The official date for the observance of Columbus Day is October 12, in remembrance of the arrival of Christopher Columbus on that date in 1492 in the Americas.
The first Columbus Day celebration took place on October 12, 1792, when the Columbian Order of New York, better known as Tammany Hall, held an event to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the historic landing. Many Italian Americans observe Columbus Day as a celebration of their heritage and not of Columbus himself, and the day was celebrated in New York City on October 12, 1866. For the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1492, following a lynching in New Orleans, where a mob lynched 11 Italian immigrants on suspicions of killing the Irish politics chief in New Orleans in 1891, still one of the largest mass lynchings in America, President Benjamin Harrison declared Columbus Day as a one-time national celebration. The proclamation was part of a wider effort after the lynching incident to placate Italian Americans that added to the anti-Italian sentiment of the time, a group not seen as “white.” Harrison also wanted to ease diplomatic tensions with Italy. During the anniversary in 1892, teachers, preachers, poets, and politicians used rituals to teach ideals of patriotism. These rituals took themes such as citizenship boundaries, the importance of loyalty to the nation, and the celebration of social progress, included among them was the Pledge of Allegiance by Francis Bellamy. The day was first enshrined as a legal holiday in the United States through the lobbying of Angelo Noce, a first-generation American, in Denver.
Colorado governor Jesse F. McDonald proclaimed the first statewide holiday in 1905, and it was made a statutory holiday in 1907. In 1934, as a result of lobbying by the Knights of Columbus and New York City Italian leader Generoso Pope, Congress passed a statute stating: "The President is requested to issue each year a proclamation (1) designating October 12 as Columbus Day; (2) calling on United States government officials to display the flag of the United States on all government buildings on Columbus Day; and (3) inviting the people of the United States to observe Columbus Day, in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies that express the public sentiment befitting the anniversary of the discovery of America." President Franklin Delano Roosevelt responded by making such a proclamation. This proclamation did not lead to the modern federal holiday; it was like language regarding Thomas Jefferson's birthday and Gold Star Mother’s Day. In 1941, Italian and Italian Americans were interned and lost rights as "enemy aliens" due to a belief they would be loyal to Italy and not America in World War II; in 1942, Franklin Roosevelt had the removal of the designation of Italian Americans as "enemy aliens" announced on Columbus Day along with a plan to offer citizenship to 200,000 elderly Italians living in the United States who had been unable to acquire citizenship due to a literacy requirement, but the implementation of the announcement was not completed until those interned in camps were released after Italy's surrender to the Allies on September 8, 1943.
In 1966, Mariano A. Lucca, from Buffalo, New York, founded the National Columbus Day Committee, which lobbied to make Columbus Day a federal holiday. These efforts were successful and legislation to create Columbus Day as a federal holiday and signed by President Lyndon Johnson on June 28, 1968, to be effective beginning in 1971.
Columbus Day honors an Italian explorer, becoming a positive symbol for the troubled history that Italians have had in immigrating to the United States. His achievement bolstered the morale of a people that had a difficult adjustment in making their way in America.
Since the honoring of the day has come into question, we need to explore the history further. Many focus upon the colonialism and racial animosity that grew from the efforts of Columbus and accuse him of such.
The journal of Columbus includes the sentence: “I know that [the Indians] are a people who can be made free and converted to our Holy Faith more by love than by force.” Columbus gave orders to his men to treat the natives they met with kindness. Columbus, in his reference to natives making “fine servants,” was observing why they were being targeted by another tribe from the mainland.
We need to approach the historical context of the European discovery and colonizing of what for them was a new world. If we are not careful, we can idealize an image of what human life would be like if it were free of the boundaries established by the ideas and laws that represented Western civilization. We can think that free of the Greek and Roman philosophy, free of the Jewish and Christian Bible and the theological tradition, that human life would be simpler, freer, and natural, with the implication that it would be peaceful and just. I want to remove that illusion from our thinking. Some of what I share here is jarring, but it ought not surprise us. Every human culture has plenty of violence, and the Native American culture was no different.
In the Bible, peoples of various cultures committed atrocities upon children, which for most of us is the worst that one can do. Elisha is saddened that Hazael of Syria will dash the heads of the little ones of Israel upon the rocks (II Kings 8:12). The defeat of Babylon will mean the heads of Jewish babies will be crushed (Isaiah 13:16). Mothers in Israel were dashed in pieces with their children (Hosea 10:14) and the little ones of Samaria will be dashed to pieces and pregnant women split open (Hosea 13:16) by the invading Assyrians. The soldiers of Persia who bring devastation to Babylon will be happy to dash the heads of its babies against the rocks (Psalm 137:9). King David slaughtered two-thirds of the men of defeated Moab (II Samuel 8:1-14).
Therefore, when thinking of pre-Columbian America, we need to think realistically. It had “slavery, cannibalism and mass human sacrifice.” From the Aztecs to the Iroquois, that was life among the indigenous peoples before Columbus arrived. This has always been the fatal flaw of the politics of race guilt. Is there a race or nationality free of guilt? To ask the question is to possess the answer. From a Christian perspective, sin and virtue cut the through the heart of every human being and therefore ever culture they create. Racism, violence, and conquest are part of the human condition. The story of the Americas before Columbus is an example.
