A darker side of Columbus emerges in US classrooms

[marmar]

AP via Yahoo!:



A darker side of Columbus emerges in US classrooms
By CHRISTINE ARMARIO, Associated Press Writer


TAMPA, Fla. – Jeffrey Kolowith's kindergarten students read a poem about Christopher Columbus, take a journey to the New World on three paper ships and place the explorer's picture on a timeline through history.

Kolowith's students learn about the explorer's significance — though they also come away with a more nuanced picture of Columbus than the noble discoverer often portrayed in pop culture and legend.

"I talk about the situation where he didn't even realize where he was," Kolowith said. "And we talked about how he was very, very mean, very bossy."

Columbus' stature in U.S. classrooms has declined somewhat through the years, and many districts will not observe his namesake holiday on Monday. Although lessons vary, many teachers are trying to present a more balanced perspective of what happened after Columbus reached the Caribbean and the suffering of indigenous populations.

"The whole terminology has changed," said James Kracht, executive associate dean for academic affairs in the Texas A&M College of Education and Human Development. "You don't hear people using the world 'discovery' anymore like they used to. 'Columbus discovers America.' Because how could he discover America if there were already people living here?" ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091011/ap_on_re_us/us_teaching_columbus

[Kutjara]

1. It's about time the old carpetbagger was consigned to history's dustbin.

I mean, why would we want to hold up an ego-maniacal, greedy, hyper-religious, authoritarian conman to our children as a symbol of the founding of Ameri... Oh, I see. Never mind.

[timeforpeace]

7. The annual Columbus bash! Glad not everything's changed.

[marmar]

8. Who would have been a bigger Columbus Day basher than Lennon?

You need to return that avatar, dude.

[arcadian]

57. Here, here.

+1

[zonkers]

2. They sure drummed Columbus and his trip to go look for new spices into my little head.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

3. Columbus was vile and should be remembered along the same lines as Pol Pot and Hitler

you could ask the Arawaks what they think of him - except there are none left.

[imdjh]

4. Oh for fuck's sake.

First off, you can trash any historical figure that you want to trash. They are dead, they can't defend themselves. And god know we have some self righteous little fucks in this country who want to trash them all.

I never learned that CC discovered an empty New World, I learned that he discovered the NW for Europe, which isn't true either, but it's hardly a conspiracy against my Viking cousins.

I would like to send out my sincere desire to all who wish to go on and on and on about this every year, not to mention their annual whinefest on Thanksgiving- stick it up your collective asses unless you want people like me following you around correcting your historical and cultural understanding of whatever your sacred cow is. Because I assure you there is always plenty to work with.

[L. Coyote]

32. Las Casas was a first-hand witness:

Las Casas writes:

"…forty-nine years have passed since the first settlers penetrated the land, the first so claimed being the large and most happy isle called Hispaniola, … This large island was perhaps the most densely populated place in the world … all the land so far discovered is a beehive of people; it is as though God had crowded into these lands the great majority of mankind."

"And of all the infinite universe of humanity, these people are the most guileless, the most devoid of wickedness and duplicity, the most obedient and faithful to their native masters and to the Spanish Christians whom they serve. They are by nature the most humble, patient, and peaceable, holding no grudges, free from embroilments, neither excitable nor quarrelsome. These people are the most devoid of rancors, hatreds, or desire for vengeance of any people in the world … they not only possess little but have no desire to possess worldly goods. For this reason they are not arrogant, embittered, or greedy.… They are very clean in their persons, with alert, intelligent minds, docile and open to doctrine, very apt to receive our holy Catholic faith, to be endowed with virtuous customs, and to behave in a godly fashion."

While lobbying for the indigenous population, Las Casas continues:

"…into this land of meek outcasts there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved for many days. And Spaniards have behaved in no other way during the past forty years, down to the present time, for they are still acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola once so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred persons."

