Sympathy for the Devil: Columbus Day and Why it Matters

Townhall.com ^ | October 11, 2021 | Joseoh Bowman

[married21]

Thank you for this article.

[nicollo]

One of the common dismissals of Columbus is that he never even set foot in America. Instead, he landed in the Bahamas.

First of all, just as Indonesia is part of Asia, the Bahamas are part of North America. Secondly, on his fourth voyage, Columbus likely did visit modern Venezuela and Central America.

I'm not convinced he didn't know that he hadn't reached Asia. He claimed that what he had discovered were a set islands off the coast of Asia. But if you consider the Waldseemüller map (large file from wikipedia) based on Amerigo Vespucci's observations (and which labelled part of South America, "America", after Vespucci), it was thought that there was a path to the Pacific Ocean between modern Panama and Columbia. So it was well understood that there was further west to go.

Btw, the Vespucci maps greatly underestimated the width of the Americas. Even the English, a hundred years later, thought they could go a few hundred miles west of Jamestown to get to the Pacific and to all the gold. Woops.