# Columbus Day v Indigenous People's Day v Leif Erikson Day

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/columbus-day-v-indigenous-peoples-day-v-leif-erikson-day/952323>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [October 11, 2021, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/columbus-day-v-indigenous-peoples-day-v-leif-erikson-day/952323 "2021-10-11T21:56:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 134

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**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2021, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/columbus-day-v-indigenous-peoples-day-v-leif-erikson-day/952323/134 "2021-10-26T20:16:16Z")

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> [@Telemark](#):
>
> > [@Max\_S](#):
> >
> > But I don’t see how an Indigenous People’s Day holiday will particularly work toward that end; certainly not any better than Columbus Day
> 
> This is a ridiculous argument. You’re essentially saying that having a holiday that celebrates someone who never reached the American mainland, was from a country that wasn’t involved in the early history of America, sailed under the flag of a country that was a strong rival to the Europeans that actually settled in what became the United States, enslaved, tortured, and killed the people he met in the new world, is somehow **a better way to teach about indigenous peoples** than a holiday that actually, you know, celebrates the people you are trying to celebrate.

You must have misunderstood my argument. I did not claim it was a better way to teach about indigenous peoples, that part of my response to **kenobi\_65** was about “the tragic history of Native Americans”. In the years between Columbus’s voyage in 1492 and the establishment of Jamestown in 1607, the indigenous population of the Americas was _literally_ [decimated - from around 60 million to 6 million people](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379118307261). This was a fact taught in school.

The particulars of Columbus’s voyage, his profiteering character plus the discovery of gold and the exploitation/subjugation of the peoples he encountered, lead _directly_ to the conquistadores and epidemics that followed in the sixteenth century, including notably for the U.S., the near-total destruction of the Mississippian culture and a strong distrust of Europeans in surviving native populations. Spanish efforts at colonization and exploration - starting with Columbus himself - set a precedent for all future European colonization efforts, including those by the English and in spite of their rivalry.

~Max

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