Christopher Columbus

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“When Christopher Columbus sailed west from Palos across the Atlantic Ocean on his first voyage to the New World, he was in search of gold, silver, precious stones, spices, and silks. Instead, he found parrots.” — Bruce Thomas Boehrer PARROT CULTURE: OUR 2,500-YEAR-LONG FASCINATION WITH THE WORLD’S MOST TALKATIVE BIRD Philadelphia PA: U of Pennsylvania P, 2004, page 50 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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WALDEN: What does Africa, –what does the West stand for? Is PEOPLE OF not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of WALDEN the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes, –with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road.

SIR JOHN FRANKLIN DR. ELISHA KENT KANE LEWIS AND CLARK CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS MUNGO PARK HDT WHAT? INDEX

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A WEEK: The sun-setting presumed all men at leisure, and in a PEOPLE OF contemplative mood; but the farmer’s boy only whistled the more A WEEK thoughtfully as he drove his cows home from pasture, and the teamster refrained from cracking his whip, and guided his team with a subdued voice. The last vestiges of daylight at length disappeared, and as we rowed silently along with our backs toward home through the darkness, only a few stars being visible, we had little to say, but sat absorbed in thought, or in silence listened to the monotonous sound of our oars, a sort of rudimental music, suitable for the ear of Night and the acoustics of her dimly lighted halls; “Pulsae referunt ad sidera valles,” and the valleys echoed the sound to the stars. As we looked up in silence to those distant lights, we were reminded that it was a rare imagination which first taught that the stars are worlds, and had conferred a great benefit on mankind. It is recorded in the Chronicle of Bernaldez, that in Columbus’s first voyage the natives “pointed towards the heavens, making signs that they believed that there was all power and holiness.” We have reason to be grateful for celestial phenomena, for they chiefly answer to the ideal in man. The stars are distant and unobtrusive, but bright and enduring as our fairest and most memorable experiences. “Let the immortal depth of your soul lead you, but earnestly extend your eyes upwards.”

ASTRONOMY CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS ANDRES BERNALDEZ

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

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1410

Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly’s YMAGO MUNDI presented a world map that would prove useful to Christopher Columbus in the surmise which he felt he needed to make, that it was a reasonable distance from Europe west across the great ocean to the Indies:

Cardinal d’Ailly was such a good guy that he had come to be known within the church as “The Eagle of France and the Indefatigable Hammer of Heretics” (Aquila Franciae, et aberrantium a veritate malleus indefessus). He trusted that it was possible, through astrological calculations, to determine the true dates of the major events HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of human history. The copy of YMAGO MUNDI on display at the Columbine Library at Seville, Spain has notes by Columbus in its margins.

Of course, it’s a tossup whether D’Ailly, or Columbus, was crazier. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1451

October 30, Saturday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus, Cristoforo Columbo, Cristobal Colon, was born in Genoa, son of a wool merchant and weaver Domenico Colombo and Susanna Fontanarossa, daughter of a wool merchant?1 He had younger brothers Bartolomeo Colombo, Giovanni Pellegrino Colombo, and Giacomo Colombo. He also had a sister Bianchinetta Colombo. What seems especially noteworthy about all this mystery surrounding the origins and early life of Columbus is that he himself was the most ardent contributor to it, making in later years a round of ambiguous and contradictory statements on his youth that bespeaks nothing so consistently as a desire to be confusing and evasive. — Sanders, Roland. LOST TRIBES AND PROMISED LANDS: THE O RIGINS OF A MERICAN R ACISM. Boston MA: Little, Brown, 1978, page 75.

1. Salvador de Madariaga has hypothesized, entirely on circumstantial evidences at best, that the family of Domenico Colombo and Susanna Fontanarossa were New Christians who had been forcibly converted from a Catalan Jewish community in 1391 who subsequently had migrated to Italy. For sure, at a number of points in his life Columbus does seem to display the character profile we have come to associate with the new convert: great fervor, vast self-righteousness, and an insatiable need to prove oneself again and yet again. Genetic tests of what we take to be his remains, in the West Indies, or the remains of a close relative, do not contain any of the known indicators of an ethnic Jewish ancestry. Such tests are not, however, conclusive. The prevailing theory of this moment is that his family was from Catalunia and was identified as “Colom,” meaning “dove.” This version has come to be of so much favor that it is even being offered repeatedly on TV’s Discovery Channel! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Amerigo Vespucci was born, “whose highest rank was boatswain’s mate in an expedition that never sailed, [who] managed in this lying world to supplant Columbus and baptize half the earth with his own dishonest name” (according to that eminent historian, Waldo Emerson).2

Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673.

Americus Vesputius a Florentine imployed by the King of Castile and Portingal, to discover the West-Indies, named from him Seven year after Columbus, America.

From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent.

The half dishonestly named

2. In fact there is no historical evidence whatever that Vespucci ever asked anyone to name anything after him, and there is surprisingly little evidence that our term “America” actually does as is alleged derive from his given name “Amerigo.” The entire ascription is mostly surmise, surmise by apologists groping among mysteries for a plausible explanation for a historical detail which, seemingly, was considered so minor at the time as not ever to be placed on record. It may be that the claim of Christopher Columbus HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1470

Portuguese navigators ventured as far as the “Gold Coast” of west Africa.3

They began to suspect that Africa was circumnavigable rather than being an impassable barrier.

The family of Christopher Columbus moved to Savona. He would go to sea as a pirate or privateer, helping to prey on Moorish shipping.

The French introduced trunnions that allowed lightweight cannon to be suspended in wheeled carriages, for ready transport about the battlefield.

The Japanese began to create large armies of conscript light infantry known as ashigaru, “light feet.” The training of such ashigaru was less thorough than that of provincial samurai, but they needed large quantities of inexpensive weapons and helmets — which would involve the development of techniques of mass 3. For this and other such maps: http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/search.html HDT WHAT? INDEX

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production. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1474

At about this point Sebastian Cabot was born (in Bristol, England or Venice, Italy).

Paolo Toscanelli (1397-1482) had constructed by 1440 a map of the Ocean Sea which positioned China and Japan some hundred degrees east of their correct position and thus narrowed the empty waters between Japan and the Canary Islands to but 3,000 miles. In this year he forwarded this map to the Portuguese canon Ferdinando Martini, who would pass it on to Christopher Columbus. On this basis Columbus, ever the optimist, ever delusional, would re-estimate that he had but 2,400 miles to travel after the Canaries dropped off the horizon behind him before he would be able to secure new supplies along the coast of Japan — rather than the correct and fatally enormous figure of 10,000 miles.

CARTOGRAPHY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1476

Christopher Columbus swam ashore when his ship was sunk in a battle off Portugal. He would join his brother Bartholomew Columbus, a cartographer, in Lisbon.

In this year, also, Venice began to grant monopoly privileges for the printing of certain books (that would be to say, the municipality implemented a primitive version of copyright).

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

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1477

Christopher Columbus joined his brother Bartholomew Columbo in Lisbon to work as a cartographer. Between this year and 1482 he would be engaged in merchant voyages as far as Iceland and Guinea.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

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1479

Union of the Christian states of Aragon and Castile under Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella. This was the beginning of the Spanish state.

Christopher Columbus got married with a noblewoman, Felipa Perestrello Moniz. Her deceased father the explorer Bartolomeu Perestrello had been involved in discovery of the Madeira Islands, and she made available to her husband her father’s charts of the winds and currents of the Portuguese possessions in the Atlantic. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1480

Ferdinand and Isabella appointed inquisitors against heresy among converted Jews.

Christopher Columbus and Felipa Perestrello Moniz had a son they named Diego Colon. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1483

King John II of Portugal refused to finance Christopher Columbus’s “The Enterprise of the Indies” proposal for a cockamamie wrong-way voyage. The visionary would need to relocate from Portugal to Spain, where the royalty knew less about the actual circumference of this planet.

The initial military accomplishment of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar came at the conquest of the Fortaleza de Tájara.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

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1484

Portuguese navigator Diego Cam discovered the mouth of the Congo River.

Christopher Columbus failed to gain the patronage the King of Portugal to enable him search for a trade route to the Indies. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1485

Felipa Perestrello Moniz died of consumption and Christopher Columbus relocated to Cadiz in Spain where he opened another shop supplying maps and charts.

Giovanni da Verrazano seems likely to have been born during this year in Val di Greve south of Florence to Piero Andrea di Bernardo da Verrazzano and Fiammetta Cappelli. There has been considerable speculation over the family name, and Thoreau would refer to him in CAPE COD as “Verrazzani,” but during his lifetime he would sign documents in Latin using “Janus Verrazanus.”

CAPE COD: We hear rumors of this country of “Norumbega” and its PEOPLE OF great city from many quarters. In a discourse by a great French CAPE COD sea-captain in Ramusio’s third volume (1556-65), this is said to be the name given to the land by its inhabitants, and Verrazzani RAMUSIO is called the discoverer of it; another in 1607 makes the natives VERRAZZANI call it, or the river, Aguncia. It is represented as an island on WYTFLIET an accompanying chart. It is frequently spoken of by old writers as a country of indefinite extent, between Canada and Florida, and it appears as a large island with Cape Breton at its eastern extremity, on the map made according to Verrazzani’s plot in Hackluyt’s “Divers Voyages.” These maps and rumors may have been the origin of the notion, common among the early settlers, that New England was an island. The country and city of Norumbega appear about where Maine now is on a map in Ortelius (“Theatrum Orbis Terrarum,” Antwerp, 1570), and the “R. Grande” is drawn where the Penobscot or St. John might be.

