Not one single human being in world history is vilified moreso in the West than Christopher Columbus. His story, as taught in the American public school system and higher education is one that forces society’s head back into a fit of sputtering rage, baying at the moon like a pack of feral curs. His actions are at the epicenter of the Left’s nebulous indictments against Western culture, through and through. If liberalism was a religion—assuming we forget its cult-like mentality toward collectivism—Columbus would fill the role of liberalism’s “Great Satan.” Pilloried as public enemy number one, he is yet another example of the Left’s plot to divide our country and further shame anything inherently Eurocentric.
Although historians have criticized Columbus for his imperfections, as we all have them, he has predominantly remained a respected figure and a symbol of European exploration of the New World. No, he did not “discover” the western continents or find that long-sought west route to Asia; his legacy was not in vain. The valuable goods and items found by his expeditions bedazzled the European world, magically transforming everyone into an ambitious sailor. At the time of his voyages, he did exactly what everyone else wealthy enough to sail around the world did: Discover, settle, and trade. Practically remaining a legendary figure who had holidays, roads, buildings, schools, and cities named after him, it wasn’t until the latter half of the 20th Century that public opinion of Christopher Columbus began to dive—thanks to yet another iconoclastic, Marxist, wastrel who cried foul about a historical pillar held dear by Western society, claiming to have knowledge about the real events of the matter.
Howard Zinn was a communist, a self-described anarchist, and the subject of a 423-page FBI profile—the perfect candidate for a college professor in America—jobs he took at Spelman College and Boston University respectively. It is in his most famous 1980 book, A People’s History of the United States, in which he thrashes America’s cultural institutions against a brick wall, including a pugnacious diatribe against Christopher Columbus and his voyages. Before delving into the plentiful improprieties of Zinn’s indictment of the United States, it must be noted he lists Columbus’ voyages, beginning in 1492, as events that are linked to America’s founding. The United States of America, for those of you who went to public school, was founded in 1776—not 1492. Criticize Columbus to the fullest; his actions couldn’t be more unrelated to the American founding. Christopher Columbus never even set foot in what is now present-day America. Starting out strong there, comrade!
Howard Zinn was either habitually terrible at research or exceptionally talented with deception; conveniently excluding important details as described about the natives changes the whole perspective of who occupied the lands of the New World. It’s almost like branding the Jeffrey Dahmer story as, “Local man arrested for storing meat in his house for nearly a decade.” There are drastically important parts missing—no pun intended.
The Columbus story is widely misled by historians who completely leave out unflattering portrayals of the natives. Zinn’s motivation for his iconoclastic manifesto was to tell history from the perspective of the “victims.” Telling a story from the victim’s perspective isn’t necessarily ill-mannered, but it’s important to include all factual evidence. If the victim’s perspective contains false assumptions, it’s prudent to clarify the false assumptions are exclusive to the victim—not representing the actual story. What Zinn has done is introduce abhorrently apocryphal accounts, often someone’s opinion or intended retelling of history, and restate it as events that actually took place.
The biggest gripe Zinn has about Columbus, as other liberals do, is he writes in his journal, in reference to the Taino (Zinn labels them as “Arawak”) natives, “They have no iron. Their spears are made out of cane. . . . They would make fine servants. . . . With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
Not only are these lines, as they appear in Zinn’s book, taken completely out of context, but they are also taken from entries made by Columbus on totally different days, sometimes being multiple days apart; in this case, two days. Zinn, engulfed with intellectual dishonesty, puts them together in his book, connected by ellipses, making them appear as if they are from the same entry.
The line, “They would make fine servants,” comes in succession to previous crucial information Howard Zinn has conveniently omitted. In previous lines, Columbus describes interactions with the natives in which they inform his crew that there exist other hostile tribes with maleficent intentions, “I saw some who bore marks of wounds on their bodies, and I made signs to them to ask how this came about, and they indicated to me that people came from other islands, which are near, and wished to capture them, and they defended themselves. And I believed and still believe that they come here from the mainland to take them for slaves.”
The Taino inform Columbus that there are other tribes from other nearby islands that practice slavery (What?? They did???) and wish to conquer and take additional slaves. It is after learning this information that Columbus suggests the Taino would, “make fine servants,” not in reference to himself, but in reference to the other tribes; the Taino, according to Columbus, appeared to be docile, hardworking, and obliging, the perfect candidate for another tribe to waltz in and take over. It was crucial for Zinn to leave out those lines in order to deviously mislead his readers.
