Christopher Columbus: Saint or Scoundrel? Part 1

Many years ago, as I was on an evangelism trip at a local mall with a group of friends and church leaders,

I noticed a t -shirt hanging in the window of a New Age shop with this inscription, Homeland Security, Fighting Terrorism Since 1492.

Above the writing was pasted a picture of a mounted group of Plains Indians from the late 1800s. In reaction to this display of historical and etymological stupidity,

I muttered under my breath, that's inaccurate. The next thing I knew, one of the group leaders was chiding me for denying what he deemed to be historically irrefutable, and like a parrot, he spewed the old slander against Americans of European descent.

The white man has done horrible things to the Indians. You ought to start reading some books. When I asked him what research he had done, he referenced movies, which often take artistic license, and common knowledge, which is a faulty appeal to the majority.

While there's nothing innately wrong with believing common knowledge, it certainly shouldn't be because of the nature of it being common, but rather because it's actually authenticated by something true.

Columbus said the world was flat, his culture said it was round. The majority has been wrong before, and I think, in this case, we are half wrong.

Yes, Europeans have done bad things to Native Americans, but you'll find that for every finger a multiculturalist wants to point at white

Christians, they have three fingers pointing back. Europeans didn't introduce slavery to the new world.

The natives already had it. Neither did Europeans introduce theft. The indigenous tribes were masters at subjugating enemy tribes and stealing their land.

Does anyone seriously want to go back to the times of ripping out a fellow human's heart to appease a sun god?

My point is not that all Europeans are superior in moral character. My point is that mankind is sinful.

All cultures have blood on their heads, and it's extremely hypocritical to bash the exceptionally evil in one culture, even to the point of recreating their culture's heroes, such as Columbus, while ignoring the evil in their own.

Let's take a look at Christopher Columbus and Western culture in general, not to prove that it's perfect or sinless, but to show why it is superior to the pagan cultures that dominated the

American continents before 1492. First, a small comment on the t -shirt for clarification.

My main problems with the shirt are not that it implies that white people had done bad things to Native Americans, but rather that it proposes three blatantly inaccurate statements or implications that paint the supposed evil of European people and innocence of Native Americans with a broad, hateful, and utterly fallacious brush.

Here are the three inaccurate statements or implications. 1. Christopher Columbus was a terrorist, i .e.

because the Native Americans have been fighting since 1492. 2. The idea of European terrorist is used in synonymy with Islamic terrorists, i .e.

Homeland Security being the organization which pursues Islamic terrorists. I saw this shirt a year or two after 9 -11.

3. Equating of the Plains Native Indians from the late 19th century with Islanders from the late 15th century, i .e.

the implication that Natives across North and South America, regardless of time frame, tribal identity, or European national influence, have unified front against all

Europeans. One does wonder, would similar statements be made about Nat Turner or Crazy Horse?