Joannes de Sacrobusco, AKA John of Holybush, Hollywood or Halifax’s SPHAERA MUNDI, a superficial abridgement of Ptolemy’s ALMAGEST, was printed posthumously in Venice. This astronomer mathematician had been born in Yorkshire, had studied at Oxford, and had taught at Paris until his death in 1256 CE. His magnum opus in four volumes would enjoy for several centuries a great reputation, as it represented a return to the more enlightened cosmogony of the Greeks – in which the earth was a stationary globe around which were revolving in circles and epicycles, the sun, the planets, and stars, while other writers were describing the earth as a circular plane surrounded by water, the heavens resting on pillars like a tent, and the stars carried by appointed angles. One of the volumes consisted of a demonstration that the eclipse that according to scripture had occurred during the crucifixion of Christ had not been a natural event, but instead miraculous. The other three described: • the sphere of fixed stars • the circle of the Zodiac • the length of days in different zones HDT WHAT? INDEX

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More than any other printer of the 15th century, Erhard Ratdolt, a German who conducted his press in Venice from 1476 to 1486, helped to wean the “Cradle books” from the manuscript tradition. Many “1sts” in typography are due to his skill and imagination. In Sacrobusto’s SPHAERA MUNDI, he was the 1st to employ on a few of the pages a number of colors. The diagrams were apparently produced not by wood-cuts but, for the 1st time, by means of metal strips embedded in lead. The 1st complete title-page (1476), and the 1st type specimen sheet, are also assigned to this press. Ratdolt’s types were direct descendants of the famous Jenson type and would be much admired by William Morris.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

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1486

Christopher Columbus remarried with Dona Beatriz Enriquez de Arana from Cordova in Spain. He submitted a proposal for a westward expedition to the East, to Castile’s Isabella the Catholic and Aragon’s Ferdinand the Catholic: “Let’s all think outside the box, shall we, just for a moment? We’ve all been saying to ourselves, the way to get to the East is to go toward the east, and yada yada yada — but who is to say that going west might not be a better way to get to the East? Now (holding up his hand) let’s just think about this for a moment, shall we, just for a moment?”

Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar successfully defended the advanced post of Íllora near Granada from its recapture by the Moors.

Sword dancing was outlawed in Vitoria, Spain on account of “the scandalous behaviour and shedding of blood occasioned by them.”4

4. Such Iberian dances often feigned combat between Moors and Christians — this is suspected to be the source of the English term “Morris dancing.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1487

The Spaniards took Malaga from the Arabs.

Christopher Columbus was in the service of the Duke of Medina Celi, Don Luis de la Cerda. However, during this year he submitted a proposal to King Henry VII of England and King Charles VIII of France (these proposals were declined). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1488

Christopher Columbus and Dona Beatriz Enriquez de Arana had a son they named Ferdinand (1488-1539), better known as Fernando.

Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673.

Christopher Columbus a Genouese offered the discovery of the West-Indies to Henry the Seventh.

From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

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1491

Portuguese merchants introduced Venetian glass and Roman Catholicism into Zaire.

Christopher Columbus again appealed to King Ferdinand of Spain for patronage and was again refused. A priest, Father Perez, interceded on his behalf with Queen Isabella, pointing out to her that he would be able to convert heathens to Christianity (what’s not to like about that?).

The ruler of the Congo kingdom accepted baptism by the Portuguese. However, not just everybody in this Kongolese kingdom was thrilled with the Portuguese, including the noble Mpanzu a Nzinga. The Kongolese military consisted of about 20,000 warriors equipped with buffalo-hide shields and bows with iron-tipped arrows, wooden clubs, bone- or metal-tipped lances, and poisoned stakes.

November 25, late Friday night (Old Style): Abu l-Qasim al-Muhli put his signature on the document which ended the Nasrid kingdom of Granada. The orderly transition of power from Muhammad XII Boabdil to the Catholic monarchs of Aragon and Castile was scheduled in this document for the following May (some of the Muslim leaders would desert their sinking ship early, and in consequence their ruler would need to rush the transition, so actually it would be on January 2d that the cross of Christendom would rise above the tower of the Alhambra).

November 28, Monday (Old Style): Since Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar was able to communicate in the Berber dialect of Arabic, he was made one of the team that was arranging the ongoing details of the capitulation of the Moors of the Alhambra of Granada. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1492

Pope Innocent VIII died, and the Spanish Cardinal Rodrigo Lanzol Borgia of Játiva in Spain became Pope Alexander VI, the 2d pope of the Borja family from the region of the Basque Pyrenees. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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After Charles VII had been crowned by Joan of Arc, Charles VIII took control of affairs in France.

Henry VII invaded France after the French threw their support to Perkin Warbeck, Flemish-born impostor, as claimant for the English throne. At the Peace of Etaples, France expelled Warbeck and paid England an indemnity of £159,000.

Lorenzo de’ Medici died. His son Piero became ruler of Firenzi.

For his services during the Catholic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar was granted land at Loja near the city of Granada.

There were numerous Jews in the court of Queen Isabella of Castille and King Ferdinand of Aragon. They were divided for the moment into a group of unconverted ones led by Abraham Senior (the gent who had arranged the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1469), and a group of conversos or “New Christians.” The unconverted Jews were in general unimpressed by Christopher Columbus’s agenda, while the converted ones were in general in support of it. (The reason for this difference is unknown, although there has been speculation that the conversos were hoping that Columbus could discover for them a new homeland to the west, to which they could migrate in order to finally free themselves from Spanish Christian suspicion and oppression.) It was after Columbus had been rejected at court, and had begun a journey toward Santa Fe, that one of these conversos, the Secretary of the Exchequer, Luis de Santángel, persuaded Queen Isabella to sponsor Columbus’s voyage into the Ocean Sea, by offering to loan her whatever money this would require. Thus it is especially ironic that Columbus’s departure toward a new world, and the final expulsion of the unconverted Jews from Spain, a Judenrein, would take place within 3 days of each other: And blindly giving themselves over to their vain hopes, they submitted to the hardships of the road and left their native regions, great and small, old and young, on foot and mounted on donkeys and other beasts, and in carriages, and made their way to the various points of departure to which each of them had to go. And on the roads and terrains over which they passed they encountered much hardship and misfortune, some of them falling HDT WHAT? INDEX

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down, to be picked up by their companions, others dying, others being born, others getting sick, so that no Christian could look upon them without anguish, and many along the way tried to persuade them to accept baptism. And some in their grief converted and remained, but very few, for their rabbis were ever by their side giving them courage, getting the women and children to sing, and playing tambourines to cheer everyone up. And thus they left Castile, some going to the ports from which they then embarked, others going to Portugal. [this was written by Andrés Bernáldez, curator of the village of Los Palacios]

ANTISEMITISM Not only was it not the case that Chris’s opponents believed that the earth was flat, but also, a fact seldom appreciated, Chris himself did not believe that the earth was an exact sphere. He believed that these others, traditionalists who thought of the earth as a sphere, were not sufficiently nuanced: his Earth was shaped like a pear, and somewhere on it was to be discovered a grand nipple-like elevation: I have always read that the world comprising the land and the water was spherical, as is testified by the investigations of Ptolemy and others.... But I have now seen so much irregularity ... that I have come to another conclusion respecting the earth, namely, that it is not round as they describe, but of the form of a pear ... or like a round ball, in one part of which is a prominence like a woman’s nipple.

Chris believed the tip of this nipple to be the Garden of Eden. He would come to be of the opinion that this great nipple was to be found by sailing up against the currents of the Orinoco River on the coast of South America. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The more I reason on it, however, the more convinced I become that the place of which I have spoken is the terrestrial paradise.

The oldest terrestrial globe still in existence, known as the Erdapfel (Earth Apple), was constructed by Nürnberg geographer Martin Behaim. Poor guy, he was evidently unaware of Chris’s nipple, as he was unaware as yet of the Americas, Australia, and Antarctica — but he was of course able to depict places Europeans had actually visited, such as the Azores and other Atlantic islands. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 2, Monday (1491, Old Style): Because the Nasrid ruler of Granada, Muhammad XII Boabdil, had been getting nervous while waiting to abdicate in May as had been agreed to in principle in the previous November, the Christian flag happened to be being raised over the Alhambra for the first time as negotiations began on this day in the tent city without the walls of Granada between the secretary to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, Juan de Colomba, and Father Juan Pérez, a sponsor of the proposal of Christopher Columbus that sailing to the west might well turn up a more direct passage and sources for obtaining for Spain the spice riches of the Orient.5 Retrospectively, the meeting in the siege tents would come to be regarded as of greater long-term significance than this lowering and raising of flags over the fortress palace atop the hill, but at the time there was no question in anybody's mind that it was the flag ceremony which was the significant, albeit off-schedule, incident of this day. It would not be until 1552 that it would be suggested, by Francisco López de Gómara to King Charles V, that the conquest of the Americas that had begun with Columbus had constituted the most significant event since the divine Creation of the universe,

— or, at least, since the 1st Coming of Christ. I freely admit that, according to white writers, white teachers, white historians and white molders of public opinion, nothing ever happened in the world of any importance that could not or should not be labeled “white.” — W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, “The Superior Race” This would turn out to be a key year in the history of tourism. Columbus, or Colon, or Colombo or whatever his name was, had made a serious error in calculating the circumference of the earth which could have gotten a whole bunch of white people, including himself, lost while sailing the ocean blue and dying of thirst. Instead it seems he lucked out. Yes, a whole bunch of people would get killed as a result of this ridiculous miscalculation of his, but, by and large, they wouldn’t be white people. I will make only one further comment on this year: Bartolomé de las Casas reported,6 that what this mass-murder Columbus/Colon/Colombo most craved was “to discover more.” This is the real world, in which, it seems, it is those of us who most crave who are surest to become craven.

