Repost: Reconsidering Thanksgiving (and Columbus Day)

While it is true that for most Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of gratitude for the comforts and people in our lives—a celebration of diversity and of the tolerance therein—it is also true that for many remaining Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning. Yes, there was a day in which the Wampanoag in the North east and the colonizers shared a harvest celebration. However, within fifty years of that feast, the Wampanoag were no longer a free people. The remaining Native Americans have been removed further and further from their resources and homelands. Their reservations are small, environmentally inhospitable to agriculture, and under constantly abuse. One-in-Three Native American women are raped by intruders who enter their reservation, commit the crime, and then flee. (See link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/us/native-americans-struggle-with-high-rate-of-rape.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.) As reservations are somewhat separate from federal law, it is difficult to prosecute non-native Americans who enter a reservation and commit a crime. Tribes are unprotected and their needs go unheeded, despite having been forced to live where they are in the first place. Children are taken from them by state child services for reasons which often cannot be fully explained (see link: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141662357/incentives-and-cultural-bias-fuel-foster-system), further chipping away at the populations of their dwindling families.

For many Americans, the Natives are a distant memory from a biased and largely incorrect fifth grade history textbook. It’s important that while we enjoy our cozy homes, blessed family, and plentiful foods and comforts, we also take a moment to remember those who have suffered and continue to do so in the creation of the world in which we now live.

While we like to believe Christopher Columbus discovered America, this is wrong for multiple reasons. Most importantly, America was already fully populated by tens of millions of Natives. It was so heavily populated that it was experiencing issues with global warming, as so many trees had been utilized and so many fires were constantly being burned. It is also a false statement because Europeans and Nords had sailed to North America many times previously without having been able to domiante the local populations. Eventually, the occasional arrival of Europeans brought plagues to North America, and it was Smallpox which wiped out more than 20 million Natives. By the time Columbus arrived (and systematically murdered, enslaved, and raped the Native population with which he came into contact) most of the work had been done for him.

It’s also important to understand just how Europeans and Natives interacted. No one person can represent an entire population, and so not all settlers were murderous rapists. Colonials were often completely overwhelmed by the cleanliness, kindness, and beauty of the Native Peoples. Their “laws” and habits were so fantastic that there was a constant “problem” with colonials fleeing their territories to intermix with the Natives and live happily. Some tribes were so kind and welcoming that their populations became completely interbred with Europeans. Verrazzano, for example, was a sailor who brought a native upon his ship. He described him as being "as beautiful in stature and build as I can possibly describe." William Wood , a British fisherman, said the Natives of New England were "more amiable to behold, though dressed only in Adam's finery, than ... an English dandy in the newest fashion." (See book: http://books.google.com/books/about/1491.html?id=vSCra8jUI2EC)

Christpher Columbus provides perhaps the finest examples of the atrocities which have been carried out against all manner of Native peoples. Columbus came upon Haiti and, having recognized the presence of gold and of the people’s limited technology, immediately set about subjugating its people. He so thoroughly enslaved and destroyed the native Arawaks that:

    According to a letter written by Michele de Cuneo, before his first voyage had even reached Haiti in 1492, "Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native women to rape." Columbus wrote in 1500: "A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand."

When there were no more Arawaks to mine his gold for him–for they no longer existed–Columbus systematically depleted the Bahamas of their peoples for this task. Tens of thousands of slaves from the Bahamas were transported to Haiti, leaving the islands behind deserted. Peter Martyr reported in 1516: "Packed in below deck, with hatchways closed to prevent their escape, so many slaves died on the trip that a ship without a compass, chart, or guide, but only following the trail of dead Indians who had been thrown from the ships could find its way from the Bahamas to Hispaniola."

After the new batch of slaves died, Columbus depleted Puerto Rico, and then Cuba. When they had all succumbed, he turned his eyes to Africa, thus establishing the transatlantic slave trade and the concept of "race."
(See link: http://faceless39.hubpages.com/hub/Christopher-Columbus)

So what of the Native Americans still lingering in North America? Many have given in and blended with a society which continues to destroy the environment originally taken from the indigenous peoples. There are many who can proudly cite their fractional connections with native tribes (for example, I have up to 1/16th Cherokee ancestry. It’s not even worth mentioning, really.) But for those who prefer to hold to tradition and remain separate from the society which so destroyed them in the first place, rights and protections are few and far between. So this Thanksgiving, remember what has happened to bring us to the state we are in today. Remember the “great men” who slaughtered and raped and enslaved their path across North America so that we could sit at a table of meats, breads, vegetables, casseroles, jellies, butter, and gravy. Remember the people who came before you. And of course, appreciate what you have, and know the great damages brought about by great greed.


To read a speech written by a descendent Wampanoag man Wamsutta James, see the following link: https://masbury.wordpress.com/2008/11/28/the-suppressed-thanksgiving-speech-of-wamsutta-james-wampanoag/. The speech was rejected by The Massachusetts Department of Commerce in 1970, as it was a historical recount of truth, rather than the complimentary boot-licking the state was looking to receive. Wamsutta refused to read a speech provided for him, and so he did not speak.