Monday – Columbus Day
I can believe that part of the United States still celebrate Christopher Columbus, even though we now know that he was a horrible, horrible man. Laguna Pueblo author Leslie Marmon Silko lets us know what the people he “discovered” think of him.
First, though, here’s Wikipedia’s account of some of his crimes against humanity on his third voyage:
Columbus’s colonists bought and sold slaves. Columbus executed Spanish colonists for minor crimes, and used dismemberment as punishment. Columbus and the colonists enslaved the indigenous people, including children. Natives were beaten, raped, and tortured for the location of imagined gold. Thousands committed suicide rather than face the oppression.
In February 1495, Columbus took over 1,500 Arawaks, some of whom had rebelled. About 500 of them were shipped to Spain as slaves, with about 40% dying en route.
Oh, and it wasn’t just the natives and those of us looking back who condemn Columbus. Jesuit priest Bartolome de las Casas was horrified, and his reports horrified Europe.
The Silko passage is from an account of a witches convention. There’s a contest about who can be the biggest, baddest witch, but rather than boiling babies or something comparable, the winner simply tells the story of the colonial conquest. First, there’s the lead-in:
The important thing was
this witch didn’t show off any dark thunder
charcoals
or red ant-hill beads.
This one just told them to listen:
“What I have is a story.”
At first they all laughed
but this witch said
Okay
go ahead
laugh if you want to
but as I tell the story
it will begin to happen.
I pick up midway through the story:
The wind will blow them across the ocean
thousands of them in giant boats
swarming like larva
out of a crushed ant hill.
They will carry objects
which can shoot death
faster than the eye can see.
They will kill the things they fear
all the animals
the people will starve.
They will poison the water
they will spin the water away
and there will be drought
the people will starve.
They will fear what they find
They will fear the people
They kill what they fear.
It goes on a bit longer in this vein. Even veteran witches can’t imagine anything this horrible:
So the other witches said
“Okay you win; you take the prize,
but what you said just now
‘it isn’t so funny
It doesn’t sound so good.
We are doing okay without it
we can get along without that kind of thing.
Take it back.
Call that story back.”
But the witch just shook its head
at the others in their stinking animal skins, fur
and feathers.
It’s already turned loose.
It’s already coming.
It can’t be called back
History doesn’t have to be told by the winners.
