Embassy of the United States of America U.S. Holidays

Columbus Day

Columbus Day parade in New York City, 2009. © Tai Shimizu

Background According to the U.S. Census, holiday Native American Day, and there are more than 18 million Alabama celebrates a combina- olumbus Day is the U.S. fed- people of Italian ancestry in the tion Columbus Day and American eral holiday commemorat- United States, making them the Indian Heritage Day. Hawaii calls ing explorer Christopher C fourth-largest ancestry group. it Discovery Day to commemorate Columbus’ landing in the New the arrival of Polynesian settlers. World on October 12, 1492. It also The holiday continues to evoke dis- The Census Bureau estimates the celebrates the cultural heritage cussions about the Age of Explo- population of Native Americans of Italian Americans, since many ration and the transformations it and Alaska Natives at 5 million. scholars believe Columbus was provoked, including the injustices born in Genoa, Italy. done to indigenous peoples.

Columbus Day has been an annual Some localities in the United Columbus arrives in the New World. (L. Prang & Co., holiday in the United States since States have decreed alterna- Boston, chromolithograph, 1893). Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress 1937. Initially celebrated on tives to Columbus Day to honor October 12, it was moved to the the original inhabitants of the second Monday in October to give islands where the explorer workers a long holiday weekend. landed. In California, the cities of Berkeley, Sebastopol and Santa Italian immigrants first observed Cruz have replaced Columbus Columbus Day as a celebration of Day with Indigenous Peoples their heritage in 1866 in New York. Day. South Dakota renamed the Columbus Day

About Columbus Columbus made four trans-Atlan- tic voyages between 1492 and 1504 under the sponsorship of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. These voyages changed the map of the world. By opening up the Americas to European settle- ment — and exploitation — they also altered history. Columbus was not the first European to cross the Atlantic successfully. Viking sailors are believed to have established a short- lived settlement in Newfoundland sometime in A.D. 1000 and schol- An Indian elder holds incense during a ceremony in San Salvador, El Salvador on the Día de la Raza, commemorating the ars have argued for a number of ancestors killed after the Spanish arrived in 1492. © AP Images/Luis Romero other possible pre-Columbian land- ings. Columbus, however, initiated the use of the word “Indians” to organization. It was moved to the the lasting encounter between describe the peoples he met. second Tuesday in October in 1971. Europeans and the indigenous peo- Columbus made three subsequent U.S. federal government offices ples of the Western Hemisphere. voyages and died believing he had and most banks close on Columbus In the late 15th century, Portugal found a new route to India and Day. Schools typically remain dominated the effort to establish Asia, and not, in fact, the gateway open, as do most businesses. a sea route between Europe and to North and South America. New York, San Francisco, Chicago, India by circumnavigating Africa. Boston and Denver are some of the It was with an eye toward outflank- The Celebrations cities that hold festive Columbus ing the Portuguese that Isabella I of Because the United States evolved Day/Italian heritage parades and Spain authorized an expedition in out of British colonization rather celebrations with colorful cos- which Columbus would sail west than the Spanish claims of tumes, music and Italian food. from Spain, aiming for India. This, Columbus and his successors, the of course, presumed that the world Berkeley, meanwhile, has Indigen­ United States for many years did was round; many educated people ous Peoples Day Powwow and not celebrate Columbus’ “discov- already understood this. Indian Market. ery,” although ceremonies were Columbus set sail with 90 men in held on the 300th and 400th anni- A number of other nations cel- August 1492 on three ships: the versaries of his first landing. ebrate Columbus’ voyages with Santa Maria, the Niña and the Pinta. annual holidays. Among them are In 1937, Congress and President After sailing west for five weeks, Discovery Day in the Bahamas and Franklin D. Roosevelt made Colum­ the expedition reached an island Colombia, and Día de la Resistencia bus Day, October 12, a national now part of the British Bahamas Indígena in Venezuela. It is called holiday, largely because of lobby- on October 12. Columbus named it Fiesta Nacional in Spain, and ing by the Knights of Columbus, a San Salvador and believed he had Día de la Raza in much of Latin Catholic fraternal and charitable found a new route to India, hence America, in honor of Hispanic cul- ture’s diverse roots.

United states department of state Published October, 2011 bureau of international information programs