There are other lines in which Columbus wholeheartedly gives praise to the natives and expresses his intention to treat them as respectfully as possible. He didn’t even feel that he had to force Christianity on the natives—they would make that decision themselves, “I want the natives to develop a friendly attitude toward us because I know that they are a people who can be made free and converted to our Holy Faith more by love than by force.”
In one line, also omitted by Comrade Zinn, Columbus ensures that his men are prohibited from taking a single item from the natives without giving something back to them. Yes—the encounter was so diplomatic, the sailors wished to trade with them, “I warned my men to take nothing from the people without giving something in exchange.”
Christopher Columbus isn’t the evil boogeyman the Left makes him out to be. Make no mistake: Attacking the history of his voyages is not inspired from crusading indignation on behalf of the depopulated natives. The feigned moral outrage over Christopher Columbus is derived from an insidious motivation of deranged haters of European accomplishment to subvert the triumph of Western philosophy and civilization. It was from the intrepid intellectuals of Europe in which the enlightened ideas of free speech and individual liberties arose, inspiring the creation of successfully free and religious societies. These ideas pose a magnificent threat to the power-hungry narcissists who wish to subjugate the masses into a permanent slave class, only capable of doing their leaders’ bidding. Howard Zinn and his protégés wish to see successful societies, like the United States, turn into failed experiments, all at the expense of our abundant resources that would make them filthy rich.
In essence, Christopher Columbus is at the forefront of European expansion. While not particularly discovering the New World, his settlement of the West Indies inspired a generation of explorers into thinking there was more to the tiny world they originally thought. To besmirch Columbus’ accomplishments, liberal historians had to exacerbate his imperfections, dredging up atrocious calumnies of slavery and genocide. In order to tell this elusive, unfound tale of genocide, the “experts” had to rewrite history, manipulate quotes, and bury the evidence—all while dashing Columbus memorabilia with red paint and tearing down his statues. However, a greater look at the facts suggests the genocide hokum is a complete lie.
Genocide, according to the United Nations, is defined as an, “act committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group.” Columbus and his men practiced no such thing. The main philosophy of Columbus was to attack the natives only when provoked and leaving all types of violence to a last resort. Most importantly, the biggest threat to natives, regarding physical violence, was in fact other natives.
As detailed in The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus by his son Ferdinand, a biography of Columbus written by his son, neighboring tribes within the Caribbean islands had a particular proclivity for cannibalism, let alone dividing and conquering. In certain cases, entire tribes of people suffered the horrific fate of literal gnashing of teeth, “At the island of Monserrate… [Columbus] learned from the Indians aboard that the Caribs had depopulated that island by eating all its inhabitants.”
Much of the cannibalism had taken place even before Columbus reached the New World. So, just in case anyone is wondering, no—it is not “racist” to call cannibals barbaric. These are the same people praised ad nauseum in our history books as the contemporary Isaac Newtons of the Americas. Ooh! They had calendars!! Ooh! They looked at the stars!! Ooh! They had astounding cuisines—wait—nevermind. That’s just cousin Qualetaga.
Why do liberals always insist on having snooty attitudes when people point out the barbarities of the natives? I know their hatred for white people is comparable to the burning hatred of a thousand suns, but given the vast majority of habits in pre-colonial America, the only difference between your average Caribbean native and Jeffrey Dahmer was a tomahawk and a breechcloth. These people weren’t curing illnesses, embarking on humanitarian missions to save each other from earthquakes, or parachuting into neighboring tribes to fight back against fascist war machines—rather they enslaved each other, ate each other, raped each other, pillaged each other, and stole from each other, but we have to pretend they weren’t barbaric because they could at least count the number of people they ate.
Make no mistake: Not all of the indigenous people were horrendous monsters, just as not all Europeans were loving angels. Some of the tribes encountered by Columbus were rather nice and peaceful, but this is not to forget many of them practiced rather heinous activities, even foreign to the Europeans themselves. Of course, there were some honorable mentions and tribes that reigned superior to their barbaric brothers and sisters, such as Pocahontas, Sacagawea, the Wampanoags, and the Tainos, among others. That doesn’t dispute the fact that Europeans inevitably brought something called “law and order” to the New World.
