Discovering Columbus: Villain or Not?

http://darrickdean.com/2015/10/09/columbus-legacy/ ^

[truthfinder9]

Last year I asked, Should Columbus be Celebrated? It is a controversial question, since that day in 1492 meant the eventual end of many cultures in the Western Hemisphere. The other side of the sword is that new cultures arose from those escaping the Old World. In all likelihood, using Columbus as the poster child for all that did go wrong is not fair.

One has to dig deep into many studies of the man to even begin to unravel his mind. He was secretive, put himself in the middle of politics and was the target of his enemies. All of this, and the distance of time, have made any study of the explorer a difficult one.

As Carol Delaney argues in Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem, acquiring wealth for the Spanish crown was not his primary goal. He sought allies and money for one more Crusade to the Holy Lands. Religious motivation has been suggested before, but by writers couching everything in esoteric conspiracies. It has also been suggested he knew the New World existed. As plausible as that is, most of what we know seems to point elsewhere. Beyond that:

[hanamizu]

America would have been discovered by 1500 at the latest (Cabral) with or without Columbus with all of the same destruction that occurs when Stone Age people living in desirable locations encounter more advanced civilizations.

However, very few people’s accomplishments have changed the history of humanity more than Columbus’s. To ignore him is foolish. To pretend that the discovery of the Americas was, all in all a bad thing is downright evil.

[ModelBreaker]

Had the Indians advanced to iron metallurgy and gunpowder been more advanced in agricultural techniques to feed large populations, developed wealth creation through private property, etc, the outcome would have been different. Still violent. But different.

When unequal cultures meet. Stuff happens. Unpleasant stuff happens. Always has. Always will. Ghengis Khan conquered a lot of far less unequal cultures and unpleasant stuff happened as he remade Asia.

Interesting side note. At the height of the depression, and in 1934, Roosevelt offered the many Indian tribes money to relinquish their sovereignty as nations—a status that the Constitution created.

The tribes that did not take the bribe and relinquish sovereignty (Cherokee, Osage, Shoshones and one other) are today wealthy tribes with free people on their reservations—their reservations have businesses, nice homes and still retain their cultural differences. Most people don’t know it, but Tulsa Oklahoma is Indian reservation.

OTOH, the tribes that took the money and relinquished their sovereignty are run by the Bureau of Indian affairs, live on federal land, are assigned housing, need permission from Washington to open a business and are the most poverty stricken people in the US. (BTW, this is the reason the Keystone pipeline will probably eventually go in. It travels across non-sovereign Indian reservations. They have no say in what the feds put on their land because it isn’t their land).

[RJS1950]

Yep, that was the Spanish approach although those numbers are highly overestimated. The population of Europe in 1492 was around 70 million so estimates of indigenous people in the Americas of anywhere from 20 mil to 120 mil is fantasy. Even if you set the native population at 70 mil, equal to Europe they didn’t come near wiping out 57 percent of their population. 70 mil would be an exaggeration as well. Those estimates are like the millions of slaves supposedly transported and millions supposedly dying in transport. The Central African total population at the time came nowhere near the numbers estimated and if true would have depopulated Central Africa. That is not the case.

Remember too, that some of the larger massacres by the Spanish were aided by other tribes who were being conquered and killed off by the tribes being fought.

The Spanish were bad, but they just accelerated what the various tribes were doing to each other.

[butlerweave]

It was a different World in 1492 ,you can’t compare it with today ,well maybe with the Middle East

[Bryanw92]

>>That may not be the case at all, but we will never know as the fanatical Christian Missionaries destroyed everything they could - piles and piles of writings were burned (comparable to the burning of the Library of Alexandra), objects unfamiliar to them smashed or melted down, even one report that of a round glass object that showed moving pictures and definitely the work of the Devil

I’ve heard about the advanced cities of crystal and winged black people that existed in Africa until the white men came and destroyed them all. But I didn’t know that the natives of North America had similar miraculous cities that were destroyed by evil Christians.

I have to give those primitive evil Christians credit, because they managed to completely obliterate a “more advanced culture” that had the advantage of numbers and the home field. They were so successful that not a single piece of archaeological evidence exists.

Or is it all stored in a government warehouse with the Ark of the Covenant and the 100 mpg carb?

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***...end of many cultures in the Western Hemisphere.”***

True. Now Human Sacrifices only take place in large cities like Chicago and abortion clinics.

[Mastador1]

It is a controversial question, since that day in 1492 meant the eventual end of many cultures in the Western Hemisphere.

That is a specious argument blaming Columbus, if not him someone else would have soon found the same route. You can't put the Genie back in the bottle once it's out and exploration and the search for new wealth was only increasing.

[Army Air Corps]

Or is it all stored in a government warehouse with the Ark of the Covenant and the 100 mpg carb?

Pssst, hey pal! I have the 100mpg carburetor and it is yours in exchange for some beachfront property in Gila Bend, Arizona.

