Christopher Columbus is a TERRIBLE Role Model.
Thanksgiving is a weird holiday - mainly because in the United States, we celebrate this country’s first terrorists by killing as many turkeys as humanly possible and then telling everyone what we're thankful for. Rest assured, I'm not one of those white people who is about to brag about the fact that they are 1/565th Cherokee. I'm merely one of many asking, "WHY IS THANKSGIVING A HOLIDAY?"
What are we REALLY celebrating? Let's dive in.
Nina and Pinta
Everyone, for the most part, remembers learning about the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. The thing most of us didn’t know is that, yes, one ship was called "Santa Maria", but the other two... not so much. According to historians, documents at that time say that the original ships were named after saints, until perverted sailors got on them and changed history.
““In 15th-century Spain, ships were traditionally named after saints. Salty sailors, however, bestowed less-than-sacred nicknames upon their vessels. Mariners dubbed one of the three ships on Columbus’s 1492 voyage the Pinta, Spanish for “the painted one” or “prostitute.” The Santa Clara, meanwhile, was nicknamed the Nina in honor of its owner, Juan Nino. Although the Santa Maria is called by its official name, its nickname was La Gallega, after the province of Galicia in which it was built.””
Don't Go, Columbus. (Seriously.)
It turns out, a lot of leading experts told Columbus his calculations, (or lack thereof) were incorrect for his journey, but instead of listening, Columbus said:
““For nearly a decade, Columbus lobbied European monarchies to bankroll his quest to discover a western sea route to Asia. In Portugal, England and France, the response was the same: no. The experts told Columbus his calculations were wrong and that the voyage would take much longer than he thought. Royal advisors in Spain raised similar concerns to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Turns out the naysayers were right. Columbus dramatically underestimated the earth’s circumference and the size of the oceans. Luckily for him, he ran into the uncharted Americas.””
Pythagorus,
not Columbus.
Around every Thanksgiving holiday in the 1990’s while I was in school, I would always hear that Columbus set out to prove the Earth was round. Later on, outside of school, I read about Pythagorus who lived in 571 B.C.E. Most of the things I, and others were taught in school, turned out to be FLAT out wrong, (see what I did there). How does that make you feel?
““The credit is usually given to the Greek philosopher Pythagoras and his school, although several of his contemporaries also believed the Earth was round. Almost 2000 years before Columbus was born, these ancient Greeks argued that because the moon was a shphere and the sun was a sphere, the Earth should be a sphere.””
Columbus,
You're Late AF.
Okay, so he didn't do a lot of stuff he’s been credited for, BUT he definitely discovered the Americas, right? RIGHT??
The first to discover North America is normally credited to Leif Eriksson around 1000 C.E. before Columbus. The first of mankind to our knowledge, to find North and South America, were people whose origin can be traced 13,000+ years ago, though this is still being studied. It was most definitely not Christopher Columbus though.
Columbus:
Also Not a Good Guy.
“There is no more glaring distortion in the history learned by generations of Americans—in textbooks, in schools, in the popular culture—than in the story of Christopher Columbus. He is universally portrayed as a heroic figure, a brave adventurer, a skilled seaman who crossed the ocean not knowing what he would find, and stumbled on an unknown continent.
All that may be true. But what is missing from that story is that, when he landed in the Bahamas Islands, Columbus and his crew of “good Christian white men”, greeted by peaceful and generous natives, set out on a ruthless quest for gold that led to enslavement, misery, and death for that population.”
“What [Christopher Columbus] had categorically not done was “discover” anything, as somewhere between 50 to 100 million people already lived there quite happily, just as they had done for tens of thousands of years. On the other hand, what he did was to start a brutal slave trade in American Indians, and usher in four centuries of genocide that culled them to virtual extinction. Within a generation of Columbus landing, perhaps only 5-10 per cent of the entire American Indian population remained.”
Whoa, um, well… this seems like our parents and their parents really wanted to try and bury the true story deep down so we could enjoy our meal learn about friendship, (or they had no idea.).
Oh, I mean,
Happy Thanksgiving!
FINAL WORDS: I support Thanksgiving as a social gathering and I appreciate the time we spend with our loved ones, I could have done without the lies though. Try and enjoy yourself this year with your new found knowledge and celebrate this holiday as a time for thankfulness and togetherness. Let's try to leave Columbus out of it though.[This article was originally published in 2015 by me, but I reposted in 2021 when moving all of my blogs to my new site.]
