Columbus and the Labyrinth of History

Article 37

Every generation creates the Columbus it needs. As the Quincentenary of his 1492 voyage approaches, observers are torn between celebrating a brave visionary and condemning the first representative of an age of imperial exploitation. Here Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Noble Wilford explores the various Columbus legends and discovers, beneath them, a very human figure and an adventure unprecedented in boldness.

John Noble Wilford

History has not been the same since succeeding generation can ask questions hope for any future, had come the Chris- Christopher Columbus. Neither has he of the past that those in the past never tian vision of a merciful God and a glori- been the same throughout history. asked themselves. Columbus could not ous heaven.” It is hard to conceive of During the five centuries since his ep- know that he had ushered in what we call those words being written today. In a for- ochal voyage of 1492, Columbus has the Age of Discovery, with all its impli- ward to the 1983 edition of Morison’s been many things to many people: the cations, any more than we can know Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of protean symbol of the adventuring hu- what two world wars, nuclear weapons, Christopher Columbus, British historian man spirit, the lone hero defying both the the collapse of colonial empires, the end David Beers Quinn criticizes Morison odds and entrenched thinking to change of the Cold War, and the beginning of for ignoring or dismissing Columbus’s the world; the first modern man or a space travel will mean for people centu- failings. Columbus, Quinn writes, “can- lucky adventurer blinded by medieval ries from now. Perceptions change, and not be detached from the imperialist ex- mysticism; an icon of Western faith in so does our understanding of the past. ploitation of his discoveries and must be progress or an object of scorn for his fail- Accordingly, the image of Columbus made to take some share of responsibil- ings of leadership and intellect; a man has changed through the years, some- ity for the brutal exploitation of the is- virtually deified at one time and roundly times as a result of new information, lands and mainlands he found.” vilified today for his part in the initiation more often because of changes in the By and large, this new perspective has of an international slave trade and Euro- lenses through which we view him. Once produced a more realistic, demytholo- pean imperialism. We hardly know the a beneficiary of this phenomenon, Co- gized version of the Columbus story. The real Columbus. Such, it seems, is the fate lumbus in times of reigning optimism temptation, though, is to swing too far in of historical figures whose deeds rever- has been exalted as a mythic hero. Now, the other direction, rewriting history as berate through time. with the approach of the Quincentennial, we wish it would have been or judging The Columbus story surely confirms he has fallen victim to a more self-criti- people wholly by anachronistic political the axiom that all works of history are in- cal society, one prone to hero-bashing standards. This has happened all too of- terim reports. What people did in the past and historical pessimism. ten regarding Columbus, producing myth is not preserved in amber, a moment cap- As recently as 1974, Samuel Eliot and propaganda in the guise of history. tured and immutable through the ages. Morison, the biographer of Columbus, All the more reason for us to sift Each generation looks back and, drawing concluded one of his books with a paean through the romantic inventions and en- from its own experiences, presumes to to European influence on America: “To during misconceptions that have clouded find patterns that illuminate both past the people of the New World, pagans ex- the real Columbus and to recognize that and present. This is natural and proper. A pecting short and brutish lives, void of so much of the man we celebrate or con-

1 Article 37. Columbus and the Labyrinth of History demn is our own creation. He is the em- their most trusted functionaries, clam- and more people, he composed a letter to bodiment of our running dialogue about bered into armed launches and headed the court of Ferdinand and Isabella in the human potential for good and evil. for the sandy beach and green trees. which he announced his discovery. He They carried the flags of the Christian had made good his boast to one and all. monarchs of Spain. A solemn Columbus, He may have harbored some disappoint- Some of the facts about Columbus— without so much as a thought that it was ment in not reaching the Asian mainland, who he was and what he did—are be- anything but his to take, proclaimed pos- but he had sailed across the Ocean Sea yond serious dispute. This mariner of session of the island for the king and for and found lands and peoples unknown to humble and obscure origins was pos- the queen. Columbus and his officers Europeans. And he wanted the court to sessed of an idea that became an obses- then dropped to their knees in prayer. read about it in his own words, especially sion. He proposed to sail west across the It did not escape Columbus that these since this justified his own claim to the uncharted ocean to the fabled shores of islanders “go around as naked as their titles and wealth due him pursuant to the the Indies, the lands of gold and spices mothers bore them; and the women deal he had struck with the court. celebrated in the tales of Marco Polo and also.” This was not prurience but culture The letter Columbus wrote was also the goal of an increasingly expansionist shock. Columbus was generally admir- his bid for a place in history. He under- Europe in the 15th century. The Portu- ing in his initial descriptions of the peo- stood that the achievement would go for guese had sought a route around the tip ple. They were “guileless and generous.” naught unless the news got back to oth- of Africa. Some Florentine cosmogra- Bringing cotton, parrots, and javelins to ers. To explore (the word, in one version phers had pondered the prospect of a trade, they paddled out to Columbus’s of its etymology, comes from the Latin westward sea route. But Columbus was ships in their dugouts, each made from a “to cry out”) is to search out and exclaim apparently the first with the stubborn single tree and so long that they held 40 discovery. Simply reaching a new land courage to stake his life on the execution men; the West Indian term for these dug- does not in itself constitute a discovery. of such a daring scheme. outs was canoa—and thus a New-World It must be announced and then recorded After years pleading his case before word entered European speech. Colum- in history so that the discovery can be the courts of Portugal and Spain, dis- bus was pleased to note that they had no acted upon. missed as a hopeless visionary or a tire- firearms. When he had shown them some Others besides the indigenous people somely boastful nuisance, Columbus swords, “they took them by the edge and preceded Columbus in finding parts of finally won the reluctant support of Fer- through ignorance cut themselves.” America. This is no longer an issue of dinand and Isabella. At the little Andalu- “They should be good and intelligent consuming dispute in Columbian stud- sian port of Palos de la Frontera, he servants,” he concluded, “for I see that ies. Almost certainly the Norse under raised a fleet of three ships and enlisted they say very quickly everything that is Leif Ericson landed at some northern is- some 90 seamen. Whatever the sailors’ said to them; and I believed they would lands and established a short-lived settle- trepidations or their opinion of Colum- become Christians very easily, for it ment at Newfoundland. Ericson and bus when he arrived at Palos, their des- seemed to me that they had no religion.” others may have reached America, but tiny was to share with him a voyage “by Columbus the anthropologist had his they failed to discover it. For nothing which route,” Columbus wrote in the priorities. came of their deeds. Columbus, in writ- prologue to his journal, “we do not know Unfortunately, we have no record of ing the letter, was making sure his deeds for certain anyone previously has the first impressions that the people Co- would have consequences and his passed.” lumbus called Indians had of the Europe- achievement would enter history. Columbus was never more in com- ans. What did they think of these white The letter eventually reached the mand of himself and his destiny than on men with beards? Their sailing ships and court in Barcelona and had the desired that day, August 3, 1492, when he their weapons that belched smoke? Their effect. The king and queen received Co- weighed anchor at Palos. He was a con- Christian God and their inordinate inter- lumbus with pomp and listened to his summate mariner, as all his contempo- est in gold and a place beyond the hori- story with genuine interest and pleasure. raries agreed and historians have not zon called the Indies? We will never They instructed him to return to the new- contradicted, and here he was doing what know. They could not put their feelings found lands with a larger fleet including he did best and so sure of his success. Of into writing; they had no writing. And soldiers and settlers. America had en- course, he never made it to the Indies, as the encounter itself doomed them. tered world history, though Columbus head-shaking savants had predicted, then Within a generation or two, they became insisted to his dying day that he had or on any of his three subsequent voy- extinct, mainly through exposure to Eu- reached the Indies. ages. His landfall came half a world ropean diseases, and so could not pass on short of them, on an unprepossessing is- by word of mouth stories about the mo- land inhabited by naked people with no ment white men entered their lives. This familiar story of Columbus has knowledge whatsoever of Marco Polo’s Columbus made certain by his words been embellished to create an enduring Great Khan. and actions that his discovery would not popular legend. Some of the tales On the morning of October 12, Co- be lost to history. On the homeward voy- (though not all of them) have been laid to lumbus and his captains, together with age, after visiting a string of other islands rest through historical research.