5. He would return with corn (Zea mays) and other crop plants. PLANTS 6. Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 1951, HISTORIA DE LOS INDIES, Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico, Volume I, p.146. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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For the longest time, only a rather small group of Spanish intellectuals and bureaucrats would have any interest in this crazed figure, Christopher the Christ Carrier, who had supposed the hill of the Garden of Eden to be at

the origin of every strong ocean current which he had encountered. The half-mythicized faces of America, such as that of the Emperor Montezuma (Motechuzoma), would for a long time quite overshadow this HDT WHAT? INDEX

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genocidal figure. Ethnicity gave Columbus a lobby, a prerequisite to public success in US culture. The 1850 census reported only 3,679 individuals of Italian birth. Yet by 1866, Italian-Americans, organized by the Sharpshooters’ Association of New York, celebrated the landfall and, within three years, annual festivities were being held in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Boston, Cincinnati, New Orleans, and San Francisco on or around October 12. Italians and Spaniards were just not enough, however, to turn this celebration into a national practice. Fortunately, ethnicity gave Columbus a second –and more numerous– group of lobbyists, Irish-Americans. By 1850, there were already 962,000 Americans claiming Irish descent. Many of them regrouped in organizations like the Knights of Columbus, a fraternal society for Catholic males founded in 1881. In less than ten years, community support and the institutional patronage of the Catholic church swelled the Knights’ membership. As the association spread in the northeast with the backing of prominent Irish-Americans, it increasingly emphasized the shaping of “citizen culture.” Columbus played a leading role in making citizens out of these immigrants. He provided them with a public example of Catholic devotion and civic virtue, and thus a powerful rejoinder to the cliché that allegiance to Rome preempted the Catholics’ attachment to the United States. In New Haven, the 1892 celebration of the landing attracted some forty thousand people –including six thousand Knights and a thousand- piece band conducted by the musical director of West Point– in a joint celebration of holiness and patriotism.

January 6, Friday (1491, Old Style): An event which might have taken place in November of the previous year, and which had been scheduled for the following May, took place on this date instead. The Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella rode in triumph into the last conquered city of the Moorish occupation of western Europe.

April 17, Tuesday (Old Style): A contract was signed between Christopher Columbus and Spain, to seek a westward ocean passage to Asia. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 30, Monday (Old Style): Privileges and Prerogatives Granted by Their Catholic Majesties to Christopher Columbus: Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic monarchs of Castile and Aragon, appointed Columbus as their viceroy and governor with a 22 1/2% share of all booty and with life and death power over any subjects whom he might add to their domain. READ THE FULL TEXT

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

August 2, Thursday/3, Friday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus was all set to sail out of the port of Palos near Huelva in the mouth of the Guadalquivir River, but this day the 2nd was the 9th of the month of Ab in the lunar Hebrew calendar, the day of the destruction of the 1st Temple of Jerusalem in 586 BCE by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar and also the day of the destruction of the 2nd Temple of Jerusalem more than six and a half centuries later, by Roman legions in 70 CE. This was an inauspicious day, on which “no Jew would begin an enterprise.” For unstated reasons, Columbus waited to sail early on the following morning, before dawn on the 3rd of August. (There has been speculation by the Jewish historian Cecil Roth, that the family of Columbus had been a “New Christian” family, of Jews who had forcibly been converted and had subsequently migrated to Genoa, and that this was the real reason behind Columbus’s delay in raising his sails. However, if Columbus was such a “New Christian” wary of this scary Jewish anniversary, he was definitely not the only such person aboard the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, for in addition to his son Fernando Colon he was taking along with him another New Christian because of this man’s ability to speak Hebrew. Therefore, even if the superstition as to the date of August 2d were in play here –which doesn’t seem the case– it would not necessarily have been any personal trepidations on the part of Columbus himself that were controlling here.)

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August 3, Friday (Old Style): Cristóbal Colón, with the ships the Niña, the Pínta, and the Santa María and 119 men, departed Palos, Spain, traveling toward the west across the ocean to a new land that they would name Nuéva España and Tiérra Nova (New Spain and New Found Lands).

The 100-ton Santa María has a crew of 52.

Martín Alonso Pinzón, a shipowner, was part owner of the Niña and Pínta. Don Pinzón procured crews, prepared the ships and was commander of the Pínta during this expedition. Don Pinzón’s brother Vicente Yañez Pinzón commanded the Niña in 1492 and 1493 and remained with Cristóbal Colón throughout the expedition. Hempen sails, hempen caulking, and hempen rigging would help these little ships to reach the New World of their dreams. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673.

Christopher Columbus sent to discover the West- Indies by Ferdinando King of Arragon, and Isabella Queen of Castile, who descended from Edward the Third King of England.

The Caribby-Islands the Antilles or Canibal, or Camerean-Islands now discovered by Christopher Columbus, who took possession of Florida and Hispaniola for the King of Spain.

From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

The 100-ton Santa María has a crew of 52.

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673.

Christopher Columbus sent to discover the West- Indies by Ferdinando King of Arragon, and Isabella Queen of Castile, who descended from Edward the Third King of England.

The Caribby-Islands the Antilles or Canibal, or Camerean-Islands now discovered by Christopher Columbus, who took possession of Florida and Hispaniola for the King of Spain.

From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

September 6, Thursday (Old Style): The 3 tiny vessels of Christopher Columbus departed from Gomera in the Canary Islands after repair and refit.

September 20, Thursday (Old Style): At the Sargasso Sea, weather conditions changed. Christopher Columbus was keeping 2 different log books, the public one of which was intended to deceive the crew as to how far they were from home.

September 23, Sunday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus’s crews had become disgruntled, really truly disgruntled.

October 7, Sunday (Old Style): A landfall was reported, which turned out to be spurious.

October 11, Thursday (Old Style): The crews were just about resolved on mutiny. But then came another — “Land ho!”7

7. Actually it was 2AM when a guy name of Rodrígo de Triana glimpsed a couple of white cliffs on the dark horizon, so the date should be October 12th, Friday (Old Style), local time. We don’t now know which island of the Bahamas in particular it was that he had sighted but we do know that Captain Columbus awarded this dude a gold coin for his night vision. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 12, Friday (Old Style): There is no separate entry for this day either in the lying official log or in the fantastical private log of Christopher Columbus. The expedition landed at what Christopher Columbus called “San Salvador,” and the natives called “Guanahaní” (and may possibly be Watling Island in the Bahamas). It is not known for sure which island they had sighted although we now understand something that Columbus did not, that he had not actually reached the passage to India and China; however, it is known that he and some of his crew did get ashore on this date somewhere in the Caribbean. Columbus would immediately jot down a thought that came to his mind, that the people he was meeting “should make good servants.”

The people he was meeting were the graceful, handsome, and pleasant Bahamian Tainos. Noting that “They do not carry arms and have no knowledge of them,” our guy would soon be suggesting that “With fifty men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.” –Twelve years later, not a single person of that population of 40,000-odd graceful, handsome, and pleasant Americans would still exist. All would have died under the lash, laboring for the man, and their sole record of existence would be the hammock, and that loan-word in our European languages. Centuries later a faithful student of Harvard College Professor Louis Agassiz, W.K. Brooks, would obtain some of their skulls and derogate them as primitive and worthy of being dominated and exterminated. He would offer that the “outlines of the skulls have none of the softness and delicacy which characterizes those of the more civilized and gentle races of men,” men such as the Spaniards who dominated and exterminated these primitives who “could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.” I ... gave to some among them some red caps and some glass beads, which they hung round their necks, and many other things of little value. At this they were greatly pleased and became so entirely our friends that it was a wonder to see. Afterwards they came swimming to the ships’ boats, where we were, and brought us parrots and cotton thread in balls, and spears and many other things, and we exchanged for them other things, such as small glass beads and hawks’ bells, which we gave to them. In fact, they took all and gave all, such as they had.... They all go naked as their mothers bore them, and the women also, although I saw only one very young girl. And all those whom I did see were youths, so that I did not see one who was over thirty years of age; they were very well built, with very handsome bodies and very good faces. Their hair is coarse and short, almost like the hairs of a horse’s tail; they wear their HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

hair down over their eyebrows, except for a few strands behind which they wear long and never cut. Some of them are painted black, and they are the color of the people of the Canaries, neither black nor white, and some of them are painted white and some red and some in any color that they find.... They are all generally fairly tall, good looking and well proportioned. I saw some who bore marks of wounds on their bodies, and I made signs to them to ask how this came about, and they indicated to me that people had come from other islands, which are near, and wished to capture them, and they had defended themselves.... They should be good servants and of quick intelligence. Samuel Eliot Morison has commented on this that “to the intellectuals of Europe it seemed that Columbus had stepped back several millennia, and encountered people living in the Golden Age, that bright morning of humanity which existed only in the imagination of poets. Columbus’s discovery enabled Europeans to see their own ancestors, as it were, in a ‘state of nature,’ before Pandora’s box was opened. The ‘virtuous savage’ myth, which reached its height in the 18th Century, began at Guanahaní on October 12, 1492.”8

The great man (Columbus, not Morison) wrote in his journal about gifts offered by the natives: “the natives brought fruit, wooden spears, and certain dried leaves which gave off a distinct fragrance.” As each item seemed much-prized; Columbus accepted the gifts and ordered them brought back to the ship. The fruit they ate; the pungent “certain dried leaves,” presumably tobacco, they had the uncommon good sense to throw away.9

October 13, Saturday (Old Style): On this day Christopher Columbus saw parrots: “When Christopher Columbus sailed west from Palos across the Atlantic Ocean on his first voyage to the New World, he was in search of gold, silver, precious stones, spices, and silks. Instead, he found parrots.” — Bruce Thomas Boehrer PARROT CULTURE: OUR 2,500-YEAR-LONG FASCINATION WITH THE WORLD’S MOST TALKATIVE BIRD Philadelphia PA: U of Pennsylvania P, 2004, page 50

October 17, Wednesday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus became aware of the existence of the island of San Salvador. (It had been there all along, more or less unnoticed except by the people who had noticed.)