"The island of Cuba is… now almost completely depopulated. San Juan and Jamaica are two of the largest, most productive and attractive islands; both are now deserted and devastated. On the northern side of Cuba and Hispaniola the neighboring Lucayos comprising more than sixty islands … have the healthiest lands in the world, where lived more than five hundred thousand souls; they are now deserted, inhabited by not a single living creature. All the people were slain or died after being taken into captivity and brought to the Island of Hispaniola to be sold as slaves. When the Spaniards saw that some of these had escaped, they sent a ship to find them, and it voyaged for three years among the islands searching for those who had escaped being slaughtered…"

"More than thirty other islands in the vicinity of San Juan are for the most part and for the same reason depopulated…"

"As for the vast mainland, which is ten times larger than all Spain, … we are sure that our Spaniards, with their cruel and abominable acts, have devastated the land and exterminated the rational people who fully inhabited it. We can estimate very surely and truthfully that in the forty years that have passed, with the infernal actions of the Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men, women, and children. In truth, I believe without trying to deceive myself that the number of the slain is more like fifteen million."

"Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire gold, and to swell themselves with riches in a very brief time…"

"… the Indians began to seek ways to throw the Christians out of their lands.… And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers' breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, 'Boil there, you offspring of the devil!' Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby. They made some low wide gallows on which they hanged victim's feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive. To others they attached straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and set them afire. With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim's neck, saying, 'Go now, carry the message,' meaning, Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains. … survivors were distributed among the Christians to be slaves."

[Vidar]

46. Thanks for repeating that account.

[imdjh]

49. However, if it were a commonly held position, it would be in greater evidence, wouldn't it?

[L. Coyote]

64. Read post 37 below. This account slipped by the Inquisition because a copy was in England

and later discovered. The Inquisition was so thorough that the list of allowed books fit on one page, and then they decided to edit every word in those too!!!

Do your research, why don't you, instead of just spouting baseless counter-point opinions founded on your cultures childhood fairy tale propaganda.

[imdjh]

66. Get off the cross, we need the wood. nt

[EFerrari]

72. That's not hyper-rational. That's just straight up denial.

lol

[imdjh]

75. Not denial, indifference.

[L. Coyote]

93. Sixty million dead, and you want to be a comedian. That's people, not trees BTW.

The loss of a continent of forests is just a side-effect of having stupid, insensitive, irrational assholes replace the aboriginal population.

[imdjh]

94. See, that's the kind of thing which makes you look dishonest.

[Vidar]

87. Takes a while to overcome 500 years of propaganda.

[EFerrari]

44. One of the oldest tropes in American letters, the idea was broadcast

in European literature, notably by de Toqueville, and is all over American letters or as F.S. Fitgerald liked to call it, "the fresh green breast of the new world".

"But North America was inhabited only by wandering tribes, who had no thought of profiting by the natural riches of the soil; that vast country was still, properly speaking, an empty continent, a desert land awaiting its inhabitants."

-- Democracy in America, Book 1 Chapter 17, emphasis mine

[imdjh]

47. I would read that as "was, for all intents and purposes...."

I didn't say that no one had ever said it, that would be a foolish claim and while I realize that you think that I am a fool that wouldn't be your first bad call in this life. I said that I had never been taught that the New World was empty on Columbus' arrival. Certainly I was never taught that North America was empty, as it wouldn't have made sense that my ancestors were greeted in Virginia upon arrival. I read your quote as meaning "North America was, as far as we are concerned, empty, devoid of modern civilization and therefore ripe for the taking."

[EFerrari]

73. Then you would be revising for your own purposes. n/t

[imdjh]

78. You appear to be correct, he was being literal. However, he wrote that 200 years later and ....

.... apparently didn't know what he was talking about. So I'm not clear as to why you think this is significant. It's inconsistent with the teachings about the New World. Ordinary history classes, with emphasis varying by region, talk about the Taino, the Arawak, the Maya, the Inca, the Caribs, the tribes of the Eastern Seaboard , the plains, and the West. How then could one maintain that de Togueville's "empty continent" comment defined the understanding of the American people or people in general?

[Kalyke]

54. So I guess you think the slaughter of millions of Native Americans is OK, then?

Whinefest... :eyes:

I understand giving thanks on Thanksgiving for the promise of what the USA could/can be, I understand Columbus reporting back to Europe regarding what he found here, I understand that many of our national monuments were built on slave labor and I understand the fear that caused thousands of Asian-Americans to be corralled like cattle, but I don't have to condone those wrongs or the many wrongs this nation has performed in the name of nationalism.

[Winterblues]

55. Maybe we could come up with a Holiday for when Bush* "discovered" Iraq?

:shrug:

[dana_b]

69. maybe you didn't mean to

but that ALMOST made me laugh.

how people can just toss aside the rape, murder, enslavement and genocide of others is beyond me. Maybe it's just too much to have their little grade school fairy tales washed away.

