Christopher Columbus Statue Defaced

[Bham1982]

It would not have mattered if Columbus and the other explorers had been all sweetness and light and just acted as wondering tourists. The inhabitants of the western hemisphere would still have been decimated by their contacts with the Eurasian and African endemic diseases. The Roman empire was heavily depopulated by the arrival from Asia of "childhood diseases" which are far more serious in adult onset. During World War II, the building of the ALCAN Highway to Alaska exposed to disease and caused serious mortality in previously isolated Native American groups along the route.

Correct. While the Spanish were indeed very brutal, the reason the native peoples of the Caribbean were essentially wiped out was due to disease, not slaughter. It's the contact, not the behavior, that drove them to extinction.

The Spaniards, were probably extremely dismayed to see the Taino and other natives dying off, not because of their humanity, but because their labor force was destroyed. That led to the pan-Atlantic slave trade, and is why most of the West Indies are black today.

[Bham1982]

T If it was so bad here before, how did there get to be over 100 million people here Before Discovery? Less than 300,000 remained in 1910. So Exploitation and Colonialism had a profound impact.

You're conflating a few numbers here.

The first number [[100 million+) is an estimate of native peoples of the New World when Columbus arrived. The second number [[less than 300k) is an estimate of native peoples in the U.S. in 1910.

There were almost certainly more native peoples alive in the New World in 1910 than in 1492. Despite all the brutality and disease, there were very high birth rates, many parts of the New World were almost untouched by the Spanairds, and we're talking more than 400 years of growth. Most people in Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador today are primarily native in bloodline. Tons of people [[but not majority) in Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica have native blood. Really only Argentina and Chile have small native populations relative to population.

The U.S. never had a large native population, not back then, and not in 1910. The country was largely empty, especially relative to places like Mexico and Central America, which were teeming with native populations. The native population in the U.S. has never been larger than today.

[Bham1982]

And you don't win points by revising history. From the writings of Christopher Columbus, literally in his own words:

http://ageofex.marinersmuseum.org/in...rsection&id=65

"Now that so much gold is found, a dispute arises as to which brings more profit, whether to go about robbing or to go to the mines. A hundred castellanos are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid."

Let me spell out in simple terms what Columbus is referring to here: Sex slavery. The kidnapping of native women to be sold for sex. This is what Columbus' men were doing, under his watch, with his knowledge and consent. If you'd like to offer an alternative explanation for those words, I'm all ears. Perhaps you should not be calling others ignorant when you are the one who is ignorant of the facts.

Also note the age of the girls he refers to as being in the most "demand": nine to ten years old. Child rape, plain and simple. Mass child rape of prepubescent girls.

If you believe in a literal Hell, then without a doubt, Columbus is burning there for all eternity.

You're really grasping at straws now. The fact that 10 year old girls were viewed as sexual beings in 1492 does not make Columbus better or worse than anyone else. The natives all did this, and most of Europe did this. Hell, much of the world does this right now, doesn't mean that everyone in Africa and the Middle East are "Hitlers".

They were doing this stuff very recently in some of the most advanced countries on earth. In Europe, girls around 13-14 would usually leave the home and be bought for a time to serve as domestics for a few years, to learn the domestic arts, and to provide a cook/cleaner for a prosperous couple. But often these domestics were essentially sex workers. I even have a story about this from my grandma's generation.

Who, in your mind, isn't equivalent to Hitler in 1492, given that there was no issue with children being thought of as sexual beings? What do universal social mores have to do with a specific individual?

[gazhekwe]

Hmm. Where are you getting your information about natives raping their children all the time? You come up with the typical white privilege arguments how savages were obviously all kinds of sinful and whites are so much better. Not true.

It was not just the child rape as Columbus rewarded his men with free sex with women and children and none of the people had any choice, because, well, they were inferior, non-Christian, and so gentle.

What else did Columbus do?

Here it is in his own [[translated from the Latin) words:

The Latin printing of this letter announced the existence of the American continent throughout Europe. “I discovered many islands inhabited by numerous people. I took possession of all of them for our most fortunate King by making public proclamation and unfurling his standard, no one making any resistance,” Columbus wrote.

In addition to announcing his momentous discovery, Columbus’s letter also provides observations of the native people’s culture and lack of weapons, noting that “they are destitute of arms, which are entirely unknown to them, and for which they are not adapted; not on account of any bodily deformity, for they are well made, but because they are timid and full of terror.” Writing that the natives are “fearful and timid . . . guileless and honest,” Columbus declares that the land could easily be conquered by Spain, and the natives “might become Christians and inclined to love our King and Queen and Princes and all the people of Spain.” ...

