• But it was Columbus that “opened” the Americas to europeans, which I consider a fairly significant event. He may not have been the first, but I dare say the most important to our history. Without Columbus the United States would likely not exist. Although it is wrong to glorify him, what he did is historicaly significant. Since we all know what Columbus did to the native populations I don’t think that we are in danger of over glorifying his achievements, however. I remember a whole bunch of really crappy anti-Columbus Day bills from congress last season (unfortunately I did not qualify for nationals) :cry: and they were all soundly defeated, if that’s any indication of national sentiment.


  • I don’t think you can blame columbus for all the crimes that occured in the Americas for the next 500 years from the point of discovery. If you do then perhaps you should also celebrate all the good things that all the people accomplished that followed him. Dispite what some might think, if it hadn’t been for North America, Nazis would rule Europe.

    Now some will say, WWII might not have happened had it not been for Columbus. Those same people want their cake and want to eat it too. So what, had columbus not discovered America nobody would have and none of the bad things would have occured?

    Who is next? The Pope that evil doer! Why, he is against birth control, yeah, more starving babies!!! Oh, a 9 year old girl is raped by her uncle? Make her have the kid, NO to abortion! I bet the Pope and Catholics by not promoting birth control have created more death by starvation then were aztecs killed by columbus’s party directly.

    BB


  • Columbus Day?
    NO! It’s just another wasted holiday.

    Labor Day?
    NO! Why celebrate labor by taking the day off?
    Wasn’t it originally, partly in honor of(read pay off to)labor unions
    back when they were about twice as big (and a big part of American labor?) Now they are a minority that has to much control over the price of
    labor and products reducing American’s purchasing power.

    MLKjr Day?
    NO! Correta Scott King(his widow)said DrMLKjr
    recognized the value of work and
    that it took work to make progress.
    NOT another holiday!

    Valentines’ Day?
    NO! It was invented by the flower, candy
    and gretting card industries to boost sales
    during a down time (February.)
    Besides, shouldn’t lovers celebrate year round?

    Take Your Daughter to Work Day?
    NO! Why discriminate against the boys?
    Why give the children another day off school
    depriving them of an education? Rename it …
    Inefficient and Dangerous Day!


    Just a few offerings …


  • I don’t think you can blame columbus for all the crimes that occured in the Americas for the next 500 years from the point of discovery. If you do then perhaps you should also celebrate all the good things that all the people accomplished that followed him. Dispite what some might think, if it hadn’t been for North America, Nazis would rule Europe.

    6 Million were killed in Haiti under Columbus’s rule, the rest slowly dieing out in the next 30 years. They died in slavery camps in Haitian Gold minds and Cotton (Pre-Cotton Gin) plantations.

    Disease did not kill very many people in the Caribbean. Unlike Northern-North America, New England for example, the Caribbean was a haven for disease, and people’s immune systems grew better because of it. Unfortunately, the Native Americans in New England were perhaps “Too Healthy”. They did not live in cramped cities, they bathed often, they ate well, and they lived in a climate where disease was not rampant. This proved their undoing when new diseases came to their shores around 1614 (Smallpox and Plague first arrive), killing as many as 90%-96% of their people.

    All can be found in Chapter 2 of the book “Lies my Teacher told me”, with references to primary history sources.


  • No yanny, you are the lying.


  • Yanny, Haiti only has a population of 7 million now, you believe they had 6 million people to kill?

    Yes, the native Arawak Amerindians were slaughtered after it’s discovery but it was by Spanish Settlers, not by Chris Columbus’s own hands or the hands of the men he commanded.

    In fact Yanny, the Arawak Amerindians were initially slaughtered by other ‘Carib nations’. The spanish only started to slaughter the Arawak’s AFTER Columbus was away.

    As usual Yanny, not only do you cite no facts, but the facts you do use aren’t facts at all. What’s the motto of the sophists? Never let the facts get in the way of a poor argument, just cite lies to distract your opponent.

    The top end estimates of the death was 1 million not 6 million, it occured when Columbus was away. Columbus was dead in 1506 and left that side of the globe for good in 1504 long before most of the slaughter even occured, yeah, blame the dead guy, he can’t defend himself!

    You might was well blame Jesus Christ for the Crusades Yanny! :wink:

    http://abe.www.ecn.purdue.edu/~agenhtml/agenmc/haiti/history.html

    http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ha.html

    http://www.discoverhaiti.com/history00_1_1.htm

    http://wilstar.net/holidays/columbus.htm


  • Well done, BB!
    Multiple sources.
    I read three of them completely
    and perused the cia.gov one.