[treestar]

51. Did he do anything himself though?

I can see blaming the aftermath, the white man coming in large numbers and doing bad things, but blaming Columbus alone seems to be just using him as a metaphor for what was the work of many people.

Just finding America from the European point of view is not evil by itself.

[Marr]

52. Colombus was incredibly cruel towards the natives, and decimated their

populations by way of murder and slavery. Natives were required to turn in a certain amount of gold every few months, and if they did not, they'd have their nose cut off, or their ears, etc. He also sold them off into slavery. IIRC, during his time in the area, 12 year girls were the priciest items on offer.

Whether he raped those populations in service to god, or gold, or crown, or himself is something that can be debated-- but he did thoroughly rape them.

[Xithras]

60. Yes. So bad that the Spanish themselves eventually arrested him.

The Spanish were generally cruel toward those they conquered, but Columbus was so callous and corrupt that even the Spanish authorities were horrified. He was eventually slapped in manacles and shipped back to Spain.

Unlike many, I hold no grudge against Columbus for what happened after his "discovery". Blaming Columbus for that is like blaming Marco Polo for the British takeover of China, or blaming Marie Curie for Hiroshima. People making discoveries should not be held liable for the ways others later abuse those discoveries.

That said, I oppose the common celebration of his "day" simply because he was a cruel governor who liked to engage in real torture and enjoyed the sexual slavery of prepubescent girls. Even by the standards of his own era, Columbus was generally considered to be a cruel and evil person. Though the Spanish crown did eventually set him free and let him go exploring again, he was so detested by his own peers that the Governor of Hispanola refused to rescue him when his exploration fleet was shipwrecked. He was only picked up when church leaders started to complain that it was cruel to leave him and his starving crew on the island...a year later.

[imdjh]

68. Why did Tenochtitlan have draw bridges?

[Marr]

80. You must have me confused with someone else.

I'm not arguing that the indigenous populations of Central America were peaceful, idyllic societies. I'm pointing out the fact that Columbus brutally exploited the lands he "discovered" for profit, and that his behavior was recognized as inhumane at the time, by some of his own contemporaries.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

91. Going for the blame the victim angle?

Some natives were brutal therefore it absolves Columbus, Cortez, etc?

Yeah, Confederate apologists love that one too. "Oh yeah? Well Africans kept slaves. Blah blah blah."

[L. Coyote]

95. Maybe because they knew about the asshole genocidalists exterminating the Caribs! Do'h..

What would your response have been to decades of genocide in your neighborhood?

[L0oniX]

98. Didn't he also bring slaves to this country?

[GreenStormCloud]

5. Judging the past by the standards of the present is merely smug self-righteousness.

Columbus was a man of his times. And the native peoples weren't sitting around singing Kumbaya either.

[Gabi Hayes]

9. so you have no problem with cutting off peoples' body parts to discourage them

from stealing back their own food, right? the food Columbus etal enslaved them to grow for them, because they were so lazy they refused to even WALK anywhere.

or seeing how many strikes of a sword it takes to sever a limb?

you know what I'm talking about? probably not, because I'm certain you haven't read enough of what happened then to realize how ignorant you sound

I know, things were 'different' then, weren't they?

so that sort of thing is AOK with the likes of you and the other apologists for monstrous behavior

[Confusious]

11. I have a story from my 10th great grandfather

About a raid against another indian tribe that was worse then that.

What about the aztecs, and what they did to their own people?

The indian tribes in America weren't sitting around singing kumbya.

Was columbus an ass? yes. Where the indian tribes any better? no.

[Gabi Hayes]

16. way to introduce a straw man. why don't you just admit you were wrong, and

leave it at that?


I'm wrong a great deal of the time, and have, on occasion, admitted it

sounds like you could do the same here

[Confusious]

18. Which straw man?

and what was I wrong about?

You said columbus was violent, I said the indians were just as violent. What do I have to be wrong about? A fact?

[JustAnotherGen]

90. Hmmm

A man of his time.

So was Hitler. And so was Pol Pot. And so was Stalin. And so was Klaus Barbie. And so was Dubya.

