COLUMBUS DAY

1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Christopher Columbus. Great navigator, discovered America, and left one of the larger marks on history. Tomorrow is Columbus day.

Cause for celebration, right?

Before diving into that, I’ve never had any particular feelings for Columbus day, other than it was one of my early childhood memories – the great Columbus day storm in 1962 which leveled a tree in our backyard and pretty much caused havoc throughout the northwest.

Back to Mr. Columbus. As a sailor, his greatest strength was his knowledge of the tradewinds. That knowledge overcame some grievous navigational errors. Mr Columbus overestimated the size of the European land mass and grossly underestimated the size of the planet. He had estimated the Canary Islands were about 2,300 miles away. It was more like 12,000 miles. Oops.

He also didn’t prove the earth was a sphere. It had theoretically been proven long before, but he did test the theory. In any case, he landed in what he thought was India. Wrong. It was the Bahamas. Ooops.

Upon landing, he was greeted by seemingly friendly natives. He promptly took a few prisoners to find out where they had obtained the gold they were wearing. Despite the fact the Vikings had made landfall way before Chris, what Columbus did do is bring back word of his discovery to Europe.  

He also left behind something that helped pave the way for future expeditions. Germs. Small pox. There is growing evidence that the population of the Americas vastly exceeded what we were taught in school. By the time the colonists arrived in the 1600’s, there were only remnants of the native amercans left, but it was those remnants that formed our opinion of what the native Americans were like.

Charles Mann, author of the book 1491, equates that impression like forming an impression about European culture from a small band of starving escapees from a concentration camp.

The nomadic small bands of native Americans bore little resemblance to the potential millions of inhabitants alive when Christopher Columbus landed.

While Columbus had long been a source of pride from Italian Americans, the first formal Columbus day was in 1937. Pushed hard by Italian American immigrants, Roosevelt made it a formal Holiday. Every ethnic group rightfully has their heroes, but it does matter the lens through which you look.


No doubt he made an impact and he did set into motion a great sequence of events. But proof is growing he inadvertently depopulated an entire hemisphere.

His actions arguably resulted in more death than any other human being.

Should we celebrate Columbus day? I’d argue no. Should we observe it? Perhaps. It should give us some pause and make us think. If recent discoveries are correct, generations were wiped out nearly overnight. There was great suffering, but as there was no written word, we don’t have any hard evidence. Yet.

At bare minimum we should question what we learned in school. Bottom line, he did succeed in getting to the new world and getting back. But he wasn’t a particularly good navigator and he wasn’t first. Lucky? Maybe. But potentially millions paid for his success.