Why do people tie indian suffering to Columbus Day?

[daveleau]

Gomer brought this up, but he doesn't want it discussed in his thread. He is not alone in his ideas against Columbus day though. Many consider it a bad thing that we celebrate the discovery of America. I don't get the connection. To me, I would see Andrew Jackson's birthday as being the day for people to cry out about this since he was the main force behind Americas indian removal policy. I don't see how Columbus comes into the equation. Can anyone shed some light on this for me?
Thanks
Dave

Gomer's very touching thread with a superb speech by Chief Seattle: http://www.techimo.com/forum/t84119.html

[Gomer]

Simple answer to your question Dave. It was the beginning of the end for them. As well as the fact that he and the people that immediately followed were far from saints when it came to the treatment of the native peoples.

On what day do we celebrate Jackson's b-day? I don't get federal holidays off, so that one escapes me. Let me know, and I will post the speech of Chief Seattle on that day as well.

Columbus and His Trajectory
To Christopher Columbus, and the Spanish Catholic kingdom behind him, the voyage to the American lands sought a "discovery." The Grand Mariner was among a handful in Europe to suspect that strong wind currents blew across the great ocean, going west farther south and back east on the northern latitudes. Why he knew this, how he came to be the first to ascertain it for a major European power, what he sought and how he was thinking about potential "discoveries" defines the true story, not only of Columbus, but of the thinking and tenets that guided (and justified) the colonization of the American Indian continent. It is a fact that Columbus knew that conquest and Spanish political hegemony would follow a promising discovery. He hoped to and did get very rich by his "discovery."

On August 3, 1492, Columbus sailed south to the Azores (a route he knew well and where he would turn west) out the port of Palos, in southern Spain. Thousands of Jews sailed out of Spain, mostly from the same port, on the previous day. The inquisition was at its zenith in Spain in 1492; all remaining Jews were to convert or die. Executions by fire were still common. It was a pious, "Christ-bearing" Columbus who went forth with the Catholic King's mandate, carrying the mission of conversion to fuel his drive to "discover."

Landing in Guanahani (renamed San Salvador), Columbus planted a Spanish flag, ordered a Catholic Mass and proclaimed himself Viceroy over the new lands. For days, large dug-out canoes full of curious Lucayo-Arawak men paddled out to the strange, giant ships. The large canoes glided quickly over the water. Caciques (chiefs) went out with warriors carrying bows and arrows and lances, but also food and other gifts. Cdumbus sought information about larger land falls and about the source of golden amulets he received as presents. From his log, we know what Columbus thought about these new people and how he analyzed their worth. One can only wonder what thoughts crossed the Tainos' minds at this first encounter, what interpretation their unique cosmology could give these events.

The Tainos thought Columbus and his men strange enough to be gods, possibly representatives of the four Skydwelling brothers in their Creation Story. The bearded men with hairy, sand-color faces, with ships of many sails and booming sticks that could cut across a swath of trees were thought to come from the sky. Mystically overwhelmed and naturally friendly, the Arawaks' first idea was to make peace. What they had a lot of, food and simple ornaments, they gave freely. Columbus soon re-provisioned his ships' holds with fresh water, dried fish, nuts, calabashes, and cazabi (yucca) bread. During all of Columbus's first trip, in numerous encounters with Tainos, both in Cuba and Santo Domingo, the clothed visitors were welcome and the Tainos attempted to appease all their hungers. Wrote Columbus in his ship's log, "They are so ingenious and free with all they have that no one would believe it who has not seen it; of anything they possess, if it be asked of them, they never say no; on the contrary they invite you to share it and show as much love as if their hearts went with it. . ." (Jane 1930).

There is never any sense in Columbus's writing that the Tainos are incapable, only that they were innocent and well-intentioned. He would come to know that they were completely honest, as if the ability to deceive was not a developed value among them. Columbus wrote that the young men wondered at the shiny things, grabbing sabers by the edge and cutting themselves for lack of experience, but that otherwise they were quick-witted, knew their geography and expressed themselves well. The Indians referred to more than "one hundred islands by name," Columbus said. Later writings of Columbus, Las Casas, Pedro Martir de Angleria and other Caribbean chroniclers gave many instances of Taino quick-wittedness and eloquence of expression. "They are a very loving people and without covetousness," Columbus wrote. "They are adaptable for every purpose, and I declare to your Highnesses that there is not a better country nor a better people in the world than these." And also: "They have good memories and inquire eagerly about the nature of all they see." Columbus noted that after eating, the caciques were brought a bouquet of herbs with which to wash their hands prior to washing in water.