2 ANNUAL EDITIONS

‘Gardens the Most Beautiful I Ever Saw’

The following account of October 10–13, 1492, is taken from Columbus’s Diario, as abstracted by Bartolomé de las Casas and adapted by William Carlos Williams.

Wednesday, 59 leagues, W. S. W., but counted no more than 44. Here the people could endure no longer. All now complained about the length of the voyage. But I cheered them as best I could, giving them good hopes of the advantages they might gain by it. Roused to mad- ness by their fear, the captains declared they were going back but I told them then, that however much they might complain, I had to go to the Indies and they along with me, and that I would go until I found them, with the help of our Lord. And so for a time it passed but now all was in great danger from the men. Thursday, 11th of October. The course was W. S. W. More sea [spilling over the deck] than there had been during the whole of the voyage. Sandpipers and a green reed near the ship. And for this I gave thanks to God as it was a sure sign of land. Those of the Pinta saw a cane and a pole, and they took up another small pole which appeared to be worked with iron; also another bit of cane, a land plant, and a small board. The crew of the caravel Niña also saw signs of land, and a small plant covered with berries. .… I admonished the men to keep a good lookout on the forecastle and to watch well for land and to him who should first cry out that he had seen land I would give a silk doublet besides the other rewards ILLUSTRATION FROM THE GRANGER COLLECTION, NEW YORK promised by the Sovereigns which were 10,000 maravedis to him who should first see it. Two hours past midnight, the moon having risen at eleven o’clock and then shining brightly in the sky, being in its third quarter, a sailor named Rodrigo de Triana sighted the land at a distance of about two leagues. At once I ordered them to shorten sail and we lay under the mainsail without the bonnets, hove to waiting for daylight. On Friday, the 12th of October, we anchored before the land and Bright green trees, the whole land so green that it is a pleasure to made ready to go on shore. Presently we saw naked people on the look on it. Gardens of the most beautiful trees I ever saw. Later I came beach. I went ashore in the armed boat and took the royal standard, upon one man in a canoe going from one island to another. He had a and Martin Alonzo and Vincent Yañez, his brother, who was captain little of their bread, about the size of a fist, a calabash of water, a piece of the Niña. And we saw the trees very green, and much water and of brown earth, powdered then kneaded, and some dried leaves which fruits of diverse kinds. Presently many of the inhabitants assembled. I must be a thing highly valued by them for they bartered with it at San gave to some red caps and glass beads to put round their necks, and Salvador. He also had with him a native basket. The women wore in many other things of little value. They came to the ship’s boats after- front of their bodies a small piece of cotton cloth. I saw many trees ward, where we were, swimming and bringing us parrots, cotton very unlike those of our country. Branches growing in different ways threads in skeins, darts—what they had, with good will. As naked as and all from one trunk; one twig is one form and another is a different their mothers bore them, and so the women, though I did not see more shape and so unlike that it is the greatest wonder of the world to see than one young girl. All I saw were youths, well made with very hand- the diversity; thus one branch has leaves like those of a cane, and oth- some bodies and very good countenances. Their hair short and coarse, ers like those of a mastic tree; and on a single tree there are five dif- almost like the hairs of a horse’s tail. They paint themselves some ferent kinds. The fish so unlike ours that it is wonderful. Some are the black, some white, others red and others of what color they can find. shape of dories and of the finest colors, so bright that there is not a Some paint the faces and others paint the whole body, some only man who would not be astounded, and would not take great delight in round the eyes and others only on the nose. They are themselves nei- seeing them. There are also whales. I saw no beasts on land save par- ther black nor white. rots and lizards. On Saturday, as dawn broke, many of these people came to the On shore I sent the people for water, some with arms, and others beach, all youths. Their legs are very straight, all in one line, and no with casks; and as it was some little distance I waited two hours for belly. They came to the ship in canoes, made out of the trunk of a tree, them. all in one piece, and wonderfully worked, propelled with a paddle like During that time I walked among the trees, which was the most a baker’s shovel, and go at marvelous speed. beautiful thing which I had ever seen.…

