Christopher Columbus Replica Ships Greeted by Revisionist Protesters
“They are terrifying, they symbolize nothing but genocide”
As the nationwide quest to impose revisionism on major historical figures and events marches on, not even replicas are being spared this progressive nonsense.
Tuesday, in Traverse City, Michigan replica ships of the Niña and Pinta of Christopher Columbus exploratory lore, were greeted not with curious fanfare, but protests.
Invited by the Maritime Heritage Alliance, the replicas were meant to educate the citizenry on the kind of ship used during the age of exploration. But their educational efforts resulted in protesters surrounding the ships in kayaks and hollering idiocies from the shore.
Protesters described these “black ships of death” as “terrifying” and symbolizing “nothing but genocide”.
Northern Michigan’s News Leader
From Traverse City local news:
Protesters surrounded the ships and stood by on land as two Christopher Columbus replica ships sailed into Traverse City Wednesday night.
Replicas of the Niña and Pinta arrived at Clinch Park to offer tours for what some consider a celebration of American history.
However, some groups like the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians strongly disagree, leading to protests
“We look at it as educating people and getting a positive message out, we’re not here to really protest, we’re here to educate,” said Tom Shomin, councilor for the tribe.
“That’s not right, those things should not be here, they are terrifying, they symbolize nothing but genocide, nothing more,” said Timothy Grey.
A protest on land and water Wednesday night in Traverse City, after the Maritime Heritage Alliance invited the Columbus replica ships to Traverse City for a recreation of history.
“It’s part of history, you have to be respectful and we’re here educating the people about the types of ships that were used during the ancient discovery,” said Stephen Sanger, one of the captains. “They’re more than welcome to come down and voice their opinion but we’re all here teaching history, you can’t change it.”
The Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians see it differently and even describe them as the black ships of death.
“We’re an inclusive people, we’re a welcoming people, and we just want the truth to be told and when you have these ships coming in and being celebrated in this way, that’s because it’s of a false history,” said Shomin.
The tribe will be out there until Tuesday, sharing information and peacefully protesting.
“Columbus was not the best guy in the world, he did a lot of things that we’re not really proud of and so to have the Native Americans have an educational opportunity to give a second side of this we think it’s a real win-win,” said Woody Wright, member of the Maritime Heritage Alliance.
All of this was said straight-faced with no acknowledgement of the fact that Columbus’s poor navigation ultimately lead to the creation of the country with affords the ill-informed to protest factual historical events.
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Comments
I hope that President Trump prominently recognizes Columbus Day next month!
Actually, Columbus Day isn’t until October. So all you have done is add ignorance to an ignorant article.
Actually, people started vehemently protesting on the 500th anniversary (1992). Do you understand that when Columbus finally realized that he hadn’t navigated to the Indies and that there was little of value to repay his investors, he decided that slavery could turn a profit. That is certainly worth celebrating.
That’s ALL you’ve got? Really? Quite limp, actually.
See other comments if you want more. I just figured that someone who didn’t even know when Columbus day was should shut up.
So you’ve got nothing at all. No point. No message. Nothing. Why are you here?
Happy Columbus Day, drone.
You are applying 21st values to 15th century mores. If somehow that is the standard for judging those who came before us – virtually every person and every institution must be condemned. Should we condemn the indigenous tribes in the northeast and Canada that before any Europeans set foot on the continent regularly warred with one another, took hostages, made slaves out of those they captured.
What was acceptable practice in the 15th century, whether it was the conduct of Europeans on the European continent or, the conduct of indigenous tribal societies in the New World, can only be judged within the mores that existed at that time.
Why do these people hate Hispanic heritage? Columbus is the father of today’s Central and South America.
Like that idiot scarborough, who suddenly loves Rubio, after hating him during the primaries.
Leftists/Communists believe that the end justifies the means. The “end” which they are striving for is the worldwide advancement of Communism. To reach this “end” or goal, they will use any means whatsoever, including lying, cheating and even murder:
http://www.middletownbiblechurch.org/crisesod/crises9.htm
Those Killed By Communists in the 20th Century:
USSR (Lenin/Stalin) 20 million
China (Mao) 65 million
Vietnam 1 million
North Korea 2 million
Cambodia 2 million
Eastern Europe 1 million
Africa 1.5 million
Afghanistan 1.5 million
http://www.middletownbiblechurch.org/crisesod/crises9.htm
United States ? million
Undermining the U.S. Constitution: How the Communist Manifesto of 1848 Blueprints the Actions of the Democratic Party and Obama:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/undermining-the-us-constitution-diane-vann/1125805037;jsessionid=4E19815B0B471CC4F75A29C1B1C3E9D7.prodny_store01-atgap03?ean=9781477299197
Do any of these snowflake anti-Columbus buffoons realize that Columbus never got to within 1000 miles of the USA? He spent all of his time in the West Indies and was still looking for the Eastern passage to Asia. Better they rant and rave about the cruelty of the early indian tribes who were at war constantly with rape and murder of their neighbors a common thing. But oh no, Columbus is the villain.
