PERSPECTIVES: Columbus Day or Not?

Posthumous portrait of a man, said to be Christopher Columbus, by Sebastiano del Piombo, 1519

by James C. Johnston Jr.

As a youngster, Christopher Columbus reigned as one of supreme heroes of the heady days of world exploration. After the fall of Rome to Odoacer in 476 C.E., Europe was largely an ungoverned mass of enclaves of power which would sort themselves out into somewhat defined national states by 1492, which coincides with the victory of Isabella and Ferdinand of the new united national state of Spain over which they reigned backed up by the power of the Church and enforced by the Holy Inquisition headed by the Queen’s former confessor Torquemada.

With the fall of Grenada in 1492, a great victory was celebrated. The same year saw the expulsion of the Muslim populations from Spain after most of the families had lived there for five hundred years or more. And this expulsion was followed by the expulsion of all of the Jews in Spain who failed to join the Catholic Church and get baptized. It was in this lucky year of 1492, that Columbus was granted the patronage of Queen Isabella the very-powerful-hands-on co-ruler of Spain. Isabella backed Columbus and that brought the backing of the Pinzon Brothers and a total of three ships for Columbus voyage of discovery.

This was the Spain of Christopher Columbus’ day and time in history. Columbus was not Spanish. He was born in Genoa. His background is very mysterious. He was thought to be a descendant of Jewish ancestors while other historians have thought him to be of Italian blood alone. We really do not even know what he looked like. Columbus has been represented with a beard, without a beard as on this nation’s first commemorative coin, The Columbian Half-Dollar of 1892. This same image was used on the five dollar commemorative stamp of the Columbian Series of 1893 issued in compliment to the 400th year of the so-called discovery of America, named for Amerigo Vespucci for whom a German cartographer had named “The New Land” about 1508 when Columbus was not entirely well known even in Europe.

The cartographer thought that Vespucci was the discoverer of the new land because Vespucci had not referenced Columbus in his own book about his own trip to the “New World” located three thousand miles to the West of Europe over the Great Atlantic Ocean. One thing everybody could agree on was that nobody had fallen over the edge of the world …..yet. Later Ferdinand Magellan led a voyage of circumnavigation around the globe to prove forever that this world of ours was round. This fact had been known by the “Ancients” and most of the well-educated classes going back before Aristarchus of Samos.

So what was our man Columbus all about? By all accounts, he was a religious zealot which was very much keeping with the times when Heaven and Hell had an awful reality to the masses. Spain was burning “Heretics” with alarming regularity. The fact that the “Heretic’s” property was most often confiscated added a material factor to government policy regarding non-believers. Later a Spanish Pope and a member of the Borgia Family, Alexander VI, would divide the non-Christian World between Spain and Portugal, Europe’s most powerful naval powers in the late 1490’s.

Columbus’ story is very well known. I could not imagine crossing the Atlantic in those three little cockle-shells that passed as ships in that time. These Caravels, Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, all made it one way, but the Santa Maria would pile-up on a hostile outcropping of coastline, and its broken hull would be used to build a fort and shelter. Columbus would not be first home with the news of discovery. Martin Alonzo Pinzon and his brother would have that honor, but Isabella would have none of them and waited for the return of Columbus. Columbus almost was arrested on landing in Portugal by Vasco Da Gama, the Great Portuguese explorer who was to sail to India after rounding the Cape of Good Hope previously “discovered” by Bartholomew Dias.

But Columbus made it back, reported to his queen, introduced indigenous Native-American people to the monarchs, displayed fruits and other flora, and a small portion of gold which excited most of the gathering’s attention. And the rush for the Americas was on. As an interesting note, as brought out in Samuel Eliot Morison’s seminal work, Christopher Columbus, Mariner, Isabella wanted her new Spanish subjects in The New World treated well. Columbus brought up an argument to justify enslaving them. Columbus said that by converting the indigenous people to Christianity, the Spanish would save their souls and make sure that these people would then spend all of eternity in Heaven. Columbus then went on to say that now that the Spanish had saved their souls for all eternity, the least that these rescued people could do is give their earthly service to the Spanish as slaves in return! Makes perfectly good sense right!

For this reason alone, I would end Columbus Day and name it for all of the Native-or-First-Americans who died at the hands of the European invaders of the next 500 years of the invasion and confiscation of their ancestral homes. What is fair is fair is it not? We must remember that history is a mirror held up to us so that we can see our past, all which is good, all which is bad, and all that is downright ugly. The truth of what happened must always be known. History is not a selective story of only well-chosen events excluding all embarrassing historical matter. I applaud Representative Christine Barber and Representative Joanne Comerford for advancing “Indigenous People’s Day” in place of “Columbus Day”. Columbus has a significant place in history as a man thinking outside of the box and proving his theories of geography and navigation, but as a decent human being, Columbus was very badly flawed on the subject of slavery which would touch the lives of millions of people for the next five-plus centuries to come right down to the narrow-minded racial prejudice today. Yes, I support “Indigenous People’s Day” as a small bit of historical reparation to millions of people deprived of: freedom, home, land, and life itself.