3 Article 37. Columbus and the Labyrinth of History

Columbus did not, for example, have sleuths have spent lifetimes trying to re- The son went on to describe his fa- to prove that the world was round: All solve these questions, usually without ther’s character: “In eating and drinking, educated people in Europe at the time ac- notable success. and in the adornment of his person, he cepted this as a given. Isabella did not Part of the problem lies with the pas- was very moderate and modest,” Her- have to pawn her jewels to raise money sage of time. Although the record of Co- nando wrote. “He was affable in conver- for the expedition; though the Crown, lumbus by contemporaries is more sation with strangers and very pleasant to following its wars against the Moors, substantial than that of any other 15th- the members of his household, though was strapped for cash, the financial ad- century explorer, surviving accounts are with a certain gravity. He was so strict in viser Luis de Santangel arranged a loan often difficult to assess from this dis- matters of religion that for fasting and from the ample coffers of the state police tance. Whose version is to be trusted: saying prayers he might have been taken and from some Italian merchant bankers. The letters of Peter Martyr, the courtier for a member of a religious order.” And Columbus did not set sail with a in Spain who never ventured to the New Hernando may be guilty of some ex- crew of hardened criminals. Only four World? The biography by Hernando Co- aggeration. Columbus could not be too men, accused of murdering a town crier, lumbus, the devoted son protective of his gentle and modest if he were to promote took advantage of a promised amnesty, father’s fame? The history of the New his vision before skeptical courts and if and even they were seasoned mariners World by Bartolomé de las Casas (1474– he could control a crew of rough seamen and acquitted themselves well on the 1566), the Dominican friar and cham- who suspected they might be headed to voyage. pion of the Indians who never missed a their deaths. He could be harsh in meting More troublesome for historians have chance to condemn the brutality of the out punishment to seamen and in order- been certain other mysteries and contro- early explorers and colonists? Even the ing punitive raids against Indian villages. versies. few extant writings of Columbus him- Like others of that time, and to this day, Where, for example, did the first self, who could be vague, contradictory he presumably saw no contradiction be- landfall occur? We know it was a small and self-serving? tween his behavior and his religious be- island the inhabitants called Guanahani Hero worship has further distorted liefs. By all accounts Columbus was a and Columbus christened San Salvador. history. We want—or used to want—our demonstrably pious man. Late in life, his It was in the Bahamas or thereabouts, far heroes to be larger than life. The result writings portrayed a mind filled with from the Asian mainland he was seeking, can be a caricature, a plaster saint invit- mysticism and a belief in his divine mis- but which island? No fewer than nine ing iconoclasts to step forward with their sion to carry Christianity to all people different possible islands have been own images, which can also ignore the and prepare them for the impending end identified from the few ambiguous clues complexity of human reality. of the world. in Columbus’s journal. The site favored Of this mysticism, Hernando has by most experts is the Bahamian island We are left, therefore, with enough nothing to say. He is also frustratingly once called Watling’s but renamed San material to mold the Columbus we reticent or misleading about the genesis Salvador in 1924 to help solidify its choose to extol or excoriate, but not of his father’s consuming dream and claim. enough ever to feel sure we truly know even about his origins. Columbus him- the man. Did Columbus really come from self chose to reveal very little about his Genoa? Nearly every European nation early life. has at one time or another laid some Every verifiable historical document, claim to him. Was he Jewish? Such con- Nothing better illustrates history’s however, indicates that Columbus was jecture originated in the 19th century and changing images of Columbus than the born in Genoa, which was an indepen- was promoted in 1940 in Salvadore de succession of portraits of him that have dent city-state (the lesser rival to Venice) Madriaga’s vivid biography, Christo- appeared over the centuries. They show a whose ships traded throughout the entire pher Columbus. But the evidence is cir- man of many faces—handsome and stal- Mediterranean world. He was probably cumstantial. Records in Genoa indicate wart, heavy and stolid, shadowed and born in 1451, and both his father Do- that, whatever his more remote ancestry, vaguely sinister. Artistic interpretation, menico and his father’s father were wool Columbus’s family had been Christian like history, changes with the times. weavers; his mother, Susanna Fontan- for several generations. Yet, there should be little confusion arossa, was a weaver’s daughter. Chris- When and how in the mists of his over the man’s physical appearance. His topher was probably their eldest child. rootless life did Columbus conceive of son Hernando, who should have known, Bartholomew, the chart-maker who his audacious plan? Was it sheer inspira- said he was “a well-built man of more would share many of Columbus’s adven- tion bolstered by rational research? Or than average stature, the face long, the tures, was a year or two younger. The did he come into some secret knowl- cheeks somewhat high, his body neither other children who grew to adulthood edge? Was he really seeking the Indies? fat nor lean. He had an aquiline nose and were a sister named Bianchetta and a How was he finally able to win royal light colored eyes; his complexion too brother Giacomo, better known by the backing? What were his ships like?—no was light and tending to be red. In youth Spanish equivalent, Diego, who joined caravel wreck from that period has ever his hair was blond, but when he reached Christopher on the second voyage. All in been recovered. Scholars and amateur the age of 30 it all turned white.” all, the Columbuses of Genoa were fruit-

4 ANNUAL EDITIONS ful and humble tradespeople—and nothing. There may even be something to the Columbus’s introduction to the court of ing for a young man to be ashamed of. story of the unknown pilot from whom Portugal’s King John II. At a “tender age,” as Columbus once Columbus supposedly obtained secret When Columbus finally laid out his wrote, he cast his lot with those who go knowledge of lands across the ocean. But plan before John II, probably in 1483 or to sea. At first, he probably made short as far as anyone can be sure—and vol- 1484, the court cosmographers, a Portu- voyages as a crewman, and then longer umes have been written on the subject— guese historian wrote, “considered the ones on trading ships to the Genoese col- there was no sudden revelation, no blind- words of Christovae Colom as vain, sim- ony of Chios in the Aegean Sea. But ing flash of inspiration. ply founded on imagination, or things even more crucial to Columbus’s devel- like that Isle Cypango of Marco Polo.” Nor did Columbus derive his plan opment than his ancestry or his birth- Columbus refused to accept rejection. from a careful reading of scholars. He place was the timing of his birth. He was By this time, his wife had died, and in was not then, and never became, a man born two years before the fall of Con- 1485 he took their son, Diego, and left who read to learn; he read to gather sup- stantinople, Christendom’s eastern capi- Portugal for Palos, across the border in port for what he already thought to be tal, to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Young Spain. Tradition has it that Columbus true. His familiarity with the travel ac- Columbus was to grow up hearing about and little Diego, penniless and hungry, counts of Marco Polo and the Travels of the scourge of Islam, the blockage of got off the ship and trudged along a dusty Sir John Mandeville, a 14th-century col- regular trade routes to the spices of the road to the Franciscan monastery of La lection of travelers’ tales from around East, and the parlous times for Christian- Rabida. He knocked at the portal to beg the world, did not so much inform his ity. Priests and popes were calling for a for water and bread. If the legend is true, concept as inflame a mind already stoked new crusade to recapture Constantinople the father may have been taking the son with the dry tinder of desire. From other and Jerusalem. All of this could have there to be a boarding student, freeing sources—from a recent Latin translation nourished the dreams of a great adven- himself to pursue his dream. of Claudius Ptolemy’s second-century ture in an ambitious young man with Though a secretive man and often Geography, which described many nautical experience. portrayed as a loner, Columbus must not Southeast Asian spice islands, to Pierre The most significant mystery about have been without charm, even cha- d’Ailly’s Imago Mundi, a compendium Columbus concerns how he came up risma. He had insinuated himself into the of contemporary knowledge about the with his idea for sailing west to the In- influential society of Lisbon and would world which argued that the Western Sea dies. As in everything else, Columbus’s do so again in Spain. “Columbus’s abil- was not very wide—Columbus made own words on the subject obfuscate ity to thrust himself into the circles of the some calculations of global distances. more than elucidate. It was his practice, great was one of the most remarkable Like d’Ailly, he conveniently managed writes the Italian historian Paolo Emilio things about him,” writes Harvard histo- to constrict the unknown he proposed to Taviani, “never to tell everything to ev- rian John H. Parry. It was also in his challenge, grossly underestimating the eryone, to say one thing to one man, character that he seldom acknowledged distance from Europe to Japan. Had he something else to another, to reveal only the help of others. unwittingly deceived himself? Or had he portions of his arguments, clues, and ev- At La Rabida, Columbus won the deliberately contrived calculations to de- idence accumulated over the years in his friendship and confidence of a Fran- ceive those he looked to for support? All mind.” Perhaps Columbus told so many ciscan official knowledgeable in cos- that can be said with assurance is that partial stories in so many different ver- mography and through him gained Columbus was by then a man consumed sions that, as Morison suspects, he him- introductions to wealthy patrons and by an enthusiasm that willed away obsta- self could no longer remember the eventually his first audience with Ferdi- cles and brooked no doubt. origins of his idea. nand and Isabella. They referred his pro- In all probability he formulated the His marriage in Portugal may have in- posal to a commission of learned men at idea in Portugal sometime between 1476 directly contributed to his growing con- the University of Salamanca. Washing- and 1481. Columbus had come to Portu- viction. In 1479, he wed Felipa ton Irving, in his fanciful biography, has gal quite literally by accident. When the Perestrello de Moniz, a daughter of the commissioners saying that the “ro- Genoese fleet he had shipped with was lesser nobility. Her widowed mother tundity of the earth was as yet a matter of attacked and destroyed in the summer of showed Columbus the journals and maps mere speculation.” Many of them no 1476, Columbus was washed ashore at left by her husband, who had sailed for doubt deserved Irving’s condemnation the Portuguese town of Lagos. He made Prince Henry the Navigator. From the as a “mass of inert bigotry,” but they his way to Lisbon, where the talk of sea- papers of Bartolomeo Perestrello and were right (and Columbus wrong) in going exploration was everywhere. He other Portuguese seamen, Columbus their judgment that Asia could not be heard stories of westering seamen who concluded, his son Hernando wrote, “for reached by ships sailing west. They rec- found islands far out in the ocean and certain that there were many lands West ommended that the monarchs reject the saw maps sprinkled with mythical is- of the Canary Islands and Cape Verde, venture. lands. On voyages north perhaps so far and that it was possible to sail to, and dis- Columbus was nothing if not persis- as Iceland and south along the coast of cover them.” The social position of his tent. With a modest retainer from the Africa, he gained a taste for Atlantic sail- wife’s family also smoothed the way for court, he continued to solicit support