But when they see that they are safe, and all fear is banished, they are very guileless and honest, and very liberal of all they have. No one refuses the asker anything that he possesses; on the contrary they themselves invite us to ask for it. They manifest the greatest affection towards all of us, exchanging valuable things for trifles, content with the very least thing or nothing at all. . . . I gave them many beautiful and pleasing things, which I had brought with me, for no return whatever, in order to win their affection, and that they might become Christians and inclined to love our King and Queen and Princes and all the people of Spain; and that they might be eager to search for and gather and give to us what they abound in and we greatly need."

At this point he is noting their inability to fight, their acquiescence and their generosity. He softens them up further and then....

When he went back to Spain, he left 39 men on Hispaniola to build a settlement They were at their own devices meanwhile. What they did, they did under his command.

And then, in his later voyages, after determining the great riches that he could liberate for himself and Spain, came the great genocide:

The enslavement, torture, murder, and extermination of the native people of the West Indies followed quickly on the heels of Columbus and his men. It was obvious from Columbus’s journal that the Tainos were not as used to battle and warfare as the Spaniards. Columbus notes that “with 50 men you could subject everyone and make them do what you wished” and that the natives were “such cowards and so fearful” that they were, therefore, easy to rule. This idea was carried back to Europe, setting the tone for the relationship between the natives and the European explorers.

The search for gold was the primary cause for the mistreatment of the native people. On one of Columbus’s later voyages he ordered his men to complete certain tasks to ensure their survival as a colony. His men, however, disliked such hard labor and refused to act. When Columbus returned a few months later to find things worse than when he left, he punished the natives for the failure of his own men. He blamed them for destroying the settlers’ property, stealing their food, and instilling fear. In retaliation for these acts, few—if any—of which had actually occurred, he had his men round up over 1,500 Taino men, women, and children, then forced the Tainos into slavery.

Columbus, in need of a cargo other than gold and spices to ship to Spain, decided to send the Taino slaves as a show of the wealth available in the New World. He loaded the “best men and women” onto ships and sent them off to Europe, thus beginning the widespread enslavement of the native peoples.

While a fairly large number of men and women were enslaved and sent back to Spain, the fate of those left behind was equally disturbing. With each new island conquered and tribe taken, the leader of the current Spanish expedition would gather the captured natives and ask them to swear their allegiance to Spain and the Pope. This ritual was concluded with the following warning:

I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and Their Highnesses. We shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as Their Highnesses may command. And we shall take your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey and refuse to receive their lord and resist and contradict him.

The natives understood little of this, since the oath was given in Spanish—a language the natives were never taught. The punishment for failure to agree with the above declaration was severe. The natives were forced into slavery. These slaves were then made to do the work of their captors. From finding gold to building settlements, the natives were forced into hard labor under terrible conditions. And if they failed to comply with the orders from the Spanish guards, they were often beaten, tortured, and killed.

https://www.gilderlehrman.org/histor...st-voyage-1493

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/socialstu..._peoples.shtml

Thank you, Bham for giving me this opportunity to share some valuable knowledge to help our future endeavors toward unity.

[gazhekwe]

The gentle, generous, loving people Columbus first encountered were the Taino. That there are still Taino today is no fault of Columbus.

The Taino, who flourished from a.d. 1200 to 1500, were about 500,000 strong when Columbus arrived. They were reputedly a gentle people whose culture, archaeologists believe, was becoming more advanced. "Taino" means "noble" or "good" in their Arawak language; they supposedly shouted the word to the approaching Spanish ships to distinguish themselves from the warring Carib tribes who also inhabited Hispaniola, the island Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic. Male and female Taino chiefs ornamented themselves in gold, which sparked the Spaniards' avarice. Within a few years of Columbus' arrival, the Taino had all but vanished, the vast majority wiped out by the arduousness of slavery and by exposure to European diseases. A few apparently escaped into the hills.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...cQhkQpmUMWB.99

[Dumpling]

Excerpt from the chapter, "Founding El Norte" in the history text "American Nations"
by Colin Woodard, published 2011:

"Second, the effort to stamp out Europe's Protestants consumed so much of the Spanish
Empire's focus, energy, and resources that it was left incapable of properly supporting
the northward expansion of its American empire. As a result, Spain's colonies in El Norte,
especially Nuevo Mexico, Texas, Alta California, and northern Sonora, were undermanned,
poorly supplied, and staggeringly poor, even by Spanish colonial standards."

