Today is the day we remember the great explorer Christopher Columbus and his discovery of the new world and how he brought Christianity with him to these foreign lands.
But there has been a movement on the left for some time to remove Columbus Day and replace it with indigenous people’s day or something. And Kamala is one of those people.
When she was running for president the first time she made this clear:
Kamala Harris: I’ll eliminate Columbus Day, make it Indigenous People’s Day pic.twitter.com/sM2Um8YrFF
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) October 14, 2024
And also more recently:
Kamala Harris on Columbus Day:
“European explorers ushered in a wave of devastation, violence, stealing land, and widespread disease” pic.twitter.com/3XijDf5Ldo
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) October 14, 2024
But this is garbage. Christopher Columbus loved God and he loved the native peoples he met when he came to the Bahamas, Cuba, Hispaniola and other places in the region and he even hanged his sailors who disobeyed his orders and harmed the native peoples.
This is a short synopsis of his voyages:
On August 3, 1492, Columbus embarked from Spain with ninety men on three ships: the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria.5 After thirty-three days at sea, Columbus’s flotilla spotted land (the Bahamas), which he claimed in the name of the Spanish monarchs. Columbus’s modern-day detractors view that as a sign of imperial conquest. It was not—it was simply a sign to other European nations that they could not establish trading posts on the Spanish possession.6
On this first voyage, Columbus also reached the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola. He stayed four months in the New World and arrived home to fanfare on March 15, 1493. Unfortunately, the Santa Maria ran aground on Hispaniola so was forced to leave forty-two men behind, ordered to treat the indigenous people well and especially to respect the women.7 But as Columbus discovered on his second voyage, that order was not heeded.
Columbus made four voyages to the New World, and each brought its own discoveries and adventures. His second voyage included many crewmen from his first, but also some new faces such as Ponce de León, who later won fame as an explorer himself. On this second voyage, Columbus and his men encountered the fierce tribe of the Caribs, who were cannibals, practiced sodomy, and castrated captured boys from neighboring tribes. Columbus recognized the Caribs’ captives as members of the peaceful tribe he met on his first voyage, so he rescued and returned them to their homes.8 This voyage included stops in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
The third voyage was the most difficult for Columbus, as he was arrested on charges of mismanagement of the Spanish trading enterprise in the New World and sent back to Spain in chains (though later exonerated). Columbus’s fourth and final voyage took place in 1502-1504, with his son Fernando among the crew. The crossing of the Atlantic was the fastest ever: sixteen days. The expedition visited Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, and was marooned for a time on Jamaica.
Most accounts of Columbus’s voyages mistake his motives by focusing narrowly on economic or political factors. But in fact, his primary motive was to find enough gold to finance a crusade to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims, as evidenced by a letter he wrote in December 1492 to King Fernando and Queen Isabel, encouraging them to “spend all the profits of this my enterprise on the conquest of Jerusalem.”9 In this, he believed he was fulfilling conditions for the Second Coming of Christ. Near the end of his life, he even compiled a book about the connection between the liberation of Jerusalem and the Second Coming.10
Columbus considered himself a “Christ-bearer” like his namesake, St. Christopher.11 When he first arrived on Hispaniola, his first words to the natives were, “The monarchs of Castile have sent us not to subjugate you but to teach you the true religion.”12 In a 1502 letter to Pope Alexander VI (r. 1492-1503), Columbus asked the pontiff to send missionaries to the indigenous peoples of the New World so they could accept Christ. And in his will, Columbus proved his belief in the importance of evangelization by establishing a fund to finance missionary efforts to the lands he discovered.13
Contrary to the popular myth, Columbus initially treated many of the native peoples with great respect and friendship. He was impressed by their “generosity, intelligence, and ingenuity.”14 He recorded in his diary that “in the world there are no better people or a better land. They love their neighbors as themselves, and they have the sweetest speech in the world and [they are] gentle and always laughing.”15 Columbus demanded that his men exchange gifts with the natives they encountered and not just take what they wanted by force. He enforced this policy rigorously: on his third voyage in August 1500, he hanged men who disobeyed him by harming the native people.16
Columbus did not sail to the New World with the intention of enslaving native peoples he might encounter. His views about the native peoples changed over the course of his multiple voyages based on his interaction with the various tribes and with the, at times, unruly Spanish settlers. Though a brilliant sailor and navigator, and a fearless explorer, he was not an able administrator. Columbus did view certain tribes (the Cairbs in particular) as combatants, and under the conventions of the day, subject to just-title slavery. However, his primary intention was that the natives, who worked in the Spanish settlement in Hispaniola, be considered employees of the crown.17 In further proof that Columbus did not plan to rely on slave labor, he asked the crown to send him Spanish miners to mine for gold.18 Indeed, the Spanish monarchs in their instructions to Spanish settlers mandated that the Indians be treated “very well and lovingly” and demanded that no harm should come to them.19 Sadly, this admonition was not always practiced.
Columbus was a complex man and his actions in the New World reflected the complexities of his experiences and the time in which he lived. He was neither the saint nor the barbarian portrayed by different groups with their own agendas in the modern world. Columbus passed to his eternal reward on May 20, 1506.
Greg Price on X framed it this way:
Christopher Columbus put a bunch of men in three wooden boats and ventured out west not knowing where they were going or what they would find.
They discovered a New World populated by a civilization living 5,000 years behind the rest of the world, who hadn’t developed a written language yet, and raped, pillaged, sacrificed, and ate each other as a matter of course.
Columbus brought Christianity and western civilization to that New World which led to the creation of the most advanced society in world history.
The Stone Age tribesman lost. America won. Thank you Columbus!
Happy Christopher Columbus Day!