Everything seemed exotic to the Admiral and in fact he was witness to a culture and a way of life arising from a totally different civilization-and a quite logical and compelling culture, one with a significant sense of time and existence but consistently relegated to "primitive" status on the ladder of stages of civilization elaborated by Western scholars. Only leaving aside the ascendancy view of civilization can one envision that Taino civilization was also in a developmental process - one with its own definitions, but just as genuine and important and universal as the European process.

Among the islands, Columbus asked directions to the court of the Great Khan, of whom he had read in Marco Polo's journals. Captive Lucayo-Arawaks, in the classic first of many future cross-cultural miscommunications, guided his way toward their "Khan," the island of Cuba, which they called Cubanakan. it would take a full season for the Tainos, happy people of paradise, to lose their essential good will for the Spanish, who increasingly demanded women, continued to take captives by surprise, and virulently announced their hunger for the yellow metal the Indians called guanin-the Spanish "oro" or English "gold."

At the entrance to the Bay of Bairiay, in eastern Cuba, the three Spanish ships hove to through a night of thick tropical rain before awakening to a "beauty never before seen by the eyes of man," according to the ship's log. That same day Columbus told his log about "green and gracious trees, different from ours, covered by flowers and fruits of marvelous flavors, many types of fowl and small birds that many with great sweetness."

However, though he waxed poetic, the Admiral's main task was sizing up the real estate and its inhabitants. He did so with a banker's eye. Columbus's venture was financed by powerful investors who wanted a return and his ship's log betrays three major concerns: finding the court of the Great Khan (for trade), finding gold in quantity, and estimating the resource exploitation value of land, slaves, precious woods, woven and raw cotton, and fruits. "Our Lord in his mercy," Columbus wrote, "Direct me where I can find the gold mine." (Tyler 1988)


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Conquest of Española
The conquest of Española began in earnest with Columbus's second trip. Fifteen hundred adventurers, ex-prisoners and ex-soldiers with experience in the final campaigns against North African Moors came back with Columbus. They came seeking their private fortunes and would be ruthless in this pursuit. The Spanish (Castillian, Aragonese, and Extremaduran) soldier of 1494 was a deadly foe. He had good steel armor and swords, arquebuses, cross-bows, trained mastiffs, and excellent cavalry.

One battle had already been fought. During Columbus's first trip, his flagship, the Santa Maria, ran aground and was wrecked. As a result, a fort, called Fort Navidad, was built and some forty men volunteered to stay behind. They were charged with maintaining good relations with the Taino and with searching for the source of gold. They were true to the later mission though not to the former.

Almost immediately the men broke into factions, fought each other and proceeded to harass the Taino population, hoarding as many as five women apiece. While Guacagarani, the local cacique, remained loyal to his promise to Columbus that he would care for the men, a band of conquistadors carried on their terror campaign deep into the territory of another cacique, Caonabo, who had made no promises. Caonabo would not tolerate the depredations and ordered attacks first on the intruding band and later on the fort itself. All the Spanish were killed but the attack became justification for retribution upon Columbus's return with seventeen ships.

The Spanish mounted almost immediate military campaigns against Indian villages. For several years the fights went back and forth and by 1496, according to Las Casas, only one third of Indian Española was left. Other historians assert that the pace was not quite as quick, that it took until about 1510 for that kind of extermination. Plagues played a big role in the decimation of the Indian population, first in Espanola, later in Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Bahamas, and good parts of Florida. A type of biological warfare that followed human migration from Europe into the Indian populations was an immediate factor at the time of contact and it contributed greatly in the decimation of Indian resistance.