5 Article 37. Columbus and the Labyrinth of History from influential courtiers. While in Cor- turn, he crushed one end of the egg and northeastern coast of South America, doba, waiting for some sign of royal en- had no trouble making it stand up on the which he named Trinidad, for the Holy couragement, he met Beatriz Enriquez table. Trinity. A few days later, he saw a coast- de Arana, a peasant woman, and they be- The anecdote has proved irresistible line to the south. Columbus recognized came lovers. In August 1488 she gave to historians and storytellers to illustrate that the tremendous volume of fresh wa- birth to an illegitimate son, Hernando. the singular role of Columbus in history. ter flowing from the Orinoco River was (They never married, and sometime after But it never happened—one more Co- evidence of a large land, but he failed to his first voyage, they drifted apart. He lumbian myth. The story was not only appreciate that this might be a continent likely felt a peasant woman was beneath apocryphal, Morison points out, but it or to pursue his investigations. Instead, his station.) “had already done duty in several Italian his mind drifted into speculation that the Through another friar at La Rabida, biographies of other characters.” river must originate in the Earthly Para- Columbus gained other audiences with In reality, Columbus would not so dise. Bound to medieval thinking, the the monarchs in 1491 and again in early easily put down the critics who dogged man who showed the way across the 1492, just after the Moorish capital of him the rest of his life—and through his- ocean lost his chance to have the New Granada fell to the Christian forces. He tory. If only he had stopped with the first World bear his name. The honor would had been led to believe that, after the bur- voyage, the echo of those fanfares in soon go to a man with a more open- den of the prolonged war was lifted, the Barcelona might not have faded so fast. minded perspective, Amerigo Vespucci, queen especially might be disposed to A fleet of 17 ships, carrying some who on his second voyage of exploration give her approval. Some writers have let 1,200 people, left Cadiz in the autumn of (1501–2) concluded that the South themselves imagine that Isabella saw 1493 with instructions to establish a per- American landmass was not Asia but a more in Columbus than an insistent sup- manent settlement on the island of His- new continent. plicant. Such speculation of a sexual re- paniola. There, near the present city of Columbus turned his back on South lationship between the two, Taviani Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic, America and sailed to Santo Domingo to says, is “a sheer fairy-tale, rejected by all Columbus built a fort, church, and house attend to the colony there. He found that historians.” for what would be his colonial capital, his brothers, Bartholomew and Diego, Nothing seemed to change with the La Isabela. The experiment was disas- had lost control. Some of the colonists fall of Granada. Columbus was turned trous. The site had no real harbor, insuf- had mutinied, and the crown had dis- away, this time with an air of finality. ficient rainfall, and little vegetation. patched a new governor empowered to Behind the scenes, however, Luis de Sickness and dissension brought work to do anything necessary to restore order. It Santangel, the chief financial adviser, in- a standstill and the colony to the point of was then that Columbus was arrested, terceded with assurances to the queen starvation. Expeditions into the moun- stripped of his titles, and sent back in that financing the expedition need not be tains failed to find any rich lodes of gold. irons to Spain in October 1500. an insurmountable obstacle. No one As Las Casas wrote, they “spread terror knows why the king and queen finally re- among the Indians in order to show them lented. They might have been persuaded how strong and powerful the Christians by the argument that they had little to were.” Bloody warfare ensued. lose and much to gain if this importunate With little gold to show for his efforts, foreigner just happened to be on to some- Columbus ordered a shipment of Taino thing. Indians to be sold as slaves in Spain. The best that can be said in defense of Co- lumbus is that he was now a desperate After his first voyage, when he was man. His power to rule La Isabela was the toast of Barcelona, Columbus sup- waning. His visions of wealth were fad- posedly faced down his first critics. At a ing. He feared that his influence back in banquet, some noblemen insisted that if Spain would be irreparably diminished Columbus had not undertaken the enter- by critical reports from recalcitrant offic- prise, someone else, a Spaniard and not a ers who had returned to Spain. And he foreigner, would have made the same had failed again to find a mainland. His discovery. At this, Columbus called for desperation was such that he forced all an egg and had it placed on the table. his crew to sign a declaration that, at “Gentlemen,” he was reported to have Cuba, they had indeed reached the main- ILLUSTRATION FROM THE GRANGER COLLECTION, NEW YORk said, pointing to the egg, “you make it land of Cathay. Sick and discouraged, he Columbus disgraced, 1500. Charged with mal- stand here, not with crumbs, salt, etc. (for sailed home in 1496. feasance as governor of Hispaniola, Columbus anyone knows how to do it with meal or The third voyage did nothing to re- returned to Spain a prisoner in chains. sand), but naked and without anything at store his reputation. Departing from all, as I will, who was the first to discover Seville in May 1498, he steered a south- It was an ignominious end to Colum- the Indies.” When it was Columbus’s erly course and reached an island off the bus’s authority and to his fame in his

