WHAT DID COLUMBUS REALLY DO?
A page from Christopher Columbus's diary & ship's log written days after landing in the New World:
"They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane. They would make fine servants. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."
-Christopher Columbus
Columbus didn't invent slavery-but he played a key role in its revival as a large scale commercial enterprise at the dawn of the economic system of capitalism. The origins of slavery go back to the agricultural revolution some 10,000 years ago, which gradually replaced hunting and gathering as the main (but not only) source of obtaining food around the globe. Humans for the first time gained some control over their food supply by creating a surplus through planting crops and domesticating animals. This development also gave incentive to use conquered peoples as slave labor instead of killing them as competitors in the fight for survival : "So enslaving an enemy rather than killing him became a means to harvest a man's labor...a new tool was acquired, the slave..." (Milton Meltzer, Slavery A World History, p 2).
My 10 year old Ethan just asked me, " What did Columbus actually do?" Good question. When I was 6 years old I asked, " How could Christopher Columbus discover a place that millions of people already knew was there?
So how should Columbus be judged ? What does it mean to be a hero ? Simple bravery and courage do not make one a hero. Columbus was both--but doesn't being heroic depend on what those actions are in service to ? There were Nazi soldiers who were brave and courageous in service to Hitler. Were they heroes ? Firefighters are heroic when they rush into a burning building to save lives. The Taino and all the other indigenous who did rise up against all odds to fight back against the Spanish were heroic, as were the occupiers at Wounded Knee, Standing Rock as well as so many others. By what standards should Columbus be considered a hero ?
It is important to understand that the destruction that was wrought was not the work of just one man. Columbus was certainly guilty of crimes against humanity, but he was not the only guilty party. It has been noted that Columbus often engaged in sexual exploitation of Tiano and other indigenous women. A number of ship's log confirm this. Rape is a horrible thing but it often takes place when one group of people exploit another. What about the Spanish royals, who financed all this, despite their early rhetoric opposing Columbus's slave-taking ? Columbus's men, who actually carried out some of the most horrific atrocities against the indigenous, certainly of the same order as the Nazi barbarians or ISIS today ? The Catholic church, which despite the denunciations by some of its priests, sanctioned all this ? How should each be judged ?
To blame Columbus for the African slave trade that saw millions of Africans would be wrong. Columbus did enslave thousands of Tiano, Arawak & others who were enslaved and sent to Europe. The economic system that developed in the Western Hemisphere was based on labor intensive enterprises and those enterprises required so many laborers that the expansion of slavery was almost inevitable. Columbus's son became very wealthy through the trade of African slaves.
Columbus himself was either directly or indirectly responsible for the death of thousands of indigenous people, but he did not force the Cherokee, the Cree & the Seminole to travel along the "Trail of Tears". He was not at Wounded Knee. When I lived in Canada, my
love interest was a member of the St, Regis Mohawk Nation. She & I often traveled to the Nation on weekends. I enjoyed playing football & lacrosse with the young boys, but I also enjoyed the time that I spent with the elders of the Nation. Like many First Nation people, the St. Regis Mohawk have an unwritten history. The history is oral. I asked a learned elder, what happened when the St. Regis Mohawk people first encountered the white Europeans. He said, " Roland, while our people lived along what is now the Canadian-US border where Ontario & Quebec meet, we were hunters and gatherers. We traveled over a wide swarth of land from time to time, as far away as what is now Alberta. We knew that there were other people. We also knew that we lived on a sphere shaped planet. We had observed that for centuries. If a St, Regis Mohawk man began walking toward the top of the world five hundred years ago, he could have walked all the way to the top of the sphere. He would have known how to survive, by hunting and eating safe plants. In his walk to the North pole he may well not have encountered another living soul. When our people first encountered white people we thought that they would hunt and trap some of the very abundant fur bearing animals and then they would simply leave". Like the other First Nation people that the Europeans met, the St. Regis-Mohawk people had no concept of property law or ownership/ You lived where you were. You did not own it in the sense that you had title to it. Title did not exist. Perhaps the most devastating thing that white people did to all First Nation people early on was to force the first or real Americans to change the very way they lived.
First Nation people were enslaved. In fact Columbus enslaved thousands of them, but they could not sustain the agricultural nation that America was becoming. The conflicts were great and continue to this day. The founders referred to the First Nation people as " Nations" and entered into treaties with them. 18th Century Americans then used the existence of those treaties as symbolic of the fact that only legitimate " Nations" could enter treaties, therefore America was a nation. White Americans moved the First Nation people whenever it met the needs of white people. As a child visiting my grandparents in South Carolina I met a man who came to my grandparents house seeking daywork one day. I told my grandfather that the man seemed to be neither Black nor White. He replied, " No he is Cherokee". I said, " Grandfather aren't the Cherokee people all in Oklahoma". He said, " they did not start out there". He then explained the " Trail of Tears". My significant other and all of the other First Nation people were forced to live on smaller and smaller plots of land until they could no longer live as they had lived for centuries. Cherokee, Cree & others were moved to Oklahoma, which was known as Indian territory, which was given to them for "forever". Forever lasted only until white people wanted to settle in Oklahoma. When that happened the First Nation people were forced on to smaller & smaller reservations. No First Nation was safe. The Osage, Sioux & other Plains First Nation people, had hunted and lived with buffalo for centuries. When white people wanted to settle and farm in the area where the First Nation people lived, they simply sent them packing to guess where: Yes Oklahoma. The white people then killed almost all the buffalo, whose fecal matter had fertilized prairie grasses for centuries. Those grasses also held the soil in place. Without the grasses much of the soil simply turned to dust and when the Plains winds came they just blew the soil away along with the corn, wheat and other crops that the whites planted. Back to the Osage. They were confined to ever shrinking reservation land in Oklahoma. In 1910 oil was discovered on the land where the Osage had been relocated to. The Osage should have become rich. Right? Nope. Many Osage began to disappear. Many Osage were murdered by white men who then somehow acquired the land either through adverse possession or by creating a cloud over the title.
How did white Americans feel about the real Americans in the 19th century?
" All of the good Indians I know are dead"
- William Tecumseh Sherman
" Kill the Indian save the man"
-Ward Churchill
We are now finding hundreds of bodies on the sites that once house " training schools" , many run by the Catholic church, for First Nation children in Canada & in the US. Many white leaders somehow thought that the real Americans would somehow just " go away". The treaties that the early whites used to legitimize the young nation required the US government to provide things like safe drinking water to people who for centuries had had no problem finding safe drinking water. Every day a number of First Nation females are raped by white men and many of them simply disappear. When those crimes are solved 76% of the men who commit the crimes are white. Tribal police are unable to investigate the crimes because of limited resources. State & local law enforcement throw up their hands and say, " We cannot simply go on tribal land". Oddly the reservations are subject to Federal jurisdiction because of treaties and the Bureau of Indian Affairs and it's parent Department of the Interior, but the FBI for the most part does not get involved. No one's mother, daughter or sister should be raped, abducted or simply disappear, but there is world of difference between what happens when a blonde, blue eyed women disappears and when a brown skinned, dark eyed First Nation women vanishes.
The Arizona state legislature is now doing everything it possibly can to prevent the real Americans in Arizona from voting. When I explained the fact that requiring only members of the same household be allowed to deliver absentee ballots to a post office posed an undue burden on reservations where there is one car per 10 households, to an Arizona State Senator, he simply said, " Mr. Nicholson, I did not know that".
You cannot blame Christopher Columbus for everything, but his exploration had a big impact on real Americans.
PS. Ethan asked me how anyone could "discover" a place that millions of people knew existed?