Given the complete lack of evidence for charges of genocide, European mistreatment of indigenous peoples is quite a peculiar subject in relation to Christopher Columbus because the vast majority of fatal altercations between the two groups took place after Columbus’ absence from all leadership positions. Essentially, Columbus is taking the bulk of the blame for egregious crimes he did not commit himself. As more and more history is peeled back, it is discovered that the Italian explorer had more to navigate than raging waters and ritualistic natives in loincloths. The world’s largest secrets always seem to fade away when one looks at the politics of those involved. Christopher Columbus was subject to a concerted effort of unsatisfied and rebellious colonizers to foment a coup d’état of his settlement on Hispaniola.
Pay attention: I bet your history teacher doesn’t know this.
During Columbus’ reign as Governor of Hispaniola, he was rather fair-minded in his interactions with colonists as well as the natives, oftentimes treating the natives softer than his own men. Under his commands, all colonists, despite their social class, were forced into labor, as Columbus exhausted every possible avenue he could to avoid taking native slaves and breaking any diplomatic opportunities with them. The colonists, some being convicts sent from Spain to Hispaniola as laborers, didn’t take too kindly to their governor’s rules. Many Spanish colonists hated Columbus because he was of Italian descent and felt insulted to be put under his subjugation. Belaboring his men in portions of the West Indies that were largely undiscovered, the work entrusted unto the colonists was difficult and unforthcoming of initial results; some felt lied to about the robust treasures and wealth of the New World. As the workers engaged in new explorations, Columbus was often absent, leaving his brother in charge. The incompetence of his brother pushed the belabored colonists over the edge and they staged a rebellion against the settlement, to which caused the arrest of some people.
Word of chaos and pandemonium in Hispaniola traveled back to Spain, in which the King and Queen appointed a knight named Francisco de Bobadilla to investigate the situation. Francisco de Bobadilla was considered a political adversary of Columbus and used this opportunity to portray him in every negative light at his disposal. Once de Bobadilla reached Hispaniola, he appointed himself as governor and arrested Columbus almost immediately, hardly interested in entertaining the slandered governor’s side of the story. The rebellious colonists told de Bobadilla fabricated stories of horror, mismanagement, and incompetence; it was their word against Columbus’. After Christopher Columbus was detained, de Bobadilla released all of those arrested by him for rebellion against the settlement and the Crown. The King and Queen eventually grew wise to de Bobadilla’s power-hungry antics and sent for him to return to Spain. It was on de Bobadilla’s trip back home that his ship encountered a massive hurricane and capsized, leaving the disgraced knight to drown in the Atlantic.
The King and Queen of Spain reinstated Columbus’ status and reversed his punishment, restoring his previously confiscated property. Unfortunately, order was still required in the Spanish colonies. The monarchy called upon a soldier, Nicolás de Ovando, to govern the West Indies. Although de Ovando was able to restore order to the settlement, his treatment of the natives wasn’t as magnanimous as that of Columbus. His grisly tyrannical rule inspired forced labor, massacres, and starvation. According to the book, Historia de las Indias (History of the Indies), written by famed Spanish historian, Las Casas, the situation in the Indies became so rough that the natives began to commit mass suicide, “drinking the juice of cassava root.”
These are the men much deserving of the globe’s fuming indignation about “mass genocide,” not Christopher Columbus. If it wasn’t for a raging political opportunist’s massive ego and a sorry excuse for a rebound, Columbus would be hailed as Martin Luther King. It is because of ideologues with agendas, including the infamous Howard Zinn—the sickening Marxist who thinks the United States was founded in 1492—that Christopher Columbus’ legacy has been rife with calumny, undeserved criticism, and daunting revisionism. Thanks to the adversaries of Western society and their handmaidens in academia, media, and government for allowing generations of aspiring freedom lovers to turn their back on one of the most iconic figures in European history. Liberals wish Nelson Mandela was as altruistic as Christopher Columbus. Ostensibly, the arbiters of historical right and wrong base their decisions in such disgraceful, unstable, and uncontrollable characteristics of determination like race, completely oblivious to an individual’s actions.
For decades, millions of school children have been told the Columbus story through the lens of radical revolutionaries, whose malevolent goals seek the destruction of Western civilization and our way of life. It is only through the hope of informed intellectuals and those willing to speak up against their insidious means and ends that future generations are told the truth about grand European explorers who were bold enough to endure months on the seas, hoping to find a new path for civilization to travel. Not often does history produce individuals of grandeur ambition or unfaltering altruism; Christopher Columbus was the son of both.
Great article!