Gold mines had been discovered. Well-armed Spanish patrols captured Indians as needed to work gruelingly in the gold mines. The wanton cruelty and disregard for human life by the fifteenth century Spanish in the conquest of the Indies is darkly legendary. Often, Indian miners died of starvation, though food could be had easily. As many Indians were easily enslaved through raids during the early years, the life of an Indian had little value.

Caonabo, the most respected cacique in Española persisted a few years until captured by trickery and punished by a Columbus lieutenant, Alonso de Hojeda. Columbus ordered Caonabo decapitated but later sent him on to Spain as a slave (the cacique was lost at sea, in the same disaster that claimed Guaironex). Hojeda himself sliced off the cacique's brothers' ears. These types of actions precipitated general insurrection among the Taino Indians.

In 1496, Columbus led an assault later known as the Battle of the Vega and called by his followers the principal battle against paganism, in part to punish a cacique, Guatiguanax, who had killed ten Spaniards and burned forty others. Guatiguanax had taken revenge for the killing of one of his own elders, who had been torn to death by a Spanish mastiff commanded by two Spanish soldiers. Columbus captured many Indians that he sold into slavery during this campaign. (Fernandez-Armesto 1974)

One immediate factor of the invasion of the Caribbean is that Spain immediately shipped out increasing numbers of transmigrants to the newly "discovered" islands. A transmigration took hold that was similar to the Amazonian one of present-day Brazil. It is contended here that this initial migration to the Indian country of the Americas was caused by mostly the same factors that cause the transmigrations today-the landlessness and general poverty of the European peasant after displacement from land as land production became increasingly measured for its commodity value rather than its people-feeding value.

After 1502, when the gold foretold by Columbus was found in Española, migrants came by the thousands. Las Casas complained later: "Nobody came to the Indies except for gold-in order to leave the state of poverty which plagues all classes in Spain." The roads to the mines were like ant hills with arriving Spanish, wrote de Angleria. Many in the first wave were poor Spanish nobleman with parasitic ways and their even poorer servants. The Indians complained that the Spanish ate too much and worked little.

In time, the Spanish commendadors realized that they had brought too many people to the island. But it can be safely asserted that the immediate process of transmigration precipitated itself because of the misery of the inhabitants of Spain in their homeland. It will remain a consistent theme in the process of peopling the Americas with Europeans. Wrote Las Casas: "Allowing too many people to emigrate from Spain has always been one of the principal reasons behind the devastation of the Indies."


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The Last Spanish Crusade
Once military superiority was established, the persecution of the Indian people by the Spanish was characterized by unimaginable cruelty The Indian had no personhood, the Spanish conquest allowed no regard whatsoever for the human life of an Indian.

"It was a general rule among our Spaniards to be extraordinarily cruel to the Indians," Las Casas wrote. The Spanish men relished working their steel swords on the Taino flesh, often cutting hands off at the slightest offense. They would test their swords and manly strength on captured Indians and place bets on the slicing off of heads or the cutting of bodies in half with one blow," Las Casas told.

In a single act of revenge after an Indian attack, the Spanish soldiers captured 700 villagers and stabbed them all to death. The war cacique they hanged, as this was an abhorred form of death to the Tainos. Angleria records that during this incident some soldiers attempted to protect children. One soldier took a young boy in his arms, but the boy was stabbed by another soldier who came from behind with a lance. Another good soldier had a boy by the hand, and a passing soldier cut the boy's legs with his sword. When lsabella's successor, Queen Juana (the protectress) heard about this massacre, she was moved to order an investigation. Fray Nicholas de Ovando, then governor, held a posthumous trial for the slaughtered caciques and cacicas. As witnesses, he brought in the men who did the killings.

There were many pitched battles where Indians routed the Spanish soldiers, and organized resistance persisted for fifty years, but Spanish cannon, steel swords, horses and dogs overwhelmed the Indians. One by one, Spanish captains approached the ruling nucleus of the tribal leadership. The techniques used to lure and trap the sincere Taino were strictly Machiavellian. The Spanish would sue for peace and start negotiations at which the caciques would put on large feasts. Then the Spanish would attack.