    :o I believe!

  • '19 Moderator

    Ouch!


  • Quoting Lies my teacher told me, page 63 third paragraph,

    “Estimates of Haiti’s pre-Columbian population average 8,000,000 people. When Christopher Columbus returned in Spain, he left his brother Bartholomew in charge of the island. Bartholomew took a census of Indian adults in 1946 and came up with 1,100,000”

    According to his citiations (which he does after ever fact) this information came from “De Cordoba letter in Williams’ Documents of West Indian History, 1:94”.

    Want to know what your favorite hero did to cause such widespread genocide? Page 62,

    “The Indians promised to pay tribute to the Catholic Sovereigns every three monthsm, as follows: In the In the Cibae, where the gold mines were located, every person of 14 years of age or upward was to pay a large hawk bell of gold dust; all others were to pay 25 pounds of cotton. Whenever an Indian delivered his tribute, he was to receive a brass or copper tokein which he must wear around his neck as proof he made the payment”

    That is cited "Ferdinand Columbus, The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. 1959), 149-150.

    This source is from one of the most presitigious Universities in New Jersey (aside from Princeton).

    Now, that was what he forced them to do, what was their punishment?

    “The Spanish punished those whose tokeins had expired: they cut off their hands.”

    Same source. How much pressure did this put upon the Indians?

    “As a result of the sufferings and hard labor they endured, the Indians choose and have chosen suicide. Occasionally, a hundred have committed mass suicide. The women, exhausted by labor, have shunned conception and childbirth… Many, while pregnant, have taking something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their children with their own hands, so not to leave them in such oppression”

    Same source as the first “De Cordoba letter in Williams’ Documents of West Indian History, 1:94”.

    And this man deserves a holiday?


  • Columbus was Italian, so how is he responsible for what the Spanish did?

    Estimates of Haitis population were 8 million? The population of Spain was only about 8 million at that time. Where is your proof Yanny? Lies I say, LIES!!!

    Here is somethign from : http://abe.www.ecn.purdue.edu/~agenhtml/agenmc/haiti/history.html

    While Columbus was away, Spaniards started looting, raping, killing, whipping and enslaving the natives, making them turn in gold as well as food. This regime of terror continued despite Las Casas’ complaints and the return of Admiral Columbus, and led to the decimation of the local population (Caribs). Estimates suggest that somewhere between 300,000 and one million natives died of exhaustion, disease, violence or suicide between 1492 and 1550. The exhaustion of the riverbeds and mines further led the Spaniards to move West towards newer eldorados in what are today Mexico and Peru.

    So, Columbus was Italian so had no control over what the Spanish did, was dead for 45 years of that period and yet was responsible for the 300,000 to 1 million, oh wait, we are using Yanny factoids, errr 6 to 8 million dead. Riiiiiiiiiight…… By the way, the killings of the natives didn’t really start in earnst until the first spanish settlement had been slaughtered by an inland tribe with the locals taking part. I believe destroying a settlement is an act of war.

    This article here:
    http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04140a.htm
    goes on to say the island was in fact sparcely populated. That there were 2 factions, one headed by the admiral and the other was headed by settlers and it was the settlers doing the gold mining and slaughtering. It also mentions as well as the other articles cited that it was the Carib natives in the area who were doing most of the killing.

    This article:
    http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/caribbean/haiti/history.htm

    states that the population was only 400, 000 when Columbus ‘discovered’ the island.

    This article:
    http://www.internationalorphans.org/Haiti-history

    states that the population was about 400, 000 when Columbus came by.

    As usual, your ‘facts’ don’t stand up to scrutiny, this is getting to be a broken record. If you are really taught these lies in school then your school board should be indicted for incompetence.

    BB


  • Why does Jesus have a holiday for his birthday and his death for what the crusaders did Yanny?

    BB


  • I don’t think it really matters to him, BB.

    I’m trying to figure out what exactly Yanny has a problem with here. Don’t agree with the holiday? Don’t celebrate it. Why are you so gung-ho on taking away the celebration from the rest of the people in this country?

    We’re not celebrating his (supposed) killings (if they are true), but rather we’re celebrating his accomplishments which made the founding of America possible. Do we stop recognizing the accomplishments of Abraham Lincoln, simply because he owned slaves?


  • sigh I love how my arguments are never addressed :lol: . You’re a debater, Yanny, you should know that silence equals consent.


  • If anyone has something against Christopher Columbus, it should not be the Carribean natives, Incas, et cetera who died as an indirect result of actions long after his rediscovery of the West. It should be the Jews and Moors, whose torture, death, and stolen gold financed his trip beforehand.

