Kamala, Meet the Indigenous Stand Watie

Since our Vice President chose to honor "Indigenous People's Day" while disparaging the person who the holiday is named for, let's meet an indigenous person. History is complicated.

History is complicated. Traveling down that road can be painful, contradictory, and often confusing.

People like their narratives delivered cleanly and straightforwardly, just as the late Roger Ailes once described the media. They like to get their headline with somebody being wrong or right. “Nuance confuses the press,” he once said. It confuses politicians, too, and many voters.

A statue of Christopher Columbus in Cooper River Park along the borders of Camden, Pennsauken, Collingswood, and Cherry Hill in southern New Jersey, complete with American and Italian flags. It was relocated in June 2020 before it could be vandalized during that summer’s George Floyd riots.

History is replete with nuance.

Take Columbus Day, a national holiday in America since 1934 that we honored on Monday, as we do every October. It honors the dispatch of Columbus by the King and Queen of Spain in 1492 during the “age of discovery” with three ships to find a direct westerly route from Europe to Asia. He would make three more journies, some under the sponsorship of Catholic Monarchs in Spain. He never found that direct path to Asia but discovered an entire continent and changed history. He’s perhaps wrongly credited for “discovering America,” an honor that probably belongs to Leif Erickson, the Norse-Icelandic explorer from the 10th and 11th centuries. Or Bjarni Herjólfsson, another Norse-Icelandic adventurer in 986, from whom Erickson reportedly bought his ships and learned of the strange new land.

Neither Erickson nor Herjólfsson, who is believed to have actually discovered Newfoundland, nor Columbus ever made it to what we know as the Lower 48. All of Columbus’s trips ended up in the Caribbean and what is now Central America, narrowly missing the Yucatan Peninsula. Juan Ponce de Leon is credited with being the first to land on Florida’s east coast in 1513. The first settlement in the lower 48 occurred at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. The Mayflower landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, on November 11, 1620.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Columbus was born in the Republic of Genoa, now a major port city in northwestern Italy, which is why so many Italian-Americans celebrate his holiday. Anyone who lives or has lived in the Philadelphia area knows what I mean.

Side note: Did you know that the Italian Senate includes a seat from North America and other parts of the world? That’s because after World War II, with Italy in ruins, millions of Italians migrated to the United States, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. While in the food industry, I met the Italian Senator from North America, the late Renato “Ron” Turano, a former head of the Independent Bakers Association and a second-generation baker from Chicago.

I once gave him a tour of the US Capitol. I asked him how he managed to “campaign” for votes across North America. He told me that most of the roughly 90,000 “voting” Italians living in North America were concentrated in three cities: Toronto, Philadelphia, and New York (even though he was from Chicago), so that’s where he campaigned. Of course, you will find Italian communities in Erie, Pennsylvania; South Bend, Indiana; and elsewhere, mainly across the northeast and midwest.

He passed away in 2021. Turano Baking Company is alive and well, as are many other baking companies established by Italian immigrants, including Amoroso’s in Philadelphia, a favorite of authentic Philly cheesesteak connoisseurs.

Back to our topic. Anyone who has lived or worked among these Italian communities knows of their pride in and ownership of Christopher Columbus Day. Many of them, including my friend and fellow writer Christine Flowers, a descendent of Irish and Italian heritage, have strong views about the recent efforts to rebrand Columbus Day as “Indigenous People’s Day,” which the Vice President of the United States and the Democratic nominee for President did in spades yesterday.

Speaking close to noon before the Congress of American Indians at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building - that large Rococo building next to the White House that once housed every cabinet agency - she celebrated “Indigenous People’s Day.” Not once did she utter the name Christopher Columbus.

Since 1934, every October, the United States has recognized the voyage of the European explorers who first landed on the shores of the Americas.  But that is not the whole story.  That has never been the whole story.

Those explorers ushered in a wave of devastation for Tribal nations — perpetrating violence, stealing land, and spreading disease.

We must not shy away from this shameful past, and we must shed light on it and do everything we can to address the impact of the past on Native communities today.

At least she didn’t use the word “colonizer.”

It was a pure pander to the Native American community, who have legitimate issues with American history and especially the federal government and its failed stewardship. It’s an ugly history that must be acknowledged and learned but not misrepresented or abused for partisan advantage.

Which is exactly what Harris did, rather shamefully.

“The idea that the Native Americans were peaceful, environmentally-conscious saints who were then victimized by greedy European colonizers is a well-constructed and propogated lie,” writes Jeff, a pseudonym at The Dissenter, a Substack blog mostly focused on Christian apologetics. “But more than that, it’s an insult to the intelligence of anyone who cares to study history.”

Jeff delves into the dark past of violence, cannibalism, slavery, and child sacrifice that permeated many “Indigenous” cultures. “In fact, most Native American tribes were far from peaceful,” he adds. “They were engaged in near-constant warfare, raiding and murdering each other with alarming frequency. The Iroquois Confederacy may be the most notable example of this, a coalition of tribes in the northeastern United States. Their infamous Mourning Wars were brutal campaigns aimed at capturing prisoners to replace lost members of their tribe.”

Also not mentioned by the Vice President yesterday was one of my go-to “Indigenous” leaders, one Stand Watie of the Cherokee Nation.

Watie is best remembered as the last Confederate General to surrender after the Civil War concluded in 1865. In 1995, the US Postal Service honored him with a postage stamp. The American Spectator’s Paul Kengor, a historian, notes Watie’s history.

I’m pausing to recall one Stand Watie (1806-1871). The powerful Cherokee leader likewise not only supported black enslavement but became a fearless Confederate general. He, too, resisted the Emancipation Proclamation. In fact, he was the last Confederate general to surrender in the Civil War. He is often referred to as “The Last Confederate General.” Many articles use that exact title.

Watie was born in December 1806 on Cherokee Nation territory (present-day Georgia). He was there raised in a slave-owning family. He quickly rose up the ranks of the Cherokee leadership, and was respected and feared. When fellow Indians looked to preserve the institution of slavery and keep their black folk in shackles, they looked to Watie as a “gifted field commander and a bold guerrilla leader.”

Native American history in North America is complicated, as I outlined in this blog post from 2022. Sadly, it is wrought with both tragedy and falsehoods and is used more to divide than unite, to exploit more than to reconcile.

This brings me back to Kamala Harris and Pennsylvania’s role in the 2024 election. The Keystone State may decide the outcome of the election. Its 19 electoral votes may determine whether Donald Trump or Harris eclipses the magic 270 number nationally, regardless of the popular vote. Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 but lost by 80,000 ballots in 2020 despite leading by more than 600,000 when “Election Day” ended and before mail-in ballots were counted.

Dissing Christopher Columbus for some mythical reinvention of history when Philadelphia and its environs (and the very politically competitive Erie County) are among the largest concentrations of voters with Italian heritage might not be wise.

Yes, I know, voters have other issues on their minds, no matter their heritage, and probably enjoyed the day off. But is it wise to engage and insult voters this way when a race is this close? And is it wise to stoke animosities with false or misleading claims that insult our intelligence?

We deserve better. Let’s keep honoring Columbus Day as it was intended and find other ways to honor our Native American heritage.