08/31/2018
My dynamic, knowledgeable and lovely wife Darrelle posted this 2 years ago. It merits repeating postings. I add the following info as I'm a fervent native American advocate... Columbus was a genocidal scoundrel, that we should celebrate him at all is a horror. The following observations (quotes indicated) are from the journal of a Dominican friar named Bartholomew de las Casas who was horrified with what crimes against humanity were being committed by the Spanish in the New World.... One of Columbus' first observations of the Arawak men and women who greeted him peacefully in the Caribbean was that "they would make fine servants....With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." He also believed that the Indians would be able to provide him with the immense quantities of gold he was seeking. When he returned to Spain, he promised the Spanish royals that he would return from his next voyage with "as much gold as they need...and as many slaves as they ask."
Although Columbus made good on his word to send back many slaves, most of the Arawaks perished on the transatlantic journey or soon after their arrival in Spain. So he threw his energy into collecting gold. In Haiti, he ordered that "...all Indians over age 14 surrender a quota of gold every three months." The quota was unattainable--gold did not exist in the quantities that Columbus imagined. Nevertheless, "Indians who did not meet the quota had their hands cut off and bled to death." This information was first made widely available in Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" first published in 1980.