    That is, if you believe that the Spanish Inquisition was a bad thing. It of course was not a good thing, but it is now being downplayed as less harmful than the other Catholic creed cleansings of the period. Kind of Genocide Lite I guess. Some records show as few as 3000 to 5000 deaths over a 350-year history of the government policy, which some say actually started around 1580 instead of the 1480s while others mention millions of brutally killed victims and horrible conditions for those allowed to live.

    Even the current Pope says it was a bad thing, but that the Church and its members should repent of it and that others ideally would forgive it.

    Personally, if I was arguing against Columbus, I’d use the past one could argue he should’ve known about much more than the future he couldn’t hope to predict.
    Edit: fixed a grammatical error in the above sentence and some random typoos.

    http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP2INQUI.HTM

    http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0201_In_Search_of_Columbu.html

    http://www.joesessays.com/history/100.shtml

    http://www.seedofabraham.org/Text/rabbi/1492 page 1.html


  • If you are interested in revisionist history, another great “starter” resource is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States of America.

    He asserts, (rightfully, in my opinion), that history in general is a malleable commodity and every word, phrase and omission has connotations that may or may not be discernable by the reader.

    I’m no expert on the media, history, or even particularly liberal or conservative. However, I am open-minded enough to listen to other people’s arguments without resorting to cliche’ed responses. With that in mind, please reserve your judegment for Zinn’s views because, at first, they can seem outrageously “left.”

    Zinn asserts that Columbus believed he’d landed in Asia (answering the question of why Native Americans are called “Indians”). Because they had no written history, it’s difficult to gather a full account of what happened within those few disasterous decades. Columbus and the spaniards, however, did keep journals…which reveals quite a bit.

    The Arawak Indians (Tainos) greeted Columbus in the Bahamas. Columbus considered them gentle and people of peace. “They do not bear arms, and do not know for I showed them a sword–they took it by the edge and cut themselves.”

    He continues with other observations that now seem culturally insensitive (because they’re so gentle they’d make fine servants, etc.). Anyway, we all know why Columbus was there…not to discover the new world as it was already pretty well discovered…but for gold. He makes no secret of this in his journals.

    By 1500, Colubus’ forces had erected crosses all over the Bahamas–he was very religious–but also 340 gallows. Why would he build so many gallows?

    Samuel Eliot Morison (Harvard historian and an admiring Columbus’ biographer) writes: “Whoever thought up this ghastly system, Columbus was responsible for it, as the only means of producing gold for export… Thos who fled to the mountains were hunted with hounds, and those who escaped, starvation and disease took toll, while thousands of poor creatures in desperation took cassava poison to end their miseries.”

    Morison is referring to Columbus’ system for producing the vast tracts of gold the Arawaks supposedly had. The natives were ordered to produce a specific quantity of gold, and if they could not their arms were severed.

    “So the policy and acts of Columbus for which he alone was responsible began the depopulation of the terrestrial paradise that was Hispaniola in 1492. Of the original natives, estimated by modern ethnologist at 300,000 in number, one-third were killed off between 1494 and 1496. By 1508, an enumeration showed only 60,000 alive…in 1548 Oviedo (Morison is referring to Fernandex de Oviedo, the official Spanish historian of conquest) doubted whether 500 Indians remained. -Morison

    Speeding things up a bit, when gold couldn’t be produced, he sent slaves (about 500; though 200 died en route). From his journal in 1498: “From here one might send, in the name of the Holy Trinity, as many slaves as could be sold…”

    Also take a look at Bartolome de las Casas, a Dominican priest who arrived in the New World a few years after Columbus and was horrified. He wrote a book called The Devastation of the Indians.

    From Casas’ book we witness horrible, horrible atrocities commited by Columbus’ men. These accounts were corroborated by a group of Dominican friars, who addressed the Spanish gov’t in the hopes they would intercede.

    It is estimated that in Cuba during the time, 7,000 children died in a period of 3 months due to enslaved and overworked parents, malnutrition and exposure.

    Of course there was also the accidental deaths, such as typhoid, typhus, etc.

    However, consider if cultural differences are “accidental.” For example, the Arawaks’ culture did not include any concept of private property. Yet, if a native “stole” from Columbus’ men they were beheaded or burned at the stake.

    Columbus gave his men women to use. This is not a cultural misunderstanding. An Italian noble named Cuneo describes in his journal how he raped and beat a Caribbean woman whom Columbus had “given” him.

    Anyway, I think we can ALL agree that Columbus discovered America kinda like I might “discover” a coke in your fridge.