8. Professor Morison was the last Harvard historian to ride a horse to work. He taught the young Harvard men while attired in riding breeches. He refused to teach the Radcliffe girls because girls are so frivolous. He believed so passionately that the writing of history was an art that, when interrupted at his desk by the barking of a dog, he shot the dog. After WWII he taught while attired in an Admiral’s uniform. 9. Unfortunately for us, our attitude would change. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

October 28, Sunday-November 6, Tuesday (Old Style): During this timeframe Christopher Columbus would be becoming aware of the existence of the island of Cuba. (It had been there all along, more or less unnoticed except by the people who had noticed.) As 1st actual observation of the use of tobacco by the natives, by Europeans, the natives were seen to be holding a tizón, or firebrand, made of yerbas, or plant substance, in their hands while inhaling the smoke.

October 29, Monday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus landed on Cuba, claiming it for Spain.

November: Rodrígo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, in Cuba searching for the Khan of Cathay (China), are credited as being the 1st white men to observe the act of smoking tobacco. They reported that they witnessed natives10 wrapping dried leaves in palm or maize “in the manner of a musket formed of paper.” They saw them light one end, then commence “drinking” the smoke through the other (they weren’t making this up, Bob Newhart would insist in “Button Down Comedy”). Jerez became a confirmed smoker, and is thought to be the first outside of the Americas. When he brought the habit back to his hometown, the smoke billowing from his mouth and nose so frightened his neighbors that he would for 7 years be imprisoned for this “devilish habit” by the holy inquisitors — by the time he would be released, smoking would have become a Spanish craze (just think of how Bob Newhart would have spun that one, pretending that he’d just gotten out of jail after being there 7 years for smoking –and was noticing a bunch of people, smoking: “Hey, excuse me, are you sure you should be doing that?”).

November 11, Sunday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus had 5 young male savages forcibly seized when they visited the ship, to be taken back and taught Spanish and then properly interrogated as to “what is in the land.” He ordered his men to raid a house from which “they brought back seven head of women [cabezas de mugeres], small and large and three children.”

November 22, Thursday (Old Style): Martín Alonso Pinzón, captain of the Pinta, deserted the Columbus expedition off Cuba.

December 1, Saturday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus sailed toward a large island the local Arawaks knew about, which they termed Haiti but which he would redesignate as La Isla Española, or Hispaniola.

10. As it would turn out, these weren’t Chinamen at all! –As it would turn out, all the Chinamen were someplace else doing something else at the time. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

December 6, Thursday (Old Style): Scouting Europeans first sighted a large island which they would like to have, which the local Arawaks knew as Haiti but which Christopher Columbus would redesignate La Isla Española, or Hispaniola.11 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

11. The western portion of this island would later be ceded to the French under the name Saint-Domingue, and would eventually loom like a large dark cloud on the horizon of the hegemonic history of the Western Hemisphere, as a free kingdom again known as Haiti. But all this is later, as is the reputation of the “discoverer.” It would not be until 1552 that it would be suggested (by Francisco López de Gómara to King Charles V) that the conquest of the Americas had been the most significant event since the divine Creation of the universe, or, at least, since the first Coming of Christ. For the longest time, only a rather small group of

Spanish intellectuals and bureaucrats would have any interest in this crazed figure, Christopher the Christ Carrier, who supposed the hill of the Garden of Eden to be at the origin of every strong ocean current which he encountered. the half-mythicized faces of America, such as that of the Emperor Montezuma (Motechuzoma), quite overshadowed him for the time being.

Ethnicity gave Columbus a lobby, a prerequisite to public success in US culture. The 1850 census reported only 3,679 individuals of Italian birth. Yet by 1866, Italian-Americans, organized by the Sharpshooters’ Association of New York, celebrated the landfall and, within three years, annual festivities were being held in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Boston, Cincinnati, New Orleans, and San Francisco on or around October 12. Italians and Spaniards were just not enough, however, to turn this celebration into a national practice. Fortunately, ethnicity gave Columbus a second –and more numerous– group of lobbyists, Irish-Americans. By 1850, there were already 962,000 Americans claiming Irish descent. Many of them regrouped in organizations like the Knights of Columbus, a fraternal society for Catholic males founded in 1881. In less than ten years, community support and the institutional patronage of the Catholic church swelled the Knights’ membership. As the association spread in the northeast with the backing of prominent Irish-Americans, it increasingly emphasized the shaping of “citizen culture.” Columbus HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

December 25, Tuesday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria, sank off Haiti, La Isla Española or Hispaniola. Of necessity, the adventurers used its timbers to construct ashore a fort they termed La Navidad.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

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1493

Did Christopher Columbus and his men introduce syphilis into Italy? (So goes a mid-16th-century theory concerning the source of the deadly syphilis epidemic that ravaged Europe during Winter 1493/1494. The modern theory is that this was simply a coincidental development of an exceptionally deadly permutation of an ancient disease.)

However, there’s no question but that Columbus brought back some hot stuff! Peter Martyr would relate that he brought “pepper more pungent than that from the Caucasus.” (These capsicum peppers were introduced into Spain in 1493, known in England by 1548, and grown in Central Europe as early as 1585.) PLANTS

The Spanish Sovereigns granted the Admiral from Castille, Cristóbal Colón, the right to bear arms, which is to say, permission to wear the sword of nobility. From this year into 1499 he would be exploring the rim of the Caribbean in 3 voyages. He had brought sugar cane and cucumbers from the Canary Islands to Hispaniola at Santo Domingo. His father-in-law owned a sugar plantation on Madeira.

January 16, day (Old Style): Christopher Columbus began his return journey to Spain in the Niña and the Pinta.

February 14, Thursday (Old Style): The Niña and the Pinta were separated during a fierce storm.

February 15, Friday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus, aboard the Niña, sighted Santa Maria Island in the Azores. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 4, Monday (Old Style): The Niña carrying Christopher Columbus was driven by a cyclone into the port of Lisbon, Portugal. With him he brought a few artifacts, some plants, and 10 strange red slaves. The first thing he did was post a package to Rey Ferdinand and Regina Isabella of España, under a cover letter that has since been lost. Presumably the cover letter was an announcement that his and her majesty’s faithful servant had intrepidly sailed west to the Islands of India beyond the Ganges River, on the opposite side of the earth, and had then retraced his steps, by sailing east. Of course, as any magician might have advised him, a demonstration voyage of this nature could have been more impressive had he had the sense to depart in a westerly direction and then appear from the east, or, as any court adviser might have advised him, to return with a ridiculous ballast consisting of gold lumps — but never you mind, he did bring slaves.

March 5, Tuesday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus arrived at Palos in Spain aboard the Niña bringing his news of a New World.

March 15, Friday (Old Style): The Niña and the Pinta arrived separately at Palos, Spain. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 3, Friday (Old Style): The Spanish Pope, Pope Alexander VI, formerly Rodrigo Borgia of Spain (that’s Jeremy Irons, to all you TV buffs), issued the bull INTER CETERA DIVINA confirming Spanish claims to all lands “discovered” or “to be discovered” in the Western Ocean.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

May 4, Saturday (Old Style): By running his finger down a line of longitude on a map, Pope Alexander VI assigned a Demarcation Line 100 leagues west of the Azores dividing the non-Christian world between Spain and Portugal (Spain was to have everything west of the line, Portugal everything to the east). This not only provided these white adventurers with a way to keep at least temporarily out of each other’s hair, but also ordered these “God-fearing” men to “instruct the inhabitants in the Catholic faith.”12

This would turn out to be a really really good deal for Portugal, because nobody was able to measure longitude very well at sea in those days and that map line would in consequence turn out to have been drawn way, way to far to the west. Without intending to, this “Spanish Pope” had effectively given away almost all of South America, to Portugal.

12. “Guys, we gotta have a cover story.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673. Alexander the Sixt Pope of Rome a Spaniard, took upon him to divide the world by his Bull, betwixt the Portingal and the Spaniard, bearing date the fourth of May, Giving to the one the East, and to the other the West-Indies.

St. Jean Porto Rico discovered by Christopher Columbus, Cuba and Jamaica discovered by him, this was his second voyage. From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent.

