Opinion · Op-ed
Christopher Columbus
A composite of two anonymous submissions by two separate Springdale residents
Monday (Oct, 12) was officially Columbus Day. [The Town] sent out an email saying they will be closed on Monday for Indigenous Peoples' Day, but did not recognize Columbus Day as well. Banks, Post Offices, etc recognize the Columbus Day holiday. I feel the Town should have included Columbus Day as well in their email. This is the 2nd year in a row that the Town did not recognize Columbus Day and only recognized Indigenous Peoples' Day. While the Indigenous People are very important, I feel Columbus is equally important especially with America 250 this year.
“Columbus was not, as is well-known to the ungrateful modern-day legatees of his conquest, a perfect man. A famous example of his errant moral judgment was the exploitation of Native labor he sanctioned in Santo Domingo. It was markedly aberrant behavior from Columbus, who took well-noted pains to treat the Native peoples with basic dignity even as many of his contemporaries couldn’t be bothered. It also tends to be presented by Columbus’s critics shorn of its context: It was an ill-considered political concession he granted to La Isabela’s alcade mayor, Francisco Roldán, who … used his .. leverage [a revolt against Columbus’ brother] to force Columbus to permit the exploitative labor practices …
“The insubordinate Roldán would later be pardoned by Columbus’s successor as governor of the West Indies and foremost political adversary, Francisco de Bobadilla, whose salacious and uncorroborated allegations against Columbus would create the corpus of the modern revisionist’s attack on the explorer’s character.
“Columbus, in spite of his many faults, was a man of character. …Even Bartolomé de las Casas, the “Defender and Apostle to the Indians” whose lurid, if hyperbolic, treatises on the treatment of Native peoples made him famous, spoke favorably of Columbus and his treatment of indigenous people. Columbus famously adopted a Native American boy and urged his fellow voyagers to exercise restraint and mercy toward the Natives, even, for instance, after they had burned down an entire Spanish settlement and killed all of the Spaniards in the area.”
(taken from: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/columbus-day-a-defense-of-christopher-columbus/)