Columbus Day, 2025

(Portrait from Musei di Genoa)

Christopher Columbus is back. A Proclamation from President Trump:

Today our Nation honors the legendary Christopher Columbus — the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization, and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth. This Columbus Day, we honor his life with reverence and gratitude, and we pledge to reclaim his extraordinary legacy of faith, courage, perseverance, and virtue from the left-wing arsonists who have sought to destroy his name and dishonor his memory.

..Guided by steadfast prayer and unwavering fortitude and resolve, Columbus’s journey carried thousands of years of wisdom, philosophy, reason, and culture across the Atlantic into the Americas — paving the way for the ultimate triumph of Western civilization less than three centuries later on July 4, 1776.

Outrageously, in recent years, Christopher Columbus has been a prime target of a vicious and merciless campaign to erase our history, slander our heroes, and attack our heritage. Before our very eyes, left-wing radicals toppled his statues, vandalized his monuments, tarnished his character, and sought to exile him from our public spaces. Under my leadership, those days are finally over — and our Nation will now abide by a simple truth: Christopher Columbus was a true American hero, and every citizen is eternally indebted to his relentless determination.

Academia, with its focus on the depredations of Western civilization, selected Columbus as the wellspring from which evil sprung. Isabella, who bankrolled his voyage, and the Spanish conquistadors are more fitting targets of opprobrium, but according to Progressive educators the descendants of the ruthless Spanish are now the oppressed, so an Italian hero is a politically safer target.

Personally, I am in favor of celebrating Columbus and indigenous people today, but to the oppressor-oppressed philosophy honoring all heritages is as racist as saying "all lives matter." I'm glad that the President is restoring some balance to the conversation.

Happy Columbus Day

In honor of Columbus Day (or Indigenous Peoples' Day to the enlightened) I had pork sausages for breakfast. The explanation, from 2018:

(Image by Sutori)

The Columbian Exchange is a term coined in 1972:

Christopher Columbus introduced horses, sugar plants, and disease to the New World, while facilitating the introduction of New World commodities like sugar, tobacco, chocolate, and potatoes to the Old World.

The process by which commodities, people, and diseases crossed the Atlantic is known as the Columbian Exchange.

One of the most impactful transplants was "Isabella's Pigs" (Kenneth C. Davis. America's Hidden History):

Isabella is credited as the one who encouraged Columbus to take some pigs aboard ship, along with dogs and horses.

Once introduced to the New World, Isabella’s pigs became one of the staples of Spanish armies and colonists. Able to forage for themselves and remarkably fertile, the pigs provided a valuable source of easily transported and self-perpetuating protein. For the conquistador on the move, the pigs offered many advantages, according to historian Charles Hudson: “Pigs are the most efficient food producers that can be herded…. A pig’s carcass yields 65 percent to 80 percent dressed meat…. A four-ounce serving of pork yields 402 calories…. Pigs are unusually fecund. A female as young as nine months may become pregnant, and she can give birth to as many as twelve in a litter…. Thus a herd of pigs can increase prodigiously within a few years.”

Along with the side benefit of producing fertilizer in the form of manure, these pigs offered one other very estimable advantage to Spanish Christians, as Hudson points out. “They ate pork not only for sustenance but also to remove any suspicion that they were Jews.”

Perhaps the greatest unintended consequence of this mobile mess hall may have been the waves of disease that are credited with wiping out so much of the native American populace the Spanish encountered.....Charles C. Mann fingers the pigs, the “ambulatory meat locker,” as the possible culprit behind the deadly epidemics that swept the New World’s original inhabitants. “Swine, mainstays of European agriculture, transmit anthrax, brucellosis, leptospirosis, trichinosis, and tuberculosis. Pigs breed exuberantly and can pass disease to deer and turkeys, which then can infect people…. Only a few…pigs would have to wander off to contaminate the forest.

Columbus Day, 2022

A Columbus statue in Pittsburgh awaits its fate (AP/WSJ)

In the debate over whether to bury or praise Christopher Columbus people say dumb things, such as

“This goes way beyond public speech,” Mr. Sague said. “From the time that Columbus met the Taino, my ancestors, his mind was thinking, how can I exploit these people mercilessly.”