6 ANNUAL EDITIONS

Columbus’s Mysterious Signature

In 1498, Columbus instructed all of his heirs to continue to represents both a Christian cross and a ship’s mast. The line X “sign with my signature which I now employ which is an X M Y may have one meaning, “Jesus cum Maris sit nobis in with an S over it and an M with a Roman A over it and over via” (an invocation with which Columbus opened much of his them an S and then a Greek Y with an S over it, preserving the writing), with the Y representing the fork in the road and the relation of the lines and the points.” At the top, thus, is the letter symbolism for his having chosen the hard way to destiny’s ful- S between two dots. On the palindromic second row are the let- fillment. Fleming suggests a double meaning. The X and Y at ter S A S, also preceded, separated, and ended with dots. The either end of the bottom line could also stand for “Christopho- third row has the letters X M and a Greek Y, without dots. Be- rus,” his name and destiny, and “Jacobus,” for “St. James,” low that is the final signature, Xpo Ferens, a Greco-Latin form whose feast day and Christopher’s are the same and who is, not of his given name. incidentally, the patron saint of Spain, Santiago—Sant Yago. To this day no one can decipher the meaning Columbus had in mind, but it almost certainly bears on his religious outlook. The simplest explanations hold that the letters stand for seven words. It has been suggested that the four letters stand for “Ser- vus Sum Altissimi Salvatoris,” for “Servant I Am of the Most High Savior.” The three letters of the third line could be an invocation to Christ Jesus and Mary, or to Christ, Mary, and Jo- seph. Another proposed solution is that the seven letters are the initials for “Spiritus Sanctus Altissimi Salvator Xristus Maria Yesus.” John Fleming, a medievalist at Princeton University, be- Fleming’s cryptographic skills have uncovered other clues lieves he has cracked the code, finding it to be an “acrostic of in the signature to Columbus’s “religious imagination.” But, considerable complexity committed to a more or less learned for understanding Columbus the mystical discoverer, Fleming and hermetic mystical theology.” Columbus, he concludes, draws insight from his associations with Mary, Christopher, was borrowing from two medieval traditions in formal signa- and Santiago. He writes: “In Columbus’s heavenly city, the tures, that of the church worthies, like St. Francis, who devised Virgin Mary stands ever firm between her two Christ-bearing intricate crucigrams, and that of the church mariners who often guards, Christophorus on the one hand, San Yago the included in their craft marks anchors, masts, fishhooks, and so Moorslayer on the other. And in the larger meaning of these forth. For his signature, Fleming says, Columbus seems to two saints, both celebrated by the Roman church on a single have combined religious and nautical symbolism. The unifying day, which was of course Columbus’s name-day, we may see idea is the medieval association of the Virgin Mary with Stella adumbrated much of the glory, and much of the tragedy, of the Maris, the indispensable navigational star also known as Po- European encounter with the New World.” laris, or the North Star. The first cross bar stands for StellA From The Mysterious History of Columbus, copyright © 1991 by Alfred A. MariS. The vertical “mast” stands for “Stella Ave Maris,” after Knopf. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Art Reproduction from the the vesper hymn “Ave, stella maris.” By design, the structure collection of the Library of Congress

lifetime. The crown eventually restored Historians cite the last voyage as one Highnesses that, if it please God to re- his titles, but never again was he allowed of his many “missed opportunities.” move me hence, you will aid me to go to to serve as viceroy. The monarchs now With luck and more persistence, Colum- Rome and on other pilgrimages.” were under no illusions about Columbus. bus might have stumbled upon the Maya He had failed as a colonial administrator, civilization or the Pacific Ocean. As it and they had strong doubts about the va- was, he barely made it back to Spain. He Columbus in his last years was a lidity of his claims to have reached the was marooned a year on Jamaica, where dispirited man who felt himself to be Indies. he wrote a pathetic letter to the mon- misunderstood and unappreciated. He Columbus was given permission for archs. “I implore Your Highnesses’ par- sought to define himself in a remarkable one final voyage, which lasted from don,” he wrote. “I am ruined as I have manuscript now known as Libro de las 1502 to 1504. He was specifically barred said. Hitherto I have wept for others; profecías, or The Book of Prophecies. from returning to Santo Domingo. In- now have pity upon me, Heaven, and Between the third and fourth voyages, stead, he explored the coast of Central weep for me, earth! I came to Your High- Columbus collected passages of biblical America and attempted without success nesses with honest purpose and sincere scriptures and the words of a wide range to establish a settlement in Panama. zeal, and I do not lie. I humbly beg Your of classical and medieval authors. Ac-

7 Article 37. Columbus and the Labyrinth of History cording to his own description, this was to see it through. “The Lord purposed tion left no doubt about the magnitude of a notebook “of sources, statements, that there should be something clearly Columbus’s error in thinking he had opinions and prophecies on the subject miraculous in this matter of the voyage reached the Indies. Conquering explor- of the recovery of God’s Holy City and to the Indies,” Columbus wrote in the ers such as Cortes and Pizarro won Mount Zion, and on the discovery and Prophecies, “so as to encourage me and greater immediate fame by their dazzling evangelization of the islands of the In- others in the… Household of God.” Be- exploits against the Aztecs and Incas. dies and of all other peoples and na- ginning in 1493, he began signing nearly Cartographers saw fit to name the New tions.” all of his letters and documents Christof- World after Vespucci, not Columbus. The document reveals the depth and erens, a Latinization of his given name Books of general history scarcely men- passion of Columbus’s belief that he had that means “Christ-bearer.” tioned Columbus or ignored him alto- a special relationship with God and was New attention to the spiritual side of gether. acting as the agent of God’s scheme for Columbus does not, however, necessar- Within 50 years of Columbus’s death, history. He marshaled evidence from the ily bring this complex man into focus. Bartolomé de las Casas, the Dominican prophecies of the Bible to show that his Images of a superstitious spiritualist and bishop who extolled and defended the recent discoveries were only the prelude the modern explorer must be superim- Indians, produced the first revisionist to the realization of a greater destiny. It posed to produce a stereoscopic picture history. In his History of the Indies, Las was as if he saw his role as being not un- of Columbus, revealing the depth and Casas wrote eloquently of the atrocities like John the Baptist’s in relation to heights of the mental terrain through committed against the Indians. To sail to Christ. The wealth from his voyages and which he traveled as he found America the islands Columbus had discovered, discoveries had given the king and queen and then lost his way in failure, self-pity, Las Casas wrote, one needed only to fol- of Spain the means to recover the Holy and a fog of mysticism. low the floating corpses of Indians that Land for Christendom, and thereby he marked the way. His accounts of torture had set the stage for the grandiose climax and killings documented the so-called of Christian history, the salvation of all Columbus was probably no more Black Legend of Spanish cruelty that the world’s peoples and their gathering than 55 years old when he died on May was seized upon by the English, Dutch, at Zion on the eve of the end of time. 20, 1506, in Valladolid, Spain. But he and French to fan the fires of national ri- Most historians who studied the doc- was much older in body and in tormented valries and religious hatreds. ument have tended to dismiss it as the mind. His last voyages had left him crip- As the Age of Discovery flourished product of his troubled and possibly se- pled with arthritis and weak from fever. during the late 16th century, Columbus nile mind. His other writings at the time He was reduced to a sad figure, spending began to be rescued from oblivion. He sometimes betrayed a mind verging on his last years in disgrace while stub- was celebrated in poetry and plays, espe- paranoia. Delno C. West, a historian who bornly pressing his claims for the resto- cially in Italy and later in Spain. A glim- has recently translated the Book of ration of titles and the wealth due him. mer of history’s future hero could be Prophecies, suspects that historians were Contrary to legend, he was neither seen in a popular play by Lope de Vega “reluctant to admit that the first Ameri- destitute nor alone at the end. His two in 1614. In The New World Discovered can hero was influenced by prophetic sons were with him, in a comfortable by Christopher Columbus, he portrayed ideas.” If the book indeed reflects Co- home. We cannot be sure of the tradi- Columbus as a dreamer up against the es- lumbus’s thinking even before 1492, it tional story, that he died believing he had tablishment, a man of singular purpose undermines the popular image of Co- reached the Indies. He never gave ex- who triumphed, the embodiment of that lumbus as a man of the modern age who plicit expression to any recognition that spirit driving humans to explore and dis- applied reason in conceiving his venture. he had found something other than Asia. cover. It exposes him as a person thoroughly All the evidence, though, suggests that It was in the New World, though, that mired in the medieval world, obsessed he died unsatisfied. Columbus would be transformed almost with eschatology, and driven by a sup- His death went unheralded. There beyond human recognition into an icon. posed call from God to carry out a mis- was no public ceremony of mourning By the late 17th century, people in the sion of apocalyptic dimensions. and no recorded expressions of grief at British colonies of North America were West contends that this spirituality, the royal court. The man who rose from beginning to think of themselves as which fed Columbus’s apocalyptic view obscurity died in obscurity. His remains Americans and sought to define them- of history, lay at the heart of the man and have been moved so many times over the selves in their own terms and symbols. shaped his actions. Rather than some centuries, from Spain to the New World Samuel Sewell, a Boston judge, sug- map or unknown pilot’s tale, this may and presumably back again, that no one gested that the new lands should right- have been the “secret knowledge” that is sure of his final resting place. fully be named for Columbus, “the inspired Columbus. Certainly, without In the first century after his voyages, magnanimous hero… who was mani- his unwavering belief in himself and his Columbus languished in the backwaters festly appointed by God to be the Finder destiny, Columbus might not have sus- of history. His reputation suffered from out of these lands.” The idea took root. In tained the single-minded persistence it his many failures as a colonial governor. time, writers and orators used the name took to win support for the enterprise and The 1519–1522 Magellan circumnaviga- “Columbia” as a poetic name for Amer-

