Thread by @rebeccanagle

If you are observing #ColumbusDay instead of #IndigenousPeoplesDay2020 here is a list of what you are celebrating...

1. Christopher Columbus's army used Indigenous people as dog food. They were known to feed live babies to dogs in front of their horrified parents.

CW: SA

2.) His "voyage" initiated the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade when he captured 1600 Taino people and shipped them to Spain for gold. Most died on the journey.

3.) Columbus sex trafficked Indigenous girls for his own personal profit. He journaled, “There are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.”

4.) Columbus's army required any Taino person 14 or older to bring them a thimble of gold dust every 3 months. If not, the army would chop off their hands and tie the victim's hands around their neck. Most victims bled to death. An estimated 10,000 Taino people died this way.

5. His army systematically raped Indigenous women. His close friend Michele de Cuneo wrote the following

“While I was in the boat I captured a very beautiful Carib woman... I conceived desire to take pleasure. I wanted to put my desire into execution but she did not want it...

and treated me with her finger nails that I wished I had never begun... I took a rope and thrashed her well, for which she raised such unheard of screams... Finally we came to an agreement that I can tell you that she seemed to have been brought up in a school of harlots.”

6. After 50 years of “Columbus discovering America”, 2.86 million of the estimated 3 million Tainos living on the island now named Hispanola had died, 95% of the population. Imagine if in a period of 50 years, 19 out of every 20 people you knew had died.

7. Columbus did not discover America; it was already home to tens of millions of Indigenous people. The Indigenous people of what many call Turtle Island have been living here since the beginning of time.

8. Columbus was not even the first European person to travel to present day America and also did not demonstrate that the world was round; that fact had been widely accepted in Europe for centuries—as demonstrated by the era’s text books.

Further reading:
indiancountrytoday.com/archive/8-myth…

#TheMoreYouKnow #IndigenousPeoplesDay #IndigenousPeoplesDay2020