[Dumpling]

A few paragraphs later:

"During this training period Native apprentices would be called "neophytes," and every
aspect of their lives would be monitored and controlled. It would take a phenomenal
effort, to be sure. Missions would have to be built all over the frontier, each a self-
sufficient compound with a church; a comfortable residence for the missionaries; a
well-manned military post to enforce discipline; tanneries, workshops, kilns, and mills
where neophytes would learn their trades; male and female dormitories; and stables,
barns, and outbuildings to house horses, mules, and livestock.
The friars would protect the neophytes from rapacious settlers or hostile Indians ---
and lock any females over the age of seven in the barracks at sunset to prevent
their rape by the resident soldiers. When the neophytes were considered to have
successfully internalized the Catholic faith, Spanish work habits, and the Castilian
language, the mission would become their village and the missionaries would move
on to oversee new missions on the expanding frontier. Or so the plan went."

[Vic01]

A big Thank You... gazhekwe and aj3647. I like facts and historical documentation... very refreshing.

[Jimaz]

From A People's History Of The United States by Howard Zinn:

Chapter 1: Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress

When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas ["the chief source-and, on many matters the only source-of information about what happened on the islands after Columbus came"] says, "there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it...."

Samuel Eliot Morison, the Harvard historian, was the most distinguished writer on Columbus, the author of a multivolume biography, and was himself a sailor who retraced Columbus's route across the Atlantic. In his popular book Christopher Columbus, Mariner, written in 1954, he tells about the enslavement and the killing: "The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide."

[gazhekwe]

Well, that's why we think Columbus Day needs to be rethought, not to celebrate so much cruelty, greed and carelessness with the
precious lives of so many. Many millions more than six, which was Hitler's big crime.

[canuck]

Well, that's why we think Columbus Day needs to be rethought, not to celebrate so much cruelty, greed and carelessness with the
precious lives of so many. Many millions more than six, which was Hitler's big crime.

Gazhekwe, can we not have closure, quick?
Does everything have to be controversial?
Do we always have to be bound by the past?

[gazhekwe]

Well, I was happy with the whole thing, the artistic statement that was easily removed, and all. Then SOME people had to start throwing stinkbombs of ignorance. Just wanted to freshen things up a bit. I do not believe education is controversy, or if it is, about time.

[compn]

what the heck is wrong with everyone?

the statue wasnt defaced, it was decorated for halloween. bloody axes in october? always a halloween reference. yes, everyones yards are already decorated for the halloween holiday.

but yeah columbus day is stupid.

[Zacha341]

Hah! I missed the call to decorate the front yard for halloween. Drats, I best get right on it!

[Dan Wesson]

what the heck is wrong with everyone?

the statue wasnt defaced, it was decorated for halloween. bloody axes in october? always a halloween reference. yes, everyones yards are already decorated for the halloween holiday.

but yeah columbus day is stupid.

Yeah I totally agree. If it ain't a Hallmark Holiday where money can't be generated off the masses then phooey.

Hmmm maybe we could sell tomahawks and red paint....

[Hermod]

The U.S. never had a large native population, not back then, and not in 1910. The country was largely empty, especially relative to places like Mexico and Central America, which were teeming with native populations. The native population in the U.S. has never been larger than today.

You are wrong here. There was a substantial NA population in the east of the Mississippi. It suffered two major disease catastrophes. The first was the aimless wandering exploration of the southeast North American mainland by DeSoto and his men The second was by repetitive visits by European fishermen and traders along the Atlantic coast. The NA population east of the Mississippi was reduced by two-thirds [[or more) before the first permanent colonists arrived.

[gazhekwe]

White people always want to think there was nobody here when they got here. They are products of the American eurocentric education system, which starts with the English colonies, lip service to the earlier French, and glossing over the Spanish et al.

And then, when they are forced to see the facts, they want to invoke the two wrongs make a right argument, as in, well, you guys did the same things to each other.

[canuck]

White people always want to think there was nobody here when they got here. They are products of the American eurocentric education system, which starts with the English colonies, lip service to the earlier French, and glossing over the Spanish et al.

And then, when they are forced to see the facts, they want to invoke the two wrongs make a right argument, as in, well, you guys did the same things to each other.

I also think that the American revolution, the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and the Fathers of said movement are the leitmotiv that is used ad infinitum to "seal" the myth of U.S. dominion of Ideas.
Oftentimes the aura of ne'er do wrong that emanates from this mythology acts as a buffer against other ideals. It is used to dismiss other progressive tendencies, because there is a sense that the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution are like the Ten Commandments, therefore cannot be improved on. The long period of slavery and the decimation of Natives and their way of life, lands are treated as a blip on a timeline.