8 ANNUAL EDITIONS ica. Joel Barlow’s poem The Vision of lumbian Exposition in Chicago, with its islands and mainland as an inconve- Columbus, appearing in 1787, has an lavish displays of modern technology, nience, the barrier standing in their way aged Columbus lamenting his fate until was less a commemoration of the past to Asia that must be breached or circum- he is visited by an angel who transports than the self-confident celebration of a navigated. him to the New World to see what his future that Americans were eager to As early as Peter Martyr, Europeans discovery had brought to pass. There he shape and enjoy. Americans ascribed to tried to assimilate the new lands into could glimpse the “fruits of his cares and Columbus all the human virtues that what they already knew or thought, re- children of his toil.” were most prized in that time of geo- jecting the utter newness of the discov- Indeed, the young republic was busy graphic and industrial expansion, heady ery. This was, after all, during the planning the 300th anniversary of the optimism, and unquestioning belief in Renaissance, a period of rediscovering landfall, in October 1792, when it named progress. A century before, Columbus the past while reaching out to new hori- its new national capital the District of had been the symbol of American prom- zons. And so the peoples of the New Columbia—perhaps to appease those ise; now he was the symbol of American World were described in terms of the Re- who demanded that the entire country be success. naissance-ancient image of the “noble designated Columbia. Next to George The 20th century has dispelled much savage,” living in what classical writers Washington, Columbus was the nation’s of that. We have a new Columbus for a had described as the innocent “Golden most exalted hero. In him the new nation new age. He is the creation of genera- Age.” The inhabitants of the New World, without its own history and mythology tions that have known devastating world Martyr wrote, “seem to live in that found a hero from the distant past, one wars, the struggle against imperialism, golden world of which old writers speak seemingly free of association with the and economic expansion that ravages na- so much, wherein men lived simply and European colonial powers and Old- ture without necessarily satisfying basic innocently without enforcement of laws, World tyranny. Americans invoked Co- human needs. In this view, the Age of without quarreling, judges and libels, lumbus, the solitary individual who had Discovery initiated by Columbus was content only to satisfy nature, without challenged the unknown, as they con- not the bright dawning of a glorious ep- further vexation for knowledge of things templated the dangers and promise of och but an invasion, a conquest and Co- to come.” their own wilderness frontier. “Instead of lumbus himself less a symbol of progress The innocence of the indigenous ravaging the newly found countries,” than of oppression. Americans was more imagined than real. Washington Irving wrote in his 1828 bi- Columbus scholarship has changed. To one degree or another, they knew ography, Columbus “sought to colonize More historians are writing books from warfare, brutality, slavery, human sacri- and cultivate them, to civilize the na- the standpoint of the Indians. They are fice, and cannibalism. Columbus did not, tives.” examining the consequences—the ex- as charged, “introduce” slavery to the This would be the Columbus Ameri- change of plants and animals between New World; the practice existed there cans knew and honored throughout the continents, the spread of deadly diseases, before his arrival, though his shipments 19th and into the present century. With the swift decline of the indigenous of Tainos to Spain presaged a transoce- the influx of millions of immigrants after Americans in the face of European in- anic traffic in slaves unprecedented in the Civil War, he was even made to as- roads. The Quincentennial happens to history. sume the role of ethnic hero. In response come at a time of bitter debate among This idealized image of people living to adverse Protestant attitudes and to af- Americans over racism, sexism, imperi- in nature persisted until it was too late to firm their own Americanism, Irish Cath- alism, Eurocentrism, and other “isms.” learn who the Americans really were olic immigrants organized the Knights of Kirkpatrick Sale’s 1990 book about Co- and, accepting them for what they were, Columbus in 1882. The fraternity’s liter- lumbus said it all in its title, The Con- to find a way to live and let live. Disease ature described Columbus as “a prophet quest of Paradise. and conquest wiped out the people and and a seer” and an inspiration to each their cultures. In their place Europeans knight to become “a better Catholic and had begun to “invent” America, as the a better citizen.” Catholics in both Amer- Was Columbus a great man, or Mexican historian Edmundo O’Gorman ica and Europe launched a campaign to merely an agent of a great accomplish- contends, in their own image and for canonize Columbus on the grounds that ment, or perhaps not a very admirable their own purposes. They had set upon a he had brought the “Christian faith to man at all? His standing in history has course, writes historian Alfred W. half the world.” The movement failed varied whenever posterity reevaluated Crosby, of creating “Neo-Europes.” This not because of Columbus’s brutal treat- the consequences of Europe’s discovery was the America that took its place in ment of Indians but mainly because of of America. Ultimately, Columbus’s world history. the son he had sired out of wedlock. reputation in history is judged in relation In the 18th century, however, Euro- Columbus’s reputation was never to the place that is accorded America in pean intellectuals did engage in a search- higher than on the 400th anniversary of history. ing reappraisal. A scientific movement, his first voyage. There were parades and Europeans took a long time appreciat- encouraged by the French naturalist fireworks, the naming of streets and ded- ing their discovery. Columbus and suc- Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon icating of monuments. The World’s Co- ceeding explorers looked upon the (1707–1788), spread the idea that Amer-

