In grade school, we’d play jump rope. One of the most popular chants and rhymes started like this:
“Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, in fourteen hundred and ninety-two.”
To all the other jump-rope rhymes, I’d kill it. But this rhyme, in particular, never failed to trip me up, slow me down, make me fall. Hearing his name always turned my stomach, made my eyes widen, and set the hairs on my arms on end. Talk about a jump scare.
Just as fall blew in, making her fated acquaintance with me, a brisk sort of apprehension always came with it. I can remember how happy I was to get a Monday off, to sleep in late and slip deeply under my covers on those chilly mornings. Around this time, my mom would freshly bake us pumpkin muffins and pull out our old box of decorations to get us in the spooky spirit. My dad, ever eager to contribute, would tell us scary stories.
Stories about massacres and horrid monsters, white as ghosts, bloodthirsty, unremorseful, and full of vengeance. Evil tales of villains as old as time.
Except these monsters were worse than the boogeyman, worse than werewolves and Frankenstein. These monsters weren’t part of the decorations Mom pulled out for Halloween. They weren’t featured in children’s Halloween books, nor did they appear as costumes that kids in my class wore to school. No, these monsters were real. These monsters were taught. These monsters were adored. These monsters were praised. These monsters were the reason we were given a day off.
“These monsters were taught. These monsters were adored. These monsters were praised. These monsters were the reason we were given a day off.”
Growing up Indigenous, Christopher Columbus always instilled in me a fear that hearing Dracula never did.
With Indigenous Peoples Day having been observed, I’m ever so grateful to be a resident of California and a student at University of California, Berkeley, and ever so relieved to have not been haunted this Halloween by Columbus’ twisted glorification and legacy. With some guilty pleasure, I disregard the day and the man altogether and allow myself to be frightened by things commonly associated with evil, more widely understood as terrifying and unsettling figures.Â
As children, we are taught to accept the stories we are told as absolute truth. We memorize dates, names, and rhymes long before we question their meanings. Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, stumbled upon America, and, just like that, a hero was born. Columbus discovered our country; he could be credited as the “founder of America.” He wasn’t only brilliant, then, but he was a brave pioneer, the freest, most upstanding man to whom we owe everything.Â
But, as it turns out, Columbus’ extraordinary tale was as mythical as Frankenstein’s. Columbus’ own compass, which he used to sail right into our beloved America (The Bahama Islands), was just as defective as his moral one.Â
Columbus didn’t “discover” anything, and what he did find, on the promised lands that he landed on, was a bunch of Indigenous people, whom he enslaved, raped, and massacred. I will spare the details that my dad never did, but I won’t sugarcoat and completely rewrite the entire story to turn the wicked into the righteous.Â
Every October, we dress up as monsters, tell each other ghost stories. Giving our fears faces and names makes them easier to contain and recognize. But the monsters in our picture books do not resemble the ones we find in our history books. In Columbus’s case, a man responsible for so much suffering was remembered as a hero for centuries. The most frightening thing is not the fact that some monsters are real, but the fact that so many have been taught to celebrate them.Â
South Dakota first recognized Indigenous Peoples Day as a holiday in 1989, and today 17 states recognize it either in place of or alongside Columbus Day. Although Indigenous Peoples Day does not undo the past or erase the history behind Columbus Day, it still grants Indigenous people something they have been lacking for years: recognition.Â
Thinking back to that little girl jumping rope on the playground, scared over something that seemed so arbitrary to my peers, I get a little emotional. Maybe what unsettled me wasn’t Columbus himself, but the realization that plagued my heart before I could even articulate it: the story I was being asked to celebrate had no place for me in it. Columbus still scares me, especially in the places he is still recognized and celebrated federally. However, I am grateful today for the change in people’s perspectives and the awareness being spread. I am grateful that today my story does not have to disappear in order for someone else’s to be remembered. Â