Columbus Day Abolished

The explorer who supposedly discovered America, Christopher Columbus, was also the one to cause the destruction of the Native Americans residing in the ‘New World’. For this embellished act of exploration, there is a holiday, Columbus Day, held in honor for his infamous exploration. Columbus Day should be abolished from being a national holiday because of the fact that after he set reign over America under Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand populations of the Indians in Haiti decreased rapidly from 8,000,000 to 12,000 Native Americans remaining. “Estimates of Haiti's pre-Columbian population range as high as 8,000,000 people. When Christopher Columbus returned to Spain, he left his brother Bartholomew in charge of the island. Bartholomew took

“Las Casas traveled to Spain and harangued the government. In his books and articles, he demanded that the Spaniards return Indian land and end forced labor. By the end of his life, he also proclaimed a revolutionary idea: the equality of all human races,” (“The Washington Post” Gibbin). Bartolome believed in equality and in the vicinity of Columbus, he should have been the real hero. Not only did Columbus enslave Native Americans, as he punished them by cutting parts of their body off, he like every other Spaniard kept the Indians as slaves expecting taxes of gold every three months. “Whenever an Indian delivered his tribute, he was to receive a brass or copper token which he must wear about his neck as proof that he had made his payment. Any Indian found without such a token was to be punished. With a fresh token, an Indian was safe for three months, much of which time would be devoted to collecting more gold,” (Loewen, 2). But to think about it, the Spaniards expected so much from the Native Americans but the Natives didn’t even expect the Spaniards to hurt them. “All the Indians of all the Indies never once did aught hurt or wrong to Christians, but rather held them to be descended from heaven, from the sky, until many times they or their neighbors received from the Christians many acts of wrongful harm,

To prove a point without the astrolabe, compass, and maps created by other explorers, Columbus wouldn’t have been able to find America. Although many of the deaths of the Native Americans were caused by illnesses, such like small pox, tuberculosis, and typhus you can still blame Columbus. If Columbus’s greed for glory and slaves didn’t exist, then the punitive ways of the Spaniards, the murders and the loss of many Native American religions and cultures wouldn’t occur. Why support a man who exterminated many for sheer selfishness? Exactly, you don’t. Therefore, the aforementioned explorer shouldn’t have a national holiday honoring