9 Article 37. Columbus and the Labyrinth of History

1991: Cerebration, Not Celebration

It was in 1982 that I first became aware that the 500th anniversary of African Americans also remind their fellow citizens that the events Columbus’s 1492 Voyage of Discovery was a minefield, where the of 1492 and afterwards gave rise to the slave trade. And Jews appro- prudent celebrant stepped lightly and guardedly. priately notice that 1492 was the year when they were forcibly ex- To my long-time friend Ramon, in an institute attached to the for- pelled from their Spanish homeland. In a counter-counteraction in all eign ministry in Madrid, I said on the telephone one day that year, this Quincentenary skirmishing, however, the National Endowment “Ramon, here at Florida we’re beginning to get interested in the Co- for the Humanities decided not to fund a proposed television docu- lumbus Discovery Quincentenary.” mentary about the early contact period because, reportedly, it was too “Why do you say Columbus?” he responded. “He was an Italian biased against the Europeans. (Spain, by contrast, is acting uncom- mercenary. It was Spain that discovered America, not Columbus.” monly large-minded: It has agreed to fund the Smithsonian-Carlos Fu- “But, Ramon,” I protested, “we can’t celebrate 1492 in the United entes television production, “The Buried Mirror,” a show that is States without mentioning Columbus.” highly critical of Spain’s colonial practices.) “In your country,” he lectured me, “Columbus Day is an Italian It is this “politically correct” dynamic that, most likely, will keep holiday. But the ships, the crews, the money were all Spanish. Colum- 1992 from being quite the exuberant and careless celebration that the bus was a hired hand.” Bicentennial was in 1976. “But—” Anglo-Saxon and Celtic Americans felt comfortable with the Bi- “So when Cape Canaveral space center holds its 100th anniver- centennial because it reinforced their ethnic and cultural givens (Ply- sary, are you going to call it the Werner von Braun celebration?” mouth Rock, Virginia, Washington, Jefferson, the English language, I was grateful to Ramon for alerting me, in his way, to the sensitive Northern European immigration, etc.). Today, nervous about what is character of this anniversary. Soon afterwards I learned that “Discov- happening to “their” country and learning that citizens of Hispanic or- ery,” too, is a term freighted with ethnic and cultural contentions, as igins are projected soon to be the largest U.S. minority, the old line many descendants of the native peoples in the Americas argue against white majority may not be enthusiastic about celebrating the 500th its Eurocentric and paternalistic coloring. “We were already here,” coming of the Hispanics—especially since they sense no continuing they reminded me. And they were here so long ago, 10 to 25,000 years need for Columbus as a unifying principle or symbol. the anthropologists say. I was left to wonder, which was the Old What is likely to happen in 1992? Occasional public celebrations World and which was the New? and observances will be produced by civic, ethnic, and cultural bod- As the past ten years have shown, the Spanish-Italian tension has ies. Reproductions of Columbus’s ships will arrive in various ports softened, but the European-Native American disjunction has hard- from Spain. Tall ships may parade in New York harbor. Fireworks ened, as historians, epidemiologists, moralists, romanticists, and na- will explode here and there. People will view two television mini-se- tive spokespersons have clashed over the benefits, if any, that ries and read countless ambivalent newspaper stories. European entrance onto the American stage brought the societies of The Federal Quincentenary Jubilee Commission that was ap- both worlds, particularly this one. pointed to superintend our exultations is in disarray, its chairman Certainly huge numbers of indigenous people died as a result of forced out on a charge of mishandling funds, its coffers empty of fed- the collision: some, it is true, from the sword, but by far the majority eral dollars, its principal private donor, Texaco, pulling the plug. from the Europeans’ unwitting introduction of pathogens—smallpox, Some states, and numerous individual cities (especially those named measles, tuberculosis, the plague—to which the native peoples had no after Columbus, 63 at last count), have plans for observances, large or immunities. Recognizing the dimensions of that calamity, many small. Florida which has the best reasons, geographically and tempo- Westerners acknowledge that there is little to celebrate. In Spain, rally, to do something, has no state-wide plans, two commissions hav- where a 500th Year Worlds’ Fair will open in Seville, many of that ing collapsed and a third now being stripped of its funds. country’s intellectuals are decrying what they call a 15th-and 16th- But now the good news: In anticipation of the 500th anniversary century genocidio. an enormous amount of intellectual activity has occurred, in the form In the margins of the debate, native descendants and their advo- of archival discoveries, archaeological excavations, museum and li- cates are publicizing a long list of grievances against the Caucasians brary exhibitions, conferences, and publications. Some 30 new and who abused their liberties, expropriated their lands, and despoiled an upcoming adult titles have been enumerated by Publishers Weekly. environmental paradise. On July 17–21, 1990, some 400 Indian peo- Over 100 exhibitions and conferences have been counted by the Na- ple, including a delegation from the United States, met in Quito, Ec- tional Endowment for the Humanities. This remarkable efflorescence uador, to plan public protests against 500 years of European of original research and scholarship will leave a lasting legacy of un- “invasion” and “oppression.” Even before that, the first sign of reac- derstanding and good. On the twin principles that cerebration is more tion in the United States had already come when, in December 1989, valuable than celebration and that correcting one paragraph in our representatives of the American Indian Movement, supported by a children’s schoolbooks is worth more than a half-million dollars group of university students, began picketing the “First Encounters” worth of fireworks exploded over Biscayne Bay, 1992 should be the archaeology exhibition mounted by the Florida Museum of Natural best 1492 anniversary ever. History as it traveled from Gainesville to Tampa, Atlanta, and Dallas. —Michael Gannon (In Tampa, their presence was welcomed because it boosted paid at- tendance.) In 1992, a loose confederation of North American Indian groups will picket in all U.S. cities where the Columbus replica ships will dock. They seek, one of their leaders told me, “not confrontation Michael Gannon is Director of the Institute for Early Contact but media attention to present-day Native American problems.” Period Studies at the University of Florida.

