He “solved the problem by creating the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, importing slaves from Africa. “Things got so bad,” Johnson says, “that Indians began committing suicide en masse.” As Indians died off from disease, malnutrition, overwork, murder, and suicide, Columbus needed a new source of labor. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and killed.” ( A People’s History of the United States, p. “The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. “The Indians had been given an impossible task,” Zinn writes. Those who failed had their hands cut off and bled to death. When he returned to Haiti with more ships and men, Columbus ordered all persons 14 years of age or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. In A People’s History of the United States, historian Howard Zinn describes how Columbus had his men round up 1,500 Arawak men, women, and children, then picked the 500 “best specimens” and took them to Spain to sell as slaves. In his journal, Columbus describes the Indians as “generous to a fault.” He repaid this hospitality by demanding gold and taking slaves. The Spanish were never attacked or treated with hostility. Writer Bayard Johnson recounts the disturbing history of Columbus’s interactions with the inhabitants of the Caribbean islands he visited:Īt every landfall, the Indians either greeted Columbus with friendship or fled into the jungle. Columbus is our continent’s first racist, and an exceptionally brutal one at that. In recent days, Black Lives Matter and Indigenous protesters have recognized that history in attacking statues of Christopher Columbus in St. “The celebrated foundational document of our country, the Declaration of Independence, was steeped in racism.” But while our nation traces its birth to that 1776 document, the racist strain in its DNA predates the Declaration by centuries. “Our national DNA clearly includes racism,” Joseph Nangle, OFM, observed in his June 4 column for Pax Christi USA.
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