And, of course, the version of history that I (and most every school kid) learned was a cleaned-up, Euro-centric view: good old Christopher Columbus, discovering the Americas and thus establishing a connection between Europe and our American turf.
Except that’s not quite how things happened.
Columbus was actually trying to reach Asia on behalf of Spain’s monarchy to establish trade routes for spices. But, since he was sailing with faulty maps (and didn’t have the 21st century advantage of a GPS), he was off by 10,000 miles, give or take a few. He and his ships landed in the Caribbean, on an island called Hispaniola (now containing the Dominican Republic and Haiti), upon whose shore his flagship, the Santa Maria, sank. He nevertheless insisted he’d landed in India, and thus tagged the natives as Indians. His rule as governor of settlements in Hispaniola was — by his own accounts — vicious and brutal to the native peoples of the land. Eventually, he fell out of favor with the Spanish crown, and was dismissed as governor.
What’s more, since people were already living there, he didn’t exactly discover the land. And he can’t really take credit as the first European to have landed upon American continental shores. That credit actually goes to Leif Ericson, a Norseman who sailed to and established a settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern peninsular of Newfoundland, Canada in the year 1002 or 1003, nearly 500 years before Columbus.
So, while Columbus does get credit for making four round-trip voyages between Spain and the Americas, thus paving the way for the American colonies, he wasn’t quite the good-guy discoverer that he’s cracked up to be in simplified history stories. Which leads to the question... how did Columbus Day get established, anyway?
Since Columbus was Catholic, the name Columbus became associated with Catholic immigration, which was opposed by anti-immigration groups like the Ku Klux Klan in the mid-1800s. In 1882, the Knights of Columbus was established as a fraternity to benefit Catholic families, and the name Columbus was chosen because of all he’d come to represent. His miscalculations and misdeeds had long been swept aside as a part of a common knowledge of history. In 1937, partly due to lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, Columbus Day was first observed as a federal holiday.
So ... why does digging into the history of Columbus and the holiday matter? Why not merrily chant “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” and hit a few Columbus Day sales?
Because understanding our heritage and history shouldn’t just be reduced to a few sound bites. Truly honoring our history means understanding it, as much as possible, both the good and the ugly. And that’s important because, as the famous quote goes, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” That was penned by George Santayana, philosopher and writer, in his book “The Life of Reason.” Santayana was born in Spain, educated at Harvard and was a best-selling writer.
In that spirit, there are plenty of resources for exploring the deeper, richer history behind Columbus's sailing that ocean-blue. Two good places to start: the History Channel's Columbus page and Time magazine's article on the history of Columbus Day.
Sharon Short’s column runs Monday in Life. Send email to sharonshort@sharonshort .com.
About the Author