The same kind of deal happened in Canada, the Louis Riel adventure was treated much like the action of crazy terrorists bent on destroying Canada's chance at progress. The importance of creating a sedentary population in many parts of the country was supposed to have a deleterious effect on treaties. If the Innu or the Cree in Quebec ceased hunting and using vast territories that the Europeans were just scratching, then the case for ownership of the land would be more difficult to claim by the Natives. This has happened in New Zealand and Australia et al. Wherever enlightened folks were educated enough to write laws, the mining of resources happened to accelerate the divisions and segregation into small particulars of aboriginal folk. The myth of uncultured, unable nations was important to keep the crushing ball rolling; "education" took care of that.

[gazhekwe]

"Oftentimes the aura of ne'er do wrong that emanates from this mythology acts as a buffer against other ideals." Boy Howdy. you said a mouthful there.

[SDCC]

1904 World's Fair

[canuck]

"Oftentimes the aura of ne'er do wrong that emanates from this mythology acts as a buffer against other ideals." Boy Howdy. you said a mouthful there.

Lol. My effective writing course is long gone. I need a couple slaps from a virtual ruler to edit...

Thanks Gazhekwe!

[Hermod]

White people always want to think there was nobody here when they got here. They are products of the American eurocentric education system, which starts with the English colonies, lip service to the earlier French, and glossing over the Spanish et al.

And then, when they are forced to see the facts, they want to invoke the two wrongs make a right argument, as in, well, you guys did the same things to each other.

It did seem strangely empty when they arrived with many deserted villages where the people had either died off completely or had been reduced to such a small number that they moved in to another village. It is virtually impossible today to conceive of the degree of mortality caused by the introduction of a multitude of deadly diseases into a population with zero genetic immunity.

[gazhekwe]

There is your Anglocentric view, right there. It was only the northeast coast where the plagues had either killed or driven out the people recent to the arrival of the Anglos. The plagues were brought by the Euro explorers. Before they showed up there were vast populations along the east coast, as evidenced by the industriously worked farming and fishing communities.

After the plagues, west of the coast, on into the center of the country, the population was largely still intact. Of course, also by the time the Anglos got to the coast and noted the cleared farmlands and empty villages, the Spanish had already been on the south and southwest for over 120 years, decimating the populations they found there. The Spanish worked there depredations clear though Central and South America, too.

When the Spaniards came, on the heels of Columbus, there were many people.

Now, the interesting thing is, beginning in about the 12th century, there began to be a series of to date unexplained population changes.

Our history explains how and why the People traveled from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes and beyond. It took many generations to complete the migration. We are now the People of the Three Fires. A series of Prophets warned of incoming people wearing the Face of Death, who would bring diseases which would kill everyone who did not get out and head west. Now our people live from the eastern Great Lakes, up into southern Canada, and all the way west to the Rocky Mountains, with the center of the population being the Great Lakes. Here, we were found by the French. Our integration experience was completely different from the people who first encountered the Anglos.

I am pretty sure the 12th century is the time of note because until recently, the 10th century was the beginning of study of Native populations. Others may have experienced prophecies also, and migrated to avoid the Face of Death.

[Bham1982]

White people always want to think there was nobody here when they got here. They are products of the American eurocentric education system, which starts with the English colonies, lip service to the earlier French, and glossing over the Spanish et al.

And then, when they are forced to see the facts, they want to invoke the two wrongs make a right argument, as in, well, you guys did the same things to each other.

Coud you provide us with an actual documented source that the Eastern half of the U.S. was teeming with millions of natives during the dawn of colonialism? I suspect you can't.

All your nonsense about what "white people" supposedly believe [[as opposed to Chinese Americans, I guess?) or "eurocentric education" [[as opposed to, what, Angolan education?) is just codespeak for "I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but Columbus=bad dude, so time to dredge up the Racism 101 syllabus".

[Bham1982]

Here's an actual scholarly estimate, one from a source that is most definitely left-leaning-

Estimate of Columbus-era native population north of the Rio Grande [[so U.S. and Canada)- peaked at somewhere between 900k and 12 million.

Estimate of Columbus-era native population [[in what is today Mexico)- peaked at somewhere between 3 and 38 million.

So legitimate scholars estimate that Mexico had somewhere between 3-4 times the population of the U.S. and Canada combined. And Central/South America follow a similar pattern. The Andes were even more populated.

Relative to the rest of the Americas, the U.S. and Canada were comparatively empty. Not surprising that Mexico, with 10-15 times the human density, and with far more organized tribal societies, has been able to retain native bloodlines and culture to a far greater degree.

http://www.bxscience.edu/ourpages/au...population.pdf