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Calendars are marvelous devices for spreading confusion. The official celebration of Columbus Day was last Monday. Traditional Columbus Day was Thursday, because on Oct. 12, 1492, the sailor standing watch on the Pinta spied land.
However, they used the Julian calendar then, and it was inaccurate by one day every 128 years. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII rectified matters by declaring that Oct. 4 would be followed immediately by Oct. 15, thereby synchronizing the calendar with the seasons.
Thus the real 497th anniversary is yet to come. If our
current calendar had been in effect in 1492, then it was on
the morning of Oct. 22 that Christopher Columbus landed on
San Salvador. He thought he was in the Orient near Japan
and India; thus the islands were Indies
and their
inhabitants Indians.
No matter which Columbus Day you choose, the holiday gets more controversial every year. It used to be one of those unofficial events like Hallowe'en or Arbor Day. The second Monday in October became an official government day off only a few years ago in order to placate a large and vocal lobby of Italian-Americans, who claim Columbus as one of their own, since he grew up in the Italian city of Genoa.
But Columbus never thought of himself as Italian, or more properly, as a Genoese, since there was no Italy then. In 1476, after a stint as a pirate, he fought for Portugal in a battle against Genoa. He always wrote in Spanish or Latin, never Italian.
So honoring Columbus really doesn't do much to honor
Italian-Americans who are proud of their ancestry, since
Columbus certainly wasn't proud of his Italian ancestry.
The other complication with Columbus Day comes from the
descendants of those Indians
who survived the
aftermath of the first Columbus Day.
At a rally Monday in Denver, American Indians called for the abolition of Columbus Day as a national holiday. Several speakers observed that Columbus really deserves to go down in history, not as a misguided discoverer nor as a great seaman, but with brutal tyrants like Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. The speakers charged that Columbus established a colonial system which enslaved or killed 300,000 people in Haiti alone, and 20 million more in the Caribbean and South America.
Russell Means, an Indian activist, received a summons after he poured blood on a statue of Columbus. If Means is guilty of defacing a statue, then the sculptor who omitted the blood is guilty of defacing history.
But no matter how many demonstrations are held, Columbus
Day will never be eliminated as a national holiday. We
don't subtract holidays, we add them, and the trend is to
placate ethnic groups by declaring new holidays. Those
holidays may be named for one person, but in actual fact,
Columbus Day is the day we honor Italian-Americans
just as Martin Luther King Day is the day we set aside
to honor the contributions and struggles of black
Americans.
If Irish-Americans wanted to push the issue, St. Patrick's Day could become an official holiday. Scandinavians have promoted Lief Ericson Day (Oct. 9). In this part of America, Cinco de Mayo becomes more of a general holiday every year -- not because our history books mention much about the Mexican repulsion of French invaders at the battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, but because we want to celebrate and honor Hispanic contributions.
The Indian activists have a point about Columbus. But their current tactics won't get them anywhere. They should instead start lobbying for a Makhpiya-Luta (Red Cloud) Day or a Goyakla (One Who Yawns, a/k/a Geronimo) Day or a Tecumseh Day.
But their tribes, unlike ours, didn't bother with
confusing written calendars. It is thus impossible to
select one leader's birthday and make it a Native
American Day.
So my suggestion is Tashunca-uitco (Crazy
Horse) Day, to be celebrated on June 25 -- the anniversary
of the Indian victory at the Battle of Greasy Grass, known
to many of us white eyes as Custer's Last Stand.
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