One Spanish governor, Ovando, did this to destroy the powerful woman cacique, Anacaona, whose people he sought to "encommend" to new Spanish arrivals. He chose Christmas day, after three days of generous feasting, dancing, storytelling, and games. Anacaona had arranged a large areito, where her councilors were singing of the ancestors. At a signal from Ovando, Spanish soldiers seized Anacaona and all her nobles. The nobles were burned in a pile. Anacaona, the Taino queen, was hung. (Tyler 1988)

One by one, the caciques of Española fell and their peoples were given over to Spanish masters, or "encomendados," who literally worked the majority of them to death. Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica followed. In Puerto Rico, Caribs and Tainos joined battle against the Spanish and later migrated together to the islands in the Lower Antilles. In Cuba, the Tainos allied with the Ciboneys to mount several major rebellions. They were aided by the warnings of Hatuey, a cacique from Espaflola, who had seen the Spanish system in his own land. Hatuey was joined by a Cubano cacique, Guamax, to initiate a general warrior resistance that would carry on to the 1530s. Hatuey, who warned other Indians that gold was the only god of the Spanish, was captured and ordered burned alive. The story of Hatuey's execution, recorded by Las Casas, is still told to children in eastern Cuba.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/41/013.html

[daveleau]

That's what I was getting at- the popularity of the day seems to drive people's disdain for it rather than reviling a day that is more appropriate. I don't see the validity in that. Truly Andrew Jackson's b-day is not celebrated, but his actions were directly felt by the indians. He had a very aggressive indian removal policy and gained a great deal of his fame from driving out the Seminoles and the Red Creek indians from Florida.

Looking at the link you gave in the other thread, it gives an interesting history of the inhabitants of the Caribbean. So far in my reading, I have seen where Columbus held some of the inhabitants captive on his ships- although it does not say why (good or bad). It does talk of how Columbus returned their hospitality with desires for gold, slaves and fine wood carvings.

[SeanC]

(sarcasm) Because Columbus discovered the new world and led to the ones that did remove Indians. So it's all Columbus' fault. (end sarcasm)

Rather then blame the ones that actually DID do things, blame the most famous person that didn't do anything.

Sean

[Gomer]

Did the Spanish (read the West) represent progress to the Indian peoples? Did Indian people advance as a result of the great encounter? Or was there possibly something the West might have learned from the American indigenous peoples? The Indian populations had little opportunity to teach their culture to the newcomers. The encomienda system, which distributed whole tribes outright to conquistadores for working gold mines and tilling soil, destroyed the Tainos and surrounding peoples with genocidal tempo. Swept aside, the Indian populations retreated to remote areas as their civilization was truncated and their ancient communal patterns were destroyed. Five hundred years later, it might be appropriate to appreciate what more we might have now known, had their humanity been respected and their social-cultural knowledge intelligently understood.

That the Tainos (the term actually describes the sachem families from among the island Arawaks) could keep their quite numerous people strong and well fed, yet prescribe both agriculture and fisheries of a reduced scale, and using the softest of technologies, reaped sufficient yet sustainable yields of food, housing, and other resources, is a significant achievement. Labeled as "primitive" and "backward," even today, it has boen arguably not improved upon.

The label "primitive" is almost always a denigrating assignation. In academic historical thinking, the so-called "primitive peoples," whether in their "savage" and "barbaric" stages, were of a lesser time (the past) from which we (the humans) are thought to have progressed. however, in contemporary development theory, the most "advanced" thinking uniformly incorporates "scale" and the concept of "appropriate technologies." Such new fields as "sustainable agriculture" and "eco-systems management," and the theoretics of "no growth" are establishing themselves in colleges and universities. Their applicability and practicability in a world of fragile ecologies are increasingly accepted. Taino life, in fact, most of what heretofore has been branded as "primitive" and thus not worth emulating about indigenous cultures, is viewed in a totally different light as humankind enters the twenty-first century. "Primitiveness" which should only define a people's "primary" relationship with nature, might be seen as a positive human value and activity in these ecologically precarious times.

