The U.S.A. celebrates one Christopher Columbus with his very own holiday.
Both men did rather similar things, with the one exception of course that the latter won his genocide campaigns and racial superiority wars, and the former lost them.
The total death toll of W.W.2. is 75 million on all sides, for comparison.
[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/climate-changed-after-europe...
I have no idea what your currency is and who is on it.
My currency is American and every single one of them has more native bodies on them than Columbus. President's day has zero people protesting against it.
Like I said, history is written by the winners.
On American currency, Washington, Jefferson and Jackson (!) are most relevant although they're obviously not the only authority figures that were all about taking land.
The first ~12 presidents or so are each responsible for more atrocities against natives than Columbus could ever have done on the one crappy island he occupied for a few years. You don't go from 13 coastal colonies to "sea to shining sea" without breaking a few eggs.
What do you base the idea upon that it was mostly disease and not warfare?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_ep...
This source suggests that the estimate is that 25–50% of members of most tribes were felled by disease. Given that 90% of the population was felled overall, it seems unlikely that most were felled due to disease.
Sources of death, wider timeframe:
* Disease
* Columbus on one tiny island
* Spaniards in general who are not Columbus (who was italian but sponsored by Spain)
* British/Americans
It claims that 55 million of the population of 60 million was killed by “violence and disease”.
> Following Christopher Columbus' arrival in North America in 1492, violence and disease killed 90% of the indigenous population — nearly 55 million people — according to a study published this year.
Given that the other source claims that 25-50% of most tribes was lost to disease, I find the idea that disease caused almost all of the deaths to be unsupported unless you have something else than “general knowledge” which is contradicted by sources, which, admittedly, are estimates as they always are.
Columbus did his share of wrongs, but he wasn't responsible for a genocide.
I'm not being facetious in giving you a let-me-Google-that-for-you link (normally when one does that it's to sort of hint at someone they are too lazy to look up a technical question).
But in this case it's an honest invitation to do some basic research yourself. If I gave you specific links it could be cherry-picked links to highly skewed content to people with ideological axes to grind.
History (outside of government-sponsored and civic-minded textbooks) tends to be pretty grim and filled with bloodshed and injustice and this is no exception.
Your original comment doesn't state it's position clearly. I'm parsing it as a kind of exasperated disbelief in someone perceived to be making a ridiculous claim.
If instead this is a debate about the exact meaning and semantics of the use of the word 'genocide' feel free to ignore this.
Edit: updated link
If I recall, that book's source was the writings of a Columbus critic of the time (a monk I think?)
Are there any other sources that discuss Columbus and his interactions with native populations?