Columbus Day, Extermination Wars, And The Texas History They Never Taught You

Spoiler: the guys with schools named after them were the bad guys.

It’s been said a million times, by me and by others, that the Trump Administration is a white supremacist administration. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Mango Mussolini celebrated Christopher Columbus at the White House this weekend and pledged to protect his legacy.

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. But by 1499, complaints about how Columbus and his brothers were running Hispaniola had reached Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella sent Francisco de Bobadilla to investigate. That led to Columbus’ arrest and his being shipped back to Spain in chains.

Here is some of the testimony de Bobadilla collected that led to Columbus’ arrest:

• A man named Luquitas stole food because he was starving. Columbus ordered him hanged. When the people begged, Columbus instead had his nose and ears cut off, exiled him, and put a shackle on his foot.

• Columbus flogged a naked woman on a donkey because she said she was pregnant and she wasn’t.

• He hanged a man for saying “Long live the king.”

• He hanged a notary for documenting what was happening.

• He starved his own colony and profited from it.

Columbus wasn’t a hero. He was just a guy who took a long boat ride, then hurt and killed a lot of people. His real legacy is that he opened the door to colonization, and Spain walked right through it, all the way to Texas.

Spain and imperialism.

Spain didn’t stay confined to the Caribbean Islands that Columbus landed on. They conquered Mexico. They massacred thousands in Peru. They forced Indigenous people into slavery in silver mines in Bolivia.

Later, historians would call this “The Great Dying.” Over the first 100 years after European arrival, the indigenous population of the Americas dropped from 60 million to 6 million. They killed 10% of the world’s population through disease, warfare, and famine. And scientists have now determined that there were so many deaths that it led to a drop in CO2 in the atmosphere and cooled the Earth.

Spain to Texas.

Spanish slave-raiding expeditions began in Texas in the late 1500s, launched out of the frontier province of Nuevo León. In 1663, more than a hundred men from Saltillo and Monterrey rode north into Native lands, motivated in part by the desire to capture Indians to work in the mines. Even a Spanish official warned that one colonization scheme’s real purpose was to enslave the people who had already escaped Nuevo León.

Spain didn’t actually settle Texas until France showed up. In 1685, La Salle planted a colony on Matagorda Bay. Spain’s answer was missions and presidios, built to secure Texas against the French. The missions packed people together, and disease did the rest. In 1739, smallpox and measles swept through all five San Antonio missions. At Mission Concepción, the population was cut in half. The missions aimed to destroy every aspect of native culture.

Stephen F. Austin.

After Spain granted Moses Austin a commission to settle families in Texas, he died. So, it was taken up by his son, Stephen F. Austin, who settled the land with the first 300 families of Texas.

While Austin’s first contact with the Karankawa was peaceful, he later wrote in his journal that the Karankawa “may be called universal enemies to men” and that there would be “no way of subduing them but extermination.”

In February 1823, after Coco Karankawa killed two colonists, the colonists attacked a Karankawa village on Skull Creek, killing 19, before the rest of the villagers fled. The colonists stole their possessions and burned the village to the ground. This was later known as the Skull Creek massacre.

By August 1823, the Texas Rangers were formed when Austin offered ten men $15 a month to defend against “hostile Indians.”

In 1824, Austin assembled 90 men and led an expedition into Karankawa territory. The frightened Karankawa took refuge at the old La Bahía mission, where a priest stepped in to prevent bloodshed. The Karankawa agreed to remain west of the Lavaca River, opposite the settlers’ lands.

Mirabeau Lamar.

I strongly dislike this mofo. And so far, as far as I know, Dallas has been the only city with the spine to rename “Lamar Street” to “Botham Jean Parkway.” In the city I live, there is still a Lamar Street and a Lamar High School. But let’s talk about why he was awful, and why streets and schools SHOULD NOT be named after him.

The Cherokee had been living north of the San Antonio Road since 1819, and the Mexican government let them stay. In December 1835, Texas sent Sam Houston and John Forbes to negotiate with them, and they signed a treaty on February 23, 1836.

But Texas broke that treaty.

Texas President Mirabeau Lamar told the Texas Congress, “The white man and the red man cannot dwell in harmony together.” Kind of like when Trump said, “Immigrants were poisoning the blood of our country.” Funny how history rhymes.

Lamar called for an “extermination war” to expel the Cherokee.

In 1839, about 500 troops marched on the Cherokee to force them out. This was known as the Battle of Neches. About 100 Indigenous people were killed. The rest were forced to flee Texas to Oklahoma.

Lamar is remembered as the “Father of Texas Education,” and a university is named after him. Lamar University. A man who called for an “extermination war.”

John Baylor.

In 1854, the Texas Legislature set aside land for Indian reservations. Indigenous Americans gave up the nomadic life and took up farming in these lands.

John Baylor was appointed Indian agent to the Comanches in 1855, but was dismissed in 1857 after feuding with his supervisor. After that, he spoke at mass meetings, became the editor of a paper known as The White Man, and organized a vigilante force of 1,000 men.

And in 1859, he showed up at the reservations with his vigilante army, threatening to attack. The only way to keep the Indigenous population safe was for them to flee to Oklahoma, and that’s exactly what they did.

Land back.

When Texas emptied the Brazos Reservation in 1859, it reverted to the state and was opened to Texas citizens in 1873. That’s Texas history in one sentence. Take the land, remove the people, hand it to white settlers, then put up a historical marker about it.

Land Back is the movement to undo some of that, and it turns six today. NDN Collective launched the LANDBACK campaign on Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2020. The campaign is focused on returning public lands. In its own words, “Ain’t nobody coming for your house.”

This isn’t radical. Richard Nixon returned 48,000 acres to Taos Pueblo in 1970. In 2020, Donald Trump signed the law that started returning the National Bison Range to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. Mango Mussolini did Land Back. Look it up.

Texas has its own unpaid bill. In 2000, the US Court of Federal Claims ruled that the federal government knowingly failed to protect 2.85 million acres of the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe’s land in East Texas. In 2002, the court recommended Congress pay the tribe $270.6 million. Most of that was for oil, gas, and timber taken off their land. Congress never paid it.

The tribe still claims roughly 400,000 acres covering the Davy Crockett and Sam Houston National Forests and the Big Thicket National Preserve. Those are public lands. Tribal leaders have said they have no interest in displacing private landowners. They’re asking for what a federal court already said they’re owed.

Columbus never set foot in Texas. Austin wrote that the Karankawa had to be exterminated. Lamar called for an exterminating war. Baylor ran a newspaper called The White Man. Texas named its capital after one of them and a university after another. The courts already did the math. All that’s left is to pay the bill.

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