So until I can figure out how to get a video on to this blog, I'm putting up the article that I just wrote for our newspaper. It's all about Columbus Day and the Nor'easter News is a big part of my college life and the lives of a lot of other students, so it's nice for prospective students to have the opportunity to see some of what goes on. The main reason I joined Nor'easter News was because the old editor-in-chief sent out a newspaper to the incoming freshman, and I really enjoyed reading it. Maybe this will inspire others to take part in their own school newspapers, and if you do come to UNE, then maybe you'd like to get involved here.

The Real Columbus

Alyssa Fastnacht, Nor'easter Staff

            “In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It was a courageous thing to do, but someone was already here.”

As children, we grew up with these funny little songs to help us remember what we were learning in history lessons, and it still sticks. Like these songs, we have national holidays to help us to remember our country’s past. Every October on the second Monday, Americans (especially Italian-Americans) celebrate Columbus Day. Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain and landed in this new land he believed to be the Indies unaware that he had actually landed in only a seemingly vacant area, which today is known as the Americas. He found out shortly that there were already people, Native Americans in particular, inhabiting that region.

Columbus barged in with his ignorance and diseases, truly making his presence known to the natives. Originally he thought the Native Americans were a peaceful people, but as more and more time went by, Columbus began to think of them as merely savages who were inferior to Europeans. On the other hand, he noticed their work ethic and decided they would make perfect slaves for his fellow Spanish comrades. In Columbus’ second excursion to the New World he captured and brought back over sixteen hundred Native American slaves. Women who were in danger of being captured would run away leaving their young children to fend for themselves in order to avoid being caught by the European bigots. The slaves were treated brutally and many of them became terminally ill on the boat before they even reached Spanish soil, and the sailors on the ships were ordered to throw all of the dead bodies overboard. “Columbus stood for the medieval values of Europe: Expansion, conquest, nationalism, and the forceful conversion to Christianity.”

Not only was Columbus a nuisance to the Native American people, but he was also quite the shady guy. Lying to his crew of around one hundred and twenty men, there is reason to believe that Columbus kept two “diaries.” One was the actual written accounts of what took place on their adventure, and the other was used to convince his men that they had only been gallivanting about for a lesser number of months than was true. Furthermore, his background has never been officially known. Some believe he was Italian, but others think that because we know he spent the better part of his life in Spain, that he was actually a Spaniard himself.

The very first recorded observance of Columbus Day was in New York City, 1792, a whole three hundred years after the discovery of the New World. It wasn’t until another hundred years later that President Benjamin Harrison publically acknowledged the accomplishments of Christopher Columbus. Forty-five years later when President Franklin Roosevelt was in office, he decided that October 12^th was to be the official Columbus Day. Finally in 1971, Congress declared that Columbus Day was to be recognized as a national holiday on the second Monday in October.

“So tell me, who discovered what? He thought he was in a different spot. Columbus was lost, the Caribs were not; they were already here.”