September 25, Saturday (Old Style): From Cádiz, Christopher Columbus sailed on his 2d expedition to the New World. This time he brought 17 ships and 1,500 men, including missionaries, soldiers such as Juan Ponce de Leon, and laborers. In addition to agricultural equipment, cattle, and seeds, there were about a hundred stowaways.

October 13, Sunday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus departed from Hierro (Canary Islands), sailing WSW.

November 3, Sunday (Old Style): The expedition of Christopher Columbus sighted the island of Dominica at dawn, and the island of Guadeloupe shortly thereafter.

November 11, Monday (Old Style): The expedition of Christopher Columbus sighted the islands of Montserrat and St. Martins (I’m not certain when he sighted Antigua gave it the name Santa Maria de la Antigua).

November 19, Tuesday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus became aware of the existence of the island of Puerto Rico. (It had been there all along, more or less unnoticed except by the people who had noticed.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

November 22, Friday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus completed his return to the island of Haiti, which he had redesignated as La Isla Española or Hispaniola. On this trip he was bringing with him the seed of the lemon tree, the lime tree, and the sweet orange tree. He was also introducing sugar cane to the island (by 1516 the first processed sugar would be shipping from Santo Domingo to Spain; soon after that Portugal would begin importing sugar from Brazil and so sugar cane would become, as we know, a driving force for the African slave trade). PLANTS

November 28, Thursday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus arrived at La Navidad on Haiti, La Isla Española or Hispaniola only to discover that his fort there, constructed from the remains of his flagship the Santa Maria, had been destroyed.

December 8, Sunday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus founded, on the large island the Taino referred to as Haiti, which he was referring to as La Isla Española or Hispaniola, the new colony of La Isabela. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1494

Christopher Columbus introduced cucumbers and other vegetables from Europe to Haiti. Columbus’s physician, Chanea, described Mexican capsicums (red peppers). PLANTS HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Romano Pane, the friar who was accompanying Christopher Columbus, recorded that “Indians” were using tobacco by reducing it to a powder that “they take through a cane half a cubit long: one end of this they place in the nose, and the other upon the powder.”

An undated letter from Christopher Columbus to the King and Queen of Spain, presumably delivered in this year: Most High and Mighty Sovereigns, In obedience to your Highnesses’ commands, and with submission to superior judgment, I will say whatever occurs to me in reference to the colonization and commerce of the Island of Espanola, and of the other islands, both those already discovered and those that may be discovered hereafter. In the first place, as regards the Island of Espanola: Inasmuch as the number of colonists who desire to go thither amounts to two thousand, owing to the land being safer and better for farming and trading, and because it will serve as a place to which they can return and from which they can carry on trade with the neighboring islands: 1. That in the said island there shall be founded three or four towns, situated in the most convenient places, and that the settlers who are there be assigned to the aforesaid places and towns. 2. That for the better and more speedy colonization of the said island, no one shall have liberty to collect gold in it except those who have taken out colonists’ papers, and have built houses for their abode, in the town in which they are, that they may live united and in greater safety. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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3. That each town shall have its alcalde [Mayor] ... and its notary public, as is the use and custom in Castile. 4. That there shall he a church, and parish priests or friars to administer the sacraments, to perform divine worship, and for the conversion of the Indians. 5. That none of the colonists shall go to seek gold without a license from the governor or alcalde of the town where he lives; and that he must first take oath to return to the place whence he sets out, for the purpose of registering faithfully all the gold he may have found, and to return once a month, or once a week, as the time may have been set for him, to render account and show the quantity of said gold; and that this shall be written down by the notary before the alcalde, or, if it seems better, that a friar or priest, deputed for the purpose, shall be also present 6. That all the gold thus brought in shall be smelted immediately, and stamped with some mark that shall distinguish each town; and that the portion which belongs to your Highnesses shall be weighed, and given and consigned to each alcalde in his own town, and registered by the above-mentioned priest or friar, so that it shall not pass through the hands of only one person, and there shall he no opportunity to conceal the truth. 7. That all gold that may be found without the mark of one of the said towns in the possession of any one who has once registered in accordance with the above order shall be taken as forfeited, and that the accuser shall have one portion of it and your Highnesses the other. 8. That one per centum of all the gold that may be found shall be set aside for building churches and adorning the same, and for the support of the priests or friars belonging to them; and, if it should be thought proper to pay any thing to the alcaldes or notaries for their services, or for ensuring the faithful perforce of their duties, that this amount shall be sent to the governor or treasurer who may be appointed there by your Highnesses. 9. As regards the division of the gold, and the share that ought to be reserved for your Highnesses, this, in my opinion, must be left to the aforesaid governor and treasurer, because it will have to be greater or less according to the quantity of gold that may be found. Or, should it seem preferable, your Highnesses might, for the space of one year, take one half, and the collector the other, and a better arrangement for the division be made afterward. 10. That if the said alcaldes or notaries shall commit or be privy to any fraud, punishment shall be provided, and the same for the colonists who shall not have declared all the gold they have. 11. That in the said island there shall be a treasurer, with a clerk to assist him, who shall receive all the gold belonging HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

to your Highnesses, and the alcaldes and notaries of the towns shall each keep a record of what they deliver to the said treasurer. 12. As, in the eagerness to get gold, every one will wish, naturally, to engage in its search in preference to any other employment, it seems to me that the privilege of going to look for gold ought to be withheld during some portion of each year, that there may be opportunity to have the other business necessary for the island performed. 13. In regard to the discovery of new countries, I think permission should be granted to all that wish to go, and more liberality used in the matter of the fifth, making the tax easier, in some fair way, in order that many may be disposed to go on voyages. I will now give my opinion about ships going to the said Island of Espanola, and the order that should be maintained; and that is, that the said ships should only be allowed to discharge in one or two ports designated for the purpose, and should register there whatever cargo they bring or unload; and when the time for their departure comes, that they should sail from these same ports, and register all the cargo they take in, that nothing may be concealed. — In reference to the transportation of gold from the island to Castile, that all of it should be taken on board the ship, both that belonging to your Highnesses and the property of every one else; that it should all be placed in one chest with two locks, with their keys, and that the master of the vessel keep one key and some person selected by the governor and treasurer the other; that there should come with the gold, for a testimony, a list of all that has been put into the said chest, properly marked, so that each owner may receive his own; and that, for the faithful performance of this duty, if any gold whatsoever is found outside of the said chest in any way, be it little or much, it shall be forfeited to your Highnesses. — That all the ships that come from the said island shall be obliged to make their proper discharge in the port of Cadiz, and that no person shall disembark or other person be permitted to go on board until the ship has been visited by the person or persons deputed for that purpose, in the said city, by your Highnesses, to whom the master shall show all that he carries, and exhibit the manifest of all the cargo, it may be seen and examined if the said ship brings any thing hidden and not known at the time of lading. — That the chest in which the said gold has been carried shall be opened in the presence of the magistrates of the said city of Cadiz, and of the person deputed for that purpose by your Highnesses, and his own property be given HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to each owner. - I beg your Highnesses to hold me in your protection; and I remain, praying our Lord God for your Highnesses’ lives and the increase of much greater States.

February 2, Sunday (1493, Old Style): The 1st convoy of 12 ships bearing 500 Carib native Americans Christopher Columbus had taken in wars with the Caciques departed from the large island that Columbus had redesignated La Isla Española or Hispaniola (the one the Tainos termed Haiti). They were to be sold as slavery in Seville, Spain. Queen Isabella would suspend the royal order for their sale and request an inquiry into the lawfulness of the sale. Theologians would differ on the lawfulness of the sale. The Caribs eventually would be shipped back to their home. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

April 30, Wednesday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus arrived at Cuba. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

May 3, Saturday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus became aware of the existence of the island of Jamaica. (It had been there all along, more or less unnoticed except by the people who had noticed.)

May 4, Sunday/5, Monday (Old Style): The Arawak would be unable to absorb the impact of the Spanish under the ruthless Christopher Columbus. The first white settlement would be established at Seville Nueva near St. Ann’s Bay, but the intrusives would soon relocate their capital across the island to present-day Spanish Town. Finding no precious metals, the Spanish would pay scant attention to their Jamaica colony.

May 14, Wednesday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus returned to Cuba.

June 7, Saturday (Old Style): In an agreement known as the Treaty of Tordesillas, the dividing line between the new territories of Spain and of Portugal was relocated by mutual consent to a point 370 degrees west of the Cape Verde Island (supposedly halfway between these lands and Antillia).

June 13, Friday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus started the return to La Isabela on Haiti, La Isla Española or Hispaniola. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

September 22, Monday (Old Style): The long-lost “Fourth Bull of 1494,” issued secretly by the Spanish Pope, virtually abolished the Demarcation Line and granted to Spain the right to the entirety of the New World. (Satanic Verses, anyone? — maybe the devil whispered in Jeremy Irons’s ear.)

September 29, Monday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus arrived at La Isabela on Haiti, La Isla Española or Hispaniola dangerously ill and in a stupor.

October 20, Monday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus reached Haiti, La Isla Española or Hispaniola.

“HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE.

The People of WALDEN: “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1496

March 10, Thursday (1495, Old Style): Christopher Columbus departed from La Isabela on the coast of Hispaniola for Spain.