Do these mush brain, social justice cyber warriors realize that if it wasn’t Columbus who united the Old and New World, somebody else would have eventually done it? Ship building and navigation techniques were really picking up. It probably would have only been a few short years later until the next adventurer “found” America. Two entire continents with no immunities to European germs, the transfer of disease was inevitable.
But not the slavery and mass-murder that Columbus was personally responsible for.
You are an idiot. We are talking about something that happened in 1492. Since you probably don’t have the brain power to do the math, that is 525 years ago. Believe it or not, things were different then. Do you think social mores in another 100 years, not to mention 525 years, will reflect todays?
What Columbus did was a horrible crime, no matter when he did it. Will it be OK to celebrate Hitler 500 years from now? There is nothing to celebrate about Columbus, there is nothing good to say about him. He wasn’t a flawed hero, he was a crackpot and a villain, and it’s time to finally give up on the 19th-century project of canonizing him.
Oh, please give it a rest! Your occasional moments of clarity punctuate the much more common self-righteous drivel that you post.
If you’ve got nothing useful to contribute to the discussion then shut up.
Follow your own advice, drone.
I am discussing the issue. What are you doing?
Are you trying to be sarcastic or have you gone completely off the deep end?
Neither one. What’s your objection to what I’ve written? Do you believe Columbus was not a crackpot and a villain? What redeeming qualities, if any, do you see in him? How do you look past his personal responsibility for so many horrible crimes?
Down with all Columbus statues!!!!
You say ridiculous things, without a shred of evidence.
Cite your source.
Source for what? Columbus’s sordid history is well-documented and completely undisputed.
“If it hadn’t been Columbus it would have been someone else.” Yet even if that “someone else” had been kinder and gentler (by the standards of the age, of course) the consequences for the Natives would almost certainly have been no better.
For ultimately it was European diseases that decimated the Natives more than any other factor. Including Europeans’ superior weapons and technology, and willingness to enslave and exploit.
At a minimum, those who view Columbus’ ships as “ships of death” might be asked to come up with alternate histories that would have produced a better result? For the continents weren’t going to remain isolated forever, and those Eurasian diseases were sure to follow the end of that isolation.
Nor is everything likely to come out equal when a civilization that is relatively technically advanced relative to another runs into one that isn’t, and one is likely to adopt many of the ways (or at least means) of the other (because it’s hard to go back to those heavy, fragile clay pots once a trader has been by with good metal ones).
Nor is it easy to make a case that the Natives were necessarily kinder and gentler than Europeans. Perhaps some were in some ways, but many were involved in internecine warfare with their neighbors, and those who weren’t mostly lived within those tyrannical Mesoamerican empires.
So, protest Columbus if you must, but is doing so not like protesting the sunrise? Columbus (or someone like him) was going to happen, and inevitably vast changes would be set in motion, and when there were inevitable conflicts the Natives were just not well-positioned to prevail.
That someone else would have discovered America means we have no reason to admire or be thankful to him. That he should not be honored is not because of what other people did as a result of his accidental discovery, but because of his own horrible crimes. Calling his ships “ships of death” is not a figure of speech, it refers to the atrocities he personally committed.
Nor is it easy to make a case that the Natives were necessarily kinder and gentler than Europeans.
Oh, they weren’t. For instance I think the Spanish did the Mexicans a favor by rescuing them from the Aztec priests and bringing them Christianity. That benefit outweighs all the damage they did. The Aztec culture deserved to be destroyed. And so did many of the other cultures that existed then. Which doesn’t excuse the atrocities, of course, but it does mean the enterprise was on the whole a good thing.
My criticism is of Columbus’s personal atrocities, which did his victims no good at all.
Columbus made four voyages between 1492 and 1503. He died in 1506. Please tell us how much slavery and mass murder he was “personally responsible” for?
You know, I’m a huge critic if Islam, which is a vile creed. As well as it’s chief proponent, Muhammad. But Muhammad died in the 7th century (if he lived at all). I would never be so stupid as to say he was “personally responsible” for 9/11/2001.