Since Bush was just a man of his times - let's just wash our hands of the mess we've made in Iraq since Bush was only acting as a man of his time.

And certainly don't come to me and ask me to beg forgiveness of the Japanese. I mean - they were violent, so were we. So what if their violence caught them on the ass with two carefully placed bombs. I mean it was all tit for tat right? So what if we were just more efficient in our tat.

[L. Coyote]

34. We found these kingdoms in such good order...

In Cuzco on Sept. 18, 1589, the last survivor of the original conquerors of Peru, Don Mancio Serra de Leguisamo, wrote in the preamble of his will the following in parts:

"We found these kingdoms in such good order, and the said Incas governed them in such wise that throughout them there was not a thief, nor a vicious man, nor an adulteress, nor was a bad woman admitted among them, nor were there immoral people. The men had honest and useful occupations. The lands, forests, mines, pastures, houses and all kinds of products were regulated and distributed in such sort that each one knew his property without any other person seizing it or occupying it, nor were there law suits respecting it...

"...the motive which obliges me to make this statement is the discharge of my conscience, as I find myself guilty. For we have destroyed by our evil example, the people who had such a government as was enjoyed by these natives. They were so free from the committal of crimes or excesses, as well men as women, that the Indian who had 100,000 pesos worth of gold or silver in his house, left it open merely placing a small stick against the door, as a sign that its master was out. With that, according to their custom, no one could enter or take anything that was there. When they saw that we put locks and keys on our doors, they supposed that it was from fear of them, that they might not kill us, but not because they believed that anyone would steal the property of another. So that when they found that we had thieves among us, and men who sought to make their daughters commit sin, they despised us." (p. 300, Markham, Sir Clements, The Incas of Peru, Second Edition, John Murray, London, 1912. )

[TuxedoKat]

77. I knew they were an advanced

civilization but I had no idea. I will have to do some further research. Very interesting, thanks for sharing that.

[EFerrari]

45. You probably don't know this but that's a very old justification.

No indigenous people created a holocaust on this continent and the Europeans did not save native peoples from themselves.

[yodermon]

21. Point is that Columbus wasn't extra-special-evil in this regard, All the "explorers"

from europe did these things. It was SOP. Which of course just makes it all that much more horrific.

[L. Coyote]

36. Regarding the first battle fought under Cortes in the New World, against the people of Tabasco

Diaz writes:

"... we doctored the horses by searing their wounds with the fat from the body of a dead Indian which we cut up to get out the fat, and we went to look at the dead lying on the plain and there were more than eight hundred of them, the greater number killed by thrusts, the others by cannon, muskets and crossbows, and many were stretched on the ground half dead…. The battle lasted over an hour ... we buried the two soldiers that had been killed ... we seared the wounds of the others and of the horses with the fat of the Indian, and after posting sentinels and guards, we had supper and rested."

"... These were the first vassals to render submission to His Majesty in New Spain."

Regarding the discovery of Yucatan, Diaz continues:

"When we had seen the gold and houses of masonry, we felt well content at having discovered such a country."

Regarding the second expedition from Cuba to Yucatan:

"As the report had spread that the lands were very rich, the soldiers and settlers who possessed no Indians in Cuba were greedily eager to go to the new land..."

On returning to Cuba:

"When the governor saw the gold we had brought ... amounted in all to twenty thousand dollars, he was well contented. Then the officers of the King took the Royal Fifth...." "When Governor Diego Velasquez understood how rich were these newly discovered lands, he ordered another fleet, much larger than the former one be sent off..."

These passages clearly relate the role of searching for riches. One form of wealth is certainly the possession of slaves, and this wealth is based on the ability to find slaves. Fundamental to enslavement is the concept of Other.

Of the expedition to Mexico:

"As soon as Hernando Cortes had been appointed General he began to search for all sorts of arms, guns, powder, and crossbows, and every kind of warlike stores which he could get together..."

"Then he ordered two standards and banners to be made, worked in gold with the royal arms and the cross on each side with a legend which said, 'Comrades, let us follow the sign of the Holy Cross with true faith, and through it we shall conquer.' …"

"Juan Sedeno passed for the richest soldier in the fleet, for he came in his own ship with the mare, and a negro and a store of cassava bread and salt pork, and at that time horses and negroes were worth their weight in gold…."

