For Native Americans the accolades showered upon Christopher Columbus are undeserved and an affront to the First Nations of this continent. He had not discovered what we now call, "America". America was discovered by the people of the land who had lived here for thousands of years. Columbus had stumbled upon a rich land while intending to reach the silk and spice riches of the Orient. His sailors were becoming more and more mutinous as they sailed westward into the far reaches of the Atlantic Ocean where legends had surmised great beasts might lurk.
Columbus was lucky to have been saved by the natives of Guanahani. When Columbus and his men approached landfall he was certain that he had found China. He was amazed at the naked people of this land and marveled at their naivete. His journal entry two days after his arrival makes clear that he had quickly turned to thoughts of exploitation. He wrote in his journal, "When your Highnesses so command, they could all be carried off to Castile or be held captive in the island itself because with 50 men they could all be subjugated and compelled to do anything one wishes." Several weeks later he made this entry in his journal, "... they are very meek and without knowledge of evil nor do they kill others or steal ... and they are without weapons and so timid that one of our people can put a hundred of them to flight."
The friendly, bemused people marveled in turn at the great ships that had brought these men to their shores. They shared food and shelter with them, but soon the conviviality waned as the greed and lust of the sailors became known. Within 15 years, over 2 million natives had been killed in a vicious ethnic cleansing as Columbus set up his colonies and governance. The horrors of gunpowder, armor, iron swords, Mastiff dogs, horses, and the voracious killing capacity of the Spaniards turned the happy people into the hunted and enslaved.
Just before his return to Spain, on November 11, 1492, five young tribesmen who had been invited aboard his flagship were forcibly seized "to take to the Sovereigns to learn our language so that it might be disclosed what is in the land."
Afterwards I sent to a house which is in the area of the river to the west and they brought back seven head of women, small and large and three children. I did this because the men would comport themselves better in Spain having women from their land than without them."
Columbus used the phrase cabezas de mugeres just as he would say "seven head of cattle." Kidnapping seven "head" of women to keep the male captives docile in their slavery was the first act of a tragedy. The last would be the extermination of the natives of the Antilles.
On hearing of Columbus' actions enslaving the native people, the king and queen sent him written instructions from Barcelona on May 29, 1493. They were explicit in how Columbus was to treat the natives: the people were not to be molested or coerced in any way. They were to be given gifts.
Eight months later Columbus dispatched twelve ships with a cargo of slaves to be sold in the slave market of Seville. He told the captain to lie about the taking of slaves, telling him to say that they had been taken in a just war with the inhabitants. After several years that this profitable slave-trading had continued with impunity, he offered the Sovereigns the prospect of a regular harvest of the native people and estimated the cost-benefit of such expeditions to be carried out in the name of the Holy Trinity and the monarchs of Spain. Columbus' proposal to enslave all of the natives of the New World colony to pay for the expenses confirmed the reports that Isabella and Ferdinand had received from other sources. It also alerted them to the real character of his slave trafficking. Isabela exploded with rage. By a royal decree dated June 20, 1500, the few surviving slaves in Castile were ordered gathered, freed and returned to their homeland.
Within weeks of this decree Columbus' met a harsh and humiliating downfall. He and his brothers were returned to Spain in irons. Isabela eventually ordered his release and even funded another voyage. But Columbus was ordered never to return to the colony he had founded.
Today he is glorified in history books as a great adventurer and explorer who expanded Western Civilization into a new continent rich in resources and potential. The story of Columbus in the Americas has been laundered so that the tales of his Conquest of the Americas could be told as a heroic legend. The genocide of the peaceful Arawaks of the Caribbean islands is well documented in Columbus' own letters and journals and in the writing of his most ardent admirer, Father Bartolom- de Las Casas, the great early historian of the West Indies. There has been an enormous cover-up of the true history and character of Christopher Columbus even though the truth could have been found long ago.
Ironically, the Native American Holocaust began under the direction of a man of Jewish heritage. According to Pawns in the Game by William Guy Carr, Columbus took his name from the Judaic Black Dove Society that had sponsored him. The Latin word for "dove" is "columba". The form "Col-n" was a common Jewish variation on the name which Columbus adopted as the Spanish equivalent of his last name. The expected form would have been "Colom" or "Colombo".
Columbus spoke Spanish while living in Italy. This is an unusual situation unless his family had originated in Spain. The area around Genoa had many Spanish-speaking Jewish refugees from the Inquisition.
Columbus kept the company of Jews and former Jews, among whom were noted astronomers and navigators, as well as his official translator. Marranos were prominent among his backers and crew. Louis Santanel, the financier for Columbus' voyage to America was a Jew.
Throughout Columbus' life he had demonstrated a keen knowledge of the Bible and the geography of the Holy Land. On one occasion he calculated the date from the destruction of the "Second House" meaning the temple, counting from the traditional (and erroneous) Jewish date of 68 CE, rather than the commonly held 70 CE.
The connections between the timing of Columbus's voyage and the expulsion of Spanish Jewry from Spain are curious. Historians have noted that though Columbus was not scheduled to set sail until August 3rd, he insisted that his crew be ready on board a full day earlier. This becomes more intriguing in that August 2, 1492 was the day that had been ordained for the last Jews of Spain to depart the country. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were departing Spain on that black day. When these coinciding dates were first noted by the Spanish biographer S. de Madariaga, the English Jewish historian Cecil Roth added a further "coincidence": August 2, 1492 coincided with the Ninth of Av, which is the Jewish fast of mourning for the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Columbus may have arranged to remain on board ship during that ill-omened day, and to depart only afterwards.
Much more evidence has been cited on the Jewish Columbus question. De Madariaga devoted a 500 page tome to proving this thesis. Some of the most important arguments, though, are summarized in the Encyclopedia Judaica, written by its editor-in-chief, Cecil Roth. Although Roth himself expresses some skepticism about Columbus' Jewish origins, it's probably significant that the entry is not preceded by the special sign that normally indicates an article about non-Jews.
The Jewish influence on the Native American Holocaust did not end with Columbus. Columbus was probably Marrano, a Jew who professed to be Christian as a cover. In addition to all the evidence that has suggested that connection, his reference to the native women he took captive as though they were cattle seems to be a Talmudic reference to non-Jews as lesser beings. His description can provide insight into Columbus' deepest racist attitude toward the natives of Espanola and sheds light on his willfulness to challenge the Spanish monarchs' compassion and conscience. Christopher Columbus, Mariner and Marrano, throughout his administration brought about the death of more than 2 million native inhabitants. He set in motion the Native American Holocaust that took the lives of nearly 100 million North American native people and destroyed ancient cultures and traditions that had been established for thousands of years. If Columbus Day is to be remembered it should be as a memorial to the dark soul of a man - Christopher Columbus, Marrano and Mariner.
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