The conquest of the western hemisphere (eventually) brought into the world Columbus Day and Thanksgiving. Each holiday is part of the process of creating the imagined community we call “America,” wherein the brutality of our imperial roots is hidden behind “holiday” sales and oyster dressing. Another history is possible. Listen =>

Discovery 

“Do you have a flag?” Eddie Izzard

Christopher Columbus, we must remember, did not sail for “Spain,” but for Castile (and at 12.5% of the take, himself, of course). Castille and Aragon had formed a military alliance through a strategically employed conjugal treaty of sorts (call it marriage) between Isabella and Ferdinand. This alliance proved formidable enough to expel the last remnants of the Moorish occupation of the Spanish peninsula in 1492. With the Moors gone, and the nascent, but not yet fully realized, nation-state of Spain taking shape in their wake, Isabella turned to Columbus to seek her fortune and solidify the place of Castille in the emerging order.

The Admiral set sail with three ships, a list of job titles and a royal contract entitling him to rape and pillage at will. Not long after, he ended up in what we now call the Caribbean and claimed the lands he bumped into for Castille (and, we must always remember, at 12.5% of the take, himself). Columbus would set up his operation of conquest on an island known as Kiskeya by the Taino people who lived there, but which he renamed Hispaniola.  The left half, some years later, taken by the French would be renamed San Domingue and, upon independence, Ayiti or Haiti. By then the Taino had been exterminated. 

Within a year Columbus was out. A fair navigator, he turned out to be a lousy administrator. His 12.5% became forfeit to the crown, and Columbus returned home. However, his method of governing  the people “discovered” through systematized brutality remained intact. 

This brutality required explanation. Afterall, the bible claimed everyone was descended from Noah’s horde. So, who were these people?  Did they have souls? Was it okay to take all of their land? A papal bull was issued saying it was okay. Taino, Toltec, K'iche, Inca all disappeared into the category of Indian and Indians were enslaved. And so, the concept of race entered the world to justify the otherwise unjustifiable in service to God and bankers - but not necessarily in that order.

In the process of reassessing Columbus and his legacy 500 years later, Columbus Day has, in many circles, become Indigenous People’s Day. Either way, the point is that on October 12 we recall the division of the world into the categorical boxes of “us and other.” For the “new world” these boxes were drawn in explicitly racialized terms, becoming the protoplasm out of which “the nation” would later rise. Modernity got off to messy start.

And so, Thanksgiving

“That legendary divorce is such a bore” Kurt Cobain

A few years later an aging imperial Spain was at war with the up and coming imperial Britain. Spain had a Catholic king; Britain a not so Catholic queen. Elizabeth had reinstated the British crown’s claim of supremacy over the Church of England, a legacy of her father’s famous divorce. That (and the execution of Queen Mary) led Pope Pius to give the green light to Phillip (of Spain) to invade England. Phillip tried. It did not go well. The attempted invasion led to the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588), and the plot lines of several Errol Flynn movies. 

To be clear, the on again, off again war between Spain (and allies) and Britain (and allies) had little to do with theology, and everything to do with imperial ambitions. Into this “great power rivalry,” a papal representative was dropped - literally thrown out of a window in Prague (giving the world the only verb ever used just once: difinistrate) and the shit got as real as the pile of manure he landed on. Upon the papal rep’s report back, a thirty year war engulfed all of Europe over the rights of the church to tell monarchs how to worship. 

The war ended in a new European - eventually, global - order, codified in the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Said treaty established the modern concept of the nation-state as a fictive feature of world politics - e.g., sovereign control by local leaders over a people (“ a nation”) living inside territories defined by fixed (sort of) boundaries. The Church no longer decided which faith was practiced inside those borders.

Another way of looking at this is that the long war between Spain (representing a transnational imperial Church) and Britain (representing the new fangled imperial nation-state) ended - and the nation-state imperialists won. The-first-Thanksgiving happened in the middle of this mess as back in the New-ish World, Britain was trying to put its bloody stamp of control on the north half of America to gain leverage, land and position over Spain. In that northern imperial zone commerce stood in for divine purpose, though God was still granted a few cameos when needed.

The aforementioned background is important, because the Pilgrims were every bit as much agents of the British empire as the Sea Hawk or Captain Blood. Afterall, the Mayflower Compact was a contract laying out the rules of a business enterprise that would become the colony established at what we now call Plymouth, Massachusetts. The colony was also a military venture. Indeed, in order to survive in this new world, the leaders of the colony signed a mutual defense treaty with the Wapanagoans. That “signing” of the treaty (likely more of a handshake) provided the context for the celebration we later mythologized as a feast of Thanksgiving.

A year later those same colonists put the head of the Wapanagoan chief’s son on a pike at the entrance of the colony to make clear where they stood on future cooperation with the original (or at least most recent) inhabitants of the area. We tend to skip that bit when making paper head-dresses in 4th grade to celebrate the holiday.

Another fine myth

The holiday itself became a national one in 1863. Yes, it was put forth as an actual day of Thanksgiving, amidst the Civil War and in service to the long sought goal of national unity. This is the purpose of national myths. So, on the one hand, who can really say at this point how the day went back in 1621. What is important is what the myth has been made to mean and, then what crimes that ascribed meaning covers up across space and time. 

Today we have multiple histories of this country. One is the imaginary melting pot of New England style clam chowder where everything turns as white as a Pilgrim’s coif eventually. The others are histories crafted from the ingredients left on the cutting board.

Metaphors are tricky. But hopefully you get the point. In order to pretend we are a unified nation of common purpose, we have to cut out the experiences of all the people that would offer evidence that this narrative is false. There are no heads on spikes and enslaved and slaughtered “indians” in the great American story. We still pretend U.S. history is a series of misunderstandings punctuated by moments of reconciliation and triumph. By this milquetoast standard we measure today - and wonder why all the shouting. 

The United States was born at the crossroads of imperial encounters. We only learn of these encounters through a version of history that has been drained of the blood letting that ensued. Youthful “America,” having sold its soul at the aforementioned crossroads, went on to become an empire in its own right, slaughtering, enslaving and stealing as willfully as, and ultimately far more effectively than, its Spanish and British predecessors.

Columbus and Queen Elizabeth are most certainly dead. Their economic and political orders have crumbled and been replaced. We can not change that past - but we can change history - emphasis on story. Perhaps then we will arrive at the point where we can re-assess the horrors of our founding, collectively say “Never Again,” and actually mean it.