[PVnRT]

58. Yet Columbus has his own holiday

[csziggy]

22. And once the indigenous population on the Caribbean Islands died off

From introduced disease and mistreatment during slavery, the Columbus family began the practice of bringing in slaves from elsewhere. First, from other islands or parts of the "New World" and eventually from Africa.

[imdjh]

30. Ah yes, "european" diseases.

Your opening line suggests that Columbus found a paradise and took a dump in it.

The problem is, if you are to believe everybody and his brother in "academic circles" there were quite literally swinging doors on the Americas with people coming and going long before Columbus got here, and way long before Jamestown and Plymouth. Van Sertima claims that advanced societies of West Africans (and sometimes he implies Egyptians) went back and forth to South America. He also claims that Ethiopian sailors landed on the West Coast of Mexico and the US long before Columbus, which isn't beyond the imagination. Of course there are those who claim the Chinese visited and later the Japanese came over to take a look.

While it would have been nice if someone had bothered to keep better records, it's so very strange that so many people believe there is sufficient evidence to support the claims that everybody and his brother from the Old World came by from time to time, but only Columbus, or John Smith, or Priscilla Presley brought the dreaded diseases with them. Such folks almost always leave out that huge numbers of Europeans died shortly after arriving in the New World and that it is now believed that syphilis actually originates in the New World rather than Africa.

[csziggy]

35. I've wondered if some of the earlier cultural collapses on both sides of the Atlantic

Were from earlier contacts. Viking settlements on the Northeast coast - evidence of cultural collapse of Native American groups in what is now the Eastern US, including the Mississipian culture. The Vikings did not have as close contacts with the natives as did the Columbus crews and the Spanish. Most of their contacts were with male only groups and were hostile. The crews of the Columbus voyages are reported to have abused the hospitality of their hosts and raped their women so there was much closer interpersonal contact there than the Vikings fighting with a canoe full of men.

But after the possible earlier contacts there were new diseases introduced into Europe - the Black Death, small pox and others were introduced after 1200-1300 if I remember correctly. And there are clear reports of massive die offs among the Native Americans shortly after European contact following Columbus's opening of the trade routes between Europe and the Americas.

In addition, even a minor mutation of influenza and other diseases can cause a new pandemic - so even if the Native Americans had been exposed to European diseases by earlier contacts, they would still not have had resistance to later versions. Just a few decades without exposure leaves a population vulnerable and there were maybe a few hundred years of isolation between contacts.

[armyowalgreens]

10. Columbus was most definitely an asshole of his time.

You seem to be living in the delusion that it was okay back then to torture and exterminate a people.

It was more prevalent. But it was in no way okay and I'm sure plenty of good natured people thought it was vile.

[Confusious]

12. I agree that columbus was an ass

But how do you judge assholes, when the entire world was full of them?

The moors where no better then the spanish then the english then the indians, etc, etc, etc..

Ok the spanish were MORE assish to the indians then the english or french.

[armyowalgreens]

13. How do you judge them? You do it like you would do it now.

Why does it matter that there were more of them?

[Confusious]

14. nevermind

I have a small idea of what I want to say, but it hasn't gelled yet.

[druidity33]

19. Actually

you might want to read, The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account by Bartolome de Las Casas. It seems there were a number of contemporaries of Columbus who abhorred his tactics and went so far as to complain to the Queen and the Church. Campaigns were waged to prevent further exploration and slaughter by certain captains and financiers.

If you educate yourself more, you might see that the world at the time was not "full of assholes".

As for the Natives being "just as bad"... i just can't even respond to that. The depth of ignorance in the statement would take too much time (that i don't have) to refute.

[Raineyb]

20. Not everyone in his time raped children and enslaved other people

The "man of his times" excuse is just that; a lame ass excuse.

[juno jones]

29. The natives had no guns or gunpower.

They didn't even have steel.

[GreenStormCloud]

38. I am referring to the self-righteousness of the modern condemners.

We have the good fortune to live in modern times and modern education. So some people like to think that they would have behaved differently if they had been in Columbus' time. But if they had been there, they would have been brought up in the system of the times and behaved in the same way Columbus did.

I am well familiar with the bad stuff that Columbus did. I read a book about it in 1992, the 500th anniversary of his first voyage. The book was written in 1892, the 400th anniversary. What Columbus did isn't a modern discovery, but was well known to historians.