That is the sort of idiocy I leave to you.
How much slavery and mass murder he was “personally responsible” for? Look it up. It was a lot; far more than most notorious criminals.
Of course neither Mohammed nor Columbus were personally responsible for crimes committed by other people after theirs deaths, or even before them. Where did you get the idea that I blame Columbus for anything that he did not personally do or order? But Mohammed (or, if you insist, the fictional character of that name) was personally responsible for the massacre of many innocents, and the enslavement of many more. By the standards we apply to most notorious criminals he was a super-villain. And so was Columbus.
Actually I don’t insist that Muhammad was a fictional character. Seventh/eighth/ninth century Arabia was crawling with Muhammads. Here’s are coins of the era depicting the moniker Muhammad and the Christian cross.
https://tse2.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.uhCqZq_YCqlpJDhRUsQFCADyEL&pid=15.1
This can’t possibly be an Islamic coin.
HMD is simply the consonental root of the Arabic “praise.” Applying “mu” to that word personalizes it into “the praised one” or “one worthy of praise.” It’s a title, not a proper name. Just like JHD is the root of “jihad” and applying “mu” to it forms “mujahid” or “one who wages jihad.”
I have no doubt that the Islamic historical narrative has at its base a Muhammad or perhaps a composite figure of several Muhammads. Lord knows there were plenty of them running around. But this places such a Muhammad in the same category as the King Arthur of legend. So while I concede that the the Islamic historical narrative that cast back into history for a Muhammad or a composite of Muhammads they could base their claim to prophetic lineage upon, tho while I concede that particular Muhammad may have existed the whole historical narrative that’s based upon him is a laughable forgery.
Hope this helps.
Irrelevant. The point is that the person described in the Koran personally committed many atrocities, and is therefore undeserving of praise, quite apart from what others have done in his name. The same is true of Columbus. I don’t view the European settlement of the Americas as a bad thing, and I certainly don’t “blame” him for it. But I do blame him for what he personally did.
You’re dancin’ as fast as you can!
WTH do you mean by that? Do you even know?
Ah, the “I have no idea what you mean” deflection! And it’s a deflection combined with projection! Dance away, Baryshnikov!
Still meaningless abuse. That seems to be all you have to offer; you have not made a single argument in this entire thread, so you should shut up.
Ah, the leftist is smoked out! Abuse! Now I’m abusing you! Come see the repression inherent in the system! (Credit to Monty Python).
You’re a self-parody. You know that, right? You’ve got nothing, and you’re proud of your ignorance. When faced with debate, you cry like a little girl.
Go away.
You are not debating. I am debating, you are merely defecating all over everything. Say something meaningful and relevant or shut your filthy mouth.
Yep–textbook deflection. When exposed as a drone, the drone will resort to scatological references. The goal? Perhaps thinking people will look away!
Sorry, no one is looking away. You’re exposed.
I would suggest that you do a lot more of ‘looking it up’. Most deaths of indigenous tribes was a result of being exposed to, and having no immunity to the diseases borne by Europeans. And no, there is zero credible evidence to substantiate the claim that the ‘white man’ particularly in the case of indigenous tribes of the plains, were deliberately given disease ridden clothing (particularly infected with small pox) to wipe out their populations.
Of the 600,000 plus deaths in our nation’s Civil War, the majority were the result of disease and inadequate medical care – there was no understanding of infection, the need for cleanliness, what caused malaria (still a prevalent disease at the time)
I’ve done quite a lot. It seems you’ve done none at all, and haven’t even bothered reading the thread before commenting, because all you’ve got are irrelevancies. Go on, look up what Columbus did. It’s not a secret. Nobody disputes it. The man was a monster.
And this has what to do with the subject?
The subject is Columbus, not “the white man”, so I don’t know why you bring this up. Nobody alleges Columbus did this. But since you mention it, there’s very credible evidence that this probably did happen at least once, in 1763. We know for certain that Colonel Henry Bouquet informed Lord Amherst that he planned to do this, that Amherst approved the plan, and that Bouquet acknowledged this and said he would carry it out. The only evidence missing is that he actually did so.
Bouquet to Amherst:
Amherst to Bouquet:
Bouquet to Amherst:
The infected blankets was actually a brilliant solution for an army far from home that was getting it’s ass kicked by an enemy that was brutal and vicious.
American Indians made war on each other and took slaves from each other long before Columbus arrived.
