Columbus versus Indigenous Peoples
The Left wants to eliminate everything they don’t like, such as guns and Columbus Day. Columbus offends them because he was involved with slavery and introduced diseases from which the natives had no natural protection.
It’s true that Europeans unknowingly introduced diseases which decimated the indigenous peoples. But it worked both ways. Archaeological and genetic evidence show that Syphilis originated in the Americas. Syphilis was probably carried to Europe by the crews of Christopher Columbus! In 1492-93, Columbus made his first trip to America. In 1495 the first well-recorded European outbreak of Syphilis occurred when the disease swept across Europe. (Coincidence? Historians don’t think so.)
The left constantly rants about America being stolen land. They want to link all tribes together as one when, in fact, they were as diverse as European nations. Like European nations, they were constantly at war with each other and taking away others land.
For example, the Mohicans had settled along the Hudson River around Albany and east. But by 1629, the Mohawks had driven out the Mohicans and taken over territories on the Hudson River that were formerly held by the Mohicans. (So, to whom should we return Albany?)
Speaking of the Mohawks, according to historian Jon Parmenter, in 1626, after the Mohawks defeated a force of mostly Mohicans and a few Dutch, the Mohawks withdrew with some body parts of those slain for later consumption. (That’s a sensitive description of cannibalism.)
The Carib people met Columbus in 1492. Did you know that the word "cannibal" originates from the Spanish term “caníbal," which was derived from the name given by Columbus for the Carib people?
At a site in southwestern Colorado, conclusive evidence comes from preserved pieces of human excrement that were found at the site. The pieces contain human proteins that could be there only if the subjects had eaten human flesh. (I doubt this archeological find will be the subject of any future Indiana Jones movie.)
It’s appropriate that Democrats want to honor Indigenous Peoples as Indigenous Peoples’ history parallels the Democrat Party’s history of slavery.
Did you know that the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery did not apply to all slaves? The “Five Civilized Tribes” of the southeast - Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole - also participated in the institution of slavery. Because these tribes were located outside the sovereignty of the United States, constitutional amendments did not apply to them. (Kinda like Kathy Hochul, who doesn’t believe the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution applies to New York State.)
Most other North American tribes also practiced some form of slavery, even before Columbus. (Wait a minute – Columbus didn’t introduce slavery to America? If that’s so, could the 1619 Project also be wrong?)
A special “shout out” on Indigenous Peoples Day should go to the Aztecs.
The Aztecs had religious festivities at the end of their 20-day months and human sacrifice was an essential feature of these festivities. (And you thought giving up something for Lent was hard.)
The founding of the Aztec capital city, Tenochtitlan, was accompanied by the sacrifice and skinning of the daughter of the King Coxcox of Culhuacan. (By contrast, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton decided on the current site of Washington D.C. over dinner and a bottle of wine.)
The Aztecs were small in number compared to their subjugated tribes and, thus, there was always a danger of an alliance between these tribes against the Aztecs. To avert this, Aztecs demanded humans as a tribute from the subjugated tribes. As a result, these tribes would constantly raid each other to procure humans for sacrifice. This minimized the chance of an alliance between the tribes. (Sounds like the current effort to keep the Left in power by dividing people over race and gender issues.)
It is hard to know how many Aztecs died under the sacrificial knife. Many reputable scholars today put the number between 20,000 and 250,000 per year for the whole Aztec Empire. (Hitler, Mao and Stalin would have been proud of the Aztecs.)
Indigenous People Day would not be complete without mentioning the Incas of Peru. Although a little less bloodthirsty than Aztecs, the Incas had enslaved other indigenous people along the Andes.
Human sacrifices were practiced by the Incas to ward off danger, famine or an epidemic. The victims were usually children, sometimes men and virgins. (Apparently, virgins have been sacrificial favorites, everywhere.)
An interesting aspect of the Inca Empire is described in the book “A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru” by Louis Baudin. Baudin writes that the regime imposed by the Inca rulers on the indigenous populations they had enslaved was a precursor of Marxist-style socialism. Private property and individual initiative were prohibited. Money and commerce did not exist. Private life was subject to tough state regulation; people had to dress in a similar way. Marriage was allowed only following the eugenic laws of the state, to avoid “racial contamination”. (The Incas earn the Margaret Sanger Planned Parenthood award for Eugenics.)
Like any tyrannical system of this type, it was oppressive and didn’t work, so much so that the subjugated indigenous peoples enthusiastically helped the few Spaniards who came to get rid of it.
So, the Aztecs and Incas enslaved other indigenous peoples. (Well, at least they weren’t racists.)
It’s lucky for Indigenous Peoples that they weren’t “White European Heritage Peoples” or the ‘Woke’ would demand that they lose their new holiday because they practiced slavery. To be fair, just about every people have practiced slavery; European, Asian and African in addition to indigenous Americans.
If the holiday had to be renamed, again, the “woke” would demand that it honor someone who did not practice slavery or cannibalism; that, of course, would eliminate just about every race and country in the history of the world.
But if you wanted to name it for someone who did not practice human sacrifice or cannibalism, Christopher Columbus is available.
