Christopher Columbus is widely known as the man who discovered America. Because of him, Europeans were able to colonize America, and therefore, he is why almost all of us live here today. Teachers over the country praise him in school, and Columbus Day is still a holiday observed across the nation. However, Christopher Columbus does not deserve any holiday, because even though he was the first European to discover America, he achieved colonization that was an has been aided by tyranny and genocide.

On his first voyage, he landed in the Bahamas. The indigenous people were hospitable to him and the Spanish. Noticing their gold jewelry, he took some of them prisoner and demanded they lead him to the source of their gold, which they did. He wrote in his journal that night that he thought their kindness to be idiocy, and he planned to take them as slaves, bragging that he could do it with 50 men.

He continued on from that island to the northern coast of Hispaniola. He left 39 men with the natives there to start a colony, took more natives prisoner, and went on. On his last stop, he came to the Samana Peninsula and encountered the hostile Ciguayo tribe. He asked to trade weapons with them, but instead they attacked, and two of his men were stabbed to death. He kidnapped about eighteen natives and took them back to Spain. Only seven of them made it.

On his second voyage, he brought 1,200 men with him to colonize areas he explored. He went back to see how the colony in Hispaniola was going and found it in ruins, the corpses of eleven of the original 39 lying in the fort. Columbus retaliated against their attackers, the Taino, by demanding every Taino boy over 14 must deliver to him a certain amount of gold or cotton every three months. If their quota was not met, their hands would be cut off and they would be left to bleed to death.

Columbus was appointed governor of all the islands he colonized. However, when accounts of his brutality reached the king and queen, he was removed from power and sent to prison. The succeeding governor was tasked to investigate Columbus’s crimes. The governor wrote a 48-page report with testimonies of 23 people of the treatment of both colonists and natives during his rule. The report describes how Columbus punished a man who stole corn by having his ears and nose cut off and then selling him into slavery.

The report also describes Columbus’s crackdowns against the natives, such as a time when many natives were killed and mutilated and then paraded through the streets to discourage further rebellion. Bartolomé de las Casas, an explorer under Columbus who later became a priest to help the natives, wrote that up to a third of the slaves in Hispaniola died while mining in inhumane conditions. Couples were permitted to see each other once every nine months, so the population declined drastically. Christopher and his brothers spent six weeks in prison, until the king pardoned them. He then gave them back all their money, and funded another voyage, their last, on the condition that none of them could be governor.

Many men and women who achieved good used questionable ways and are still considered good. Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered two atomic bombs dropped onto parts of Japan. This killed thousands, and many future babies had birth defects. Through torture of various al-Qaeda operatives, the CIA was able to track Osama bin Laden to a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and launch an operation to kill him. Generals Sheridan and Sherman burned most of the entire South during the Civil War to quickly end the conflict. Christopher Columbus introduced Europe to America, and that is why most of us sit here. However, he brutally killed, tortured, and raped so many, that we cannot overlook his crimes. A common question: Do the ends justify the means? Columbus’s ends were so terrible that we cannot let the means be justified. Columbus Day must be abolished.

This issue has been pushed aside recently because celebration of the holiday has been reduced in the past few decades. Now, only certain state services close and there are huge sales at your local Chevy dealership. However, the fact that we still allow this to remain in our calendar as a holiday reflects badly on ourselves as a nation. If Columbus Day should remain a holiday, it should be a day of remembrance for those who suffered in Columbus’s quest to colonize. America cannot be seen as a racist nation, and so must alter or abolish Columbus Day.