The recent decision in Hopkinton to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day continues a discomfiting and perhaps irreconcilable controversy on whether Christopher Columbus was an ogre or a hero and whether to celebrate him on Oct. 12 or the indigenous people he may or may not have victimized.
Interestingly, there is considerable and conflicting evidence to support either position. The negative side that Columbus mistreated the people he visited in the Caribbean in 1492 and afterward, however, is more sensational and attractive for detractors. Hardly a word is spoken in his defense, certainly not in Hopkinton. But I say, not so fast.
Here is the case for Columbus.
First, he should be viewed through a lens that appreciates customs and thought of his day. In that Age of Exploration, commanders were not as impeccable and they had to be headstrong. But he also was a committed Catholic who, before embarking, humbly entered a monastery to pray a novena with monks for a source of funding. The prior successfully intervened for that with the Spanish monarchy and Columbus insisted “all profits” should go for the liberation of Jerusalem from Muslims, a reasonable and common Christian hope of his day; so much for naysayers’ aggrandizement argument. He also promised to evangelize, hearkening to his namesake, St. Christopher, whose name means “Christ Bearer.” I hope opposition to Columbus is not out of religious bigotry.
Carol Delaney of Stanford University in Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem, with access to Columbus’s diary, insists Columbus treated native peoples, “especially women,” with great respect and friendship. His diary describes indigenous’ “generosity, intelligence and ingenuity . . . in the world there are no better people or a better land. They love their neighbors as themselves, and they have the sweetest speech in the world and (they are) gentle and always laughing.” He left written instructions that none be baptized without being invited to instruction. He wrote the Spanish Crown that in subsequent New World forays the indigenous be treated “very well and lovingly” and demanded that no harm come to them. He backed that up on his third of four voyages in August 1500 when he hanged men who had disobeyed him by harming “native people” during his absence.
Columbus’s words are recorded history. It is unfortunate that greed and untoward instincts in ensuing exploration and colonization resulted in tragic carnage and deprivation. But Columbus’s words indicate he did not want that to happen. He was so prodigious in his love for his indigenous friends that at great personal risk he rescued some of them after they had been captured by a cannibal tribe, the Caribs. Most of the basis for revising traditional thought about Columbus is based on the writings of Bartolome de las Casas, a priest, historian and associate of Columbus who lamented mistreatment of native peoples in his History of the Indies.
But here are words mostly absent in objectors’ accounts. De las Casas said he admired Columbus for his “sweetness and benignity” of character, insisting Columbus “was the first to open . . . doors . . . to . . . remote lands . . . which until then had not known our Savior.” Acknowledging Columbus’s humanity and mistakes, the priest never doubted the explorer’s good intentions, writing: “Truly, I would not dare blame the admiral’s intentions, for I knew him well and I know his intentions are good.”
The mariner’s voyages were brave and deliberate ventures into a life or death circumstance, into strong currents most thought would make a return to Europe impossible. Each night his crew sang the “Salve Regina,” an appeal to heaven for its blessing. Columbus and his crew were at least on a par with Alan Shepard and Concord High School teacher Christa McAuliffe, who bravely extended themselves beyond safety limits for the advancement of human kind.
Columbus’s immediate legacy was that important centers in the New World would be named after him. His extended legacy today shines on Catholic men called Knights of Columbus.
The K of C has a rich and storied history of service, charity and patriotism beginning with its foundation by the Rev. Michael J. McGivney in New Haven in 1882 as an organization to assist widows whose husbands working in mines were dying young. It also was a response to bigotry during a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan at the turn of the 20th century who fomented an attack on Columbus as a way to build discrimination against Catholics. Concord’s K of C Council 112 lists its beginning in 1896 with my grandfather’s brother Dennis Donovan as first grand knight.
Worldwide, the K of C has had enormous impact, providing disaster relief, economic assistance, family enhancement, education opportunities and pageantry. The K of C made its name during World War I by providing ubiquitous soldier morale activities. The organization raised $14 million (about $200 million today) for setting up morale centers, 450 sites at home and 250 abroad, where soldiers could enjoy culinary treats, watch movies, play sports, learn math, take a warm shower and relax in front of a fire place. Up to 60,000 donuts were served daily at a K of C center in Coblenz, Germany.
No wonder the famous Gen. John J. “Blackjack” Pershing, commander of all American forces in Europe, said, “Of all the organizations that took part in the winning of the war, with the exception of the military itself, there was none so efficiently and ably administered as the Knights of Columbus.” After the war, the K of C placed 300,000 veterans into jobs through an employment campaign.
This organization and its charity in the Concord area for 122 years, including Hopkinton, should not be demeaned by the Columbus controversy that may never be settled. Would it not be more sensible to leave Columbus Day as is and establish a national holiday for our native forebears on another day? As a former operator of a charity in New Mexico to aid Navajos, I would applaud that. Eugene R. Rivers II, president of the Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies in Baltimore, wrote in 1916, “To celebrate one cultural group does not require that we denigrate another.”
Hopkinton, how about dropping the perceived malice toward Columbus and his followers? Might your honorees prefer their day be built on other than Columbus’s ashes? It would dissolve the discomfit and what an honor for Hopkinton, to be the first to find and celebrate a new day and to show America how to do it.
But, please come up with a better name than “Indigenous Peoples.” Let those who are to be honored decide instead of imposing “anglo” political speak. Otherwise one could say, as George Santayana would say, “Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.”
(John Donovan of Loudon is a graduate of Bishop Brady High and UNH; co-author of “Raising Our Voice: Volume I, The History of U.S. Army Public Affairs from George Washington to 1980”; and has been selected for induction into the Army Public Affairs Hall of Fame in 2019.)