    -Thumb

  • '19 Moderator

    @Thumb:

    Anyway, I think we can ALL agree that Columbus discovered America kinda like I might “discover” a coke in your fridge.

    -Thumb

    Not quite the same, I know the coke in my fridge belongs to me and have the power to stop you from actualy enjoying what I belive to be my coke ;)


  • It never ceases to amaze me on how we judge historical figures based on modern philosphies. Kinda and generous slave owner in the 1800s is a slave owning monster today.

    How will we be judged in 500 years? Letting tinpot dictators run nations into the ground. Has anybody heard of the war that has been going on in the Congo? 5 million have died in the last 5 years or so, we let it happen, all of us. Funny how we feel pretty good about ourselves when we compare ourselves to those of 5 centuries ago.

    Winston Churchill, he’s a drunk.

    Roosevelt? An adulter.

    Lincoln? A slave owner along with Thomos Jefferson, how could a slave owner go on to write “All me are created equal” is in of itself a lesson on hypocracy.

    We’re killing our heros faster than we are making new ones.


  • Hear, Hear! That’s a fine point. I personally have nothing against any of the people named in this thread, as I have not experienced life in their times or circumstances. I do know that no one is perfect, and that some of the imperfections mentioned here are big ones. But, it is not mine to judge.

    Now, if someone did what Columbus did today, it would be met with a much different reaction not because we are better people per se but because we have different standards for ourselves and for one another than the norm at his time.

    On the other hand, I have a problem with people forgiving the Nazis or the Kmehr Rouge too easily.


  • @mr_mischief:

    Hear, Hear! That’s a fine point. I personally have nothing against any of the people named in this thread, as I have not experienced life in their times or circumstances. I do know that no one is perfect, and that some of the imperfections mentioned here are big ones. But, it is not mine to judge.

    Now, if someone did what Columbus did today, it would be met with a much different reaction not because we are better people per se but because we have different standards for ourselves and for one another than the norm at his time.

    On the other hand, I have a problem with people forgiving the Nazis or the Kmehr Rouge too easily.

    what would be the equivalent of what CC did “today”?
    To make a scientific discovery off the backs of his grad students, one that is a boon to millions and a devestation to thousands? This would not get off the ground, i don’t believe.
    To push the frontiers of space, and to become the spokesperson for the KKK?
    Is there anything one could do today to “warrent” a holiday in the future? Is there anything that would match the accomplishments and rudeness (for lack of a better word - i’m post 28-hour work-day) of Columbus?
    I am of the mind that for all the good and evil:

    1. North America would have been “discovered” by many other “explorers” of the time within 20 years of 1476 and already had been.
    2. Nothing would have prevented the deaths of millions to disease. Nothing. People are going to be immune to viruses and bugs that they carry and there are going to be people susceptible to these bugs. Are the few who visit from China to Toronto “evil” for bringing SARS to Canada? Of course not.
    3. Honoring Columbus is like honoring a mercenary, a gold panner, a merchant for doing what they do, except having a grander vision than most others. I would rather see this day go to “great scientists”, “physicians” (yes, i’m biased here), “great humanitarians”, or Me.

  • Dezrtfish/Red…the Coke in the fridge only belongs to you if you believe in private property.

    Guest & Mr_mischief…you make a good points about “updating” our opinions on historical figures. It’s healthy to question what you’ve been taught…and what better standards to apply than your own. If you feel that your standards are not righteous, then you should consider those while you’re at it.

    Columbus’ actions (and, more importantly, the actions of his men) were at that time largely considered distasteful. Rape has never been acceptable. Neither has burning and dismembering men, women and children.

    “But I’m not one to judge.”

    And in 500 years? Yeah, I hope future generations are critical enough to depose heroes if it’s warranted. Good for them! Keep improving those heroes!

    Here’s what I would give a holiday to, Cystic Crypt…

    Subject founds pharmaceutical company, discovers/invents cure for AIDS, and broadly distributes across the world as a non-profit endeavor.

    Gets the African National Congress off the ground and functioning as a guiding and peaceful leadership…and, ultimately, brings Africa into the 21st century.

    Becomes an incredibly popular advocate for peace among the religious right, be it Christian, Muslim, or Jew. This person’s deeds lead to decades (or more) of peace in the middle east and elsewhere.

    Those are a few just off the top of my head. Granted, they’re pretty large-scale. Here are some other “hero cauldrons”…

    Poverty, domestic abuse, education, campaign and voting reforms, medical cures (cancer, etc.), superb skateboarding skills, space travel technology, or even grass-roots philosophers.

    Okay, I’m talking a lot but not saying much.

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