Columbus Day

Written By:  Andrew & Becx Eide

Columbus Day falls on the second Monday of October. It is day for the remembrance of Christopher Columbus and his arrival to the Americas on October 12, 1492. This holiday is somewhat controversial because the European settlement in the Americas led to the demise of the history and culture of the indigenous peoples. So, basically, the people in the United States of America, celebrate the anniversary of the discovery of their country.

Christopher Columbus is often portrayed as the first European to sail to the Americas. He is also sometimes portrayed as the discoverer of the New World. However, there is evidence that the first Europeans to sail across the Atlantic were Viking explorers from Scandinavia. Additionally, the land was already populated by indigenous peoples who had previously discovered the Americas thousands of years before.

There is also the claim that Christopher Columbus, although he reached several of the islands in the Americas, and Central America, and possibly South America, may have never reached mainland America which we now call the United States. Therefore some people have contention with celebrating Columbus as the discoverer of what we now call the United States.

Columbus made four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean which led to the general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere. Columbus actually was trying to sail West to reach the already known countries to the East. However, during his first voyage in 1492, instead of reaching Japan as he had intended, Columbus actually landed in the Bahamas archipelago at the location he named San Salvador. On his other three voyages Christopher Columbus visited the Greater and Lesser Antilles, as well as the Caribbean coast of Venezuela and Central America, claiming them for the Spanish Empire.

Although Columbus was not the first European explorer to reach the Americas, as we have already mentioned that Viking explorers such as Leif Ericson came before him, the voyages of Columbus led to the first lasting European contact with America. They did, in fact, have an enormous impact in the historical development of the modern Western world.

Although he never admitted that the had reached a continent previously unknown to Europeans, rather than the East Indies as he had set out for, Columbus called the inhabitants of the lands he visited Indios which is Spanish for Indians.

That is our brief history of Columbus Day.