COLUMBUS DAY
Part One – To celebrate, condemn, or
consider?
Do we
celebrate Columbus’ efforts to pursue a voyage of discovery?
Or critique
one who brought slave trophies as the first fruits of future conquests?
Growing up, decades ago, I learned
to think of Christopher Columbus as a valiant hero who stood his ground believing
the earth was round, until he gained the support needed to sail the ocean blue
in 1492. Later we learned that Washington Irving had rewritten history in
convincing 19th century Americans of the myth of educated Europeans
rejected the teachings of the Greek mathematicians who had figured the
circumference of the earth within a few miles. But Irving’s view of a
revolutionary Columbus standing up to ignorance was an appealing story for 19th
Century Americans. It was as if we could tell the story of Columbus and issue
him an honorable mention as an American revolutionary personality playing his
part in the history leading to America’s founding and westward movement.
There were accurate elements in the Columbus story we were
taught. News of Columbus’ voyage was spread throughout Europe by the invention
of the printing press. In a short time it began to be realized that Columbus
may have discovered an entire continent which Europeans had not before known. It
can be argued that exploration of the seas and discoveries of the unknown
resulted in a more universal desire by the Europeans to explore beyond the
world of the known to discover that which might be unknown. The explorers of
the world’s seas were emulated by scientists seeking to understand the universe
and its laws better, as well as by inventors who began to consider how
something might be done differently with astonishing results. Perhaps the
greatest story of the Europe impacted by Columbus was how the desire to explore
the unknown and to make use of the untried was ignited. It can be reasonably
suggested that the ignited age of exploration led us from a pre-modern world to
one where people generally have more things and live decades longer than our
forefathers and foremothers living in 1492. It can be asserted that a sailor’s
spotting land on the morning of October 12, 1492 would change the history of
the world.
In recent decades, Columbus’ place
in history has become tarnished in comparison with the mythically heroic stance
I was taught as a youngster. He no longer is placed on a pedestal. There was
much to dislike about the actual Christopher Columbus who could be a vain
seeker of fame, wealth, honor and titles. But moreover he proved to be a
ruthless petty tyrant in his exercise of power. He saw Natives on the islands
adjacent to the Western continents wearing gold ornaments and demanded to know
the source of their gold. They did not tell him probably because they had
acquired the beautiful ornaments in trade with mainlanders coming in small
boats to their island and making trades. So Columbus as their governor put them
to forced labor and refused to believe they knew nothing of the gold sources.
In his mind the gold of the region belonged naturally to Spain who now would
control the region in God’s honor. Columbus has become in recent decades the
symbol of what became an all too familiar pattern after Europe discovered the
Americas. Exploration would lead quickly to exploitation. That seems now to be
the highlighted story we ought to understand in remembrance of Columbus Day.
As a North American, I live in a
Western hemisphere radically transformed because of October 12, 1492. It was
not long after the Western Hemisphere began to be known of by Europeans, that
Europeans re-engineered life in the Western Hemisphere. Native Americans had
existed within an almost separate world from that of the great Eastern land
mass. Following the arrival of Columbus, three different streams of human
population would soon be living on the Western Continent with differing roles
and possibilities. This is the history of our Western hemisphere remaining to
be worked out.
The European stream of humanity came
to the Americas as people pursuing opportunities to establish families and
communities that could prosper. They would form governments and those
governments would rule the continents. It would be a place where their pursuit
of faith and excellence could take shape. The native people, who were often disadvantaged
technologically and organizationally, faced stark choices. They often chose
from options narrowed to assimilation, isolation, submission, and destruction. They
faced their becoming unwelcomed outsiders in the lands they had lived upon for
millennia. Finally there began to be in increasing numbers Africans captured
and chained in boats, brought to the Americas to be sold as slaves in places
such as Brazil, the Caribbean, and the southern states of the United States.
Their labors would usually be the property of Europeans and descendants of
Europeans. Not only would the slaves earn profit almost wholly for the slave
owner, but death would perpetuate that their wealth was accrued by the descendants
of slave owners. The system resulted in the white slave-owning class being able
to pursue refinement that indicated superiority of culture while the African
slave was imagined as simple when in reality one class was privileged while the
other class was oppressed. The system of slavery often became the system of
sharecropping where the benefits of the labors of the underclass were
systematically transferred to the benefit of the former owner class. The
Americas became a place where three differing streams of human population were
assigned to differing realities and expectations.
These experiences that we would like
to imagine as being part of the past we have left behind, is in reality part of
the past that continues to shape our present. They are the sobering legacy of
life as it unfolded on the American continents following the sighting of land
on October 12, 1492. It is a legacy that on one hand spoke of opportunity but
on another hand of horrible exploitation. Perhaps this should not be a surprise
to us. For human history seems to point out to us that our humanity is the
mixture of the two great opposites. We are the noble creature created in God’s
image and capable of pursuing faith, ideals, and dreams. But we are also the
bloody violent creature whose sins include selfishness, arrogance, possessing love
for one’s own combined with irrational distrust of the foreign. Our humanity
seems to be torn between the influence of angels and of demons.
I hope to present in the very near future two more blogs
connected to Columbus Day. One will be focused on our own American pattern of
exploration and exploitation through a consideration of the Lewis and Clark
expedition and its aftermath. But a third blog will be focused more on our
individual ways of living. It is very easy to criticize how horrible a system
has been. It is much harder to see how the system above us is a reflection of
the determinations of individuals reflected in the system of our individuality
linked in our communities and shared societies and cultural institutions.
Faulty societies are not built on faultless innocent pristine individuality. What
must we see in ourselves based on the imperfections of the systems we have
shaped that have shaped us?
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