What should we make of Columbus?

Note: This column was written in October, 2007 and appeared in several outlets. With Columbus Day being this Monday I thought it an appropriate post.

On October the 8th government employees paused in honor of Christopher Columbus. The rest of us continued on business as usual, except for the banks of course. I took the occasion to reflect on what Columbus was, and I use “what” purposely because his legacy is more than a single man.

I recall some of my grade-school history concerning Columbus. He grew up poor and spent his youth sailing and studying what little was known about geography. Columbus didn’t develop the idea of a spherical earth or of sailing west to reach the East. He did, however, desire to prove each theory and gain some fame and fortune for himself.

Columbus didn’t gain the fortune he sought and died in poverty within 15 years of a discovery he never realized he had made. He certainly gained fame, but he didn’t prove the idea of sailing west to reach India. In fact, he thought the New World was India. By modern standards Columbus would be an ignorant failure. However, he didn’t live in modern times.

For his day he was certainly a great navigator and a pioneer explorer. He discovered an area unknown in his world and found his way back home. How many of us can’t find our way out of the two-acre forest behind our homes? He made his voyage with sailors who believed the sea serpent-filled Atlantic Ocean had no end and the equator was so hot that the ocean boiled. Considering the circumstances, Columbus’ achievement was remarkable.

Yet there’s another side to Columbus, and each anniversary of his landing brings renewed scorn to his memory. Not only do his critics point out his failures, as if that were a new discovery, they charge him with raping the Utopian paradise that was the Caribbean.

Antagonists charge Columbus with establishing a genocidal pattern of murder and slavery that quickly exterminated the Arawak tribesmen. Columbus’ critics maintain that the entire era of European exploration and settlement exploded into a slaughterous inquisition and that Genoa’s famed mariner lit the fuse.

However, the idea that the New World lived in peace and harmony before Columbus is somewhat naïve. Yes, the Spanish abused the Taino Arawak tribe. But Columbus’ critics accentuate his violence only, never mentioning that the New World had a native brand of brutality.

The Taino were rather peaceful. But the Caribs were a warrior tribe that was pushing Tainos from their land before Columbus arrived. They made wives of captured Taino women (slavery, anyone?), made necklaces from a vanquished enemy’s teeth, and may have practiced cannibalism. Perhaps Caribs had decimated the Ciboneys, said to have populated the Caribbean 5000 years ago, before the Spanish arrived to finish off both tribes.

The Ciboneys apparently descended from a prior culture that was nearly exterminated by yet another people. Brazil’s Tupinamba Indians practiced a warrior form of cannibalism whether the Caribs did or not. And each of these tribes came from the mainland meaning that they themselves were explorers and not indigenous to the Caribbean.

I’ll neither praise nor scorn Columbus and his successors. But keep in mind that most known civilizations came from somewhere and displaced someone else along the way, likely by force. Mankind has explored, fought, conquered and lost since Adam and Eve were booted from the Garden of Eden, and it will continue as long as man survives. Is that preferable to living in peace and mutual respect? Certainly not, but it’s reality nonetheless.

One commenter summarized Columbus thusly, “It is not history that is good or bad--history merely is. It is human nature that is good or bad; and we are all a part of it. Let’s celebrate it whenever we can, each in our own ways.”

We must judge Columbus’ contribution, both good and evil, on the standards of his time. To condemn him in retrospect, by modern standards, is an injustice.