Historian Howard Zinn, author of “A People’s History of the United States,” notes that when Columbus and his men first came ashore in the Carribean islands, they were greeted by Arawaks who brought them food, water and gifts. Columbus wrote in his log: “They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane … They would make fine servants … With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” The Arawaks were among the first to suffer at the hands of Europeans. Columbus tortured Indians — even murdered them — if they failed to produce sufficient quantities of gold.

There are accounts of sexual violence and sex trafficking of Indigenous women. Columbus also sold sex slaves as young as 9-years-old to his men. For European conquerors, Indians were commodities to be bought and sold, used and abused at their whim.

Harvard historian Samuel Elliot Morison, author of “Christopher Columbus, Mariner” (1954) wrote: “The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide.” While complete genocide is an exaggeration, its incompleteness, in many instances, was not due to lack of intent or effort.

In his book “An American Genocide,” Yale University historian Benjamin Madley reports that between 1846 and 1873 California’s Indian population decreased from approximately 150,000 to 30,000. Madley makes a compelling case that untold thousands of these Indigenous People were murdered as California and federal officials created a “killing machine” comprised of U.S. soldiers, militiamen, volunteers, slavers and mercenaries.

Madley argues the killing of California Indians cannot be explained by greed and racism alone. Rather, it was motivated in no small measure by a belief in “manifest destiny” a phrase attributed to John O’Sullivan in 1845. The influential columnist wrote that it is “by the right of our [the United States] manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.”

In 1850 the Daily Alta California newspaper wrote: “Such is the destiny of that miserable race [Indians], and we are but fulfilling our own by the enactment of scenes on the Pacific similar to those which have stained with blood our Indian history from the first dawnings of civilization.”

That same newspaper noted that gold rush miners were united in “the work of extermination.”

Killing Indians and taking their land was hardly a crime, evil or sin. To the contrary, Indians were considered an impediment to spreading capitalism and democracy across the continent — as ordained by God — and had to be exterminated. People in the 19th-century were not shy about using “extermination” when speaking of Native Americans. This term had replaced “extirpation” (the extinction of a race, family, species, or sometimes an idea or doctrine, by destruction) commonly used regarding Indians and Indian policy in the 18th-century.

Madley states the drive to exterminate California Indians was genocide and uses the definition adopted by the United Nations in 1948. Acts qualify as genocide if they are “committed with the intent to destroy in whole or part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

Historian Brendan Lindsay reports the slaughter of California Indians was democratically carried out, it was “will of the people.” Lindsay writes: “Thousands of men certainly went so far as to participate directly in the genocide … But perhaps the more important story to share is that of the hundreds of thousands of white citizens who, through apathy, inaction or tacit support, allowed the extermination to proceed, directly by violence or indirectly through genocidal policies or cultural extermination and planned neglect.”

The genocidal crimes were horrific. In April 1846, John Freemont led an expedition against the Wintu people that resulted in the death of between 125 and 170 Native Americans. Speaking of what is called the Sacramento River Massacre, a member of the expedition reported that “bucks, squaws and paposes were shot down like sheep and those men [members of the expedition] never stopped as long as they could find one alive.” Freemont was later complimented by Kit Carson (a member of the expedition) on completing “a perfect butchery.” (When California became a state in 1850 Freemont was one of its first two senators.)

In May 1850, U.S. Army Dragoons (mounted troops) accompanied by artillery, killed between 200 and 400 Indians on an island (later called Bloody Island) in Clear Lake, California. Native American men were shot and bayoneted, women and children clubbed to death. Captain Nathaniel Lyon, who led the attack reported “the island became a perfect slaughtering pen” as the Indians had no way of escaping. In 1851 near Old Shasta, California, miners killed 300 Wintu Indians and burned their council meeting house.

Although they lacked firearms and were heavily outnumbered by well-armed federal troops and California militiamen, Indians on occasion fought back even though they had no chance of dislodging the white attackers and were slaughtered. Writing in the Nation, Richard White notes that Oregonians (some of the first “forty-niners” gold miners) shot Indians on sight and hunted them like animals.

The federal government established reservations but refused to protect Indians who were removed there or provide them with adequate supplies and rations. J. Ross Browne, a federal official sent to Round Valley to investigate conditions, reported that in the winter of 1858-59, whites slaughtered “a hundred and fifty peaceable Indians,” including nursing mothers and small children. Madley reports a number of horrifying murders. Sally Bell, a Sinkyone Indian recalled the day “some white men came. They killed my grandfather and my mother and father … then they killed my baby sister and cut her heart out and threw it into the bush where I ran and hid.”

One can only imagine what Native Americans thought when Columbus Day became a national holiday in 1937. As of 2022 at least 12 states celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day or Native American Day instead of or in addition to Columbus Day. In New York, Indigenous Peoples’ Day is celebrated the second Monday in October.

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George J. Bryjak lives in Bloomingdale and is retired after 24 years of teaching sociology at the University of San Diego.

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Sources

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“Celebrating Columbus Day continues to be controversial” (2018) October 7, Arizona State University News, www.news.asu.edu

“Gov. Hochul signed a proclamation to recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day” (2021) October 11, WGRZ www.wgrz.com

Lindsay, B. (2015) Murder State: California’s American Genocide, 1846-1873, University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln

MacGuill, D. (2021) “Did Christopher Columbus seize, sell and export slaves? May 25, Snopes Fact Check www.snopes.com

Madley, B. (2017) An American Genocide: the United States and the California Catastrophe, 1846=1873, Yale University Press:

McCrisken, Trevor B., “Exceptionalism: Manifest Destiny,” Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy (2002), Vol. 2, p. 68

Stone, E. (1976) “Columbus and Genocide” Volume 26, Issue 6, American Heritage,

www.americanheritage.com

Strauss, V. (2015) “Why is Columbus Day still a U.S. Federal holiday?” October 11, The Washington Post, www.washingtonpost.com

White, R. (2016) “Naming America’s Own Genocide,” August 17, The Nation, www.thenation.com

Zinn, H. (2003) History of the United States: 1492 – Present, Harper Collins Publishers: New York