Christopher Columbus

Cristobal Colon
(Christopher Columbus)
High School

Landing on San Salvador: October 12, 1492

Cristobal Colon
Born: 1451
Died: May 20, 1506
Rank: Explorer

The Spice Trade

Cristobal Colon, or Christopher Columbus, is many things to many people. A murderer and an adventurer, a hero and a villain. He didn’t discover America, and he would wholeheartedly agree with that statement, as he believed until his dying day that the lands he encountered were part of the periphery of western Asia. He was also five hundred years behind the Norsemen Leif Erikson, who is considered the first European to reach the Americas. Yet, his voyages were far more monumental than the Norse who preceded him, and were part of a much larger movement, for, “in just over thirty years mariners of the Iberian Peninsula tied the world together in unprecedented ways.”

The Portuguese had slowly made their way down the western coasts of Africa in the preceding decades, culminating in Bartolomeu Dias’s voyage in 1488, and his discovery of a passage to India, round Africa. This was followed by Vasco de Gama’s successful run to India a decade later, which opened the spice trade to the Portuguese. Columbus believed that there was a better way to the Indies, and that meant sailing directly westward.

Columbus was born in the Italian city-state of Genoa, in 1451. As a young man, he worked in his father’s wool shop, but soon joined the Genoese merchant fleets and began his career as a sailor. He served in the Genoese merchant fleets, and even served in the navy of Rene of Anjou, so that “by his early twenties… Columbus had acquired considerable sailing experience in the Mediterranean, and had begun to venture into the Atlantic.”

Toscanelli

At this time, Venice’s powerful navy controlled India’s spice trade with Europe, making the city of Venice fabulously rich. This prompted others, namely Portugal, to try to outflank the Venetians by finding a route to India around the continent of Africa.Others thought they had a better idea. Paolo Toscanelli (1397 - 1482) was an accomplished astronomer and cosmographer from Florence. He believed that, instead of sailing round the continent of Africa, it was entirely possible to sail directly west and reach the western coast of Asia. In a letter to Fra Fernan Martins, a Canon (Priest) living in Lisbon, Toscanelli provided a sailing chart he himself created:

“...on which are delineated your coasts and islands, whence you must begin to make your journey always westward…and how far from the pole or equinoctial line you ought to keep, and through how much space or over how many miles you should arrive at those most fertile places full of all sorts of spices and jewels.”

Martins supposedly acted as the “go-between” for Toscanelli and Columbus, who became fascinated by the Florentine’s proposal. Many were skeptical of this proposal, and when Toscanelli died in 1482, it was Columbus who would carry the torch. He attempted to gain backing from the Portugues King, and, when that failed, sent out feelers to both Venice, and Genoa - he even sent his brother to the English. The problem was, as Beatriz Bodmer shows, Toscanelli was wrong, and so was Columbus - who believed the span to be even less. They were short the actual distance to Asia by over eight thousand nautical miles; and there were two continents in the way that none of them knew about! However, after many years of persistence, Columbus managed to wrangle some money, small but enough, from Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon (a wife/husband partnership, who together ruled the lands of modern Spain). Given the use of the Nina, Pinta, and the Santa-Maria, with a combined crew of ninety men, he set sail into the unknown.

At the wheel of one of the ships were the Niño Brothers, whose father was captured in Ghana, later to become a great merchant for the Spanish. His sons became master sailors and helped pilot Columbus across the Atlantic Ocean. Later, Pedro was given the title of Chief Pilot of the Ocean Sea (for the Atlantic), by Queen Isabella of Castile.(1)

First Voyage
The voyage was not without trouble. Columbus was an experienced navigator, but these were unknown waters, uncharted and mysterious. By the beginning of October, his men were on the cusp of outright mutiny when, by a trick of luck, land was sighted. On October 12, 1492, Columbus made landfall on an island he dubbed San Salvador. It was here that he encountered native islanders, the Lucayans - a branch of the Tainos who inhabited the wider Caribbean world. Believing that he was in the Indies, Columbus called them “Indios”.(2) There are two beliefs, by linguists, of why they were called this, the first is that he believed himself to have landed in the Indies of western Asia, and the second was because of their hospitality and openness, he called the people “una gente in dios,” or, “A people in God”, “in God”, “in Dios”. In his journals, repeatedly, he called them “the best people in the world,” and “a better race there cannot be”.(3)(4) He saw them as equals and later advocated for them having equal citizens with civil rights.(6)(7) His initial assessment of them provides a somewhat contradictory account as he writes:

“They do not carry arms nor are they acquainted with them, because I showed them swords and they took them by the edge and through ignorance cut themselves. They have no iron...All of them alike are of good-sized stature and carry themselves well. I saw some who had marks of wounds on their bodies and I made signs to them asking what they were; and they showed me how people from other islands nearby came there and tried to take them, and how they defended themselves…”

These belonged to the Arawak speaking Tainos, of the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas. Columbus believed they’d make excellent hired servants and fellow Christians, based on their intelligence and strong build. With his arrival, these people's lives were changed forever.

