What does Columbus Day commemorate?

Columbus Day commemorates the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas on October 12, 1492. On that morning, the Italian-born navigator (Cristoforo Colombo, born in Genoa about 1451), sailing in the service of the Spanish monarchs Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, made landfall on an island in the Bahamas that the Native Lucayan inhabitants called Guanahani and which Columbus renamed San Salvador. The expedition consisted of three ships, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, with about 90 men, and had departed from Palos de la Frontera in Spain on August 3, 1492.

Columbus was attempting to reach the East Indies by sailing west, on the assumption that the Earth was smaller than it actually is and that Asia was therefore reachable across the Atlantic. He never set foot on what is now the continental United States; his four voyages (1492 to 1493, 1493 to 1496, 1498 to 1500, and 1502 to 1504) reached the Caribbean islands, the coast of Central America, and the northern coast of South America, and he died in Valladolid, Spain on May 20, 1506 still believing he had reached the outskirts of Asia.

Columbus's voyages opened sustained European contact with the Americas, beginning the Columbian Exchange of plants, animals, peoples, and diseases that reshaped both hemispheres, and eventually leading to Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and English colonization. The holiday's history began with state observances in the late nineteenth century, was first proclaimed nationally for the 400th anniversary in 1892 by President Benjamin Harrison, and became a federal holiday in 1934 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Modern observance is contested: many states and municipalities now mark Indigenous Peoples' Day on the same date in recognition of the catastrophic effects of European contact on Native peoples (estimates of Native population loss after 1492 range from 50 to 90 percent over the following century, primarily from introduced diseases such as smallpox, measles, and influenza). The holiday remains officially Columbus Day at the federal level under 5 U.S.C. section 6103, but presidents now also issue Indigenous Peoples' Day proclamations and many federal employees see both observances mentioned on the federal calendar.