Goodbye Columbus
On Columbus Day in Asbury Park New Jersey in the 1960’s, the city would host a ceremony where a person dressed and portraying the character of Christopher Columbus, along with a couple of attendants dressed in their period garb, would brave the ocean’s waves and come ashore ceremoniously “discovering America” right there on the beach in Asbury Park.
The two Boy Scout troops in my hometown of Oceanport at the time had a native American dance team that I participated in called the Lakota’s. We would wear native American costumes and perform native American dances like the snake dance and the Hopi hoop dance.
On at least one Columbus Day, and I think maybe two, I and the other members of our Lakota tribe were there to greet Columbus as he landed in Asbury, we performed our dances to entertain the public and get our picture in the Asbury Park Press.
When I was growing up, we learned all about the explorers of the New World in grammar school (that would be elementary school in case you didn’t grow up in Jersey). DeSoto, Magellan, Hudson, de Leon, Pizarro, Cabot, to name a few, we learned all about them. We had to write “reports” and present our explorers to the rest of the class. Their place in history was quite important at the time. It was still cool to celebrate explorers.
And of course, the most famous of the explorers, the Italian Christopher Columbus, was widely touted as the person who “discovered America” on October 12, 1492, by landing on an island he called San Salvador. And as a result, thanks to Italian Americans and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937, we picked up another holiday called Columbus Day to be celebrated on October 12, now of course it is recognized on the second Monday of October.
In October of 2021, President Biden signed a proclamation naming the second Monday of the month Indigenous People’s Day, in direct conflict with Columbus Day.
It was no longer cool to celebrate Columbus’ discovery because it opened the new world to other European explorers and ultimately colonization which would lead to warring and diseases that would have a devasting impact on the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
My DNA indicates I am 75% Scandinavian and mostly Norwegian and since my people didn’t make it to America until the early 1900’s I don’t feel too much guilt with the mistreatment of America’s indigenous people directly. My people were Vikings, they were “raping and pillaging” other Europeans, of which, I suppose I must share some accountability for ancestrally.
And speaking of Scandinavians the truth is Columbus was not the first European to reach the Americas, the Norwegian Leif Erickson is credited with doing that about 500 years earlier; and the first European settlement Vinland, thought to be located on modern-day Newfoundland, was established by Vikings probably coming from nearby Greenland or Iceland.
The world has lots of sad stories in its documented and undocumented history. It seems that sadly, conquering and colonization were built into our human nature. The Bible and our world history books are full of stories of civilizations at war, conquering, enslaving, and exiling. I suppose we are all to blame, even our indigenous people. And, sadly, it continues still to this day, as we are made aware of listening to the news every day.
I spent Columbus Day, or Indigenous People’s Day, this year on the Eastern Shore making a quick visit to see my mother. Since the guy who cuts the grass was slacking a little that week, I got the lawn tractor out and knocked that off. With the tide clock indicating high tide in about an hour, though it was mid-October, I got a fishing pole out of the shed and threw the line out. I had some pretty good bites but only managed to catch a small spot, which I returned to the water to catch again another day. Though I don’t like the fall because I know it means winter is coming, October on the Eastern Shore has become one of my favorite months. I stood on the pier looking out over the waters and coastlines once traveled by another explorer four hundred years ago, Captain John Smith who explored the Chesapeake Bay and who knows, maybe even anchored his shallop in the protected waters of Fishing Creek while he traded with the natives on Deep Point Road.
In 1970 American writer Dee Brown published a book titled Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. I read that book at some point in the early 70’s and though I can’t say I remember the details of the book now 50 years later, I do remember that I cried finishing the last chapter.
I guess I must have felt some guilt after all.
Postscript:
Today October 19 is the anniversary of the day Kim’s dad Royal lost his battle with cancer four years ago. October 15 was the anniversary of the day my dear friend Tawanda lost hers in 2011. I have written in the past about both, Royal in The Steinster and Tawanda in The Beauty of an October Day. I am confident they are both resting peacefully.
The photo above is of the Lakota’s though not in costume probably circa 1968. I couldn’t find the photo of us in costume. That’s me front and center. The photo below of Christopher Columbus landing on the beach is not one of our group. I couldn’t find that photo either. This one is from the book Images of America, Monmouth Council Boy Scouts.