Its just nature or cultural darwinism, when two cultures come in contact with each other and one of them is superior in technology and wealth, then the inferior culture ceases to exist.
How many indians did Columbus kill ? How many does it take for mass murder status in your mind. Weren’t all the people left by Columbus when he sailed back the first time to Spain mass murdered by the peace loving indians??
At least hundreds.
According to the FBI, four. Columbus exceeded that by orders of magnitude.
Why didn’t the FBI arrest Columbus for his serial crimes?
If he were still alive they would. There’s no statute for murder.
Since Columbus never landed on the mainland known as the United States of America, the FBI would not have had jurisdiction.
He explored areas which are in the Caribbean, Central and South America. OF course, some of those islands may be under US jurisdiction now.
No, they were justly killed when, not satisfied with stealing all the gold and raping and enslaving all the women they could lay their hands on, they attempted to rob a gold mine. The mine’s owner naturally objected and fought back.
Yes, it’s really horrible when boatloads of foreign people arrive uninvited in a place, abuse the hospitality of the native population, commit crimes against them, and demand that the natives change their entire societies to suit the desires of the invaders.
Unless the foreign invaders are Muslims, of course, in which case it’s just more wonderful “diversity” of which we should all be glad, and anybody who objects is clearly just a hateful bigot!
Nobody claims it’s acceptable for someone — whether native or foreign — to commit crimes against others. Nobody disputes that immigrants who commit crimes should be punished and deported. What has that got to do with all the immigrants who don’t commit any crimes?
“Nobody disputes that immigrants who commit crimes should be punished and deported”?
You’re trying to be funny, right?
Democrats all across this country (Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, California, etc.) have been refusing to charge illegal alien criminals so that they not deported. An armed, serial bank robber in MA was given a sentence of less than a year, specifically so that he would not be subject to deportation. As soon as he was released from prison, he committed a home invasion and two murders. The idiot state’s attorney in MD announced publicly that local prosecutors in MD should not charge illegal alien criminals at all, so that they would not risk deportation.
The governments in Europe have been just as corrupt in dealing with muslim criminal “refugees” there. Swedish cops won’t even go into many of the muslim enclaves there, let alone arrest the criminals. German officials pretend the “refugee” sex crimes there are not even happening, and on the rare occasions when an arrest is made, the perpetrator usually gets a slap on the wrist, and rarely ever gets deported.
Columbus personally responsible? Ooooohhh….I get it….satire with a dollop of hyperbole and a sprinkle of Common Core.
What are you talking about? How was he not responsible for his own actions?
Slavery and mass murder (constant warfare) were already in the New World, being practiced by the natives. Columbus didn’t bring those things here.
And nobody claimed he did. What is your point?
One thing is for sure. The crossing of the Atlantic in large ships was never going to be done by the American Indians. It was always going to be a white European that crossed the Atlantic to the Americas. White Europeans are the only ones with the technology, wealth, and culture to do it.
I know this kind of factual observation makes snowflake heads explode but that is the facts. Same could be said of Sub-Saharan africans. They never invented a sail or the technology to build ocean going ships.
So what? Neither wealth nor the possession of technology make someone better than another, or entitle him to kill, rob, or rape another.
This is what the king of Spain said in several 16th century edicts forbidding Spanish explorers from enslaving or even exploiting the Indians.
And the fact that the king had to keep issuing these edicts is prima facia evidence they were routinely ignored.
I’m not denying that there were people with the Christian impulse not to persecute others. But they tended to stay home. Hell, I can cite sources (it would take me time, as it’s been a while) in which Christian clerics told Christian monarchs and nobles NOT to “take up the cross” and go crusading. That it was wrong to kill fellow human beings (yes, they considered Muslims fellow human beings) over real estate. But these critics never left home.
Ergo it’s beyond possible to believe that the results would have been different had Columbus been replaced by someone else.
That is not the point. No criminal is excused by claiming that there are many other criminals in the world. You seem to still be working under the delusion that I’m blaming Columbus for the long-term results of his exploration. I can’t imagine where you got such an idea. I am blaming him for his personal crimes, which are not excused in any way by the existence of other criminals. As you yourself point out, what he did was not lawful or accepted by the standards of the day, so he can’t be compared to people who lived just and upright lives and are now blamed merely because moral fashions have changed.
Someone is illiterate in history and is ignorant of how the natives conducted warfare with each other, and sought out other tribes’ territories constantly.
How is that relevant?
