As known Christopher Columbus’s Catholic. What Christopher Columbus motives were along with that of his bros. Bartolome and Diego (he would later become a priests) were, only they knew. The late Prof. W.H. Carroll and anthropologist Carol L. Delaney (Stanford) have said that Christopher Columbus asked Spain to send good Christians and that Christopher Columbus forbade marauding and atrocities. But many of the people who were sent to the New World were convicted criminals, sometimes death row inmates. Christopher Columbus did not want the administrator job given that he and his brothers were Italian, the sailors and soldiers often went against orders Columbus and his brother Bartolome gave. Christopher Columbus has said in his diaries that he wanted things to be done like this but his sailors and soldiers did differently.
Now while 1 can discard or debate hundreds of years later the the sincerity of what Christopher Columbus wrote in his diary, again only he knew. Fact is that Columbus and his 2 brothers are thousands of miles away in another land, having to deal with mutiny threats, diseases and warring Indians. 1 could conclude that Columbus and his 2 brothers believed they could not stop the people (who disregarded their orders) from doing what they were doing had to go along with it by pacifying the people they were in charge of until help came from Spain.
It’s likely the Native Americans who Christopher Columbus discovered were not the original people. We know the history from 1492 onwards in that both the Tainos and Caribs were fighting each other for land, but we don’t know what the history was before 1492, as we don’t know who was there in 1482, 1472, etc. We don’t know how long the Caribs and Tainos or Arawaks were there, how much of the land was originally theirs and whether there were other tribes living there before who were killed or expelled. It’s possible that in 1462, there were other Natives living there before the Caribs and Tainos drove them out either by war or threat of war-after that the territory fighting left was between the Caribs and Tainos. What it means is that if there was a tribe of 200 people, the larger tribe could threaten the smaller tribe with war, that tribe leaves and dies because they didn’t find enough food, etc. Neither Tainos nor Canibs had written language, this wasn’t recorded in their history, if this happened. So it’s possible others could’ve been living there before the Tainos and Caribs were there, before they were killed or expelled by both Tainos and Caribs and that after that the fighting was left between the Arawaks (Tainos) & Caribs. If this is true, then the Tainos and Canibs would not be the original inhabitants, the original inhabitants would be those who were there before them.
25% of Native Americans have European DNA-there were 30,000 Solutreans who came from Europe to the Americas during the Ice Age. Some American Indian art has pictures of people with blonde hair blue eyes. In Aztec art, 1 God Quetzalcoatl has a full grown beard and when Hernan Cortez conquered, he was thought as a God who would return from the east. As American Indians did not grow beards, it can be concluded that Aztecs had contact with Solutreans. The Solutreans are believed to have gone extinct either by wars or they mixed. When American Indians or Native Americans wanted land, they waged wars against other Native Americans to get their land. But when American Indians lost their land in wars, then the complaints about ‘stolen land’, though much of the land they had they weren’t the original owners as they had gotten this from other tribes.
Finally, what matters is what happens today. If an American Indian is being discriminated against when it comes to housing, jobs and crimes (either as victim or perpetrator), then that is wrong and must be solved. But what is history is past. Might makes right was the world then and no need for the Europeans to apologize for winning because they did the same thing the American Indians did to each other but only Whites did a better job winning the lands given they had horses, guns and many American Indian allies who fought on the side of the Whites in Indian wars. Focus on injustices happening today. If people do not want to celebrate Columbus Day, then it is their right but let people who want to celebrate Columbus Day celebrate this day.