Circle the Wagons! They're Coming for Columbus!

Indian activists shed trail of tears on Ho Plaza.

By: Eric Shive on October 23rd, 2006 at 2:27 PM

The second Monday in October is a day when Italian Americans take a break from whacking informants and cooking spaghetti sauce to put on their finest polyester track suits, iciest white cutoff t-shirts, and largest gold crucifixes to celebrate the discovery of the Americas by their ancestral countryman, Christopher Columbus. Alas, Columbus Day has also become the time of the year when bitter Indians leave their casinos to wail about genocide and scalp the legacies of the European colonists. In the face of this assault, it is necessary to circle the wagon around our European forbearers and defend our heritage.

On October 12, Indians from Cornell, the local community, and around the country gathered on Ho Plaza to protest the celebration of Columbus Day. The event began with some ritual chanting—perhaps to keep the rain god away on such an overcast and ominous-looking afternoon. Unfortunately, the rest of the rally was much less exciting. There was no tomahawk throwing contest, no make-up-your-own dreamcatcher game, and no Sugarhill Gang's "Apache" playing in the background. Instead, there was a libel throwing contest, a make-up-your-own genocide game, and incomprehensible chanting in the background.

The first speaker was Jason Corwin, a graduate student at Cornell and citizen of the Seneca Nation. He declared that we cannot celebrate Columbus's discovery of America because America was already settled by Indians at the time of his arrival. Next, Professor Eric Cheyfitz spoke, echoing Corwin's point on Columbus's discovery of America by claiming "Columbus didn't discover America any more than George Bush discovered Iraq." Cheyfitz insisted we Americans "stop celebrating a genocide" and end Columbus Day.

A later speaker spoke of the existence of Indian "political prisoners" in the United States. He then incorporated South American natives into the discussion by stating that a great number of native peoples were killed under Augusto Pinochet's regime in Chile. Just like American liberals blame George W. Bush for every problem in America, Augusto Pinochet is the whipping boy of South America's leftists. As if driving out the communists from Chile was not sufficient evidence, Pinochet's ability to inspire this amount of residual hatred from the left is further sign of his impressive rule in that nation.

A few more individuals gave their speeches on Ho Plaza, but most merely reverberated previous speakers' arguments or added more stories of the oppression of Indians in the Americas. The picture painted at the anti-Columbus Day rally was of a pure, pristine, and peaceful civilization that was brutally oppressed, massacred, and perpetually harassed by evil, conquering, blood-thirsty Europeans.

We are supposed to believe that before the arrival of the European explorers Indians heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon, asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned, sang with all the voices of the mountains, and painted with all the colors of the wind. We are supposed to accept the image of Indian civilization sung by Disney's Pocahontas. Maybe if the lyrics the lovely Disney princess sang were completely true or if more of the pre-Columbian Indian inhabitants had been smoking hot like Pocahontas there would be more sympathy for the Indians' grievances. The problem is that the truth is not entirely on their side, and not all of their ancestors conformed to the idealized eating disorder-inducing physique of Disney's Pocahontas.

A glimpse at the reality of the pre-Columbian Indian civilizations can be seen in an August 23, 2006 article from Reuters: "Boiled bones show Aztecs butchered, ate invaders." Skeletons found at an archaeological site near Mexico City proved that the Aztecs ritually sacrificed and ate a group of several hundred Spanish conquistadors and their companions. The director of the dig, archeologist Enrique Martinez characterized the suffering of the prisoners: "While the prisoners were listening to their companions being sacrificed, the next ones were being selected…You can only imagine what it was like for the last ones, who were left six months before being chosen, their anguish."

According to the article, teeth marks on the bones indicate where human flesh was ripped from the bone and knife marks show where hearts were cut out of chests. Other evidence illustrates that pregnant women's unborn babies were stabbed in utero as part of the ritual sacrifice. Any people that would participate in such atrocities are not civilized—they are savage.

As a response to hearing reports of human sacrifice, the piece continues, "[Hernán] Cortes renamed the town Tecuaque—meaning 'where people were eaten' in the indigenous Nahuatl language—and sent an army to wipe out its people." Can anyone really blame Señor Cortes? What kind of man would not respond aggressively to accounts that his countrymen had been cruelly imprisoned, their hearts cut out and their unborn children murdered?

The rosy portrayal of pre-Columbian natives by radical Indian activists makes it seem as if Europeans brought the concept of violence to the New World. At the anti-Columbus Day rally there was absolutely no mention of any brutality or wrongdoing on the part of native peoples. It is almost as if they want us to think that before Columbus the Americas were inhabited by peace-loving peoples who would solve conflicts by hugging it out or playing a friendly game of rock, paper, scissors (or perhaps more accurately, rock, tree bark, pointed stick).

This characterization, of course, is false. The Incan empire did not arise from hugs and kisses but from diplomacy and conquest. In fact, it was some of the Inca's disaffected subject tribes that provided critical aid for Francisco Pizzaro in his conquest of Peru. The Aztecs also made war to create and hold together their empire, and similarly, Cortes allied with the native Tlaxcaltecs to rise up against the Aztecs in Mexico. There was no great harmony among the first peoples inhabiting the Americas.

To be sure, there were atrocities committed against American Indians by Europeans. However, it is important to understand that both the white man and the red man participated in violence and cruelty in the New World. Death and destruction did not occur on a one-way llama path. In North America, for every reneged land deal or peace treaty there was a brutal scalping or a raid on a European settlement. Thomas Jefferson included the following in the Declaration of Independence's list of complaints against King George III:

"He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."

You can't earn that sort of a reputation by merely helping colonists grow corn and sharing a friendly Thanksgiving dinner. And it wasn't the Europeans who taught them how to kill.

Regardless of the caterwauling of radical Indian activists Columbus Day should not be abolished. Yes, Europeans did bad things to Indians and yes, Indians did bad things to each other and to Europeans as well. But for all of the trials and tribulations the Americas have experienced since Columbus's arrival, all of its people have benefited from the gift of Western civilization that was brought to its shores. The redeeming power of Christianity was passed on to millions who had been living in the darkness of pagan superstition. The political, technological, medical, and economic advances of the West have benefited all peoples living in North in South America.

In short, the Indian activists who rallied on Ho Plaza should instead be thanking Christopher Columbus and his European successors for bestowing upon them the fruits of Western Civilization. Without those dead white males there would be no United States of America; no Cornell University; no Ho Plaza; no microphone and speakers to amplify the Indian activists' rants; and no proud descendants of the brave European settlers to call them out on their lies.

Eric Shive is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at ems63@cornell.edu.