Columbus thought he could find India by sailing West, and he persuaded the powerful Queen Isabella of Spain to finance his voyage. He was probably composing his excuse to the monarch who started the Spanish Inquisition in 1478 and not thinking about how he could "exploit" the "Indians" he encountered.

By the way, although "exploit" has Latin roots, the modern meaning of "use selfishly" did not come into being until 1838 and was popularized by Karl Marx later that century.

Poor Christopher, selectively condemned for all the bad that followed his voyages and none of the good, and attributed with modes of thinking that didn't exist until 400 years after his time.

Happy Columbus Day

In 2020 Columbus, OH took down
its Columbus statue (npr)

In 2021 the controversy over Columbus Day has died down; apparently people who like to argue about such things have turned their attention to other matters. But I have no doubt that they'll be back to rile everyone.

ICYMI, even the notion that Columbus "discovered America" has been attacked as one of the sources of the Doctrine of Discovery, which was used by Christian nations to justify the colonization of the world.

I'm not an ardent defender of Columbus Day. He was not a brilliant man--he mistook the New World for India after all--but his actions did affect the course of human history. Much of the good and evil that occurred after 1492 has been laid at Columbus' feet, though he was just a guy trying to make a real to pay back Queen Isabella.

Columbus and the Europeans who followed him were no saints, but the Indigenous Peoples whom they conquered were not noble savages, which ironically is also a Western concept.

From 2019's post:

Following the modern tendency of viewing the deeds of historical figures and cultures through the prism of today's morality, we eagerly await critical academic analysis of Indigenous People's practices, such as human sacrifice, cannibalism, and polygyny (one man, two or more wives).

And it's not well-publicized that the Indians of the 19th century embraced the Southern States' practice of owning African slaves:

“The Five Civilized Tribes [Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole] were deeply committed to slavery, established their own racialized black codes, immediately reestablished slavery when they arrived in Indian territory, rebuilt their nations with slave labor, crushed slave rebellions, and enthusiastically sided with the Confederacy in the Civil War.”

Take Christopher Columbus down from his pedestal if you insist, but don't replace him with others who committed reprehensible deeds.

Columbian Exchange

(Image by Sutori)

The Columbian Exchange is a term coined in 1972:

Christopher Columbus introduced horses, sugar plants, and disease to the New World, while facilitating the introduction of New World commodities like sugar, tobacco, chocolate, and potatoes to the Old World.

The process by which commodities, people, and diseases crossed the Atlantic is known as the Columbian Exchange.

One of the most impactful transplants was "Isabella's Pigs" (Kenneth C. Davis. America's Hidden History):

Isabella is credited as the one who encouraged Columbus to take some pigs aboard ship, along with dogs and horses.

Once introduced to the New World, Isabella’s pigs became one of the staples of Spanish armies and colonists. Able to forage for themselves and remarkably fertile, the pigs provided a valuable source of easily transported and self-perpetuating protein. For the conquistador on the move, the pigs offered many advantages, according to historian Charles Hudson: “Pigs are the most efficient food producers that can be herded…. A pig’s carcass yields 65 percent to 80 percent dressed meat…. A four-ounce serving of pork yields 402 calories…. Pigs are unusually fecund. A female as young as nine months may become pregnant, and she can give birth to as many as twelve in a litter…. Thus a herd of pigs can increase prodigiously within a few years.”

Along with the side benefit of producing fertilizer in the form of manure, these pigs offered one other very estimable advantage to Spanish Christians, as Hudson points out. “They ate pork not only for sustenance but also to remove any suspicion that they were Jews.”

Perhaps the greatest unintended consequence of this mobile mess hall may have been the waves of disease that are credited with wiping out so much of the native American populace the Spanish encountered.....Charles C. Mann fingers the pigs, the “ambulatory meat locker,” as the possible culprit behind the deadly epidemics that swept the New World’s original inhabitants. “Swine, mainstays of European agriculture, transmit anthrax, brucellosis, leptospirosis, trichinosis, and tuberculosis. Pigs breed exuberantly and can pass disease to deer and turkeys, which then can infect people…. Only a few…pigs would have to wander off to contaminate the forest.

In honor of Columbus Day I had some bacon this morning.