Columbus Day

Second Monday in October.

October 12, 1492. Perhaps no date in Pan-American history is as important or controversial.

By October 11, 1492, Columbus’s crew had had enough. The trip was too long. They had spotted weeds and birds—signs of land—for weeks, but not a hint of soil. And at the rate they were going, many were afraid there would hardly be enough headwind to take them back to Spain.

Each day, Columbus lied to the men about how far they’d traveled, so as not to worry them more about the distance between themselves and civilization.

Finally a sailor aboard the Pinta by the name of Rodrigo de Triana spotted a speck of land on the horizon. On October 12, Columbus disembarked at an island in the Bahamas whose exact location is lost to history, and met with the island’s residents. His first impressions were that the people were young (all under 30), unclothed, painted black or various colors, and were a people who could be easily converted to Christianity, as “it seemed to me they had no religion of their own.”

Also, he noted how when he showed them his sword, they had never seen such a thing. They gripped it by blade and were surprised to find themselves cut. It was a foretelling symbol of the future of the two peoples and their relations.

Throughout much of the Americas, Columbus is derided as the bringer of devastation to two continents and the precursor to the genocide of millions of people.

“When Columbus sent back hundreds of Taino indians to be sold as slaves, Queen Isabella ordered them free and returned to their land.  Eventually, the European colonists and sovereigns became so discontent with Columbus’ mismanagement that he was arrested and shipped back to Spain in chains. He spent the rest of his life trying to regain his governorship over Hispaniola.

“The government of Columbus was brutal and violated human dignity and the moral senses of his contemporaries.  He was the first to establish institutions of slavery and brutal conquest that would lead to the demise of the nations and people who already called the Western Hemisphere their home.

Dia de la Raza

Historians have still not settled upon a psychological portrait of the man around whom so much of world history hinges upon. Unlike the kings of the day whom history recorded so fastidiously, Columbus was a relative nobody until 1492.

And that may be the root of his popularity in 18th and 19th century United States. Here was a man not descended from royalty, but who attained fame and (supposedly) fortune merely by heading west into the great unknown—a fitting hero in the days of “manifest destiny.”

Had Columbus turned back on October 11, the New World would never have been discovered, and the indigenous tribes of the Americas would have lived in peace for hundreds of years. Unlikely. The idea had flourished in Europe that if the world was round a quicker way to the Orient must exist, and had Columbus turned back, it was only a matter of time before others would go the distance. Whether the actions of another discoverer could have stemmed the brutality, slavery and genocide, we will never know.

The Huejotzingo Codex of 1531: the first known depiction of the Virgin in indigenous glyphs

Today in the United States, over 500 years later, Columbus is one of four individuals honored with a federal holiday. The others are Martin Luther King Jr., George Washington, and Jesus Christ.

Leif Erikson Day

October 9.

Leif Erikson arrived in the New World 500 years before Columbus. But you don’t hear any schoolchildren singing, ‘In 1002, Leif Erikson sailed the ocean blue.’

August Werner with Leif Erikson statue
August Werner with Leif Erikson statue

Leif was the son of Norseman Erik the Red. According to the Norse sagas, Erik’s family had been exiled from Norway because of his father’s part in some killings there.

In Iceland, Erik continued the family tradition by getting exiled from Iceland, after committing two separate murders. (One of the victims was a neighbor who refused to give Erik back his shovel.)

Rather than head east, Erik followed the sun, landing in a frozen wasteland he deceptively named “Greenland” to attract settlers. The ploy worked.

Small Norse settlements on Greenland survived over 400 years, although at no time did the Norse population surpass 5000. The last written record of the Norse settlement’s existence was from a wedding dated 1408.

Leif’s father Erik was a pagan, his mother a Christian. Leif followed his mother’s religion, but carried on the male tradition—not of murder and banishment, but of heading west into the great unknown.

Leif had heard of a land to the west from a trader named Bjarni Herjolfsson, who had been blown off course on his way from Iceland to Greenland. Despite being the first European to site mainland North America, Herjolfsson was too anxious to get to Greenland to even make a pitstop. Had he been more patient, we might be celebrating Bjarni Herjolfsson Day today, but as it was, Bjarni passed word onto Leif, who gathered men to explore.

According to the sagas, Leif and his followers founded three North American settlements: Helluland (land of flat stones), Markland (forest land) and Vinland (meadow land.) But none of the settlements reached the size or longevity of Greenland, and knowledge of the existence of the land disappeared for centuries.

Jandamsfjelet, Norway
Jandamsfjelet, Norway

In the 1960s archaeologists excavated the remains of a Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, the first conclusive proof of Viking settlement in mainland North America.