Yet those are the things that every more powerful society/culture did to every less powerful society/culture with which they had contact through most of history, and doubtless through all of pre-history, everywhere around the globe. Historically, almost every powerful society/culture eventually encounters, and is toppled, by a more powerful society/culture. In 1492, the Native Americans’ time as the ruling societies in the New World was up. This was how the world had worked for millennia. It was not unique to European societies, and it was not alien to New World societies before Columbus.
But the ancestors of those American Indians did manage to cross an ocean and populate 2 continents in far more perilous circumstances.
Does building big ships and having technology, wealth, and a particular culture make you superior? The Native Americans had all the technology, culture and wealth they needed. They were perpetuating their way of life. They weren’t impoverished or declining. BTW, the Chinese and Eastern Indians had technology, culture and wealth that was more than a match for the ‘white’ Europeans. That is why the Europeans were so determined to get to the Indies and not the other way around. You be sure look up what Vasco da Gama did when he arrived in India. It was a civilized tour de force.
The only thing that would make my head explode is contemplating your arrogance and ignorance. BTW, white man, what technology have you personally invented? Judging by your post, you are inferior to most of the people I have ever met. BOOM!!
Their ancestors didn’t cross an ocean, they walked across the iced-up Bering Strait.
I know that. But it seems to me that if you are smart enough to cross an ocean by finding a narrow strait, that counts.
They found a whole continent without human competition. Pretty good, eh?
Bizarre. They didn’t cross a narrow straight. There was no straight. They hunted sea mammals and other sea life along a strip of land between glacier and sea as they had for millenia.
They were hardy and resourceful and they put up with conditions that would have killed you, New York (and probably me), but it wasn’t particularly inventive.
They didn’t “find” the strait. It was simply there and they crossed it; that doesn’t take any smarts.
@Arminius They were “hardy and resourceful”, but not inventive. def resourceful: – having the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties. able to deal skillfully and promptly with new situations, difficulties, etc. def inventive: having the ability to create or design new things or to think originally. You are splitting hairs.
@Milhouse If you can’t find a strait because it is already there, I guess Columbus couldn’t find the New World because it was already there.
It doesn’t take smarts? I guess you would have had to be there to be sure. They may not have the knowledge we have now, but what makes you think they weren’t smart?
Sheesh. No, not it was already there, it was simply there. They didn’t find it, any more than you “find” the street outside your home every morning, or than you “find” some place you happen to walk past in the ordinary course of your day. They weren’t looking for it, it was simply there where they happened to be, so it took no smarts at all to see it. Over the course of centuries, every so often someone would cross it, to hunt or fish on the other side. There was never any planning involved in this gradual migration. Of those people who crossed, the great-grandchildren of some eventually moved further on, again without any planning, exploration, discovery, or use of smarts.
” …The Native Americans had all the technology, culture and wealth they needed. They were perpetuating their way of life. They weren’t impoverished or declining.”
The archaeological remains tell a different story. At least for the tribes of North America before the Europeans brought the horse.
Their short, asymmetrically-developed skeletons tell a story of deprivation. They were skillful hunters, bur very desperately hungry hunters. Occassionally they’d feast at buffalo jumps. Those were few and far between.
The alacrity the plains Indians took to the European introduction to the horse should at least be a speed bump on the road to your statement that they “had all the technology, culture and wealth they needed.” Not true. Someone tossed them a life ring in the form of a horse and they grabbed at it like a drowning man.
The rest of your assertions shrivel in the face of such evidence.
The horse was useful and they adopted it – just as the Europeans adopted many things from native Americans.
Your claim that they were desperately poor is propaganda. That kind of European justification is exactly what is being revised. There is nothing wrong with revisions; if the revisions are more accurate.
I am sure there were some tribes that were failing. The cliff dwellers are gone. But most of the cultures were doing just fine, thank you.
Right, Yellowsnake. Here’s a source you may be more inclined to believe.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/29/science/don-t-blame-columbus-for-all-the-indians-ills.html
“…’Our research shows that health was on a downward trajectory long before Columbus arrived,” Dr. Richard H. Steckel and Dr. Jerome C. Rose, study leaders, wrote in ”The Backbone of History: Health and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere,” a book they edited. It was published in August.”
As they say, read the whole thing. It doesn’t support my entire assertion. But my assertion is not based upon a single news article.
One other thought. The ancestors of these native Americans killed wholly mammoths and other giant animals. But you claim that at the time of Columbus they were dying off because they could not hunt bison? Sound like white man’s propaganda and I have little doubt that some archeologists that will claim to have found misshapen bones and generalized to a desired conclusion.
