One Republican congressman suggested the nation celebrates Columbus Day as a means of commemorating the day a legendary explorer discovered the U.S.
“Over 500 years ago, Christopher Columbus landed on this wonderful land we call the U.S.A. Celebrate #ColumbusDay!” tweeted Rep. Gus Bilirakis on Monday morning, echoing the long-held conventional wisdom about the discovery of America.
The Florida congressman’s statement, however, was labeled “an unfortunate distortion” by Edward Shore, a doctoral candidate in Latin American history at the University of Texas at Austin for two reasons. First, Shore points out that Columbus didn’t land in the U.S. on Oct. 12, 1492, but rather on an island in the Bahamas.
Over 500 years ago, Christopher Columbus landed on this wonderful land we call the U.S.A. Celebrate #ColumbusDay!
— Gus Bilirakis (@RepGusBilirakis) October 12, 2015
“Second, and most alarming, is the effort to suppress an informed conversation about the causes and consequences of Europe’s arrival in the Americas and their objectives, which ultimately included colonizing, ‘Christianizing,’ and enslaving local peoples,” he told MSNBC.
While Columbus didn’t touch U.S. soil on his first journey to the Americas, the explorer did chart Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, which would later become U.S. territories, on subsequent expeditions. But he never reached the continental U.S.
Since the establishment of Columbus Day, historians have come to regard Leiff Erikson and his crew of Viking explorers as the first to reach the Americas. Of course, native peoples lived in these lands for thousands of years before either European explorer was credited with discovering them.
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