The Vikings Skipped Columbus Day and Now Fans Are Hitting Back With a Brutal History Lesson

A mob roped Christopher Columbus and yanked him off his pedestal at the Minnesota State Capitol.

Not one NFL team mentioned Columbus on his holiday, and Minnesota's team went a step further.

The team with the most awkward name in the league walked straight into a buzzsaw.

Vikings Posted an Indigenous Peoples' Day Tribute for the Second Straight Year

On October 12, the federal Columbus Day holiday, the Minnesota Vikings posted a tribute to Indigenous Peoples' Day.

The Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Rams did the same.

Even in deep blue Los Angeles, the Rams' pregame post drew a flood of angry replies.

A Chiefs fan who said they had Cherokee ancestry took offense that the team dodged the words Columbus Day.

The other 29 teams said nothing at all, and neither did the league office, OutKick's Armando Salguero reported.

It was the second year in a row no NFL team acknowledged the holiday.

In 2025, the Vikings joined the Buffalo Bills and Arizona Cardinals in posting Indigenous Peoples' Day messages instead.

The Vikings could not even agree with themselves on the spelling, posting "Indigenous People's Day" with the apostrophe in the wrong spot.

Joe Biden became the first president to proclaim Indigenous Peoples' Day in 2021, but Congress never made it a federal holiday.

Fans Reminded the Team What Real Vikings Did to Coastal Villages

The replies came fast.

Fans walked the team through the real record of Norse raiders, from sacked coastal villages to captives hauled off as slaves.

"Better change your name too," one fan wrote, capping it with a clown emoji.

Another asked when the team planned to ditch the Vikings name.

Rams fans piled on, with one noting that Columbus is the rare immigrant liberals cannot stand.

The history buffs had one more card to play.

Leif Erikson – a real Viking – reached North America nearly five centuries before Columbus.

Trump honored him in an October 2025 proclamation as the man who "became the first European to land in North America."

So the team named after the first Europeans to reach this continent just snubbed the explorer who came second.

Presidents proclaim Leif Erikson Day every October 9, which fell three days before Columbus Day in 2026.

Leif Erikson's statue has stood on the Minnesota State Capitol grounds since 1949.

When the crowd came for Columbus on June 10, 2020, the Viking was left untouched.

The crowd had gathered for an American Indian Movement rally, and after the statue fell, its leader waved people back so a state tow truck could cart Columbus away.

Troopers under Governor Tim Walz knew the protest was coming hours ahead of time and still stood aside as the statue hit the ground.

Fourteen days after the toppling, the state still had not charged a single person.

Trump Already Told the NFL Where He Stands On Native Names

In July 2025, Trump demanded Washington bring back the Redskins name and urged Cleveland to restore the Indians.

His reasoning was simple – "Indians are being treated very unfairly."

Washington and Cleveland both caved to activists, scrubbing names their fans loved for generations.

Kansas City framed its post as a thank-you to the American Indian Community Working Group, its partner in recognizing area tribes.

A team name can honor a people, and the activists erasing those names are not doing anyone any favors.

The NFL Will Not Say the Name of a Federal Holiday

The same teams that mark Easter, Hanukkah, and September 11 suddenly go quiet every second Monday in October.

Columbus Day is the one they now treat like a live grenade.

The holiday was never just about one sailor, either.

President Benjamin Harrison first called for a national Columbus celebration in 1892, a year after a New Orleans lynch mob killed 11 Italian immigrants.

For generations of Italian-American families, the holiday has been a hard-won badge of belonging.

Trump stood with those families, placing a statue of Columbus on the White House grounds.

His 2026 proclamation, signed October 7, promised "we will never allow his legacy to be erased by radical extremists" after rioters tore down a Columbus statue in Baltimore on July 4, 2020.

Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, made Columbus Day a national observance in 1934.

The league that cannot bring itself to say Columbus's name is running from a holiday a Democrat president created.

And the team that skipped it is named after the guys who got here first – with swords.

Sources:

• Armando Salguero, "Three NFL teams roasted for celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day on Columbus Day, which no team even mentioned," OutKick, October 13, 2026.
• Armando Salguero, "No NFL Team Celebrated Columbus Day On X, But Three Celebrated Indigenous People Day," OutKick, October 14, 2025.
• Cullen Linebarger, "NFL Team Hit with Brutal Reminder About Its Nickname After Deciding to Snub Columbus Day to Celebrate 'Indigenous Peoples' Day'," The Gateway Pundit, October 13, 2026.
• The White House, "Columbus Day, 2026," Federal Register, October 7, 2026.
• The White House, "Leif Erikson Day, 2025," The White House, October 9, 2025.
• FOX 9, "Group tears down Columbus statue outside Minnesota State Capitol," FOX 9, June 10, 2020.
• Theo Keith, "Two weeks after Columbus statue toppling, no one charged," FOX 9, June 24, 2020.
• Ryan Gaydos, "Trump floats 'restriction' for Commanders if they fail to ditch nickname in favor of Redskins return," Fox News, July 20, 2025.