10 ANNUAL EDITIONS ica was somehow inferior to the Old be ameliorated? He offered a prize for were the products not of global disasters World. As evidence, Buffon offered den- the essay that would best answer those and multiple creations but of slow and igrating comparisons between the “ridic- questions. steady change. ulous” tapir and the elephant, the llama The respondents whose essays have By contrast, Crosby observes, the and the camel, and the “cowardly” puma survived were evenly divided between 20th century has experienced the two and the noble lion. Moreover, Old- optimists and pessimists. Although “Eu- worst wars in history, genocide, the in- World animals introduced there fared rope is indebted to the New World for a vention of more ominous means of de- poorly, declining in health and size, with few conveniences, and a few luxuries,” struction, revolutions and the collapse of the sole exception of the pig. It was Buf- Raynal himself observed, these were “so empires, rampant population growth, fon’s thesis that America suffered an ar- cruelly obtained, so unequally distrib- and the threat of ecological disaster. Cat- rested development because of a humid uted, and so obstinately disputed” that astrophism, not steady progress, is the climate, which he attributed to its rela- they may not justify the costs. In conclu- modern paradigm. Even the universe tively late emergence from the waters of sion, the abbé asked, if we had it to do was born, many scientists now believe, the Biblical flood. over again, would we still want to dis- in one explosive moment—the Big Buffon’s ideas enjoyed a vogue cover the way to America and India? “Is Bang. throughout the 18th century and inspired it to be imagined,” Raynal speculated, “The rapidity and magnitude of more extreme arguments about “Amer- “that there exists a being infernal enough change in our century,” Crosby con- ica’s weakness.” Not only were the ani- to answer this question in the affirma- cludes, “has prepared us to ask different mals inferior, so were the Americans, tive?” questions about the encounter than the and even Europeans who settled there Pangs of guilt and expressions of older schools of scientists and scholars soon degenerated. moral outrage were futile, however; asked.” Unlike the proud patriots in colonial nothing stayed the momentum of Euro- and post-Revolutionary North America, pean expansion in America. Most of the European intellectuals began expressing immigrants had never heard of the If Abbé Raynal held his essay contest strong reservations about the benefits of “American weakness” or read the intel- today, the pessimists might outnumber the American discovery. There was no lectuals who idealized or despised the In- the optimists. Indeed, almost everything gainsaying its importance. Few disputed dians or deplored Europe’s bloodstained about Columbus and the discovery of the opinion of Adam Smith: “The dis- seizure of the lands. By the millions— America has become controversial. covery of America, and that of a passage particularly after the introduction of the And perhaps the greatest controversy to the East Indies by the Cape of Good steamship and on through World War of all is whether or not to celebrate the Hope, are the two greatest and most im- I—immigrants flocked to a promised Quincentennial. The critics who advo- portant events recorded in the history of land where people could make some- cate not celebrating it are correct, if to mankind.” thing of themselves and prepare a better celebrate perpetuates a view of the en- But there were negative assessments, life for their children. There had been counter that ignores the terrible toll. This not unlike today’s. The anti-imperialist nothing quite like this in history. This must be acknowledged and memorial- Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) wrote: was reflected in the image of Columbia. ized in the hope that nothing like it is “The Europeans have scarcely visited Little wonder that Columbus’s standing ever repeated. Even so, it would be un- any coast but to gratify avarice, and ex- in history was never higher than it was historical to ignore the more salutary tend corruption; to arrogate dominion when the achievements and promise of consequences. The New World, for ex- without rights, and practice cruelty with- America seemed so bright and were example, changed Europe through new out incentive.” He was also one of the travagantly proclaimed at home and ideas, new resources, and new models of first to make an unflattering connection abroad. political and social life that would spread between the conquest of America and its The “primary factor behind our [cur- through the world. William H. McNeill original conqueror. Columbus, Johnson rent] reassessment of the encounter,” is one of many historians who believe said, had to travel “from court to court, Crosby writes, “is a general reassess- this led to the Enlightenment of the 18th scorned and repulsed as a wild projector, ment of the role of rapid change, even ca- century and thus to the philosophical, po- an idle promiser of kingdoms in the tastrophe, in human history, and even the litical, and scientific foundations of clouds: nor has any part of the world had history of the earth and of the universe.” modern Western civilization. It should reason to rejoice that he found at last re- The earlier faith in progress was founded not be overlooked that this is the kind of ception and employment.” on a Western belief that change came society that encourages and tolerates the The French philosopher Abbé Guil- gradually and almost invariably for the revisionists who condemn its many un- laume-Thomas Raynal (1713–1796) better. In 19th-century science, the uni- forgivable transgressions in the New challenged others to consider the follow- formitarian geology of Charles Lyell and World. ing questions: Has the discovery of the evolutionary theory of Charles Dar- Of course, attributing so much to any America been useful or harmful to man- win were widely accepted because they one historical development makes some kind? If useful, how can its usefulness be seemed to confirm the idea of progress: historians uneasy. In cautioning against magnified? If harmful, how can the harm The present world and its inhabitants the “presentism” in much historical in-

11 Article 37. Columbus and the Labyrinth of History terpretations, Herbert Butterfield re- But he does not deserve to bear alone the People have choices, but they do not called “the schoolboy who, writing on blame for the consequences of his auda- always choose well. One wishes Colum- the results of Columbus’s discovery of cious act. bus had acquitted himself more nobly, in America, enumerated amongst other We must resist the temptation to shift the full knowledge that, even if he had, things the execution of Charles I, the war blame for our behavior to someone dead others who came after would have al- of the Spanish Succession and the and gone. Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peru- most surely squandered the opportunity French Revolution.” No one will ever vian novelist, finds little to admire in the presented to them to make a truly fresh know what the world and subsequent early Spanish conquerors but recognizes start in human history—a new world in events would have been like if the dis- the dangers inherent in transferring to more than the geographic sense. But covery had not been made, or if it had not them an inordinate share of the blame for wishes, yesterday’s self-congratulation occurred until much later. But the impact modern America. or today’s self-flagellation, are not his- of that discovery can hardly be underes- “Why have the post-colonial repub- tory. timated. And it did start with Christopher lics of the Americas—republics that Columbus’s failings, as well as his Columbus. might have been expected to have deeper ambitions and courage, are beyond his- That brings up another issue central to and broader notions of liberty, equality, torical doubt—and are all too human. the Quincentenary debates: Columbus’s and fraternity—failed so miserably to The mythic Columbus of our creation is responsibility for all that followed. It improve the lives of their Indian citi- something else. His destiny, it seems, is must be remembered who he was—not zens?” Vargas Llosa asks. “Immense op- to serve as a barometer of our self-confi- who we wish he had been. He was a Eu- portunities brought by the civilization dence, our hopes and aspirations, our ropean Christian of the 15th century sail- that discovered and conquered America faith in progress, and the capacity of hu- ing for the crown of Spain. There can be have been beneficial only to a minority, mans to create a more just society. no expiation, only understanding. His sometimes a very small one; whereas the single-mindedness and boldness, as well great majority managed to have only a as the magnitude of his achievement, negative share of the conquest.… One of give him heroic standing. Others did not our worst defects, our best fictions, is to have Columbus’s bold idea to sail across believe that our miseries have been im- John Noble Wilford has been a science cor- the unknown ocean, or if they did, they posed on us from abroad, that others, for respondent for the New York Times since never acted upon it. Columbus did. In so example, the conquistadores, have al- 1965. Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Wil- ford is the author of The Mapmakers (1981), many other respects, he failed to rise ways been responsible for our prob- The Riddle of the Dinosaur (1985), Mars above his milieu and set a more worthy lems.… Did they really do it? We did it; Beckons (1990), and Mysterious History of example, and so ended up a tragic figure. we are the conquistadores.” Columbus (1991).