In 1963 Congress declared October 9 “Leif Erikson Day,” following the lead of states like Wisconsin and Minnesota. October 9th isn’t actually Leif’s birthday, or the day he discovered North America. Nope, October 9th marks the anniversary of the arrival of the “Sloopers,”–early Norwegian immigrants to the U.S.–in New York Harbor aboard the ship Restauration, in 1825, following in the ancient wake of their daring westbound ancestor.

To all my Norwegian friends, Uff da! This day’s for you.

Day of Portugal

June 10

The feats of Arms, and famed heroic Host
from occidental Lusitanian strand,
who over the waters never by seaman crossed
fared beyond the Taprobane-land (Ceylon)
forceful in perils and in battle-post,
with more than promised force of mortal hand…

Os Luíadas

June 10 is Portugal’s National Day, aptly known as “Portugal Day” or Dia de Portugal. Actually it’s longer, but few go around saying, “Happy Day of Portugal, Camões, and the Portuguese Community!”

Portugal Day marks the death of writer, historian and adventurer Luís de Camões in 1580.

Camões wrote the Portuguese national epic Os Lusíadas , a history in verse of the Iberian nation and the era of discovery.

Compared to his writings, little is known of Camões’ real life. He was banished from Lisbon in 1546, supposedly because of an affair with a lady of the court. He served in the military for two years in Morocco, where he lost his right eye. He returned to Lisbon where the king (John III) pardoned him for injuring an officer in a street brawl; then spent 17 years in exile from his homeland, living in Goa, India and Macau, China. During these years he conceived of and wrote much of Os Lusíadas. Legend tells us he survived a shipwreck in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, keeping his manuscript dry by swimming with one arm and holding it above the water with the other.

Luis de Camões - he ain't winking

(The word “Lusiadas” stems from the tribe that occupied Portugal in ancient times, and refers to the Portuguese.)

Camões presented his masterpiece to King Sebastian in 1572 and won a small royal pension. However, he spent the end of his life in in a Lisbon poorhouse.

The year of Camões’ death, King Philip of Spain claimed the throne of Portugal after the disappearance of King Sebastian at the Battle of Alcácer Quibir. Portugal remained under Spanish control for sixty years.

Today, citizens of Portugal get the day off, the President addresses the nation, and Portuguese around the world gather to celebrate their homeland and their heritage.

Daniel Boone Day

June 7

Daniel Boone

Today the Kentucky Historical Society celebrates the life of Daniel Boone, American pioneer and legendary folk hero.

Daniel Boone was born on a mountaintop in Tennessee, greenest state in the land of the—wait no—mixing up my folk heroes here. Boone was born in Eastern Pennsylvania, not Tennessee, but like Davy Crockett he was indeed raised in the woods so he knew every tree. No record of when he killed his first bear, but he was an expert hunter/trapper by age twelve.

Boone had two siblings who scandalized the Quaker world by marrying “worldlings”, ie. non-Quakers. This scandal may or may not have contributed to the family’s decision to move further west to the Shenandoah Valley and then to North Carolina in 1751. He married Rebecca Bryan five years later, and fought in the French and Indian War.

Legend has it that an American beech tree in Tennessee still bears Boone’s handiwork. The pioneer supposedly carved “D. Boon cilled a bar [killed a bear] on this tree in the year 1760”. (www.inhs.illinois.edu)

June 7 was chosen as Boone Day because it marks the supposed anniversary of the pioneer’s entry into Kentucky in 1767.

Two years later, Boone’s friend, a trader named John Findley, asked Boone to help him explore the unchartered wilderness, and Boone obliged.

Boone’s most famous trek may have been through 200 miles of Virginian wilderness to the Cumberland Gap, a journey immortalized by Caleb Bingham in his 1851 painting. Thousands of settlers later followed Boone’s path to make their way inland toward the Kentucky River.

Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers the Cumberland Gap, Caleb Bingham, 1851

Daniel Boone Day has been celebrated for over 100 years. The 1908 American Practitioner states that

“Daniel Boone Day will be one of the features of the week, during which there will be sewing bees, apple parings, corn huskings and old-fashioned dances.”

That Boone Day, however, was celebrated on June 15th.

By 1922, the Kentucky Historical Society extended a cordial invitation to readers and friends “to attend Boone Day exercises on June 7”, the traditional anniversary of the day in 1767 that Boone first explored the backwoods of what is now Kentucky.

[And no, despite his penchant for journeying out to the middle of nowhere, Boone had nothing to do with the term “Boondocks”. That comes from the Tagalog word bondoc, which means mountain and was brought to the U.S. by military personnel in the Philippines.]

http://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/daniel-boone.htm