What do we really know about Columbus?

In the hero-or-villain debate over Christopher Columbus, teacher John Yarnell has a history of letting students decide for themselves.

“We put Columbus on trial in the classroom,” said Yarnell, who teaches history at Port Susan Middle School in Stanwood. Yarnell said Columbus is now mostly covered in high school. For years, accounts of the Genoan who sailed for the Spanish crown were examined in mock trials in his classes.

“What history teachers try to do is lay out the evidence — good and bad — and let students make the decisions,” Yarnell said Tuesday.

Sunday will mark 522 years since Columbus first landed in the New World on an island that’s now part of the Bahamas. And at 4 p.m. Sunday, Yarnell will present a program titled “Columbus … What Happened?” Sponsored by the Stanwood Area Historical Society, the free event will be at the Floyd Norgaard Cultural Center in Stanwood.

Yarnell will discuss why schoolchildren here likely won’t be singing “In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” That’s what I remember from school.

Still a federal holiday, Columbus Day is now in the news because of the Seattle City Council’s approval Monday of a resolution designating the second Monday in October as Indigenous People’s Day.

Columbus Day wasn’t officially a holiday in Seattle, or anywhere in Washington, and the action didn’t replace it with a different holiday. Indigenous People’s Day will be a time to celebrate and honor Native Americans. The Seattle School Board also decided recently to observe Indigenous People’s Day on the second Monday of October.

The Stanwood teacher shared historical accounts about Columbus that I never was taught. Within 30 years of Columbus establishing his first colony on the island of Hispaniola, some 500,000 Taino people believed to have lived there “were all dead, almost all of them,” Yarnell said. Most died from diseases for which they had no immunity. “They were replaced with African slaves,” he said.

Yarnell also explained Columbus’ “tribute system,” which required native people to pay him a toll of gold. “If they didn’t, their hands would be chopped off,” Yarnell said.

He disputes as “absolute myth” that Columbus sailed off at a time when everyone thought the earth was flat. Columbus was bound for the Spice Islands (Maluku Islands) and for China, which he never found.

With his students, Yarnell has focused on what he calls “the Columbian exchange” of plants and animals. Neither horses nor common earthworms existed in North America before Columbus arrived, and Europe had no potatoes, tomatoes or corn. “Potatoes were Incan,” he said.

So far, no cities in Snohomish County are known to be considering Indigenous People’s Day. That doesn’t mean there isn’t any support for the idea.

Lita Sheldon is the librarian at the Tulalip Tribes’ Hibulb Cultural Center. She is pleased by the creation of Indigenous People’s Day in Seattle. Sheldon is working on a film about the life of the late William Shelton, a Tulalip leader and story pole carver credited with preserving tribal traditions.

Sheldon, 62, earned her library degree in 1977. She said she often heard from American Indian students that there was no information about them. “People need to know where they came form and who they are,” she said.

Professor Christopher Teuton, who is of Cherokee heritage, is chairman of the University of Washington’s Department of American Indian Studies. He sees Indigenous People’s Day as a positive step in recognizing that Seattle was founded on indigenous land, and that racism is not an issue only of the past. “To promote better relations with indigenous peoples, these realities need to be understood and addressed,” Teuton said.

He said that students in every American Indian Studies class he teaches will often ask “Why wasn’t I taught this in high school?”

“Christopher Columbus never set foot upon land claimed by the United States. He’s not a national figure,” Teuton said. “In considering the Columbus myth, our students should have the opportunity to learn about the man, read his journals, study the history of his times, and consider the continuing effects of colonialism in our world.”

Dan Berger, an assistant professor of comparative ethnic studies at UW Bothell, said that to make the Columbus story easy to understand is to gloss over significant details.

“Columbus Day is really a celebration of conquest,” Berger said. “The move to Indigenous People’s Day is to restore history, to grapple with American history with all of its blemishes as well as its bounties.”

Yarnell, the Stanwood teacher, believes it’s his job to get it right. “One of the things history teachers do is correct the false narrative,” Yarnell said.

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.

Columbus presentation

John Yarnell, a U.S. history teacher at Port Susan Middle School in Stanwood, will give a free presentation, “Columbus … What Happened?” about Christopher Columbus at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Floyd Norgaard Cultural Center, 27130 102nd Ave. NW, Stanwood. The event is part of the Stanwood Area Historical Society’s “H&H — Hors d’oeuvres &History” series. Information: www.sahs-fncc.org