Thread by @JRehling

What they didn't *want* you to know about Christopher Columbus:
#IndigenousPeoplesDay2018

1) Columbus did not set people straight about the shape of the world. Navigators in his time all believed that the world was round.

2) Columbus was wrong about geography, not a lone rebel who was right. He thought that a trip to Japan was only 3,000 miles. In reality, it would be 12,000 miles even if a route existed.

3) Columbus was not a hero who is maligned only in modern times. His cruelty during 7 years ruling Hispaniola, including torture, mutilation, and slavery, led to the Spanish imprisoning him.

4) Columbus never admitted his geographical error. In defiance of the facts, Columbus claimed that the lands he reached were near Asia, and it is because of that error and lie that Native Americans have been called "Indians" for centuries.

5) Columbus did not "discover" America or even claim to. The lands he reached were populated already. Vikings had sailed to North America centuries earlier. And Columbus claimed that those lands were in or near Asia.

6) Columbus was not a hero in any sense. His presence on Hispaniola alone caused over 100,000 deaths, due to disease, genocidal warfare, and exceptional cruelty. He also mutilated and tortured Spaniards who migrated with him.

7) Columbus did not bring beneficial European civilization to the peoples of the Americas. European diseases killed over 90% of the population that existed in 1492, with war killing most of the rest. >>

8) When English settlers arrived in Plymouth, the ground was already cleared for habitation by a Native village that had been wiped out by smallpox in the preceding years. The wave of European disease killed most Native Americans without them ever seeing a European face.

9) If there were a recent equivalent of Columbus, Hitler would come closest. Naming a holiday in his honor is astonishingly contrary to his life and actions.