Columbus next sailed along the coasts of modern Cuba and Hispaniola, where the Santa Maria ran aground on Christmas Day, 1492. Leaving behind forty men in a settlement called La Navidad, Columbus returned to Spain to receive a hero’s welcome. He also received money and supplies to conduct a second voyage, in 1493. These were followed by a third and fourth voyage in 1498 and 1502. But what happened to the men he left behind? Upon returning to Hispaniola in 1493, he discovered the men were dead, slain by the natives from other islands. These natives, most likely the Caribs, took back the bodies of the dead and native women captives, according to Dr. Diego Alvarez, the physician in the second voyage. They set out an expedition to rescue these women and find out what had happened to their men, and what they found can only be described in his journal:

“These captive women told us that the Carribbee men use them with such cruelty as would scarcely be believed; and that they eat the children which they bear to them, only bringing up those which they have by their native wives. Such of their male enemies as they can take away alive, they bring here to their homes to make a feast of them, and those who are killed in battle they eat up after the fighting is over. They claim that the flesh of man is so good to eat that nothing like it can be compared to it in the world; and this is pretty evident, for of the human bones we found in their houses everything that could be gnawed had already been gnawed, so that nothing else remained of them but what was too hard to be eaten. In one of the houses we found the neck of a man undergoing the process of cooking in a pot, preparatory for eating it.”(8)

It was at this point that Columbus raised up arms against some of the indigenous people of the islands. Things only went south from there.

Note: Nearly 10-20% of indigenous people were already enslaved by other native tribes before the Spanish arrived, and they would steal women and children from other different islands and either enslave them or marry them, which also made it natural that their languages would merge, making it difficult to know which tribe you would be interacting with.(9)

Hero and Villain

Upon his return to Hispaniola for his third voyage, in 1498, Columbus and his two brothers, Diego and Bartolomeo, were arrested and jailed, accused of tyrannical governance of Hispaniola. Judge Francisco de Bobadilla (a Knight of the Order of Calatrava) was sent back with Columbus to observe the happenings of the island. He created a forty-eight page document, which included over twenty witness statements from friends and enemies of Columbus, and revealed his barbarity in a manner so shocking that the crowned heads of Spain ordered his recall. Bobadilla took over command of Hispaniola and the native population of the nearby islands. This act was also a handy way for the King and Queen to assert direct crown control over the colony, which had hitherto been administered by Columbus and his brothers (who were now returned to Spain, in chains). After six weeks, however, they were released and all charges were dropped. With the help of friends, and those who had accompanied him on his voyage, they pleaded his case before the King and Queen, and after much persuasion, Columbus was allowed to conduct a fourth voyage.
When Columbus returned, he found that those who were placed in control of Hispaniola were now enslaving the people by the thousands. War had broken out among all the islands and the indigenous people were dying by the hundreds. His replacement governor, Francisco de Bobadilla, was imprisoned by Juan Ponce de Leon, to be shipped back to Spain. Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres was placed in charge of Hispaniola - someone who despised Columbus. So when Columbus requested to harbor in Hispaniola, insisting that a hurricane was developing, he was denied any contact. At the same time, a fleet of 30 treasure ships left port, heading for Spain, not believing Columbus’ prediction; 29 of them were lost at sea, with over 500 men, one being Governor Bobadilla.

Columbus spent some time sailing among the islands of the Caribbean, possibly reaching even the coast of Honduras, Venezuela and Panama, but was stranded for a year in Jamaica. Winning favor of the natives, they paddled canoes to Hispaniola asking to rescue Columbus, but the new governor, Cáceresthen, despised Columbus, and denied any help. Later, another ship found them, and Columbus returned to Spain to live out the rest of his life fighting for what he believed the crown owed him. He also spent much of his last few years writing about his Christian faith and even how his missionary work had influenced the new lands he had found. His journals were published years later, and in them, he told of how he would accumulate gold for Spain through barter and not through mining, as he was accused. He would not even allow his men to take gold given by the Taino, unless they exchanged something else of value. Other ventures he may have undertaken, if not for his death, included funding an expedition to take back Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire and Muslim rule, and dedicated any riches from his enterprises to go to funding that conquest by Spain.(10)

Columbus died in Spain, in 1506. Though he did not discover the Americas, insisting it was India until his dying day, Columbus opened the floodgates for further European exploration and colonization of the “new world.” Although hailed as a hero, Columbus was often brutal to the indigenous who attacked those under his care. Yet, his arrival in the Western Hemisphere completely changed the course of history, and the subsequent transfer of goods (such as plants, spices, food, etc.), in the Colombian Exchange, brought about the first global exchange of goods in human history.

Note: Columbus was no half-wit treasure hunter, as some would like to claim, but a brilliant and experienced navigator, a philosopher, and man of political stout; he was given a charge that others had asked for before him, but were never granted, and though he was accused of heinous crimes, he was able to refute them in front of the crown and many accusers.(11)(12) Remember also that it was Columbus who predicted the Hurricane that sank the the ship, carrying the man who originally imprisoned him and took Columbus’s governorship in Hispaniola.

Did you know?
In his 1824 biography of Columbus, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow first put forth the idea that the Catholic clergy of Spain, with whom Columbus interviewed, were of the belief that the earth was round! A ridiculous assertion, as most of the educated people of Western Europe - and the Catholic Church was the leading institution of learning - had long known of the spherical nature of the Earth. This was old news, as shown by astronomers of mathematicians of antiquity some two thousand years before Columbus sailed!

Christopher Columbus (High School Activity) - Columbus sailed into the unknown. He was going into uncharted waters, and that was an enormous risk. Even worse, his tiny ships were driven by the winds, they didn’t have a keel, and everyone slept out on the deck, because there was very little room. When his crew had had enough, they came close to mutiny, agreeing only to sail for another three days before turning around. For this activity, you’ve decided to join Columbus in his mission. But the weeks have dragged on, and fear and resentment are growing. Write a letter of what the voyage was like, and why you - along with your fellow sailors - have come so close to chucking old Christopher overboard. For the details on Columbus’s ships, watch this video:

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