IUNDERSTAND that some school textbooks are now teaching our kids that Christopher Columbus was a terrorist.

Columbus Day is coming up and will be celebrated once again on Monday, October 12.

In recent years, there has been a great tendency to make the heroes of my childhood into villains.

Children are now taught in many schools that Columbus was a terrorist because he mistreated Indians and that Washington should no longer be considered the father of our country because he was a slave owner. When I was young, his birthday was celebrated as was Lincoln's.

Today, we celebrate President's Day which commemorates all of our Presidents from the great to the not so great.

Are there any heroes left?

The first Columbus Day celebration was held in 1792 when New York City celebrated the 300th anniversary of the landing of Columbus in the new world.

Italian-Americans began to observe the day as a celebration of their heritage in New York in 1866. In 1934, prompted by the Knights of Columbus, the Congress passed a resolution and President Roosevelt signed an order creating a national holiday. Since 1971, that holiday has been celebrated on the second Monday in October.

Recently, some people who are more concerned about correctness then historical significance have suggested that Columbus should be condemned as a terrorist and the holiday no longer celebrated.

School text books have begun to tout the terrible aftermath of the conquest by Spain, forgetting completely the courage that it took to get here in the first place or the dedicated work that Columbus did to get the money and ships from the Spanish King and Queen in the first place. Remembering that the Church insisted that the world was flat and you'd fall off the edge if you sailed too far, Columbus challenged that concept, insisting that if you sailed west, you'd reach China in the east. It was, at the time, not only a novel concept, it was heritical and more than one had been burned at the stake for suggesting as much.

He is celebrated for an idea not for the harsh things that he and the Spanish did once the conquest was a fait accomplit.

The Columbus biographer Samuel Eliot Morison, a retired American rear admiral who died in 1976, said in his book on the life of Columbus that upon arriving in the Americas the natives went out to meet Columbus. They were friendly and gregarious.

He quotes Columbus as saying, "I could conquer them with fifty men and govern them as I please."

He took several of the natives back to Spain to show the queen.

The queen castigated him for failing to come back with gold but after promises that he would find gold, he was sent back on a second voyage.

More modern biographers have said that he kidnapped the Indians and took them back to Spain.

On his second voyage, Columbus returned demanding gold and if it wasn't turned over, he treated the natives especially harshly.

The Arawaks had enough and resisted. This turned into an outright slaughter by Columbus.

He demanded that the natives pay the crown a tribute. Some who did not, had their hands cut off.

Pedro de Cordoro wrote back to the King about what was happening and said, "As a result of the sufferings and hard labor they have endured, the Indians choose and have chosen suicide." He went on to say that, rather than give birth, women killed themselves and their newborn infants.

The men of Columbus brought with them diseases as well. This was an ecological disaster that caused the death of over 3,000,000 Arawaks in the course of fifty years.

To fill the void left by this, the Spanish began bringing black slaves from Africa.

For many years, I have had an interest in the history of Central and South America and have read a number of books about the treatment by the Spanish of the Aztecs, Mayans and Peruvians in particular.

The Spanish conquistadors were merciless. Most were consumed by a greedy lust for gold without any care or consideration for the people here, their culture or the environment.

They carried with them monks who were consumed by a religious fervor and insisted upon the conversion of the native tribes.

The monks destroyed libraries of books, condemning them as heretical. So much was lost that currently only four Pre- Columbian books remain in existence. They burned thousands.

The gold they finally did find overwhelmed the economy of Europe and eventually caused a number of economic depressions, ruining governments, businesses and people. The flood of gold turned out not to be a joy but a tragedy to Spain and all of its neighbors.

We should remember that Columbus along with our founders behaved in ways that were normal for them in their day.

What we celebrate on Columbus Day is the beginning of the discovery of America by Europeans and proof that the world was not only round but far larger than anyone had ever considered.

I have no problem with a fair and balanced approach to the explorers and our nation's founders. I do have a problem with taking all the bad that many did and making that the only thing that is taught or written about.

There has even been a move afoot recently to degrade the position of George Washington because he was a slave owner.

Of course, he was born into a world in which slavery was accepted. In fact, when he was born, slavery was accepted not only in the south but also in New York as well as many other northern states.

He became a slave owner when his father died in 1743. At the age of eleven, he inherited ten slaves and 500 acres of land. When he began farming Mount Vernon eleven years later, at the age of 22, he had a work force of about 36 slaves. With his marriage to Martha Custis in 1759, 20 of her slaves came to Mount Vernon. After their marriage, Washington purchased even more slaves.

The slave population also increased because the slaves were marrying and raising their own families. By 1799, when George Washington died, there were 316 slaves living on the estate.

Slaves played an integral role in Mount Vernon's history. The skilled and manual labor needed to run Mount Vernon was largely provided by slaves. Many of the working slaves were trained in crafts such as milling, coopering, blacksmithing, carpentry and shoemaking.

The others worked as house servants, boatmen, coachmen or field hands.

Some female slaves were also taught skills, particularly spinning, weaving and sewing, while others worked as house servants or in the laundry, the dairy, or the kitchen. Many female slaves also worked in the fields. Almost three-quarters of the 184 working slaves at Mount Vernon worked in the fields, and of those, about 60 per cent were women.

Food grown at Mount Vernon was distributed to the slaves and their families and to the Washingtons.

Any surplus was sold at market. The slaves received their food rations weekly.

Many slaves also kept their own gardens to supplement their diet. The slaves could sell their food at local markets to earn extra income. The slaves were also issued clothing once a year.

The work-day at Mount Vernon was from sunrise to sunset, with 2 hours off for meals. Sunday was a holiday. Slaves also received 3-4 days off at Christmas, and the Monday after Easter and Pentecost as holidays.

If a slave was required to work a Sunday during harvest, Washington would allow them a day off later, and sometimes compensated them with pay.

George Washington's attitude toward slavery changed as he grew older. During the Revolution, as he and fellow patriots strove for liberty, Washington became increasingly conscious of the contradiction between this struggle and the system of slavery. By the time of his presidency, he seems to have believed that slavery was wrong and against the principles of the new nation.

As President, Washington did not lead a public fight against slavery, however, because he believed it would tear the new nation apart. Abolition had many opponents, especially in the South. Washington seems to have feared that if he took such a public stand, the southern states would withdraw from the Union (something they would do seventy years later, leading to the Civil War). He had worked too hard to build the country to risk tearing it apart.

Privately, however, Washington could and did lead by example.

In his will, he arranged for all of the slaves he owned to be freed after the death of his wife, Martha.

He also left instructions for the continued care and education of some of his former slaves, support and training for all of the children until they came of age and continuing support for the elderly.

It is a great mistake to force the morals and values of our time on the people of history, particularly those who were responsible for the discovery of the continent and the founding of a nation.

In fact, it is the Constitution by which we live that guarantees our freedom that was created by the founders led by Washington. For that reason, if for none other, we should celebrate those who made it possible.

Those who want to condemn Washington for being a slave owner need to remember that originally, our Constitution considered slaves a partial persons and property. A war had to be fought, the Constitution amended and the fight of Martin Luthur King and others to bring full rights to all.

Martin Luthur King was also a flawed person but achieved great things.

We celebrate these people because of the milestones accomplished and not for their flaws.

We should celebrate the best and keep the worst in a proper context.