DISCOVERING THE GREAT DISCOVERER

By Edwin Cooney

CHRISTOPHER WHO?
It’s all a part of our modern befuddlement! First it was “Spiro who?” Then it was “Jimmy who?” However, for the last five hundred years or so, for many Americans it has been “Christopher Columbus who?”

COLUMBUS DAY—JUST ANOTHER DAY?
I don’t know about you, but for me, Columbus Day, when I was growing up, was just another day!
Halloween was much more fun!
On Thanksgiving Day, one ate turkey with all the trimmings.
On Christmas Day, there was baby Jesus and neat presents (except for the clothes, of course).
Valentine’s Day meant cards and candy and maybe a kiss from a sweet little classmate.
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were bigger men than your daddy, which was why we celebrated their birthdays. Both George and Abe, after all, were born in log cabins which they helped their fathers build.
I mean, they were real folks!
Easter was about resurrection, rabbits, and candy.
Memorial Day and Fourth of July were about soldiers and firecrackers, marshmallows and watermelons.
Labor Day was the last fun picnic day before school.
As for Columbus Day, there were parades, but you very seldom got the day off from school—and besides, who was Christopher Columbus anyway?

In the fall of 1792, about the time President Washington was reluctantly seeking re-election, the New York City Society of St. Tammany celebrated the 300th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America. Not until 1866 and 1869 did the Italian-American communities of New York and San Francisco, respectively, celebrate the man whose name is spelled and pronounced Cristoforo Colombo in Italian and Cristóbal Colón in Spanish.

In 1892, it was just good politics for President Benjamin Harrison to issue a proclamation honoring the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s first great discovery. (Not that it helped much: Harrison lost his bid for a second term to Grover Cleveland, the man he’d beaten four years before.)

In 1905, the state of Colorado began celebrating Columbus Day as a holiday. By 1920, October 12th was annually celebrated just about everywhere as Columbus Day. In 1937, FDR made October 12th a federal holiday. Always seeking to do things bigger and better, in 1968, LBJ made Columbus Day the second Monday in October so that federal workers might use that extra day as part of a long weekend vacation.

WHO WAS CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS?
Sometime between August 26th and October 31st 1451, Christopher Columbus was born the eldest son of Domenico and Susanna Fontanarossa Columbus. He would eventually have three younger brothers, Bartolomeo, to whom he was closest, Giovanni Pellegrino, Giacomo, and a sister Bianchinetta. Most historians believe he was born and raised in Genoa, Italy where his father was a woolen merchant. Christopher and brother Bartolomeo were interested in sailing and fascinated by cartography, the study of maps and charts. It was this fascination that eventually took both Columbus brothers to Portugal which, in the late 1470s, was the world leader in oceanic exploration. While there he met and married Doña Felipa Perestrello e Moniz, the daughter of a wealthy merchant seaman who had sailed with Prince Henry the Navigator. As part of his marriage dowry, Columbus received his late father-in-law’s oceanic maps and ocean current charts. It should be noted that the Columbus brothers had little formal education and had taught themselves Italian, Latin, Greek, Spanish and Portuguese.

The couple was married in 1479 and had their only son Diego in January 1480. By 1485, Felipa was dead. Later that year, rather than merely sticking the five-year-old in a convent, Columbus took Diego to Spain. There, Columbus met Beatriz Enriquez, an orphan who was a weaver, and became her lifelong mate. Although the couple never married, Columbus taught young Diego to think of Beatriz as his mother. In 1488, Christopher and Beatriz had a son Ferdinand. Ferdinand and Diego both became pages to Prince Juan of Spain, son of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was Isabella who would partially finance his four voyages (in 1492, 1493, 1498 and 1502) to the New World.

Although Columbus could be vain, ambitious, and cruel, it is still reasonable to believe that he was usually responsive to the needs and vulnerabilities of those around him. By the time he left Palos, Spain on August 3, 1492 for what he believed would be East Asia, he was typical of the young upwardly-mobile professional of his time.

WHAT DID HE DO?
Although Leif Ericsson and Thorfinn Karlesefni, two Viking explorers, preceded Columbus to the New World by nearly half a millennium, it was timing that made what Christopher Columbus did matter. Columbus’s first voyage began the continuum of exploration that resulted in our comfortable occupancy of 2005 America.

