Columbus established a business in the sale of 9- and 10-year-old Taíno girls for sexual slavery. Pregnant Taíno women who were taken captive gave birth to babies who were sometimes thrown to hungry dogs. Columbus took and gifted Taíno women to his crewmen, who would violently beat and rape them. Natives were regularly whipped for what Columbus considered minor offenses - but stealing a vegetable or animal could result in cutting off a Taíno’s nose, ear, or hand the offender was sometimes forced to walk around with their severed body part in shame. While the sailor and his crew are sometimes lumped in with all the other conquest-crazy Europeans of their era, their particular cruelty can’t be so easily exonerated and shouldn’t be ignored.

“Native American Policy”: Two conflicting policies have governed this country’s treatment of Native Americans-assimilation and removal.There was nothing trivial about Columbus’ violent destruction of Taíno people.

The primary source evidence will allow students to analyze questions related to claims about colonization, peace and war, race and ethnicity, masculinity and civility, the use of violence as a political weapon, and religious association.

“Murder on the Frontier: The Paxton Massacre”: Students will attempt to understand how a vigilante group justified the murder of twenty Susquehannock men, women, and children in 1763.

“Letter from Christopher Columbus”: Students will analyze the content of Christopher Columbus’s 1493 letter to Ferdinand and Isabella.

“Nature, Culture, and Native Americans”: Daniel Wildcat, a Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma and director of the American Indian Studies Program at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, discusses the importance of distinguishing between the variety of languages, cultures, and habitats among American Indian tribes both in the past and today.

“Europeans and the New World, 1400–1530”: Brian DeLay, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley, discusses how the backwater of western Europe emerged from the devastation of the fourteenth century to generate the power, wealth, knowledge, institutions, and energy to initiate and develop a worldwide expansion.

Mann explores the population density and extensive land development in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus as well as the rapid depopulation caused by the introduction of European and African diseases, which gave Europeans the mistaken idea that the land was a vast, empty wilderness.

“America before Columbus”: Journalist Charles C.Richter (University of Pennsylvania), History Now 12: The Age of Exploration (Summer 2007) “Native American Discoveries of Europe” Daniel K.“American Indians and the Transcontinental Railroad” by Elliott West (University of Arkansas), History Now 38: The Joining of the Rails: The Transcontinental Railroad (Winter 2014).“A New Era of American Indian Autonomy” by Ned Blackhawk (Yale University), History Now 9: The American West (Fall 2006).

“Cultural Encounters: Teaching Exploration and Encounter to Students” by Joyce Chaplin (Harvard University).“Guided Readings: Indian Removal” provides five short readings with questions.In 2021, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, first celebrated in California in 1992, was proclaimed by the President as a federal holiday to be observed on the same day as Columbus Day, which is established by Congress.Įxplore the day from many angles through the resources below:

Christopher columbus day history