The horse was not only useful, the horse was necessary.
By the standards of the tribes I have dealt with, respectfully, I have more claim to membership than Elizabeth Warren.
Affiliating yourself with a tribe is a key component to laying such claim. And Warren never has.
But I digress. And i reject your assertion that he horse was anything less than necessary to tribal life.
“Don’t blame Columbus for all the Indians woes” Nobody does. But there is not a lot of reason to celebrate him either.
Nice to see that those who lament *the white man* ( just a tad racist, darling, btw) advancing to other lands also concede that the Indians did the exact same thing. But…but….that’s diiiiiiiiiiiiiferent, lol. Can’t play the oppression card both ways.
Why were Native Americans so eager to rebury Kenniwick Man, and to prevent its scientific investigation? I believe it was because they were afraid that should the presence of another racial type in North America be confirmed, that race’s extirpation would have been blamed on the later immigration of waves of the races that became the modern-day Native Americans. This would have removed Native Americans from their (presumed) moral high-horse and altered their “victim” status. Were they victims? Yes, but only because they were unable to make victims of the white invaders, but not for lack of trying. Look, Native Americans lost a war of invasion – one that they would have been happy to have reversed, had they the technology and wealth to do so. (Which they obviously didn’t, because they did lose. This is not a value judgment, it is the judgment of history.)
They were eager to rebury him because his existence contradicted their belief that they originated in place and didn’t come from anywhere else. Which nobody else believes anyway.
And because every human being deserves to be decently buried and not dug up and kept on display like some sort of rock.
It’s not revisionism to point out what the historical record has always said to those who bothered to read it — that Columbus was an awful person with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, that he brought nothing to America but death, slavery, and destruction, and that he entire voyage was based on a crackpot theory that was 100% wrong, while his critics were 100% right. (With the ships of the day it was impossible to sail half way around the world with nowhere to stop for resupplying; Columbus was convinced that everyone else was wrong about the size of the earth, and that Japan was a mere 2000 nautical miles from the Canary Islands.)
He contributed nothing to the existence of US freedom; it was the age of exploration, and had he not gone on his crazy voyage someone would eventually have gone out into the ocean just to see what was there, or else someone would have followed up on the Vinland legends and rediscovered Canada that way.
And … so what? Nobody ever became famous for not discovering the New World.
He’s the one who did it, and nobody else, no matter what you think about his failure to be the ideal modern pajama-boy.
And to be fair, he was one hell of a navigator, by anybody’s standards.
Famous or Infamous?
Im pretty sure the names of his critics have been scattered to the winds while his is remember for all eternity. Not bad for a failure.
Which makes it right?! The fact that a villain is remembered is no reason to honor him.
I’ll bet 3/4 of the people alive on this planet have never heard of him and if they did, they wouldn’t care.
For eternity? Can I have some of what you are smoking?
Congratulations for the perfect recitation of every comically illiterate revisionist canard and gem of bumper sticker wisdom.Not an original or intellectual honest thought among them. Hon, please, don’t embarrass yourself by using these to buttress your already unseemly historical illiteracy. It’s hard to even be angry with someone so dismally victimized by academic indoctrination. Save yourself, hon.
Once again, death, slavery, and destruction were already world-wide, and had traveled world-wide thousands of years earlier as man occupied the globe. Columbus didn’t intentionally bring anything to the New World that wasn’t already there. Death, slavery, and destruction (as well as poverty, disease, and injustice) were everywhere, their introduction by explorers was unnecessary and impossible because these things already existed everywhere they went.
Every criminal has the same defense. “Millions of people already die, I did nothing new.” This victim wasn’t dead until you killed him. And Columbus’s victims were alive and free until he changed that.
This crap is driving up the cost and availability of .223/5.56 ammo. While Obama was one of the greatest gun salesman in history, the violent left is making ammo manufacturers rich.
This has more to do about science than history. You know science the holy grail of the left. Natural selection the weak surcoming to the stronge. Else it would have been a hand full of Italians in the canoes.
Your simpleton’s understanding of the Theory of Evolution is breathtaking. But let’s follow you logic down the rabbit hole. If the left manages, by any means, to prevail in this culture war, then they are the better?
Somehow the annual Columbus Day Parade in San Francisco has remained intact. The parade route is down Columbus Ave. through North Beach which was not that long ago a predominantly Italian American community. The area still houses many Italian restaurants, many of which had gone way downhill as far as being anywhere near authentic.
