Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy–he is remembered as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually devastate the Native populations.

Recent consensus estimates say that prior to Columbus reaching the Americas, the continents were populated by around 50 million people with some estimates going as high as 112 million. At the same time, the population of Europe was about 65 million. However, by the middle of the 16th century, the Native population had declined by as much as 90% to about 6.5 million in part because of European diseases to which Natives had no immunity.

History is a funny thing, our understanding of it depends not only on facts but which facts matter and how we interpret them. It is a common belief that Columbus “discovered” America in 1492. That is an interpretation of the fact that he indeed did reach land in the western hemisphere in 1492. But how can you say he “discovered” it when there were human beings on shore to greet him? Discovery also implies “the first,” but Lief Ericson reached what is now Nova Scotia back in the 11th century. As an explorer, Columbus’s real claim to fame is that he was the first in what became a continuous stream of European exploration and settlement of lands in the Western Hemisphere. It is not “woke” when modern-day historians reevaluate our nostalgic beliefs of past people and events. It is simply taking off the rose-colored glasses and looking more clearly at the past, often considering new historical material. For instance, in the case of Columbus in 2005 new documents came to light in old Spanish archives.

According to an article on History.com: “On his first day in the New World, he ordered six of the natives to be seized, writing in his journal that he believed they would be good servants. Throughout his years in the New World, Columbus enacted policies of forced labor in which natives were put to work for the sake of profits. Later, Columbus sent thousands of peaceful Taino “Indians” from the island of Hispaniola to Spain to be sold. Many died in route. Those left behind were forced to search for gold in mines and work on plantations. Within 60 years after Columbus landed, only a few hundred of what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island.”

When Columbus was sent on his voyage European countries were operating under what was called the “Doctrine of Discovery.” This was an attempt by the Catholic Church to set up a framework for Europeans to use as they set out on exploration adventures. It authorized European powers to conquer the lands of non-Christians and tried to allocate new lands to various European countries. In 1452, when exploration along the coast of Africa was taking place, the pope authorized the king of Portugal to “subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ,” and “reduce their persons to perpetual servitude,” to take their belongings, including land, “to convert them to you, and your use, and your successors the Kings of Portugal.”

Can we say that Columbus’s mistreatment of the Native population can be attributed to him merely being a man of his time? There were more enlightened voices.

Bartolome de Las Casas was the first and fiercest critic of Spanish colonialism in the New World. An early traveler to the Americas who sailed on one of Columbus’s voyages, Las Casas was so horrified by the wholesale massacre he witnessed that he eventually dedicated his life to protecting the Indian community. He wrote “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies” in 1542, a shocking catalog of mass slaughter, torture and slavery.

The Doctrine of Discovery infected European thinking for centuries (and appears to be alive and well in today’s white supremacists who appear to believe that people of Western European Protestant Christian ancestry have a divine entitlement). The doctrine was introduced into United States law by U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall in the case of Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823). In Marshall’s formulation of the doctrine, the discovery of territory previously unknown to Europeans gave the discovering nation title to that territory against all other European nations, and this title could be perfected by possession. This gave the U.S. government “an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy” by either purchase or war. This in turn led to the doctrine of Manifest Destiny and the taking of Indigenous peoples’ lands between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

It isn’t until we get to the mid-22nd century that, thanks to Star Trek, we get the “Prime Directive,” a direct refutation of the Doctrine of Discovery. It prohibits Starfleet personnel and spacecraft from interfering in the normal development of any society and mandates that any Starfleet vessel or crew member is expendable to prevent violation of this rule. If only.

I don’t want to appear unpatriotic, or impractical. I am grateful for the existence of the United States of America. At our best, we can be a beacon for the world. It was a refuge for my ancestors to flee eastern Europe and establish new and better lives. But we must not wear blinders. We must look at history not in a nostalgic way but as it really happened and at historical figures as they really were. Columbus did an extraordinary thing in sailing west for three months, but he also supported slavery and mistreated fellow human beings with the support of Christian doctrine.

— — —

David J. Staszak lives in Saranac Lake.

–

Sources

–

From the Texas Observer, Sept. 21, 2023: “THE ORIGINS OF WHITE, CHRISTIAN SUPREMACY: Can 15th-century doctrine explain today’s culture wars?” by DAVID R. BROCKMAN.

“Why Columbus Day Courts Controversy” BY: HISTORY.COM editors, OCT. 7, 2019.

“Estimated indigenous populations of the Americas at the time of European contact, beginning in 1492,” Statista.com.

“Bartolomé de las Casas,” Wikipedia.