![]() Many indigenous groups oppose the holiday as celebrating a man who began the cruel treatment of natives, and the fact that the European conquest caused a huge decline in their population. Widespread opposition to Columbus celebrations dates to the later part of the 20th century, with the growing notion that he was responsible for more destruction and calamity than prosperity and progress. Originally observed on October 12, in 1971, it was changed to the second Monday in October. ![]() In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed Columbus Day a national holiday, largely due to the pressure of the Knights of Columbus. Proud of Columbus’s birthplace and faith, they organized annual religious ceremonies and parades in his honor.Ĭolumbus Day first became an official state holiday in the United States in Denver, Colorado, in 1906 through the lobbying efforts of Angelo Noce, a first-generation Italian. Some Italian-Americans observed Columbus Day as a celebration of their heritage, with the first occasion in New York City in 1866. Harrison issued a proclamation, stating: “On that day let the people, so far as possible, cease from toil and devote themselves to such exercises as may best express honor to the discoverer and their appreciation of the great achievements of the four completed centuries of American life.” In 1892, President Benjamin Harrison called on Americans to celebrate Columbus Day on its 400th anniversary as a patriotic festival of rituals framed around such themes as citizenship and progress. The first Columbus Day celebration took place in 1792, when New York’s Columbian Order, or Tammany Hall, held an event to commemorate the 300th anniversary. “My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write.”Īmericans have celebrated Columbus’s initial voyage since the colonial era. The Spaniards “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades,” las Casas wrote. The multivolume “History of the Indies” by Bartolome de las Casas, a Catholic priest, describes Spaniards driven by “insatiable greed” - “killing, terrorizing, afflicting, and torturing the native peoples” with “the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty,” and how systematic violence was aimed at preventing “Indians from daring to think of themselves as human beings.” “Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity,” Columbus wrote, “go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.” In 1495, during the second voyage, Indians were sent to Spain as slaves, many dying en route. With 50 men, we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” By his third voyage, he realized he had stumbled on a previously unknown continent.Ĭolumbus’s logbook records this initial description of the Indians: “They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. ![]() In 1493, Columbus returned to Spain in triumph, bearing gold, spices and Indian captives, and was named “Admiral of the Ocean Sea.” He crossed the Atlantic three more times before his death in 1506. Believing himself in the East Indies, Columbus called them “Indians,” a name ultimately applied to all the indigenous peoples of the New World. There, he established San Salvador, Spain’s first colony in the Americas, with 39 of his men, inaugurating a new era of European exploration, exploitation and colonization.Īrawak natives flocked to the shore and made friends with the Spaniards. In December, the expedition found Hispaniola, which Columbus thought might be Japan. Later in October, Columbus sighted Cuba and believed it was mainland China. They became the first Europeans to explore the Americas since the Vikings set up a colony in Newfoundland in the 10th century.
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