Christopher Columbus

[Jack Ryan]

Next time we celebrate Columbus Day please remember these two facts about Christopher Columbus:

1. Columbus rewarded his men with rape victims. His accounts said the men preferred little girls of ten years old because “they are tighter.” His army also practiced the tactic of raping in front of family members, eg raping a daughter in front of the father, wife in front of a husband, etc. to traumatize the entire family.
2. He also fed his attack dogs with Native body parts. Sometimes they tossed wounded Natives to the dogs to watch them be torn apart. Sometimes they tossed living children.

 

Did I miss something?

[Jack Ryan]

Christopher Columbus might well be pissed to be considered the first American, as he never wanted to discover it. He literally stumbled upon the New (to him) World when he was searching for a better trade route to India. The problem was the Americas were in his way. Initially he believed he was in India, and when he figured out he wasn’t spent years searching for a way through the continent to get there. There were Native civilizations with fabulous wealth, but he did not live long enough to find them and died a disappointed man.

At least on his first voyage, he claimed to like the Native (he thought Indian) people he met, and thought they could become good Christians. (This was probably the highest compliment he could pay them.) This didn’t stop him from kidnapping some to show to the King and Queen of Spain who bankrolled the voyage; business was business.

Columbus reports on his first voyage, 1493

As for the genocide of Native people, that has not ended. It is happening now in the Amazon jungle. The area is so vast and unexplored there are tribes who until recently have never had contact with the outside world. They are still being discovered. It’s a mix of the usual: they are dying from diseases they have no exposure to and being driven off their land and murdered by people who want to mine and farm there. They are also dying of sadness.

‘We Indians are like plants. How can we live without our soil, without our land?’ 
(Marta Guarani)

Brazilian Indians

Brazil tribe plagued by one of the highest suicide rates in the world