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The Controversial History of Christopher Columbus
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General Information
Source:
Creator:
NBC News
Faith Daniels
Resource Type:
Copyright:
Event Date:
Air/Publish Date:
10/14/1991
10/14/1991
Copyright Date:
Clip Length
Video News Report
NBCUniversal Media,
LLC.
1991
00:05:02
Description
Suzan Harjo, an American Indian, and Philip Piccigallo, of the Sons of Italy in America, debate the
controversial history of Christopher Columbus.
Keywords
Christopher Columbus, Suzan Harjo, Philip Piccigallo, Sons of Italy in America, Atrocities, Holiday,
Violence, American Indians, Gold, Church, Disease, Land, Genocide, Slavery, Torture, Self-sacrifice,
Magna Carta, Emancipation Proclamation, Britain, Latin America, Murder, Spanish Inquisition,
Bartoleme de las Casas, Apologia, Ecocide
Citation
MLA
© 2008-2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Page 1 of 3
"The Controversial History of Christopher Columbus." Faith Daniels, correspondent. NBC News.
NBCUniversal Media. 14 Oct. 1991. NBC Learn. Web. 19 March 2015
APA
Daniels, F. (Reporter). 1991, October 14. The Controversial History of Christopher Columbus.
[Television series episode]. NBC News. Retrieved from https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k12/browse/?cuecard=37664
CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE
"The Controversial History of Christopher Columbus" NBC News, New York, NY: NBC Universal,
10/14/1991. Accessed Thu Mar 19 2015 from NBC Learn: https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k12/browse/?cuecard=37664
Transcript
The Controversial History of Christopher Columbus
FAITH DANIELS, host:
We're back once again, and we're going to hear from people on both sides of the Columbus controversy
now. Suzan Harjo is a Native American and president of the Morning Star Foundation. And Philip
Piccigallo is executive director of the order of the Sons of Italy in America. Welcome. Suzan, do you
think there should be a national holiday?
SUZAN HARJO (Native American): Oh, absolutely not. And I think in the very near future it will no
longer be a national holiday. As we participate in the maturation of America and world society and begin
to look at our world as a world, that we won't have need for a holiday that is a tribute to one person and
one group's hero at the expense and great injury to other peoples.
DANIELS: What kinds of atrocities did he commit against Native Americans?
HARJO: Well, the boy was absolutely right who said it was disgusting, describing the--and accurately so,
the practices. Columbus himself did chop off hands and noses and ears of native people who did not give
him enough gold periodically. And he ordered his men to do so. Millions and millions--eight million
native people were dead, killed in the Caribbean by 1500 in less than a decade--eight million were dead
by the outright hand of Columbus, his men, church and state, and by the residual imported diseases.
DANIELS: Philip, given those kinds of atrocities, should we be celebrating this as a national holiday?
PHILIP PICCIGALLO (Sons Of Italy In America): Absolutely, a national and an international holiday.
We must keep in mind that we are seeking to measure a man by 21st century standards who was a
distinctly 14, 15th century man. To blame all of the evils and misfortune which befell the Native
Americans at that time on Christopher Columbus, illnesses for instance, phrases like genocide, which are
distinctly 20th century phrases, would be the equivalent of blaming the discoverers of fire for all of the
negative consequences of that discovery--arson, tenement fires--over the ensuing centuries.
DANIELS: But even in his day people thought he was wrong to enslave the Indians.
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PICCIGALLO: He did not introduce slavery to the Americas, as we all know. The pre-Columbian Aztecs
practiced slavery and other ignoble practices such as torture, self-sacrifices by the tens of thousands. It
was an institution as wrong as it is today.
DANIELS: But he viewed--still viewed harshly for that.
PICCIGALLO: As anyone would who would practice it. However, it was a 15th century phenomena. It is-it was--we must remember that. The nation that brought us the Magna Carta, Great Britain, did not
outlaw slavery in the colonies until 1833. We ourselves, until the Emancipation Proclamation--and slavery
was practiced well into the 1880s by Latin American countries.
DANIELS: Should he be a national hero, though?
PICCIGALLO: I believe so. I mean, we must understand the positive ramifications. People are seeking to
expunge any positive light on his uniting...
DANIELS: What do you see as a positive light?
PICCIGALLO: Well, if one--let's be fair about it and let's be--flip the side. If we are going to judge all the
evils of a modern technological, industrial, toxic-waste-ridden society on this individual for what was
many say an accidental act--his discovery of America--then let's be fair and attribute to him all of the
positive. The scientific discoveries, the modern society that we have become, the humanitarian and
philanthropic things that have stemmed from his uniting of the two worlds. And keep in mind, all of
Europeans--European history in the Americas stems from his voyage in 1492.
DANIELS: Suzan, do you see any redeeming qualities at all to Columbus' voyage?
HARJO: Murder is murder in any society in any time, and I do not accept the excuse that he was a man of
his time. Yes, he was a man of his Spanish Inquisition time. But there were his own people, his own
European people and close cousins the Spaniards. Les Casis, for example, in 1530, who reviewed this
history in the journals of Columbus and wrote the "Apologia," the apology to the native people, to the
indigenous people for the King of Spain to deliver. The King of Spain did not deliver that. I think that we
need to come to grips with what has happened in the past and who we are revering and--and take
responsibility for what has occurred and look forward to the next 500 years. Mi dispiace paesano. I do not
believe that the good Italian people of this country or in their old country--and please keep in mind that
these are our old countries. We have nowhere else to go and we are endangered here and there has been
genocide and there has been ecocide here, and we need to go forward together to find another way of
doing things for the next 500 years. We are not, as native people, going to permit a repetition of the past
500 years.
DANIELS: All right. All right, thank you very much.
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