Can we stop celebrating Christopher Columbus[i] now…please, strike that name from the calendar.
I’m not suggesting that we forget the extraordinary crossing he made with the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, whose names I remember from a refrain we sang in grade school, which began...
In 1492, Columbus
sailed the ocean blue[ii]
How could we forget that fateful voyage which altered
forever the future history of the world. I am not suggesting that we forget
these triumphs of humanity, I am only asking that we dispense with the feting of
monsters.
Columbus set out on his adventure in pursuit of fame; he sailed for wealth and titles and vanity...and to what should be his enduring shame.
He sailed across the Atlantic four times, there and back again, becoming wealthy and famous as was his desire, he even earned the titles he sought and held them for a time…though his vanity was never satisfied.
Columbus was an Italian from Genoa, born in obscurity; he first set sail when he was a child, acquiring the seamanship-skills and knowledge that brought him to a captaincy. In this aspect of his life he was a remarkable person and deserving of respect.
He became an adventurer in the service of Ferdinand and Isabella, the monarchs of Spain; they gave him command of a small flotilla, which set-out for India on September 6th. His crew sighted land in what we now call the Bahamas on October 12th; he called the island where he landed San Salvador…exactly which island this was, is now lost to human memory.
Columbus expected to be in Asia, but to his surprise, and to the surprise of everyone in the Spanish and European courts, there were other continents and other oceans between Europe and Asia they knew nothing about, which they would still have to traverse in order to get to India, which had been their aim.
The moneyed interests who backed Columbus, the queen and king of Spain, still wanted this; they still wanted a westward route to India, but they were more than happy to discover the truth for themselves, to learn the real shape of the world, and to discover that the peoples living there could be enslaved and exploited with ease.
Columbus’ exploits exposed these continents and all of their peoples to the incessant appetites and cruelties of Europeans; his journey exposed them to their hunger for gold, land and war. He brought death, disease and catastrophic suffering to those he encountered, peoples who the Spanish worked to death…literally worked to death[iii]…they depopulated the islands by working the inhabitants until they died, without even bothering to clothe or feed them…when they had spent those human-lives, they brought enslaved people from Africa to continue at the work.
Columbus never sailed past the Islands of the Caribbean. He never set foot in what came to be known as the America’s, and his life after his first voyage was not without controversy, even among the European courts he haunted.
Columbus became wealthy and earned titles, he satisfied his grand ambition. He was also arrested, jailed and relieved of his governance...because for all of his accomplishments he remained who he was, an ignoble sailor from Genoa; he may have been Admiral of the Ocean Seas (for a time), but it was a rank without authority, and his heirs did not inherit the titles he had earned. Columbus never entered the true nobility, he died at the age of fifty-four…eaten up by gonorrhea…as the story is told.
His journey was one of historical significance…yes, we should take note of it, but the truth should be told and not celebrated. Columbus was a petty man, reckless and pitiless; he came to the islands as the harbinger of death.
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