However, there has been a recent influx of chefs from Italy who have revitalized many of the old places or have opened new restaurants of their own, many quite excellent and feature the best of modern Italian cuisine. No red checked table cloth spaghetti and meatballs and a straw bottle of plonck Chianti here.
Overall the Italian character of North Beach has been overshadowed by neighboring Chinatown, which has for awhile been expanding into North Beach. Those of Chinese descent or recent arrivals most likely outnumber the remnants of of Italian community (as is quickly becoming true throughout San Francisco and other ethnic or racial communities). North Beach is becoming, as Rick Steeves would say, a cultural curiosity preserved for the benefit of tourists. But there is still a massive turnout for the Columbus Day parade.
Originally, it was a despised, discriminated against minority that pushed for Columbus Day as a federal holiday in the first place- the Italians. I’m waiting with ‘bated breath for other minorities to wind up in the same boat- and get attacked for their “no -progressive” views.
The boats are surprisingly small.
Terrifying, I suppose they would be when you’re stuck in the stone age. And then you encounter people who have passed the Iron Age, Bronze Age, Classical Age, Dark Ages, Age of Enlightenment, and are pre-Industrial with knowledge of gunpowder and how to use it. People who actually use g.d. wheels only to mention many other forms of machinery. And there you are in your dugout and birchbark canoes and your bows and arrows, sticking feathers in your headdresses and chasing buffalo around all over the place for food. Yeah, terrifying. Usually when a superior culture encounters a backward culture the backward culture is obliterated. So count your blessings they tolerated your existence. Like dragging around an anchor. Speaking of ships.
Actually, there were a surprising number of stupid conquistadors who came over intent on getting gold; and perished, ignominiously, because they didn’t know much of the natural history that the native Americans knew. The Pilgrims would have perished without help from the Indians. Nobody knows what became of the Roanoke colony.
BTW, only plains indians lived off of bison (not buffalo) and they didn’t have to chase them. They stampeded them until many were killed. They were so rich that they only ate the hump (the most nutritious and tastiest part). They regularly started fires so that the new shoots that the bison particularly liked would grow. They used bison hides for clothing and shelter. They burned bison chips for heat. They had a whole culture that revolved around the bison. They didn’t need big ships or gunpowder. Besides, until the repeating rifle was invented, the bow and arrow was often superior.
You people had better become fact based or you have no chance – the right is certainly not a superior culture.
So you concede that the Indians also sought prosperity in all its trappings, such as good vittles via the bison hump? You further contend that because the Indians forced the beasts to kill each other, their method of killing was somehow superior…or something. I would suggest you read as you write and you might catch on to the absurd degree of logical—and historical— fallacies that govern your reasoning process.
You seem to be confusing adaptation with superiority, or at least conflating them. The Native Americans were supremely adapted to their environment, as the Europeans were to theirs. This should be no surprise. But the Europeans’ technological and material superiority is what permitted them to travel from an environment they were adapted to, to one where they were not. The Native Americans’ technology and material wealth did not allow them to do the same thing, and they would have run into similar difficulties had they been able to do so.
Ultimately, Europeans adapted to conditions in the New World, and in fact most European settlements did not require native assistance to survive and their initial attempts at colonization were rarely ejected or eliminated from their toe-holds. (The examples of these things you cite are exceptions that should not be proffered as as if they were the rule. They do not refute the overwhelming evidence of European technological and material superiority.) European technology and material superiority allowed them to colonize two continents, in the face of violent opposition from the indigenous population. That indigenous population won some battles, but lost the war. They provide us with a valuable object lesson on what happens to a people who are unable to control and maintain their borders, cultures, and languages.
Oops.
I meant to say thank you.
Thank you for the tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini and yellow squash, pumpkins and corn. Thank you for the vast array of chiles, for chocolate and vanilla. Thank you for squash, wild rice, cranberries, blueberries, black walnuts and for the pecans. Double thank you for avocados. For maple sugar and pine nuts. Thank you for turkey. Say, let’s party. Thank you for haricots and for cassava and for chayote. Thank you for peanuts and for papayas. Thank you for allspice.
Oh wait, that wasn’t you. That was the place. Well, thank you for showing us around. You’ve been most gracious and generous. Except for those unhappy scalpings and all that futile resistance.
No, it wasn’t the ‘place’. For centuries they cultivated all those plants that you were facetiously thanking them for. You really thought the natives just came over here and found all those things? Did you really think that corn, tomatoes, etc just grew like what they looked like when Europeans arrived? That would have made the Americas the Garden of Eden from which your ancestors were rightfully tossed out. You are an embarrassment to that superior culture you claim to be part of.
