Disparaging Columbus is Now a Favorite Pastime

Nena Arias | October 18, 2021

Every year on October 12, Columbus Day is celebrated in America since that is the date Columbus landed here in the New World on October 12, 1492. In 1937 it became a national holiday by presidential proclamation. We have just celebrated the 529th anniversary of this momentous event in history. There were parades, including decorative floats depicting the ships Columbus traveled in and there were joyous festivities.

Although Columbus’s explorations were financed by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, Columbus was Italian from Genoa, Italy, and over the years Italian Americans began to honor Columbus’s contribution to world history, mainly the Western Hemisphere with celebrations.

But there has been a major shift in this commemoration.

By the 500th anniversary in 1992 there began to circulate discussions relating this event with the conquest of American Indians. Some people began to object to celebrating this historical event and proposed alternatives like calling it “Indigenous People’s Day.”

This shift has morphed into tainting and disparaging Christopher Columbus and making him out to have been a blood-thirsty genocidal maniac. There are outspoken people like Democrat Rep. Nydia Velázquez of New York who described the Italian explorer as “a genocidal maniac”, she said:

“Today should just be #IndigenousPeopleDay. And yet this day is still shared with a genocidal maniac. We need to take this time to reflect on the brutal history of violence against Indigenous peoples in America and recognize that there is still a lot of work to repair this harm”.

Christopher Columbus, painting by Peter Johann Nepomuk Geiger (1805-1880) [Getty]
This concept of Indigenous People’s Day is such a farce and ridiculous sham. Which “indigenous people” do these historical revisionists have in mind? Is it the Kalinago people, who ate roasted human flesh, with a particular affinity for the remains of babies and fetuses? Is it the Aztecs, who killed an estimated 84,000 people in four days in their consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan? Who made up the lie that all indigenous people of the Americas were peace-loving and tranquil people? As you can see, history quickly proves that to be false.

If people would only take the time to read Columbus’ writings, especially his journal, and judge him by his own words, that would quickly dissipate the lies myths and half-truths about the man. Am I advocating that he was a perfect man? Not at all. He was a man with great faults, just like all of us. But he was not the scoundrel the leftists claim he was.

It is interesting to me how when a lie or distortion of something that is important begins to circulate, it spreads much faster than truth because people just repeat what they hear without taking the time to corroborate its veracity. This is the case when it comes to the life and monumental achievements of Christopher Columbus and that is a travesty.

The coming of Columbus was ordained by God. You read that right! It was all in God’s plan because we now know that America had been discovered over and over again before Columbus. Why did God allow Columbus to make the impact that others had not? The reason is because God wanted the Western Hemisphere to be introduced to the Gospel. That’s right! America, like all others, has had a history in terms of the faith of its discoverers. Faulty as Columbus was, he introduced the God of the Bible in these lands.

History shows that Vikings such as Leif Erickson and other explorers came to the Americas long before Columbus, around the year 1000. We know that they went from Greenland over to Canada and then over to what is now New England. A Harvard professor of long ago by the name of Leo Wiener, an American Historian, linguist, and translator, wrote a three volumes study on early discovery. He concluded that in the early centuries of our Christian Era Arab explorers traveled westward and almost certainly discovered America. As a linguist, he discovered many Arab words in the American Indian’s language such as the Iroquois. There is also evidence that explorers from the Orient came to the west coast of North and South America. A scholar even claims that in the days of king Solomon, the Phoenicians and Hebrews discovered Mexico and Peru and began to mine silver there.

Why was nothing significant done until Columbus came? What made the difference? It is obvious that these early explorers were not interested in the development of this new continent. They were raiders who came to plunder. So, God was not interested in using them.

Columbus’s motives were different. Was it concern and curiosity about what was on the other side? Was it commerce that motivated him and his sponsors? I am sure there was some of that. But Columbus also had a very powerful motive that God wanted to use. With all his faults, Columbus was clearly in the Christian camp.

He wrote to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella regarding the new-found land:

“I say that your highnesses must not allow any foreigners except Catholic Christians [there was only Catholicism then] to trade here or set foot here. For the whole object of the enterprise was that it should be for the increase and glory of the Christian religion, and that no one should come to these parts who is not a good Christian.”

Conquest and economy did play a part but behind that was a Christian motive that clearly God wanted to use. Columbus wanted to evangelize! Columbus wrote repeatedly that he was called of God to open up the world for the Gospel. You can see this in his personal journal.

Those who hate God and hate the original design of America have expunged all this information from authentic history and they have revised it to fit their godless agenda.

Some of the Spanish conquistadors who came to the Americas over the next century were cruel but it’s unfair to lump Columbus among them and blame him for the very actions he tried to prevent. As a matter of fact, Columbus executed some of his own crew for acts of cruelty toward the natives.

Having read this editorial, I hope you will take the time to know the real Christopher Columbus and stop disparaging him in such an unjust way. Decide to be a part of truth not deception.

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