Community Corner

5 Little-Known Facts About Columbus Day

Monday's federal holiday has served as a lightening rod for controversy.

From hero to genocidaire, it's been a tough historical ride for Christoforo Colombo, Italian-born navigator sponsored by the King and Queen of Spain to secure a route to the West Indies. The second Monday in October has traditionally been used to mark the first time his crew sighted the New World on Oct. 12, 1492. His "discovery" kicked off over 500 years of European conquest and colonization of the new world, including the establishment of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Here are five things you may not have known about this decidedly controversial day.

  1. Columbus, as the navigator has become known in the English-speaking world, was Spain's bet to get into the spice trade with India that little Portugal (through Vasco da Gama and other adventurers) had set out to corner. He began a process that turned Spain into a world powerhouse through the riches of Mexico and South America, but his initial findings (gold, slaves) were not the rich commercial ties his backers had hoped for.
  2. While the lookout on the Pinta made the first publicly announced sighting of land (an island in the Bahamas, whose exact location is still unknown), Columbus claimed he had seen a light from the island several hours earlier, securing himself a lifetime pension from the Spanish crown.
  3. Even by the standards of his time, Columbus' treatment of the Taino locals was judged barbaric and tyrannical by his replacement as governor of Hispanola (the modern-day Dominican Republic and Haiti). 
  4. Fast-forward 350 years, when Americans began colonizing Minnesota: the area that is now Lakewood Cemetery was a Mdewakanton village as a way to deal with food shortages caused by the new, white arrivals and build alliances with the US Government's representative at Fort Snelling.
  5. Fast-forward 500 years, and Columbus Day has become a celebration of Italian-American heritage in some American communities.


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