Reeling Back

In fourteen hundred ninety-two (a couplet every school kid knew), Columbus sailed the ocean blue. In the U.S. today (October 13), many citizens are enjoying the statutory holiday called Columbus Day, a reflection of the mythic status once accorded America's accidental "discoverer." Veneration of him reached its high point in the original 13 colonies when, during the 1776 insurrection, Columbia became the goddess-like personification of the new nation. After independence, there was a movement to name the country Columbia. Though that didn't happen, the federal capital, Washington, was built in its own "District" of Columbia. Cities, counties, rivers and mountains were named for her, and an 1843 patriotic ditty, Columbia, The Gem of the Ocean, served as an unofficial U.S. national anthem for nearly a century. (The Brits were not immune to its charm, with Queen Victoria herself sticking the label "British Columbia" on Canada's westernmost province.) Times change, and while historians are reassessing Columbus the man, indigenous peoples are rejecting the myth. In 2004 in Venezuela, on the October 12 holiday once known as the "Day of Discovery," young protestors toppled the century-old statue of Columbus from its pedestal in downtown Caracas. In 1992, there were two feature films marking his first voyage's 500th anniversary. The second one, distributed by Paramount Pictures, was called 1492: Conquest of Paradise.