June 8, Wednesday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus reached the coast of Portugal. He had been gone this time 1 for 2 years, 8 /2 months, and was returning with pineapple

and with allspice (not having ever seen whole peppercorns, he was supposing this berry to be pepper). PLANTS HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1497

Robert Pane, who had accompanied Christopher Columbus on his 2d voyage in 1493, made the 1st report of native tobacco use to appear in Europe.

King Henry VII of England commissioned an Italian sea-captain, Giovanni Caboto of the Matthew out of Bristol harbor, a classic 15th-Century caravelle, to sail west and claim new lands for England.

The voyager would blunder upon an unexpected new land — not the Orient, as Caboto had anticipated, but the eastern coast of an immense new-found continent. His map has not survived. CARTOGRAPHY

Caboto would go down in history as John Cabot, the explorer who claimed the “New Founde Land” for a British King. Cabot planted the English flag on what is now Cape Bauld, Newfoundland. On a subsequent voyage in 1498, Cabot would enter Hudson Bay at 64°N. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

The Micmac and the Beothuk tribespeoples on Newfoundland were probably the 1st native Americans to have regular contact with Europeans. Arguably, Cabot wasn’t the 1st European to arrive on these shores, as Basque cod fishermen seem to have been visiting the Grand Banks even before Christopher Columbus’s voyage in 1492 — but had been keeping exceedingly mum about where it was that they were finding all their marvelous finny fish.13 At least four centuries earlier even than that, 11th-Century Norse Vikings may well have landed at L’Anse aux Meadows, and legend has it that an Irish monk, St. Brendan, landed in Newfoundland four centuries before those Vikings. Whatever, John Cabot’s voyage for King Henry VII in 1497 did mark the beginning of an era — British colonization of the New World. The 1st interracial contact presently of record was made in this year by Captain John Cabot who would take three Micmac with him when he returned to England. It may well be that the Micmac did not appreciate the captain’s services as a tour guide, since in the same area during his 2d voyage a few years later this explorer would disappear from our radar scopes.

13. The Atlantic cod Gadus morhua, is a demersal gadoid species distributed in the Northwest Atlantic from Greenland to North Carolina. Sexual maturity is attained between ages 2 to 4 and spawning occurs during winter and early spring. The cod is an omnivorous feeder and commonly attained lengths up to 51 inches and weights up to 55 to 77 pounds. Maximum age can be in excess of 20 years, although due to severe overfishing young fish (ages 2 to 5) now generally constitute the bulk of a catch. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Chronological observations of America

Christopher Columbus his third voyage to the to the year of Christ 1673. West-Indies, and now he discovered the Countreys of Paria and Cumana, with the Islands of Cubagua and Margarita.

John Cabota and his Son Sebastian Cabota sent by Henry the Seventh, to discover the West-Indies, which they performed from the Cape of Florida to the 67 degree and a half of Northerly latitude, being said by some to be the first that discovered Florida, Virginia, and New-found-land. From the year of World Vasques de Gama his voyage to Africa.

BY John Josselyn Gent.

FLORIDA HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

March 31, Friday (Old Style): We believe that no Jew was left anywhere on the Iberian peninsula after the expulsion of this date, except for the forced “New Christian” converso converts to Christianity who would be persecuted in the Inquisition. ANTISEMITISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1498

Infanta Isabella of Spain died while giving birth to her son.

Christopher Columbus, on his 3d voyage, found the mouth of the Orinoco River.(It was right there where it always had been.)

The Spanish shipped some 600 Caribs to Spain to be sold as slaves. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

May 30, Wednesday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus departed from Sanlucar, Spain with 6 ships, on his 3d expedition to the New World.

June 19, Tuesday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus arrived at Gomera in the Canary Islands and divided his fleet into 2 squadrons.

July 4, Wednesday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus departed from the Cape Verde Islands on his 3d voyage of New World exploration.

July 31, Tuesday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus became aware of the existence of the island of Trinidad, and then Tobago (the Cape Verde Islands had been there all along, more or less unnoticed except by the people who had noticed). He crossed over to the mainland of South America, where he saw pearls (around someone’s neck?).

August 5, Sunday (Old Style): Bartolome Colon (Bartholomew Columbus, Christopher Columbus’s brother) had established a settlement on the south coast of the island of Hispaniola, on the east bank of Ozama River, but on this day, a hurricane and subsequent earthquakes having just destroyed this “Nueva Isabela,” he established a new settlement on the west bank of that same river at the location of present-day Santo Domingo).

August 13, Monday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus left the Gulf of Paria, for Margartia. Soon his sailors would sight the island the Caribs referred to as “Camerhogue,” and he would rename it “Isla de Concepción” (later the island would come to be referred to by the Spanish as “Granada” because of a resemblance to that district in Spain, but due to the fierce hostility of the Caribs, no whites would be able to maintain themselves on the island until a French expedition would arrive from Martinique in 1650; these settlers would refer to the island as “La Grenade,” from which the British would derive “Grenada”).

August 19, Sunday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus arrived at Hispaniola. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1499

August 23, Friday (Old Style): Amerigo Vespucci developed a complicated calculational method by which a mariner might establish his ship’s longitude on a clear, calm night, to within two degrees, using nothing more than his astrolabe, the moon and Mars and the stars, a book of astronomical tables, a great deal of patience, and his own

reckoning. If the mariner had the time and the intelligence and the resources, he could do far better by this calculational method than by any method of dead reckoning. By use of this method Vespucci was able to determine that Christopher Columbus was incorrect –that this shore was not somewhere in the East Indies – that indeed this shore was positioned so that it had to be the shore of an entire different and unknown continent. This plus the crossing of the Isthmus of Panama would bring the end of the notion that there was but one major ocean, the Ocean Sea. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1500

August 23, Sunday (Old Style): Francisco de Bobadilla landed on Hispaniola at Santo Domingo with the idea that Christopher Columbus and his brothers had set themselves up as monarchs. He had them put in irons, to be sent home in chains.

October: Christopher Columbus was repatriated in irons to Spain on charges of having mistreated the natives of Hispaniola (he would be “rehabilitated”).

At the end of this year and during the following one Christopher Columbus would be on his 4th and final expedition to the islands he had discovered in the Western Ocean, while Gaspar de Corte-Real of Portugal would be exploring the east coast of Newfoundland and possibly Labrador.

Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673. CARTOGRAPHY

Christopher Columbus his fourth and last voyage to the West-Indies.

Jasper Corteriaglis a Portugal, his voyage to discover the North-West passage, he discovered Greenland, or Terra Corteriaglis, or Terra di Laborodoro.

From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1501

The Micmac and the Beothuk tribespeoples on Newfoundland were probably the 1st native Americans to have regular contact with Europeans. This may have begun as early as the 11th century with early Viking settlements along the coast, or perhaps with Basque cod fishermen who were visiting the Grand Banks before Christopher Columbus’s voyage in 1492 — but kept very quiet about where it was that they were finding all their marvelous finny fish. The 1st interracial contact presently of record had been made in 1497 by Captain John Cabot who had taken three Micmac with him when he returned to England. It may well be that the Micmac did not appreciate Cabot’s services as a tour guide, since in the same area during his 2d voyage a few years later this explorer quite disappeared from our radar scopes. Contact between Micmac and Europeans had, however, become quite routine immediately afterwards. Beginning in this year, Basque, Spanish, French, British, and Irish fishing boats would be visiting the Grand Banks every summer. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Although the Moors in Grenada continue to resist the Spanish army, Ferdinand declared Grenada to be a Christian kingdom. Your dusky asses belong to us.

Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673.

Americus Vesputius a Florentine imployed by the King of Castile and Portingal, to discover the West-Indies, named from him Seven year after Columbus, America.

From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent.

When African slaves were introduced into Hispaniola at Santo Domingo by Spanish settlers, this was the 1st importation of African slaves into the Americas. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

“When one is happy in forgetfulness, facts get forgotten.” — Robert Pen Warren, 1961 THE LEGACY OF THE CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1502

THE BOOK OF PRIVILEGES: A collection of agreements between Admiral of the Oceans Cristóbal Colón and the King and Queen of Spain at the beginning of his 4th and final voyage. From this year into 1504 Columbus would be reaching what was to become Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia. The Admiral’s ships would pass near St. Vincent and nearby smaller islands of The Grenadines but make no attempt to settle Europeans there.

Nicolas de Ovando, governor of Santo Domingo on Hispaniola, obtained the permit he needed to transport slaves born in Seville and other parts of Spain to that remote New World island — a permission that was being granted, of course, on condition that these slaves had previously received instruction in Christianity.

After Arawak slaves prove unable to survive the combination of overwork and unfamiliar Eurasian diseases, the Spanish start shipping disease-resistant West African slaves to the West Indies. By 1511, European merchants operating out of Sao Tomè and Mbanza would have turned slave-trading into big business. The way it worked was that African monarchs waged war on their neighbors and then marched their prisoners of war to the coast to trade them for glass, metal, cloth, liquor, and other manufactured goods. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

It wouldn’t be just these black slaves originating in Africa that would find new lives on this new continent. It seems that the Europeans also would introduce, in the Lesser Antilles entirely by accident, the big-headed Pheidole megacephala ant, also out of Africa.

May 11, Wednesday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus departed from Cadiz, Spain with 4 ships on his 4th and final expedition to the New World.

June 29, Wednesday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus arrived at Santo Domingo, Hispaniola.

