Dr. Doug Douglass

On this day, 3 August 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, for the “Indies,” with disastrous consequences for the people who already lived there. There are popular myths that he discovered the United States and proved the Earth was round. However, he never even set foot in what is now the mainland US, and the fact that the Earth was a sphere had been known since the days of the ancient Greeks. Columbus himself believed the Earth to be pear-shaped. He landed in what is now known as the Bahamas, where he and his crew were greeted by the Indigenous Taíno people, who lived in village communes and held all property in common. Columbus began immediately imprisoning and murdering the Indigenous people and enslaving them in the search for gold. The Taíno people began fighting back but couldn’t defeat the Spanish, with their advanced weaponry and armour, so many began to kill themselves and their children to avoid a worse fate. Within just two years, half of the 250,000 Indigenous people on nearby Haiti were dead. More colonisers came, and the genocide of the native population continued across the Caribbean and the Americas. Despite all of this, today, in many places across the region, Indigenous communities survive and continue to resist. This book gives a brief overview of five centuries of genocide and resistance: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/products/500-years-of-indigenous-resistance-gord-hill