Even if it had been true that the native Americans merely showed them around, the Europeans picked a hell of a way to thank them for their hospitality.
Is your contention that the Indians came over and magically cultivated the bounty that magically popped up for them? The seeds had to come form somewhere, dear. Did they bring them over as they settled a new land, presumably as uninvited as the Europeans? The devil is in the details.
Here’s an example of how the leftist practise of turning everything up to 11 backfires. The standard leftist narrative nowadays is that George Washington enslaved people. No, he didn’t. He owned slaves. There were slaves in his day, and he owned them. He never kidnapped a free person and turned him or her into a slave. That would have been a crime, even in his day, and it would never occur to him to do such a horrible thing. Christopher Columbus, on the other hand, did precisely that, to hundreds of people. But if I say Columbus enslaved people, modern audiences don’t know whether I mean it literally, which I do, or I’m merely saying that he was like Washington and tens of thousands of other fine and decent people who happened to own property that existed under the laws of the time.
Columbus also tortured people, and murdered them en masse, both literally, not in some PC exaggerated sense. Washington, of course, did neither.
And of course without Columbus there would have been no Washington.
There certainly would have been.
How so, Mr. alt.history?
See above. It’s already covered, and not just by me.
No, it isn’t but suppose I’m dense and wrong. You should have not trouble destroying me.
See the discussion above about how someone would have discovered America fairly soon no matter what Columbus did. So long as it happened before about 1550, the English colonization would have proceeded more or less as it did. Raleigh would have made the same voyages, Virginia would have been established in the early 17th century, and John Washington would have washed up there a half-century later, no matter who made the discovery.
And roughly the same number of Indians would have been enslaved or mass-murdered. As you put it.
Those people would not have been enslaved or murdered had he not done it to them. “Your honor, had I not stolen that lady’s purse, someone else surely would have.”
One notices with amusement the glaring omission of native Americans’ centuries-long enslavement of other tribes,along with settlers I wonder how that omission happened…To say nothing of the Indians’ well-documented brutality to other tribes. When you try to *saintify* a people by omitting the same harsh realities that have extended to all peoples’ excursions to all the continents over all of time, you risk being thought a racist, either overtly, or through the soft racism of the condescension of *excusing* a group, you’ve lost control of an already erratic attack on *white people* as singularly unique oppressors.
What are you blathering about? Who’s trying to “saintify” (sic) pre-Columbian Americans? What has “native Americans’ centuries-long enslavement of other tribes” got to do with Columbus’s crimes?
f’king hippies
Back closer to topic. The pictures show at least 2 motorboats, and a plethora of oar driven boats (both kayaks and canoes).
Don’t those have to yield right of way to sail driven craft?
Have the Coast Guard ticket them all.
Unless these protesters were using dugout or bark-hulled canoes these protests against the European explorers which made their fossil-fueled tantrum possible have no legitimacy.
So Columbus came over here to explore for fossil fuels? Glad to be enlightened.
Congratulations. You are almost bright enough to be amusing.
And you are not even close.
Actually, you know little of maritime law. To begin with, the sailboat is not under sail. Beyond that, there are a number of applicable laws.
This particular location would fall under the ‘Western Rivers Rules of the Road’. Why don’t you pick up your free copy from the Coast Guard and read it. Then you can comment from a position of knowledge.
The replica of the sailing ship has a motor and is not under sail. The video is not loading for me, but the still photo shows an area of flat water at the stern. So, they are moving under power.
However, depending on the draft of the boat, it may be restricted to a channel, especially since it is going into a harbor. In this situation, a power or a sail boat, not limited by the channel, has to yield to the boat that is limited to the channel. There are communication rules that let everyone know which way you are going.
While there are rules about right of way, I generally follow the “big boat rule”. I may have the right of way, but I respect the power of freighters in crushing a mere sailboat. In sailboat races, I may have the right of way, but there is also the basic rule to avoid collision.
The Westerners treated the Indians better than the treated each other.
The District of Columbia is named for Christopher Columbus! Cue the anti-Columbus drones on this thread! Shall we rename it the District of Obamania?
Your thoughts, drones?
I say burn it to the ground, but wait until congress is back in session…
No, it isn’t actually. The name ultimately traces back to him, of course, but the district was not named for him, any more than Christchurch was named for Jesus, or than Georgia was named for St George.
“We’re an inclusive people, we’re a welcoming people,
Bullshit.
You’re an ignorant and bigoted people.