July 1, Friday (Old Style): A hurricane struck the island of Hispaniola. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

July 30, Saturday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus landed on the Mosquito Coast, what is now Nicaragua, and there encountered cocoa — but did not find this heavily spiced bitter local drink to be of much interest. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1503

An incident occurred which has been recorded in part by Bartolome de las Casas, in part by a cave painting on the island of Hispaniola, and which closely resembles in its development the “Boston Massacre” of 1770. One of the first major clashes between the intrusive Spaniards under Christopher Columbus and the peaceful Taion tribe of Arawak natives of that island came about as an intensification of a mistake which was made while, in accordance with treaty, native-produced bread was being loaded aboard a galleon. It happened in the

following manner, a manner similar to that in which someone would shout “Fire!” in Boston: the attack dog being held by a Spaniard was becoming excited at the close proximity of the natives it had been trained to regard as its prey, and another Spaniard jokingly shouted out the attack command “Tomalo!” As the dog lunged the handler lost his grip on the leash and a Taion nearby was instantly disemboweled. This man happening to have been a minor chief, shortly afterward the natives retaliated by killing a few of the Spaniards, whereupon the garrison at Santo Domingo sent an expedition into the region and in a major battle killed perhaps 7,000 natives. After the battle they lined up the corpses in long rows, carrying off the hands.

January 9, Monday (1502, Old Style): Christopher Columbus established a garrison at Rio Belen.

April 6, Thursday (Old Style): The garrison at Rio Belen, attacked by natives, was abandoned.

April 16, Sunday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus left Rio Belen for home.

May: The Cayman Islands were sighted, and claimed for Spain. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

June 25, Sunday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus beached and abandoned his ships at Jamaica, marooning the crews. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1504

February 29, Thursday (1503, Old Style): Christopher Columbus, stranded by shipworms on the island of Jamaica, enabled his people in their abuse of the natives — by looking up in his copy of the ALMANACH PERPETUUM of Abraham Zacuto of Salamanca (an astrological guide created in 1478 in Hebrew to help pious Jews calculate the night of the new moon, translated into Latin in about 1494 by Joseph Vizinho of Lisbon) the date of the next partial lunar eclipse. He demonstrated for the amazement of these locals that white men were just awesome, in possession of a power to produce, and then dispel, a supernatural darkness of the moon.14 ASTRONOMY

June 29, Saturday (Old Style): A stranded crew of white men was rescued from Jamaica.

November 7, Thursday (Old Style): Christopher Columbus returned to Spain at the end of his final expedition to the New World.

14. I find it difficult to believe that this actually happened, or if it did happen, that it was anywhere near as simple a matter as here recounted. For one thing, this Regiomontanus almanac was of course one that had been prepared for Europe by someone who had no information about the longitudes and latitudes of the American continents. How then is this tale of the white man’s scholarly prowess even remotely plausible?

The story has been passed to us not by Columbus himself, but by his son Fernando. If Ferdinand’s story is true, the father had made a major error in his calculations, due to the different times of high noon at various longitudes around the globe, an error of fully two and one half hours. The eclipse table used gave the time of the midpoint of the eclipse at Nurenberg, and Columbus did not did not have much idea precisely where he was on the globe). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1506

May 20, Wednesday (Old Style): Having helped so many people to die, Christopher Columbus himself died.

Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673.

Christopher Columbus dyed.

From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent.

The body would be interred in Valladolid, Spain, but these remains would become at least as well traveled as the explorer himself — the burial would later be moved to a monastery at Seville –and then in 1542 moved again to Santo Domingo, Hispaniola –and then again in 1795 to Havana, Cuba. (Finally in 1898 some remains supposed to be the correct ones would be repatriated back to Seville.) DIGGING UP THE DEAD

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of WALD HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1513

Andrés Bernáldez died and, we have reason to believe, was interred at the Parroquia Mayor of Santa María la Blanca in the town of Los Palacios y Villafranca, Spain.

At some point, we don’t know exactly when, known as the “Curate of Palacios,” he had become chaplain to Diego de Deza, Archbishop of Seville.

At some point, we don’t know exactly when, he had authored HISTORIA DE LOS REYES CATÓLICOS DON FERNANDO Y DOÑA ISABEL, a volume in which we can find information about the capture of Granada, about the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, and about the background of his friend Christopher Columbus AKA Cristobal Colón. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1552

It was suggested in this year, by Francisco López de Gómara to King Charles V, that the conquest of the Americas that began with Christopher Columbus had constituted the most significant event since the divine Creation of the universe, or, at least, since the first Coming of Christ. Gosh — that grand, huh?

“The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore. Many would happily move to somewhere smaller of their own devising, and this what most beings in fact do.” — Douglas Adams (from LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING, the 3rd book of the HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY “trilogy in five parts”) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Nevertheless, for the longest time, only a rather small group of Spanish intellectuals and bureaucrats would have any interest in this crazed figure, Christopher the Christ Carrier, who had supposed the hill of the Garden of Eden to be at the origin of every strong ocean current which he had encountered. The half-mythicized faces of America, such as that of the Emperor Montezuma (Motechuzoma), would for the time being quite overshadow this genocidal figure:

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1555

At the beginning of the 15th Century Anno Domini, Pierre d’Ailly had speculated that 6,845 years of human history had already passed and that the end of the world might be anticipated to be in its 7,000th year — the speculations of this French theologian had influenced the apocalyptic thinking of such metaphysicians as Christopher Columbus (McIver, Tom. THE END OF THE WORLD: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY. Jefferson NC: McFarlane & Co., 1999 #72). MILLENNIALISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1658

On the island of Tobago in the Caribbean, Courlander settlers were overpowered by the Dutch.

In his THE BOOK OF PROPHECIES, Christopher Columbus had maintained that the world had been created in 5,343 BCE and would endure for a total of 7,000 years (in this speculation Columbus had been under the influence of Pierre d’Ailly). Assuming that there would have been no Year Zero, this calculation indicated that the end would come in this Year of Our Lord 1658 (McIver, Tom. THE END OF THE WORLD: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY. Jefferson NC: McFarlane & Co., 1999 #77). HERE COME DA JUDGE! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1768

Since it is clear that Henry Thoreau would have access to this volume: here are the pages, out of ANEW UNIVERSAL COLLECTION OF AUTHENTIC AND ENTERTAINING VOYAGES AND TRAVELS, FROM THE EARLIEST ACCOUNTS TO THE PRESENT TIME, that pertains to the voyages of discovery of Christopher Columbus. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

(Here, also, is the complete text of that sourcebook.) PERUSE THE ENTIRE BOOK! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1812

George Waddington was admitted as a scholar at Trinity College of Cambridge University. His poem “Columbus” won in a competition sponsored by Gentleman’s Magazine. WADDINGTON’S COLUMBUS HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1813

July: At Trinity College of Cambridge University, George Waddington was named as the Davies’s University Scholar, and for his poem “Columbus” he was named as the 1st Chancellor’s Gold Medallist (Prince William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, in his capacity as Chancellor of Cambridge University, presented this gold medal to him, and then on Commencement Day he would be asked to read his poem aloud in it entirety at the Senate House). WADDINGTON’S COLUMBUS • 1813 — George Waddington, for “Columbus.” • 1814 — William Whewell, for “Boadicea.” • 1815 — Edward Smirke, for “Wallace.” • 1816 — Hamilton Sydney Beresford, for “Mahomet.” • 1817 — Chauncy Hare Townshend, for “Jerusalem.” • 1818 — Charles Edward Long, for “Imperial and Papal Rome.” • 1819 — Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, for “Pompeii.” • 1821 — Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, for “Evening.” • 1823 — Winthrop Mackworth Praed, for “Australasia.” • 1824 — Winthrop Mackworth Praed, for “Athens.” • 1825 — Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, for “Sculpture.” • 1827 — Christopher Wordsworth, for “The Druids.” • 1828 — Christopher Wordsworth, for “Invasion of Russia by Napoleon Bonaparte.” • 1829 — Alfred, 1st Baron Tennyson, for “Timbuctoo.” • 1831 — George Stovin Venables, for “Attempts to find a North West Passage.” • 1842 — Henry James Sumner Maine, for “Birth of the Prince of Wales.” • 1844 — Edward Henry Bickersteth, for “The Tower of London.” • 1845 — Edward Henry Bickersteth, for “Caubul.” • 1846 — Edward Henry Bickersteth, for “Caesar’s Invasion of Britain.” • 1852 — Frederic William Farrar, for “The Arctic Regions.” • HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1816

In declaring a town named Columbus to be the new seat of government of the State of Ohio, no mention of any sort was made by any participant of any 15th-Century Genoese navigator. Although one newspaper account we have found does mention the status of the USA as a “Columbian Republic,” other than this the gazettes seem to have made no reference to any eponymous Italian. (Even as recently as 1873, any connection with a Christopher Columbus would have been regarded as historically quite irrelevant. It would only be in 1892, the quadricentennial, that Columbus would begin to be brought to the fore, at the Chicago World’s Fair.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1826

