Columbus Day
October 12, 2020
By Jim Culp
When I was in grade
school in 2nd or 3rd grade, we “studied” Columbus Day for
a few days out of the school year. We learned about the Nina, the Pinta, and
the Santa Maria. We also learned how the visiting Spaniards had meals with the indigenous
peoples, and traded gifts with them.
It wasn’t until 5th
grade that my mother sent me to a Christian School, and we studied the “early
settlement of the Americas.” This was a “Baptist” school, so naturally anything
that happened in the name of God was the Catholic’s doing. We were taught (in
our little learning books, called PACES) that Christopher Columbus was a
slaver, but that he worked for the Pope.
When I went to
college many years later, I studied all of this again. My professor was an
agnostic, and taught us the truth. Here are some excerpts from good ole Chris’
journals:
“They ought to make
good and skilled servants, for they repeat very quickly whatever we say to
them. I think they can very easily be made Christians, for they seem to have no
religion. If it pleases our Lord, I will take six of them to Your Highnesses
when I depart, in order that they may learn our language.”
"These people are very simple in war-like
matters ... I could conquer the whole of them with 50 men, and govern them as I
pleased.”
“While I was in the
boat, I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral gave
to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked—as was their custom. I
was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my
desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had
never begun. But—to cut a long story short—I then took a piece of rope and
whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would
not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you,
that you would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for whores.”
An entry in his
journal from September 1498 reads: "From here one might send, in the name
of the Holy Trinity, as many slaves as could be sold.
Historical Facts:
Columbus sent over
5,000 south and North American natives back to Spain for use as slaves.
Modern estimates for
the pre-Columbian population of Hispaniola vary from several hundred
thousand to more than a million. Some estimate that a third or more
of the 250,000–300,000 natives in Haiti were dead within the first two years of
Columbus's governorship, many from lethal forced labor in the
mines, in which a third of workers died every six months.
Please teach your
children the truth. They see enough fairy tales on TV.
-Jim
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