Thread by @VinceSchilling

Read my article in @NativeViewpoint regarding why I will never celebrate #ColumbusDay.

Here is a thread on the atrocities of #Columbus that I also share in a YouTube video embedded in the article.

[Trigger Warning #ChristopherColumbus #thread]

https://twitter.com/VinceSchilling/status/1579500099990093831

Columbus Day was promoted by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization in the 1930s that wanted a Catholic hero. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the day into law as a federal holiday in 1937.

#Columbus stole a crew member's reward.

Columbus offered a year's salary reward for the crew member who first cited land. Though a sailor saw the land, Columbus said he saw a dim light the night before and kept the reward for himself.

#Columbus, though credited with discovering America, NEVER EVER landed in the upper 48 states.

He only landed in what is now known as the Bahamas (Hispaniola), Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

And yet a massive painting of Columbus still sits in the U.S. Capitol.

After crashing and being helped by Arawaks, Tainos and Lucayans, #Columbus quickly enslaved them.

Columbus wrote:

“As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force...”

Columbus, who first wrote of the Indigenous people as beautiful, later changed his tune after his men began murdering them.

“(they are) evil" and "they eat men.” and described them as “savage cannibals, with dog-like noses that drink the blood of their victims.”

A close friend of #Columbus, Michele de Cuneo wrote a horribly distressing account of a Native female "gift" given to him by Columbus.

Michele de Cuneo detailed how at she first resisted his sexual advances until he "thrashed her well" with a rope.

[Trigger warning]

#Columbus wrote in 1500, 9-year-old girls were in high demand by his men.

“A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.”

#Columbus, wanting to make good to the king and queen, worked Indigenous slaves to exhaustion digging for gold.

Those who resisted had their ears cut off or were beheaded.

In the provinces of Cicao, Indigenous slaves over age 14 had to find a thimble full of gold dust per month.

If they failed, their hands were cut off.

10,000 Indigenous slaves died without hands.

Due to #Columbus and his men, an approximate 250,000 Indigenous people in Haiti were dead.

#Columbus and his men also had dogs of war that were covered with armor and ate human flesh.

There were dog food stands all over the coast made up of Indigenous people's bodies.

His men often threw newborn babies to the dogs in front of horrified parents.

After a multitude of complaints against #Columbus he returned to Spain in shackles.

He was later pardoned by King Ferdinand, who then turned and subsidized a fourth voyage.

Bartolome De Las Casas, a former slave owner & Bishop of Chiapas, wrote this about #Columbus:

“Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight as no age can parallel ... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature that now I tremble as I write.”

This is why I will never celebrate #ColumbusDay.

I send you blessings on this #IndigenousPeoplesDay.

Please share my article:

"Indigenous People’s Day or Columbus Day? Why this #Indigenous journalist will never celebrate Columbus Day."

By @VinceSchilling

#IndigenousPeoplesDay #ColumbusDay #Columbus

nativeviewpoint.com/indigenous-peo…

via @NativeViewpoint