Pre-Columbian America was virtually one huge slave camp. According to “Slavery and Native Americans in British North America and the United States: 1600 to 1865,” by Tony Seybert, “Most Native American tribal groups practiced some form of slavery before the European introduction of African slavery into North America. Enslaved warriors sometimes endured mutilation or torture that could end in death as part of a grief ritual for relatives slain in battle. Some Indians cut off one foot of their captives to keep them from running away.” Things changed when the Europeans arrived, however: “Indians found that British settlers… eagerly purchased or captured Indians to use as forced labor. Increasingly, Indians began selling war captives to whites.” They became slave traders.
Further, ritual human sacrifice was widespread in the Americas. The Incas practiced ritual human sacrifice to appease their gods, either executing captive warriors or “their own specially raised, perfectly formed children,” according to Kim MacQuarrie, author of “The Last Days of the Incas.” The Aztecs, on the other hand, were more into the “volume” approach to ritual human slaughter. At the re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs performed a mass human sacrifice of an estimated 80,000 enslaved captives in four days. According to an eyewitness account of the Iroquois in 1642, as observed by the Rev. Father Barthelemy Vimont’s “The Jesuit Relations”—captives had their fingers cut off, were forced to set each other on fire, had their skinned stripped off and, in one captured warrior’s case, “the torture continued throughout the night, building to a fervor, finally ending at sunrise by cutting his scalp open, forcing sand into the wound, and dragging his mutilated body around the camp. When they had finished, the Iroquois carved up and ate parts of his body.”
Cannibalism was also common in the New World before (and after) Columbus arrived. According to numerous sources, the name “Mohawk” comes from the Algonquin for “flesh eaters.” Anthropologist Marvin Harris, author of “Cannibals and Kings,” reports that the Aztecs viewed their prisoners as “marching meat.” The native peoples also were obsessed with heads. Scalping was a frequent practice among many tribes, while tribes feared Jivaro in the Andes for their head-hunting, shrinking their victims’ heads to the size of an orange. Even sports involved severed heads. If you were lucky enough to survive a game of the wildly popular Meso-American ball (losers were often dispatched to their death), your trophy could include an actual human head.
The point is not to excuse colonialism or attitudes toward Native Americans. The point is that we must not idealize what their life was like before they met white people. There was plenty of sin and violence to go around, as well as much from which to learn. In fact, a separate day from Columbus Day to remember the Indigenous people of this land and their contribution to human culture may well be in order. We have reached a time for that observance to happen. I do not know enough of that history to suggest a date or its place on the national holiday calendar, but it needs to happen.
To return to the observance of Columbus Day, by any reasonable estimation Columbus achieved success that was transformational for the entire world and specifically for the Americas. Whatever one makes of the ultimate moral repercussions of his exploration, it established the groundwork for the New World, of which our nation is now the central power. We can acknowledge that contribution and understand his flaws at the same time.
A marginalized group of immigrants created the day trying to express patriotism and fidelity to the United States. When Italian Americans celebrated the day, or built statues to Columbus, it was primarily to pronounce themselves Americans, and that is certainly worth celebrating. In fact, during an effort to take down the statue at Columbus Circle in New York City, it was this argument from Italian Americans that saved the work of art.
Edgar Guest (1881-1959) wrote “The Things That Haven’t Been Done Before.” He challenges readers to alter their daily routine and do something that has not been done before. Through this poem, Guest has persuaded readers to enjoy their lives in unique ways; by not only trying new things but also implementing innovative ideas to their regular activities. The poem imagines the perspective of an adventurous life and encourages the readers to pursue their goals, follow their dreams and not to fear taking risks. The entire poem is persuasive and praises fearless individuals who “draw apart from the beaten track,” using Christopher Columbus as an example. Guest questions the readers whether they would venture to step out of their stable way of life and strike out for a new goal.
The things that haven't been done before,
Those are the things to try;
Columbus dreamed of an unknown shore
At the rim of the far-flung sky,
And his heart was bold and his faith was strong
As he ventured in dangers new,
And he paid no heed to the jeering throng
Or the fears of the doubting crew.
The many will follow the beaten track
With guideposts on the way.
They live and have lived for ages back
With a chart for every day.
Someone has told them it's safe to go
On the road he has traveled o'er,
And all that they ever strive to know
Are the things that were known before.
A few strike out, without map or chart,
Where never a man has been,
From the beaten paths they draw apart
To see what no man has seen.
There are deeds they hunger alone to do;
Though battered and bruised and sore,
They blaze the path for the many, who
Do nothing not done before.
The things that haven't been done before
Are the tasks worthwhile today;
Are you one of the flock that follows, or
Are you one that shall lead the way'
Are you one of the timid souls that quail
At the jeers of a doubting crew,
Or dare you, whether you win or fail,
Strike out for a goal that's new?
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