In 1999, we discovered the TER World.

Is it true that the first three Providers ever listed were Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria?  It was said that their pictures were too good to be true

The Legacy of Christopher Columbus

The second Monday of October is Columbus Day, celebrated as a federal holiday in the U.S. since 1971. This day marks the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's 1492 landing in the Americas, his "discovery of the New World" for the benefit of the Spanish monarchy.

Columbus Day is a day of parades, pageants and retail shopping bargains across the nation. Schools close and government employees get the day off. But exactly who and what are being celebrated?

To celebrate Columbus is to celebrate a legacy of genocide, slavery, rape and plunder. It commemorates the violent and bloody accumulation of capital for the ruling classes of Europe and, later, the U.S.

Columbus' voyage was financed by the Spanish monarchy. Spain was then a newly unified nation-state in competition with other European powers to expand its domain and amass great wealth. The purpose of his expedition was to establish an alternative trade route to the East and return with riches. Gold and silver were of particular interest to Columbus.

When he landed in the islands now known as the Bahamas, Columbus encountered the Arawak Indians, whose kindness and generosity he noted in his journal and letters. Columbus quickly took a group of Arawaks captive, hoping they could lead him to gold. He then sailed to Hispaniola-Haiti and the Dominican Republic-where he enslaved even more Indians.

After returning to Spain and reporting on the incredible wealth in the islands of the "New World," the monarchs gave Columbus 17 ships and more than 1,200 men to plunder the Caribbean. His new expedition went from island to island gathering slaves and gold with unprecedented brutality.

Columbus was the first European slave trader in the Americas. He sent more slaves across the Atlantic Ocean than any individual of his time-about 5,000.

He and his men captured and enslaved the Arawak people almost as soon as they landed. Some were sent to Spain and others served Columbus on the islands. In 1496, Columbus jubilantly wrote Spain's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella about the possibilities for exploitation in the West Indies: "In the name of the Holy Trinity, we can send from here all the slaves and brazil wood which could be sold."

In Hispaniola, Columbus and the Spanish set up a system that made every Indian over the age of 14 responsible for gathering a certain amount of gold each month. They received copper tokens to hang around their necks if they succeeded. If an Indian was caught without a token, the Spanish cut off their hands and let them bleed to death.

Such murder and torture occurred frequently because the Spanish wildly overestimated how much gold existed on the island. Gathering enough gold to satisfy the Spanish conquerors was an impossible task.

When it became clear there was no more gold to take, the Spanish started a form of plantation slavery, known as the ecomienda system. This system thrived by working Indian slaves to death on large, privately owned estates. Indian slave labor was later used in gold and silver mines.

Sexual slavery was also widespread among the Spanish settlers. In 1500, Columbus wrote: "A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand."

Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Spanish priest sympathetic to the plight of Indians, described the terrible violence against them: "[the Spanish] rode the backs of the Indians as if they were in a hurry," and they "thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades."

When the Arawaks tried to escape enslavement, they were hunted and killed. The Spanish sent hunting dogs to rip them apart. When the Arawaks tried to organize armed uprisings, they were crushed by the settlers' advanced weaponry. Arawaks taken prisoner in battle were hanged or burned alive. Many turned to suicide out of misery and desperation.

The diseases brought by the colonizers rapidly felled the Indians. Through out the Americas, millions died from smallpox, influenza, viral hepatitis and other illnesses. European rodents and livestock wreaked havoc on the ecosystem of the Americas, which sustained the native population.

Columbus and his followers massacred an entire people. Some estimate that the pre-Columbian population on the island of Hispaniola was as high as 8 million. By 1516, the Indian population dropped to 12,000. Only 200 remained by 1542. Not one Arawak Indian was left alive on the island by 1555.

They were here way before Columbus... why don't they get a day?

appreciate DTs post. Pretty funny, wasn't it.  
That's what's wrong with this country now.  
Not enough see the forest .... FOR THE FUCKING TREES!

Probably why there's no Hitler Day either, for Christ sake.

olumbus was never "here" at all.  It's interesting how there's an American holiday in honor of a guy who never once set foot in America.

Cristobal Colon (Columbus's proper name) landed first in the outer Bahamas, and from there sailed to what is today the Dominican Republic.  How that equates to him having "discovered America" I'm not fully sure.

There is a church in Santo Domingo, in the D.R., that contains some of his remains