Originally posted on my other blog the Trav-a-log, the contents of which I am in the process of transplanting here, so that it will all live in one place!
In 1492 most well educated people in Europe, including the rulers of countries, knew that the world was spherical and thus it was theoretically possible to get to Asia by going west. What was not known was what hazards lay along the way. There could have been, for example, dragons. Or whirlpools that would send ships to hell. Nor was it widely known that Vikings had made the hop across the North Atlantic nearly 500 years earlier. So someone had to go and literally test the waters. It devolved upon the Genoan seaman Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) to undertake it. The man was flawed, but his willingness to head into a potentially hostile unknown, and the intelligence his expeditions brought back to Europe, opened up a new phase of human history.
Today Columbus is widely thought of as an architect of genocide and harbinger of the end of indigenous rule of the American continent, a man who killed, tortured and enslaved thousands. If you haven’t gotten the memo about that, look it up. It is documented and settled history. But until relatively recently the bloodier aspects of his career were not widely known or acknowledged. And so Columbus was widely honored in America across the centuries. King’s College became Columbia University. The brand new American capital was placed in the District of Columbia. Later came Columbus Circle, Columbus Avenue, Columbus Ohio, the Knights of Columbus. John Pintard and Washington Irving promoted Columbus as a patron saint for Tammany Hall and for America. (Pintard literally wanted to canonize him. A little later Irving wrote a multivolume hagiography that helped cement the explorer’s huge place in America’s celestial firmament). Columbus was mythologized. He was presented much in the same spirit as one might glorify Copernicus, Galileo and Newton, with a martyrdom narrative about how he pursued his vision in spite of the doubts of all others.
This all climaxed in 1893 with the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, a huge world’s fair intended to commemorate the 400th anniversary of 1492. It was at that fair that historian Frederick Jackson Turner announced that the American frontier was now closed, as the Native American tribes had all been defeated. Not so much an irony there as a fufillment of a historical process begun by Columbus.
I’m about to ramble wildly now, but watch how it all comes back to the very same place.
When the quincentennial arrived in 1992, the event was marked with a couple of Hollywood movies, and numerous revisionist history books. I chose to observe it myself by writing a stage play, a satirical burlesque called Columbia, the Germ of the Ocean. It earned me a MacDowell Fellowship but I didn’t get to produce it until a decade later in 2002 in a pop-up venue on 42nd Street. This was thanks to the generosity of a member a New York real estate dynasty whose name I won’t say out loud but begins with D, and whose uncle once put on a woman’s dress and chopped somebody’s head off, then confessed to it on national television while urinating. The more things change the more they stay the same! Years prior to the murders, though, it was thrilling to have a show in this venue, right on the Deuce, down the block and across the street from where Hubert’s Dime Museum had closed three decades earlier, ending a style of showmanship that had been a New York City staple since the time of P.T. Barnum.
Mine was a Swiftian satire on revisionist history in which Columbus was a woman who spoke with a vaudeville Italian dialect patterned after Chico Marx. I conceived of it as a drag role, but in the end it was played by a woman, a former member of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company, whose father was a famous realist painter from Pittsburgh, and a friend of Andy Warhol’s. Back when it was still Fort Duquesne, Pittsburgh had been ground zero for the French and Indian War, which vanquished the French from this continent, the first prerequisite for opening up the American West for expansion, which came at the expense of…Native Americans.
You see? Everything in America can be traced back to the elimination of the native inhabitants of this continent. It’s an enlightening exercise. You should try it some time. Expect much more on this topic throughout November, Native American History Month, in anticipation of the 350th anniversary of King Philip’s War next year. Don’t know what King Philip’s War is? Shame on all of us.
I learned to peg things to major anniversaries by being the p.r. man for the New-York Historical Society about a quarter century ago. Among the exhibitions it was my pleasure to promote was one called The Italians of New York: Five Centuries of Struggle and Achievement. It was put together by the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute. Some of its organizers are also the founders of The Italian American Museum, located in Little Italy, which has just reopened, is open in fact today with a slate of three wonderful-looking exhibitions.
Why choose today (Columbus Day, as I write this) for their grand reopening? I return you now to the late 19th century. At the very moment when the frontier was closing, large numbers of immigrants were arriving, among them, Italians. That feeling of displacement and “invasion” which the Native Americans had felt for centuries was now the portion of older immigrant groups, predominantly Anglo. Italians were among those on the receiving end of their hostility. The worst expression of this had occurred just a few months prior to the Columbian World’s Exposition, when 11 Italian-Americans were lynched in New Orleans. Looking to overcome that prejudice, Italians sought legitimacy, and so they coalesced around a hero they could place alongside the likes of icons like Washington and Lincoln in the American pantheon. They chose Columbus.
In retrospect, it might have been better if they had chosen Verrazzano (currently the subject of an exhibition at the Italian American Museum), or Amerigo Vespucci (for whom our country was named, after all) or New York’s first Italian immigrant Pietro Cesare Alberti or Italy’s Washington, Garibaldi. But they went with the guy with the highest Q Rating, the one for whom streets and towns and clubs and colleges had already been named. And this is how Columbus Day came about. First it was observed locally and informally, then in 1934 FDR issued the first of the tradional annual proclamations encouraging celebration of the day, and finally in 1971 (as recently as that) it became an official Federal holiday.
Most Italian Americans seem to love this day of celebration, which puts those of us who love Italian Americans in a little bit of a quandry. I’m from Rhode Island, the state with the highest number of Italians per capita in the nation. The first Italian American senator John O. Pastore was from Rhode Island. Half my teachers and classmates had names that ended in a, e, i, or o (not U though, that would be Romanian). The people across the street from my house were literally from the old country. I became a lover of both the Latin and Italian languages and the history of ancient Rome. For eight years I lived in the section of Brooklyn where most of the inhabitants came from a town called Nola, near Naples. They’re known for bringing a festival with them called the Giglio Feast. And of course I hit the better known Feast of San Gennaro when I can. Here’s me at the Columbus Day Festival in Providence in 2019.
Italian Americans have chosen this day to celebrate their culture, and I’ve chosen to celebrate THEM on this day, as opposed to Columbus. It would be nice if we could have days that celebrate Italian Americans and Native Americans and leave the problematic marauder out of it. But right now, the phenomenon is a little complicated, and knowing the history of it, I don’t know how you attack the day without attacking Italians. I support both factions. They’ve both been persecuted and they’re both important parts of America.
We’ve paid homage to over 170 Italian Americans (mostly in show business) in a dedicated section of this blog. And the Native American Interest section is here.