Altho' I doubt that sign-carrying demonstrators will do much except create animosity among the ignorant or unstable (see above), I have to admit that "Columbus Day" is an anachronism. I didn't even remember that it WAS Columbus Day until the march reminded me. But who commemorates the SECOND person to make a discovery anyway? We know now that Leif Eriksson was the first European known to have landed on American soil -- in the year 1000 A.D., 500 years before Columbus landed in the West Indies. The archaeological remains of his Viking settlement have been verified on the north coast of Newfoundland at L'Anse aux Meadows. The fabled "Vinland" was even farther to the South apparently. (Yeah, yeah, I know where Vinland is. . . ).

It is also worth noting that native North Americans came very close to discovering Europe even earlier than the year 1000. Eskimo people had settlements on the east coast of Greenland well before the Vikings arrived there. Although Greenland became a Danish possession, it is usually considered geographically still part of North America. Just a short distance farther in ocean-going kayak and they'd have made it to Iceland = Europe.

RR

Have you also seen the recent theories tearing down the whole "Land bridge" concept. Many of ht enew archealogical sites are out on the coasts under water. Much has been discovered about how many areas were above sea level and then there were shifts in which caused many settlements to be submerged. The influx of people may have been much earlier and easier from Asia and Europe than previously believed through much simpler routes by sea.

I_AM_AN_ANARCHIST (Anonymous) says:

In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route:.

Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead. When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island. - Howard Zinn, excerpted from a People's History of the United States

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/C:

I just don't understand, what would people Indigenous to this hemisphere have against Columbus. Columbus day for native americans is like Hitler day for Jews, disabled, or homosexuals. Columbus may not have pulled the have carried out the next five hundred years worth of domination, but he started it all. He set the standard. All the comments on here about "you lost get over it," or last year talking about "savages invading" or "far-left never decides to start scalping conservatives". All of this is racism that proves we need an day to talk about and educate people.

For instance whites brought the practice of scalping not natives: ":from cowboys and others who often hunted and killed Indians for sport. Some whites made a living by selling Indian scalps to the Mexican government who paid $50 for a male, $25 for a female and $10 for a child's scalp." http://www.buffalosoldier.net/Part%205.h:

This practice was seen as justifiable because native peole were often viewed as animals not people and therefore traded for pelts as if they were any other fur