Why our family will no longer celebrate Columbus Day

Two weeks ago we visited the Musee du Pantheon National Haitien in Port-au-Prince. My in-laws were visiting and we had heard that the museum holds one of the anchors from the three ships sailed by Christopher Columbus! My heart beat with excitement at the thought of seeing such an amazing historical artifact. The Santa Maria, the flagship, ran aground on the northern tip of the island, then called Haiti (mountainous land) and her lumber was used to build the first settlement in the New World.

No pictures are allowed inside the museum, although I begged our tour guide a bit pathetically. I have only my memories of a rusted anchor, the solemnity of standing in front of a pivotal piece of history, and the backdrop murals of the many ways the Spanish creatively killed off the native Taino people. 

We had just wandered through a display of Taino artifacts: their bowls, ceremonial axes, their huts, and their spears. Now we witnessed their death. Columbus himself described the Taino people, “They traded with us and gave us everything they had, with good will..they took great delight in pleasing us..They are very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil; nor do they murder or steal..Your highness may believe that in all the world there can be no better people ..They love their neighbours as themselves, and they have the sweetest talk in the world, and are gentle and always laughing.” Yet, by the time of his second voyage to the island that he gloriously renamed Hispaniola, he began to require tribute of gold or cotton from every adult male over the age of fourteen. If they did not provide the tribute they lost hands, or were torn apart by Spanish dogs. My boys looked at the murals, listened to our guide speaking, and turned to me to ask, “Why did he do that, mommy?” I have no answer.

Within 30 years, it is estimated that 80% to 90% of the local population had died, killed either by malice or by disease. The Spanish overlords turned to the slave trade and in less than one hundred years, the census of 1572 showed over 12,000 African slaves on the island. That day in the museum, we heard and saw some of their stories. We touched shackles, we saw voodoo drums, we marveled at swords and guns that were used by the great generals of the revolution that culminated in Haiti's 1804 independence.

I was proud to learn for myself and to show my children the real history behind Columbus and the Spanish "discovery" of the Americas. I hope, as so many have hoped before me, that through knowledge we can prevent the tragedies of the past from being repeated. I do not believe that we should celebrate Columbus Day. It is a shame to honor someone who either wittingly or unwittingly set into motion the massacre of an entire people and displacement and slavery of another.

I was born a slave, but nature gave me the soul of a free man. Toussaint L'Ouvture