Toppling the Myth of Columbus

     Pop quiz: who discovered America? It wasn’t Christopher Columbus. He wasn’t even the first European to establish a New World settlement. Viking Leif Erikson did that five centuries before Columbus at about the same time that Polynesian mariners crossed the Pacific, taking South American sweet potatoes back to their islands.     
     So who were the first explorers? Ancestors of modern Native Americans who arrived fifteen thousand years ago by crossing the land bridge that then connected Alaska with Siberia.     
     We can certainly credit Columbus for opening the way for European exploration, but at what a high price. Against his queen’s orders, he enslaved more than five hundred Natives and shipped them to Spain. He required other Natives to deliver a quota of gold every three months. Those not making the quota had their hands cut off and bled to death. This led to thousands committing suicide because they had no gold mines. Columbus’ governorship became so cruel that at one point he was shipped back to Spain in chains.
     Then why do we feed Columbus’ fable through text books and annual parades? Is it because we prefer a white-faced, Eurocentric myth rather than honoring the true first explorers, whose descendants were eventually forced onto reservations by descendants of the Europeans? Do we prefer to call our land grabs “manifest destiny” - God ordained - rather than admitting they were a travesty?     
​     Truth matters in our patriotism, and I applaud the boldness of some states and cities in changing Columbus Day into a celebration of our actual first Americans.
     *** Image: Jorge Silva/Reuters/Corbis. Text added.