Columbus & His Crew Of Undocumented Immigrants Refused To Learn The Local Language

Continuing on with our week of celebrating Indigenous People, which began on Monday with Indigenous People's Day, I thought that which you see here to be amusing.

Sadly, there are those who wouldn't understand the amusement.

On Indigenous People's Day it became clear to me that there were some  people who had no clue as to why enlightened, educated sorts might think it really is not a good idea to be having a federal holiday honoring Christopher Columbus.

I think those who think it blasphemy to tamper with a holiday honoring Columbus are people who learned a myth in grade school and never unlearned that myth upon higher education, such as that which one gains when one goes to college.

But, one does not need higher education to learn factual non-mythical history. One can go to a library and check out a book. Or just Google "Christopher Columbus" and read something like the Wikipedia Christopher Columbus article to find yourself a bit of enlightenment via real history, such as the four paragraphs below...

According to the report, Columbus once punished a man found guilty of stealing corn by having his ears and nose cut off and then selling him into slavery. Testimony recorded in the report claims that Columbus congratulated his brother Bartolomé on "defending the family" when the latter ordered a woman paraded naked through the streets and then had her tongue cut out for suggesting that Columbus was of lowly birth.

The document also describes how Columbus put down native unrest and revolt; he first ordered a brutal crackdown in which many natives were killed and then paraded their dismembered bodies through the streets in an attempt to discourage further rebellion.

"Columbus's government was characterised by a form of tyranny," Consuelo Varela, a Spanish historian who has seen the document, told journalists. "Even those who loved him [Columbus] had to admit the atrocities that had taken place."

De las Casas records that when he first came to Hispaniola in 1508, "there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it..."

In our current times the only thing that comes close to the Columbus style of subjugating conquered people is ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

You think in 500 years they will be celebrating ISIS Day in Iraq?

Sadly, that may come to be. Just like Columbus Day.....

The Second Day Of 2012 Dawns Cold In Texas With Genetic Material From Christopher Columbus The Grand Marshall Of The Rose Bowl Parade

Looking at the outer world through the bars of my patio prison cell on this 2nd day of the New Year you can see I am up well before the sun on this first Monday of 2012.

What you can not tell, via the view through the bars of my patio prison cell, is that the outer world at my location on the planet is currently chilled to only 2 degrees above freezing.

For more reasons than the frigid temperatures, this morning will not see a repeat of the New Year's Day Polar Bear Plunge into that inviting pool of turquoise.

I am doing no plunging today of any sort. I am in full body ache mode. I think I may have strained myself on New Year's Eve. From the start of New Year's Day I was aching, but I thought it'd quickly get better, particularly after I flooded my bloodstream with pain reducing endorphins via aerobic stimulation on the Tandy Hills.

But the Tandy Hills hiking seemed only to exacerbate the aching. I think I may need a morphine drip. Can you get that at Wal-Mart?

Changing the subject from pain to football.

Didn't the Rose Bowl used to take place on New Year's Day, along with other bowls, like the Sugar and Orange and Cotton flavor of bowls?

I don't pay much attention to football, but I notice a football headline when I read the news. Like this morning,  I read the Dallas Cowboys lost once again, thus ending their playoff hopes, once again, for another season.

And I read the Rose Bowl Parade and football game are today, the day after New Year's Day. Some sort of "Occupy" action is being anticipated for the Rose Bowl Parade, along with righteously protesting Native Americans not liking the idea of having a descendant of Christopher Columbus being the Grand Marshall of the parade.

I've not watched the Rose Bowl Parade in a long long time. I probably won't be watching it today.

A Columbus Day Walk With The Indian Ghosts & My Arizona Sister In Village Creek Natural Historical Area

Today, with it being Columbus Day, that being the day we Americans celebrate Christopher Columbus landing in the year 1492 in what we now know as the Bahamas, I decided to walk among the Indian Ghosts of Village Creek in the Village Creek Natural Historical Area in Arlington.

Little did the Village Creek area Indians know that in that year of 1492 someone from another continent had landed on their side of the Atlantic, in search of the East Indies, which caused the natives found to be called "Indios," the Spanish name for Indians.

Columbus had convinced the Spanish crown to finance his expedition to find a more expeditious route to the lucrative Asian spice market. Columbus never claimed to have discovered a previously unknown continent. I guess he thought he'd found some really far East Indies.

Columbus made 3 more voyages to the Americas, never reaching the part of the New World now known as America. He did visit the part of South America now known as Venezuela.

On his voyage of 1492 Columbus kidnapped a couple dozen "Indians" to take back to Spain to show to the Spanish Royal Court. Most of the "Indians" did not make it to Spain alive.

Columbus was not the first European explorer to find the Americas. But the voyages of Columbus were what began the flood of Europeans on to the American continents, beginning the process of colonization and confiscation of native lands. Not to mention the genocide of the native population, with the worst invaders in that regard being the brutal Spanish with their fervor to convert the heathen savages to Catholicism, even if it meant murdering them to save their souls.

Three centuries after 1492, give or take a decade or two, the world change set in motion by Columbus had changed the world of one of the biggest Indian Villages in America, that being the huge village that existed for miles along the shores of Village Creek in what became Texas, after the Texans took the land from the Indians and then the Mexicans.

Changing the subject from a holiday I really think America needs to re-think celebrating, to my sister in Arizona. I'd not talked to my sister since her return from her visit to Washington. So, my sister went walking with me when I walked with the Village Creek Indian Ghosts today. It was a relatively interesting talk until my aching elbow could no longer hold the phone.