The history of the European contact with America and its subsequent conquest has been written and rewritten but seldom from an indigenous perspective and never from the continuity of an Indian survival over that history Western historians have had a tendency to disregard the Indian oral sources and many a fundamental lie about Indian culture has been carried from early written texts into the modern day. Not a few Indian elders have told their children, upon sending them to the western school: "Remember your culture. Don't forget who wrote the history."

To the American indigenous peoples, members of a unique civilization, first sight and first contact with Columbus and his caravels could only mean that a new and yet incomprehensible manifestation had arrived. Most of the early contact stories throughout the hemisphere confirm that the indigenous response was almost uniformly friendly, curious, and extremely respectful. What came back, uniformly and abruptly, was arrogant interrogation and a superior attitude. unrelenting brutality followed, one exploding in sexual temper and blood furies never before imagined, certainly not by the Tainos, and never equalled in all the (often questionable) annals of Sun sacrifice, cannibalism and inter-tribal warfare.

The actual brutality imposed on Indians by the European conquest is now more or less accepted history. What has not decisively changed is the notion that it was, after all, justifiable. Throughout the hemisphere, the average non-Indian American is early infused with the notion that Europe brought "civilization" to the Americas, that Amerindian peoples were mired in an early, "primitive" version of the universal historical process, that they were savages, pagans, and, most damningly, cannibals. But one still needs to wonder Iabout the nature of savagery between two peoples, one of whom worked for and provided food as an uncommercialized staple to its members, and another which could shed copious blood for the gold of the earth.

In his ship's log, the Admiral recorded how well formed and muscular the Taino men and women were, with "no bellies, and good teeth." He noted, too, what good servants they would make, reminding King Ferdinand that slavery has been justified historically many times. To King Ferdinand, as a justification for enslavement, Columbus wrote: "Many other times it has already happened men have been brought from Guinea . . .They (the Tainos) will make excellent servants." Columbus speculates that a few Spanish soldiers could enslave the Tainos: "They are all naked and neither possess weapons nor know of them. They are very well fitted to be governed and set to work to till the land and do whatever is necessary. They also may be taught to build houses and wear clothes and adopt our customs With fifty men, all could be subdued and made to do all that is desired." Time would prove the battle more difficult than expected, though the end result would ultimately be as Columbus predicted.

This fifteenth century Spanish idea that non-Christian peoples could be oppressed at will is rooted in the thesis of the Cardinal bishop of Ostia, Henry of Susa, in the thirteenth century, who successfully postulated that, "heathen peoples had their own political jurisdiction and their possessions before Christ came into the world. But when this occurred, all the powers and the rights of dominion passed to Christ, who, according to doctrine, became lord over the earth, both in the spiritual and temporal sense." (Tyler 1988)

Guacanagari, a Taino cacique who befriended Columbus and was in turn sold into slavery for his trouble, twice sent Columbus face masks made of gold. I think he meant to say: "Gold is such your interest that it is what you are. Your face must be of gold; gold must be the identity your eyes look through."

[daveleau]

Thank you. That is what I was looking for. I hadn't gotten that far in the reading yet, and it's almost time for me to leave.

[Omardeth]

i think your wrong here .

first i don't think people in anyway think that people think it is bad that "we celebrate teh discovery of America" . i don't think the discovery of America is what they have a problem with .

i think that the killing of million of native people is the part that they have a problem with . Its true he did not kill them all, but there is some writing that he wasn't kind to them in anyway . But his "finding " of north america was the begining of the end for a race of people . Many people in history get blamed for things that they had little to do with . this is one of the examples i would guess .

[Chuckiechan]

I think it is fair then to say that when the first tribes left Africa during the dawn of humanity that was when the trouble started. It isn't fair to single out America. Politically correct yes, fair no!

[Creatures]

it's pretty funny i learnt totally different things in school

first contact, he arrived with his three ships! hurray! they met them, and then columbus left with two ship i think, one remained and tryed to talk with them, then columbus returned and everyone in the camp was dead, that's how the "war" started, it wasnt columbus but he wrote about that in a very hard way, so everyone hated them.

Every person made mistakes, and some of them were terrible!
give me one person in history that was always a good man!

Creatures

[Omardeth]

the bad thing about what we were taught in school is that they taught us what they wanted us to know . it wasn't always the "full" truth of what happened .