Monuments honoring Christopher Columbus are being defaced and destroyed. This year’s
Columbus Day celebrations will spark strong debate over the explorer’s legacy, but by looking
at Columbus in the big picture of history, one can see today’s anti-Columbian fury is either
misguided or part of a blind political agenda to demonize early European activity in the New
World.
First, let’s consider the matter of European disease transmission, principally smallpox, which
is estimated to have killed 70 to 80 percent of Native Americans. While those numbers are
staggering, the deaths happened over many decades. Holding Columbus responsible is
beyond preposterous. Further, calculating an actual number of deaths is impossible because
estimates of pre-Columbus populations vary enormously. In Hispaniola, for example, the range
runs from 250,000 to 3 million.
