Celebrate Indigenous People's Day

"They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned. … They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features. … They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made out of cane. … They would make fine servants. … With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

Christopher Columbus wrote this in his logbook, after he "discovered" the already inhabited islands of the Bahamas. Within 25 years, almost the entire Arawak population of Haiti, estimated to be about 3,000,000 people, had been exterminated thanks to disease, the slave trade and the forced labor policies that Columbus brought to the Caribbean. The success of the Columbus expeditions to the "new world" set off the European land-grab that led to the extermination of countless Native American tribes.

So, on this Oct. 13, 2003, let us remember it as a day that the genocide against the indigenous people of North America began.

Thanks to A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn (see link on right), for the reference to the Columbus logbook.