape and beating of a native woman, and refused to marry a peasant because of her status, even though he had had a child with her (p. #49, 50, 69, 1492). Columbus Day is something that I believe no one should celebrate because of its constant lies, deceiving ways, and too-big-to-be-true fairy tales. However accidental introducing smallpox was, Columbus still did so, making him an accidental mass murderer. Thousands of people are incarcerated each year, and of them, a portion is charged with accidental manslaughter. If the U.S. still believes that accidental manslaughter is a crime, then they should believe that Columbus falls into those lines. No other killers have a day to celebrate them and all the good they did while overlooking the simple fact that they killed, so that means that Columbus shouldn’t get any special treatment. After all, when you look at the facts, Columbus is not all that special.

Sincerely,

Emma Reusch