Exploring Columbus (Great Man or Racist Oppressor?)

"Dad, why does America celebrate Columbus Day?"

"Well, Billy, in 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed from Europe to America and founded the very first settlement in the New World. His arrival marks the beginning of America as we know it."

"But didn't he discover America by accident, dad?"

"Columbus believed the Earth was a sphere. He thought he could reach the Far East by setting off on a westward course. Though he stumbled upon what is now the Bahamas by accident, he was still a great explorer and a great man, Billy."

"A great man, dad, or a racist oppressor?"

"Pardon me, son?"

"When Columbus came to America, he brought with him the greed of the white European males who subsequently colonized America for the dough. They fought and killed the Indigenous Peoples who were already here and took their land and their gold. Columbus eventually died a very rich man."

"Well, Billy, an unfortunate part of human history involves countries invading their neighbors to take control. This has happened in many parts of the world, including Europe, which has a long history of war. But remember that Indigenous Peoples were also prone to war and fighting to expand their control well before Europeans arrived."

"Well, Columbus is also responsible for many germs and diseases that Europeans brought to America, causing untold suffering and death among the people who were here before us."

"Have you been drinking too much caffeine lately, Billy?"

"America's history of environmental destruction can also be laid at Columbus' feet, dad. As soon as the Europeans colonized America's pristine lands, they cut down the trees and plowed up the fields. Can you say soil erosion, dad?"

"Son, did I ever tell you that you take after your mother's side?"

"And what about slavery?

Nobody did a poll at the time, but if anyone had bothered, I doubt the indigenous population would have described themselves as "discovered".

I am the product of my mixed maternal and paternal ancestors.
I still dealt with racial prejudice in my youth, among my own immediate paternal family, because I was not "pure white".

I am not overly fond of Columbus Day and Thanksgiving Day, as a result.

But some things require individuals to stop futilely obsessing over.
History is one of those things.

I kind of like Columbus Day. The little tribe that Columbus discovered had an odd way of cooking their food, placing a rock over the fire, and putting flesh on it. The corruption of their word has come down to us: Barbeque.

They also were infested with ants, and had a unique device to keep the ants away from them as they slept. The Hammock.

The hammock still has a faintly nautical air to it, some 500 years later.

The tribe appears to be genetically gone, having suffered the most from their exposure to Old World diseases. These aspects of their culture have been spread worldwide.

Cristobal Colon XX was recently Admiral of the Spanish Navy.

My grandfather was an Armenian. I don't have any animosity for Turks.

The celebration of Columbus isn't a celebration of the destruction of the indigenous peoples of that time, it is a celebration of mankind finding out something else momentous about the world they lived in.

The people who came out on the short end of the stick of that era were unlucky. But it is not like they weren't treating each other like subhumans either.

So many people seem to think the native people of those days were just living in harmony, the sun was bright and the flowers were blooming. They practiced internecine warfare that was as horrible and dehumanistic as anything the Europeans were doing to each other, perhaps even more so if you look at the Aztecs and their kind.

From the article: << "Columbus believed the Earth was a sphere. He thought he could reach the Far East by setting off on a westward course. Though he stumbled upon what is now the Bahamas by accident, he was still a great explorer and a great man, Billy." >> And the myth continues, no matter how many times it is corrected. Columbus's "belief" that the Earth was a sphere was shared by all educated people in Europe -- and had been accepted for a very long time. It wasn't even a issue between him and those opposed to his voyage. The controversey between Columbus and his detractors before the voyage was over the size of the Earth -- not its shape. His opponents at the Council of Salamanca argued for a circumference pretty close to what we now know to be the case. Columbus fudged his figures and argued for a circumference barely half that size. They were right; he was wrong. Columbus took with him a letter of introduction from the sovereigns of Spain to the Great Khan of China -- based on his reading of Marco Polo. Only problem was -- the Mongols had been overthrown by native Chinese a couple hundred years before! Columbus only took along enough provisions to get about as far as he did get. He was expecting to reach "the Indies" any day -- and he claimed to his dying day that he HAD done so. If he hadn't bumped into something that neither he nor his opponents knew about -- and if the Earth had been -- as he thought -- all water from Europe to Asia -- he and his crews would have perished at sea. They were already low on provisions when they sighted land -- and the crews were starting to grumble. Aristotle had explained the evidence for the sphericity of the Earth nearly two thousand years before -- and Eratosthenes, a few hundred years later, calculated its circumference, and got a number pretty close to today's figure. While I am sure many ignorant peasants were unaware of the fact -- the educated "elite" certainly knew it. If only we could get schools to stop perpetuating the myth about this. M PS -- I used several paragraphs, with double spacing between them, when I wrote this -- but the preview shows one big long paragraph. I apologize, but I cannot figure out how to fix this problem. Any help would be appreciated.

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