Washington Irving accepted the invitation of Alexander H. Everett to attach himself to the American legation in Granada, Spain. His idea was that he would translate the materials about the discoveries of Christopher Columbus that were currently being published in 4 volumes in Madrid by the naval historian Martín Fernández de Navarrete y Ximénez de Tejada as COLECCIÓN DE LOS VIAJES Y DESCUBRIMIENTOS QUE HICIERON POR MAR LOS ESPAÑOLES DESDE FINES DEL SIGLO XV: CON VAR IOS DOCUMENTOS INÉDITOS CONCERNIENTES Á LA HISTORIA DE LA MARINA CASTELLANA Y DE LOS ESTABLECIMIENTOS ESPAÑOLES EN INDIAS. FERNÁNDEZ DE NAVARETTE I FERNÁNDEZ DE NAVARETTE II FERNÁNDEZ DE NAVARETTE III FERNÁNDEZ DE NAVARETTE IV HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1828

Washington Irving’s 3-volume fiction LIFE AND VOYAGES OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, boldly termed a biography of Christopher Columbus, boldly proclaimed the earth to be a globe, against the folly of a putative medieval consensus proclaiming the earth to be flat like the floor of a tent. 1 2

4 3 Photographic proof... (The four corners have been arbitrarily numbered clockwise.) “Care should be taken to vindicate great names from pernicious erudition.” This of course would help our Know-Nothings vastly to elaborate their contempt for different others (well, that is, if they needed any help): HDT WHAT? INDEX

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WASHINGTON IRVING AND THE SPECTRE OF THE “FLAT-EARTHER” RELIGIOUS BIGOT Where did this preposterous rationalist conceit originate, that some superstitious religious people had believed that the earth was flat? If one really wants to ascribe such a geographical conception to early Christians, one can find flat-earth theories both in Lactantius (circa 265CE-345CE) and Cosmos Indicopleustes (circa 540CE), but by the Middle Ages neither of these authors were being taken at all seriously.1 What was the dominant intellectual movement of the High Middle Ages? Scholasticism. What ancient Greek author was idolized as “The Philosopher” by the Scholastics? Aristotle. And what had been Aristotle’s views on the shape of the Earth? In DE CÆLO 2:14, he had offered at least three arguments why the Earth must be spherical. First, if all falling objects are attracted to the center of the Earth, the accumulation of debris landing at the Earth’s center would naturally assume the shape of a sphere. Secondly, the Earth’s shadow, as projected on the Moon during lunar eclipses, is clearly an arc- segment of a circle. Given enough observations of such eclipses, the shape of the Earth’s shadow would be revealed as circular. Since spheres cast circular shadows, and the Earth casts a circular shadow, the Earth must be a sphere. Thirdly, the Earth must be a sphere of no great size, since even a short journey across its surface causes a considerable difference in the altitude and rising/setting times of the fixed stars. Aristotle even hazarded a guess derived from contemporary astronomers, that the Earth’s circumference was 400,000 stades (9,987 miles). So Aristotle obviously understood that the Earth was a sphere, and of course his close students among the medieval Byzantines, Arabs, and Western Europeans also understood. Though the roots of the “flat-earther” derogation of religious people may be sought among the enlightened philosophes, as Voltaire suggested that the ancient Hebrews had believed in a flat earth although he did not assert that this had been picked up by the Christian inheritors of Jewish scriptures, and then in 1737 Thomas Paine suggested that wise Europeans had been burned at the stake for believing in a spherical earth (of course without bothering to name names or specify places and dates), Washington Irving’s CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, written while he was a US official stationed at the Alhambra in Spain, played a significant role in the retroactive construction of flat-earthers whom all loyal New-Worlders could come to love to despise. Why had this preposterous tale taken root and persisted?

1. Jeffrey Russell. INVENTING THE FLAT EARTH. Praeger, 1991: “…the search for truth is long and laborious and easily set aside. And since the present is transformed day by day, minute by minute, second by second, into the past, while the future is unknown and unknowable, we are left on the dark sea without compass or astrolabe, more unsure of our position and our goal than any of Columbus’s sailors. The terror of meaninglessness, of falling off the edge of knowledge, is greater than the imagined fear of falling off the edge of the earth. And so we prefer to believe a familiar error than to search, unceasingly, in the darkness.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

WASHINGTON IRVING AND THE SPECTRE OF THE “FLAT- EARTHER” RELIGIOUS BIGOT [CONCLUDED] AfterIn Europe Irving ,it it hadwas Antoine-Jeanbeen a feature Letronne of (1747-1848)early middle-class who first reallyEnlightenment put the anti-clericalism, flat earth on the and map when as ofit 1834,was transferred so to speak, to imbibingthe United his States ideology it becamefrom the useful Encyclopedists, as a feature for of itKnow-Nothing was he who assertedanti-Catholicism in DES OPINIONSand continued COSMOGRAPHIQUES with that DES movement’s PERES DE L’EGLISEvarious thatillegitimate until Kepler offspring. and Newton After had Irving, come along,it was astronomers Antoine-Jean had beenLetronne forbidden (1747-1848) by theologians who first toreally believe put inthe a flatspherical earth earth.on the Williammap as ofWhewell 1834, (1794-1866)so to speak, wrote imbibing of a WhisARFARE ideology BETWEEN SfromCIENCE theAND REncyclopedists,ELIGION and then forJohn it Draper was he(1811-1882) who asserted intensified in DES thisOPINIONS in CHISTORYOSMOGRAPHIQUES OF THE DES CPONFLICTERES DE LBETWEEN’EGLISE thatRELIGION until AND Kepler SCIENCE and, Newtonbut such had comederogations along, didastronomers not become had really been popularforbidden until by thetheologians generations to believebetween in1870 a sphericaland 1920. earth. In 1896 William the capstoneWhewell (1794-1866)was put on wrotethis ofedifice a WARFARE of mythinformationBETWEEN SCIENCE AND by RELIGION Andrew and Dickson then JohnWhite Draper (1813-1918) (1811- with1882) HintensifiedISTORY OF THE thisWARFARE in OFH ISTORYSCIENCE OF WITHTHE CTONFLICTHEOLOGY BETWEENIN CHRISTENDOM RELIGION. ANDBy thatSCIENCE point, but itsuch had derogations become an didarticle not becomeof faith really in anti-religious popular until circlesthe generations that there between was or 1870 had andbeen 1920. such Inbigotry, 1896 the and capstone the spectre was ofput onthe this“flat edifice earther” of mythinformation could be effectively by Andrew Dicksonused duringWhite controversies(1813-1918) with over H ISTORYDarwinism. OF THE The WARFARE spectre OF SofCIENCE the WITH“flat T HEOLOGYearther” IN religiousCHRISTENDOM .bigot By that lives point on wellit had into become our modern an article era, despiteof faith very in clearanti-religious repudiation circles by Samuel that Eliotthere Morisonwas or had among been others, such bigotry, and has moreand the recently spectre been of thefeatured “flat earther”in such verycould derivative be effectively materials used asduring Daniel controversies Boorstin’s 1981over TDarwinism.HE DISCOVERERS The. spectre of the “flat earther” religious bigot lives on well into our modern era, despite very clear repudiation by Samuel Eliot Morison among others, and has more recently been featured in such very derivative materials as Daniel Boorstin’s 1981 THE DISCOVERERS. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1831

Washington Irving’s VOYAGES AND DISCOVERIES OF THE COMPANIONS OF COLUMBUS. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1834

January 8, Wednesday: David Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, the four volumes of Washington Irving’s A HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND VOYAGES OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS (London: John Murray, Albemarle-Street, 1831; NY: G. & C. Carvill, 1828). CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

“There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away” — Emily Dickinson

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 8th of 1 M 1834 / Our Meeting was silent & some favour experienced. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1870

Prior to this point, few of our school textbooks had been mentioning the Washington Irving-sponsored myth that Christopher Columbus boldly proclaiming the earth to be a globe, against the folly of a putative medieval consensus proclaiming the earth to be flat like the floor of a tent. Subsequent to this point in our public trajectory, virtually all of our school texts would be dwelling upon and proclaiming this myth to have been the truth of the situation. (You see, the texts needed this mythification in order Whiggishly to construe our history as a triumph of science over superstition.) THE SCIENCE OF 1870 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1942

October 12, Monday: Incidental music to MacNeice’s radio play Christopher Columbus by William Walton for alto, tenor, bass, two speakers, female speaking chorus, male speaking chorus, guitar and orchestra, was performed for the initial time, over the airwaves of the BBC originating in Bedford. This was in celebration of the 450th anniversary of the landing of Columbus in the New World — a landing considered of great moment to all white people everywhere.

In a naval action off Savo Island in the Solomons, several Japanese ships and one American ship were sunk: • Destroyer Duncan (DD-485), by naval gunfire, off Savo Island •Cruiser Furutaka, by surface craft, off Savo Island • Destroyer Natsugumo, by Naval and Marine aircraft, off Savo Island • Destroyer Murakumo, by Naval and Marine aircraft, off Savo Island WORLD WAR II HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1968

Columbus Day belatedly, and very wrongly, became a federal holiday. What were we thinking?

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1992

A steel corset was installed around the 1st level of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, at the point at which calculations indicated that the stonework would first crumble under the pressure of the inclination to the south. LEANING TOWER OF PISA

In order to induce Sephardic Jews to join in the celebration of the quincentennial of what had been happening in the south of the Iberian peninsula as of the year 1492, in which the conquest of Granada had been followed very shortly not only by the sailing of Christopher Columbus but also by the expulsion of all identified Jews from a newly Christianized Spain, the Spanish government was apologizing all over the place, for the Inquisition.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2016. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of Walden and A Week HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Prepared: December 15, 2016 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: CRISTÓBAL COLÓN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.