During his first voyage, it is generally acknowledged there was no mistreatment of the native population. He agreed with Queen Isabella that Christian love rather than coercion was the best way to treat the Arawak natives who greeted him on Watling Island, one of the Bahamian Islands, that October 12th 1492. Columbus renamed Watling Island San Salvador. Cuba and Hispaniola were his final two ports of call during his first voyage. Native artifacts, some gold, and even some Indians were the souvenirs which Columbus brought back as gifts for Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. The queen fell in love with the natives and dressed them in clothes made of the softest velvet!

On his second journey to the New World, Columbus discovered that the thirty-nine men he had left behind at the settlement called Navidad had been killed by the natives for assaulting their women. It may well have been this episode that brought out the harsh side of Christopher Columbus for it was during this second voyage that he became tough on both his own men and the native populations he visited.

Near the close of his third voyage, which began in 1498, the king and queen sent a governor to Hispaniola who was authorized to arrest Columbus and return him to Spain in chains. There were reports of native enslavement as well as physical abuse against both the Spaniards and natives. There is documentation that Columbus ordered some of the enslaved natives to mine for gold under the threat of having their hands chopped off if they were unsuccessful. Finally, there is documentation of sexual enslavement of the native population.

By the time he returned to Spain in November 1504 from his fourth and final voyage, Christopher Columbus had fallen from royal favor. He was no longer Admiral of the Oceans and Seas or Governor of the lands he had visited. This was in part due to complaints about him as an administrator, but there were other factors.

First of all, he was no longer unique. Other explorers had visited the New World on behalf of Spain, Portugal, and England. Maps of the northern and eastern parts of South America had by then revealed that Columbus had not reached the riches of eastern Asia as he had claimed. One of those explorers was an Italian mapmaker named Amerigos Vespucci. It was he and not Christopher Columbus for whom the two American continents would be named.

CELEBRATING CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS!
In evaluating whether or not Columbus’s clear mistreatment of Native Americans or indigenous people should bring about his removal as one of our national heroes, three things should be considered. These are:
(1.) Was his treatment of Native Americans unusual for his time?
(2.) Was his treatment of Native Americans a part of a pattern of treatment followed by others at his specific recommendation?
(3.) Was his accomplishment enough of an historical turning point to make him uniquely significant?

For me, the answer to the first question is, that as horrible and reprehensible as his mistreatment of Native Americans was and as difficult as it is for our modern consciences to stomach, it is instructive to take the following into account:

Great empires such as those of Alexander the Great, Genghis Kahn, the Ottoman Turks, as well as Spain, France, and England advanced via their militaries rather than by their physical and social scientists;

Also, one should consider how Spain, France, and England treated their own people; Columbus’s last voyage was over by 1505 and Britain’s Henry the Eighth hadn’t even begun his thirty-eight year Reign of Terror in England yet; The Catholic Church and the governments of France and Spain hadn’t even begun to draw, quarter, hang, behead or burn any of their political opponents and religious heretics in Columbus’s lifetime; Therefore, why single out Columbus for special condemnation?

The answer to question two is a slam-dunk. Columbus as much as anyone else you want to name is singularly accountable for his own actions and absolutely no one else’s. He didn’t direct or command the actions of either Cortes or Pizzarro. Of course, Columbus’s cruelties are a part of the record of his life, but so are the practices of the religious, political and social mores of the 15th and 16th centuries which most certainly had their effect on his behavior. The days in which Columbus lived were a combination of religion tinged by superstition along with social and political institutions that demanded the absolute submission of the poor and those who were different. This explanation does not excuse Columbus; it includes him in a time that is much beyond our comprehension.

Finally, it was Christopher Columbus who, with his brother Bartolomeo and his two friends Martin and Vicente Pinzo, were ready to command the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina respectively, before anyone else was ready to sail for any other country. Thus began a continuum, not of immorality but of discovery. That is what we celebrate.

By all accounts Christopher Columbus was an excellent father, a considerate and faithful lover, a marvelous brother, and a loyal friend. On top of all that, he was one hell of an explorer.

No way, however, would he ever get my vote for governor!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY