Our view: Columbus shouldn't have holiday

Christopher Columbus was a horrible guy by most standards.

Yet, he has a major U.S. holiday named after him.

Monday marked Columbus Day, a day that resulted in the closure of banks and offices, including the Sweetwater County Courthouse and the library system. The day celebrates the myth of the man as opposed to the reality of the of the events surrounding his discovery.

For example, he didn’t prove the Earth was round. The ideas supporting a flat Earth view of the world were proven wrong by the Greeks more than 2,000 years before Columbus’ journey. Educated people in the 1490s would have known that. In fact, the first ‘modern’ globe was invented in 1492.

Also, he didn’t discover the “New World” either. Evidence suggests a number of people, including the Vikings, discovered the continent before Columbus was even born. Not to forget the people who actually settled there first, the Native Americans, who found the Americas roughly 14,000 years before. Columbus did seek a better trade route to Asia, but those thoughts went out the window as soon as he noted the gold the natives wore. Finding that source of gold became his top priority.

He left, then returned with a small army, which quickly subjugated the native population.

In the years following Columbus’ arrival to the Bahamas, it’s estimated that between three million and five million people died as a result of his greed. Gold exports from North America resulted in weakening the gold market from Africa, resulting in the African slave trade becoming the more profitable and prevalent enterprise.

Columbus should not have a day honoring his conquests. The only thing it succeeds in doing is honoring the myth of a man that propagated beyond the reality of historical events.

Does this mean we need to follow Seattle and other cities’ lean and start calling the day Indigenous People’s Day?

Not necessarily. The day itself coincides with Columbus’ arrival, so simply renaming it to something else doesn’t really fix the problem. What should be done is ultimately ending Columbus Day as a national or state holiday.

There are a large number of events that can be honored that don’t have federal or state holidays associated with them. In Wyoming, one such event is Statehood Day, which commemorates Wyoming being officially formed as a state. It’s a day marked on calendars, but isn’t widely celebrated or even recognized as a holiday.

That day, in our opinion, would be a much better day to honor than one associated with a greedy, murderous barbarian.