In response to “Ending Columbus Day Tows the Leftist Line” which appeared Dec. 4-10 issue of North Country This Week: Discrediting Christopher Columbus as a “hero” and removing him as deserving of his own special day has nothing to do with a leftist/socialist agenda.

If socialism in all its forms is to be wiped out, and if we are to protect our youth from socialist/leftist concepts, then we would have to start with eradicating socialist ideas that have wormed their way into the fabric of the United States. Socialist ideas like: social security, public libraries, fire and police departments, Medicare/Medicaid, public hospitals, the Veterans Affairs Administration, guaranteed public education (just to name a few). Doing such a thing would be unwise and absurd.

I applaud teachers like these three PCS educators who speak the truth and have discontinued the lies that Columbus was a man to be honored. It is time that updated and accurate historical information was taught.

For example, Columbus was far from being the mythic explorer with the lofty ambition of merely finding an easy trade route to Asia. Columbus was self-seeking. Before leaving in 1492, Columbus made a deal with the Spanish Crown to receive 10% of any wealth that he came upon as well as being named governor and viceroy of lands he “discovered”. On arrival, natives were held hostage until they agreed to show him the source of their acquired gold.

Columbus never set foot in what is today the continental United States. He landed in the Bahamas on October 12. As far as Europeans are concerned - Leif Eriksson arrived in North America 500 years before Columbus.

During his 4 voyages he encountered native people not only in the Caribbean, but in Central and South America. In his own writings Columbus called the native people he encountered “very simple in war-like matters…I could conquer the whole of them with 50 men, and govern them as I please … they ought to make good and skilled servants”. That is what Columbus did; he kidnapped natives to be sent back to Spain as slaves. He enslaved native people and worked them to death in gold mines for his own personal gain.

Columbus promoted slavery, his methods were draconian in nature and he was a racist.

This “hero” tortured and maimed the people he encountered including the Spanish colonists he governed. The Spanish Crown was petitioned by 23 people (some were Columbus supporters) who sited his cruelty, this led to his arrest and imprisonment in 1500.

The story of him dying penniless and imprisoned is a myth. As a result of legal litigation, he was freed and his wealth restored after only 6 weeks of imprisonment.

His arrival brought only one thing to the Taino, Lucayan, and Arawak people: misery. It brought death by European diseases, slavery, and near extinction to the many Indigenous people he encountered.

So, knowing all of these facts people still want to “celebrate” a criminal?

Columbus Day can be summed up in one word – reprehensible. It is time to retire it as a holiday, especially since it only became a federal holiday in 1937, less than 100 years ago.

For those who scoff at the idea of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, it is not an act of political power, but rather an attempt to shed light on the true history of the Americas and pay respect for those who were first to inhabit this land. Instead of this past tradition of celebrating a man who raped, pillaged and destroyed for his own personal gain.

Kent “Tehaente” Fetter

Mohawk and member of the Snipe Clan

Norwood