Should we celebrate Columbus Day? Since the early 1900s, Columbus Day has been celebrated as a national holiday celebrating Columbus’s ‘discovery’ of the Americas in 1492. But should we really honor him or his discovery? People had been living in the Americas for years before Columbus found them. Columbus and his crew brought disease and havoc on the islands they arrived on. On the island of Hispaniola, it is estimated that ninety-eight percent of the native population was killed due to war, forced labor, and disease that Columbus’s presence began. Columbus didn’t even mean to be in the Americas; he planned to land in Japan, but ended up in the New World instead. So the discoverer of the Americas was really just a lost European who killed thousands of people. Not really the national hero we were taught to believe he was.

The celebration of Columbus Day is a controversial topic. It is undeniably true that Columbus began a new age in European exploration. He paved the way for many explorers after him, explorers who actually explored instead of destroying indigenous populations. While Columbus was not the first European to discover the Americas, which falls to Leif Erikson who led a Norse expedition in the 11th century, Columbus made more Europeans leave their native land. The Colombian Exchange, the transfer of disease, animals, crops and many other things between continents, began with Columbus’s first voyage in 1492. While some populations grew because of the introduction of new crops and animals, the diseases that came along with Columbus and later explorers decimated native populations. The populations affected by the Colombian Exchange grew and diminished greatly between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Columbus fostered communication and trade between Europe and the Americas, bringing Europe into a new age of voyaging and conquests which lasted for many centuries.

But one cannot discount the negative effects of Columbus’s voyages. Columbus openly supported the raping and murdering of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. He was known to sell girls as young as nine into slavery and to let his war dogs hunt the indigenous people, later feeding their bodies to the dogs. Cities around America (an estimated nine this year including Albuquerque, N.M., Anadarko, Okla., Portland, Ore., St. Paul, Minn., and Olympia, Wash.) have changed the celebration of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day, not wanting to celebrate the famed explorer who caused so much destruction. Native Americans have initiated peaceful protests against Columbus Day parades, calling Columbus out on the genocide against their ancestors.

So should we celebrate Columbus as a great explorer? Christopher Columbus: Brave Explorer of the New World sure sounds better than Christopher Columbus: Mass Murderer of Native Peoples. Should we use the vacation day to celebrate Indigenous American culture? Celebrate ancient American peoples with an intricate culture who welcomed Columbus to their shores. With growing views towards the latter, Columbus Day might soon be seeing its last celebration.