Columbus Day, one of America’s oldest patriotic holidays, was first celebrated on Oct. 12, 1792, when the New York Society of Tammany celebrated the 300th anniversary of Italian explorer and navigator Christopher Columbus’s first voyage.
It was later established as a federal holiday by Congress and President Calvin Coolidge on Oct. 12, 1927. Columbus has been referred to as the “discoverer” of the New World although it is now known that Vikings such as Leif Eriksson had visited North America five centuries before.
Columbus traveled under the sponsorship of King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella of Aragon to find new routes to India, China, Japan and the Spice Islands. However, he stumbled on the Americas instead. While this voyage spurred the exploration of the Americas, there was, as with most early history, a dark side to the exploration.
Columbus discovered living and thriving cultures during his journey, now known as Native Americans, although Columbus, who believed they had landed in India, referred to them as Indians. Although Columbus wrote that the people he encountered were gentle, they were treated with brutality and suffered from diseases that were unfamiliar resulting in fatalities.
Columbus and his men pillaged the villages and enslaved large numbers of the indigenous people. When he returned to Europe and the word of the Americas got around many Europeans set off on voyages of their own to gain territory. This led to mass widespread harm, death, disease and destruction of the Native peoples’ culture.
As the dark side of America’s history and its players comes to light many people strive to bring awareness to the negatively impacted parties. One way people choose to do this is by altering holidays. In 1977 activists came together to propose the renaming of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day in honor of those who Columbus mistreated. It was first recognized by South Dakota in 1990. In 1992, Berkeley, Calif. celebrated the quadricentennial anniversary of Columbus’s landing with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Although it is not yet a Federal holiday, it is now recognized annually by 17 of the 50 states.
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