By: Christopher W Tremoglie
October 12, 2022, is the 530th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ landing in the Western Hemisphere uniting the Eastern and Western hemispheres. Until about 1992 this was a day to celebrate Italian-American culture in the United States. It was a national holiday.
But beginning at the latest in 1992, the quincentennial of Columbus’ achievement, October 12 became a day to scorn Western Civilization as the American Left, through their various Native American front groups, and “multiculturalist” academicians, used the occasion to recite various atrocity stories and criticisms of the settlement and conquest of the Americas by Europeans.
Tales of enslavement of the Indigenous People or Native Americans, not always true, were disseminated in the gullible news media, by vapid entertainers, in sensationalized fiction, and in tendentious academic monographs. Recitations of massacres, ethnic cleansing, and genocide committed by Spanish, English, French, and other European settlers were instituted in school curriculums across America.
Within the past few years, the Americaphobes and the Europhobes evolved into greater militancy. Groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter and other Leftist groups staged riots to topple statues of Christopher Columbus in cities across America and Europe.
As the Italian conservative leader Giorgia Meloni said during her speech in Spain – only the Taliban topples statues. She will not accept this barbaric behavior by the Left. Neither should any European or American accept this attempt to bowdlerize Western history.
But since the Left is so intent on talking about the history of the European settlement in the Western Hemisphere – in the New World- then we should talk about the entire history.
Native Americans are portrayed by the gullible media, the vapid singers and actors, the sensationalized screenwriters, and the tendentious intelligentsia as victims. They are presented as noble peaceful people, kind and generous, living in a paradise who were betrayed and murdered by vicious, greedy White, Christian men.
But this is not the whole truth. Let us never forget that Native Americans massacred their illegal immigrants beginning with Columbus’ initial voyage in 1492 and the first English settlements in North America.
Columbus was repelled by Native Americans from landing on the northern coast of Hispaniola and later landed on what is now Santo Domingo in 1492. One year later, in 1493, Taino warriors, led by their ‘Cacique’ Caonabo attacked and destroyed Columbus’ settlement of La Navidad in Hispaniola killing the sailors Columbus left there while he returned to Spain.
The pattern of Native Americans massacring European settlers was repeated for the next four hundred years until the last tribes were subjugated in the American West. Native Americans routinely massacred White settlers not only in the Caribbean but in what would later become the United States. The following is a partial list of massacres of European settlers committed by Native Americans.
1609 Orapax Massacre 33 English colonists killed by Powhatans in Virginia
1622 Jamestown Massacre 347 “ “ “ “ “ “ “
1680 New Mexico 422 Spaniards killed
1694 Oyster River 104 English killed by Wabanakis in New Hampshire
1757 Ft Wm Henry
Massacre 180 British killed
1778 Wyoming Valley 340 Pennsylvania Colonists killed by Iroquois
Massacre some by ritual torture
1857 Mountain Meadows 140 settlers killed by Paiutes in Utah
Massacre
1862 Dakota Wars 800 settlers killed by Sioux
1865 Bloody Point Wagon train of 65 Whites killed by Modocs in
Massacre Oregon
1911 Last Massacre Shosones kill four ranchers and one policeman in
Nevada
So the idea that massacres and genocide are uniquely American or European acts is a spurious claim made by those who are intent on destroying Western Civilization. It is blatant racism disguised as a grievance. It is a tactic to discredit republicanism and capitalism. It is designed to create disorder.
This practice of perverting Columbus and the legacy of European settlement in the Americas underscores the need for conservatives to learn about their heritage, ensure that the correct history is taught to their descendants, and preserve and protect their culture. Activism to protect your heritage and culture is no vice.
Conservatives must heed the aphorism attributed to the Athenian politician and general Pericles who allegedly said, “ Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”