[norton]

Not at all sure of your conclusions; I can name at least four "Bands", groupings of diverse "Mission Indians" and sub-sets of major tribes in this neighborhood (So Cal) who are living very large and self governing based on casino capitalism & non-union/non-indian labor.
IIRC the Tohono Odam living along the Arizona/mexico border are pretty independent from US border control and one of the reasons there's no water for California agriculture is N-Western tribal "rights" to unhindered salmon access. (other reasons apply as well, this is California after all)

[PIF]

You misunderstand. The African cities were build of wood and have long ago burnt and returned to the jungle and dust. There is no woo-woo here - just ordinary history.

Rather, you need to understand that sanitary conditions were horrible in Europe - that is nonexistent. Bathing was the work of the Devil, etc. The African cities were clean, every home had indoor plumping, with sewage disposal via hollow wooden logs. Disease was almost unknown, food was plentiful, and the climate good (it has changed since then due mostly to the ravages of constant Islamic wars destroying the vegetation which turned the much of area into semi-desert - goats and fire are the principle weapons against the land).

Portugal, at that time, was the superpower of Europe; its vast water-born shipping empire was the envy of all other, the Library at Lisbon held all the super-secret shipping and navigation maps - equivalent to today’s nuclear secrets - (destroyed in the 18th Century earthquake and tidal wave). Yet the living conditions were terrible. That is why when the traders and explorers arrived in that part of Africa they did not wish to return.

Christian missionaries in Central and South America did huge cultural damage as a matter of policy and of historical fact. What remains and what those cultures were, in common knowledge, is mostly what Hollywood and the History Channel invented.

[jmcenanly]

How many cultures vanished unrecorded before Columbus’ arrival? What Columbus brought to the New World was History.

[SunkenCiv]

Why? Because of this?

• Obama: Christians who take religion most seriously 'suspicious of those not like them'
• Obama Celebrates Columbus Day: Ushered in 'Disease, Devastation, and Violence'
• Obama Celebrates Columbus Day: Ushered In "Disease,Devastation,And Violence"

or maybe this ****?

• 9 cities abolish Columbus Day in favor Indigenous Peoples' Day
• Santa Rosa Junior College to observe Indigenous People's Day on Columbus Day

Some GGG topics from the FRchives:

• Remains of Conquistador Convoy Found in Mexico
• Was Christopher Columbus in Greenland 15 years before he discovered America?
• Hidden secrets of 1491 world map revealed via multispectral imaging
• South Iceland Cave Made before Settlement
• Study: Vikings May Have Taken a Native American to Iceland
• First American in Europe 'was native woman kidnapped by Vikings and hauled back to Iceland...'
• Ptolemy's Geography, America and Columbus: Ancient Greeks and why maybe America was discovered
• Pre-Columbian Map of North America Could Be Authentic--Or not
• Archaeological sensation in Oestfold [ Inca remains from 11th c Norway? ]
• Leif Erikson Day, October 9, 2004
• The Egg Island theory (Where Did Columbus Make Landfall?)
• Israelites Were In America Before Columbus

[Tzimisce]

I’m “Indigenous” to the US.

But they’re still scrubbing my history.

[Politicalkiddo]

Does this fall under “settled indoctrination”?

[Politicalkiddo]

Well, he got somewhere. How often do Democrats get anywhere?

[Texan5]

I don’t see Columbus as the villain in the discovery scenario-if there is a “villain” in that episode of history, it is Spanish greed-all Columbus did was call the attention of Europeans to a place that no one was paying much attention to up till then, and got paid for it-the rest would have happened eventually anyway-it was pretty much inevitable...

But I don’t see the Spaniards as being any “nicer” than the Native Americans-they were just a few centuries more advanced in their methods of conquest, and they were past cannibalism and human sacrifice. Other than that, it was a brutal world everywhere and spoils of war were the reward of the winner...

Obama and the rest really ought to quit bashing Columbus...

[donaldo]

This whole Columbus thing is another attempt to inflict guilt on “whitey.” Alistair MacLean wrote about Captain Cook thus:

“Here was the man, the cynics would say, who was going to open up the Pacific to the benefits and riches of Western civilization. Whole books have, in fact, been written roundly condemning Cook for the ever-lasting damage he was responsible for wreaking on the Pacific. Alas, merely because a man can write a book doesn’t mean that he can’t be silly, and such writers are very silly indeed. If it hadn’t been Cook, it would have been someone else. Could anyone possibly be so naive as to imagine that if Cook had never lived that the Pacific would still be a trackless and undiscovered waste?” Source: Captain Cook by Alistair MacLean, page 48. Just so. If it hadn’t been Columbus it would’ve been someone else. This crap is getting old. And how about that quaint multicultural practice of the Aztecs ripping out hearts and eating flesh? The Western Hemisphere wasn’t exactly a Garden of Eden before Cristoforo Colombo arrived, was it?

[colorado tanker]

For many years Columbus Day was a total circus here. AIM, Ward Churchill and every wing nut would demonstrate and block the streets to try to shut down the parade. Darn near succeeded, but there is a very stubborn Italian community here, including Knights of Columbus.

Eventually, they couldn't find enough nuts to protest when they failed at stopping the parades. And then Ward Churchill was exposed as a fraud and kicked out of town. Now, it's a pretty normal holiday and parade.

[SunkenCiv]

I wholeheartedly agree.

[SunkenCiv]

I wholeheartedly agree.