The whole damn world was full of assholes and anybody who posts here who thinks they would have been different is fooling themselves. Except for some of the upper classes, Europe was illiterate. Hell, the Spanish Inquisition was just getting started (1478) and we all know how "humane" that was.

[Raineyb]

43. And the people OF THE TIME who thought that Columbus was an asshole

to use our vernacular? Were they judging him out of context? I'd say no. What's right and wrong didn't change all that much just the willingness to accept the excuses.

[imdjh]

48. Are not above suspicion for personal motives, and are unremarkable wouldn't you think?

Surely in any given time there is someone who says, "This isn't right." That doesn't define the times, nor does it necessarily mean that person is ahead of his time.

I don't find it at all surprising that a person of the next generation, with aspirations of his own, with moral and spiritual conflicts of his own, and who owes his allegiance to someone other than his King, would try to take down someone like Columbus. For all we know, Las Casas was working for a foreign power.

[PVnRT]

61. Hellooooooo hero worship

[Raineyb]

84. I have NO idea what ignored said

But based on your reply I'll assume I didn't miss much.

[PVnRT]

92. In essence,

he accused Las Casas of having an agenda, being accountable to a "foreign power" other than Spain, trying to besmirch the reputation of that proud Christian warrior Christopher Columbus.

[Raineyb]

97. Sounds like like I was right..

And that ignore is doing quite a bit of projection.

[L. Coyote]

96. You have no clue, do you? You just say whatever comes to mind with no basis in fact.

Las Casas was a special prosecutor working within the legal system, appointed Universal Protector of the Indians. His job was to deal with the atrocities. He was a member of a religious order.

You seem to not realize the laws of the land at the time allowed taking lands from pagans, and the Church and the Crown each got one-fifth of the booty from conquest of pagan lands. That was the law!! That defines the times! Ethnohistorical sources record the personal motives with clarity, getting rich be raping other cultures.

[imdjh]

50. Driving to Earth Day with plastic water bottles, synthetic clothes, and the AC on. nt

[Marr]

53. That's just too easy. There were critics of this amoral pursuit of riches at the time,

like Las Casas. They may be few, but they were well known and their moral arguments would fit right into a modern conversation. These societies had a morality very similar to our own. They just ignored it in favor of wealth, as many of our own people are doing today.

[Hannah Bell]

6. that family is interesting. i hadn't realized descendants ran a lot of caribbean/

(e.g. jamaica) latin america for significant periods of time.


direct descendant assassinated by eta 1986. i wonder why?

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crist%25C3%25B3bal_Col%25C3%25B3n_de_Carvajal_y_Maroto&ei=p1fSSoPdOYHYtgPCoKDwCw&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=2&ct=result&ved=0CA8Q7gEwAQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3DCrist%25C3%25B3bal%2BCol%25C3%25B3n%2Bde%2BCarvajal%2By%2BMaroto%26hl%3Den

[malaise]

15. Send them this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qbMKTY_Cr0
Christopher COlumbus is a damn blasted liar. I love me some Burning Spear.

[Blue_Tires]

56. thanks for that...

[skygazer]

17. Columbus' significance was never that he "discovered America"

It was that he stumbled upon it at a time when Europe had the means to exploit it. The Vikings were here first, even established a colony. But they couldn't sustain it because their technology wasn't far enough advanced to overpower the people who were already here. That had changed by the time Columbus arrived.

The whole point of his trip to "travel west to go east" was to make money. When he hit land, that goal had not changed, just the destination did. How he chose to make that money changed the course of history - not because America had been "discovered" but because it introduced a new form of slavery to the world - slavery based on a person's race.

Slavery was nothing new - people have probably been enslaved since the dawn of time - but prior to the time of Columbus (and he was not alone in exploiting colonized peoples), it was mostly connected to warfare or used as a punishment for crime. In other words, anyone of any race could be a slave. Now, that changed - when the Native Americans he first enslaved died out, they were replaced with Africans whose lands had also been overrun by Europeans. Now slaves were people with dark skin, easily recognized. Slavery had become about race. Four hundred years of horrible history followed. We're still living with the legacy.

I don't feel it is history's job to make judgments so much as it is to fairly analyze and assess actions and consequences. Columbus was a man of his time - that's not an excuse, but an explanation. That's what that time was like and it's good that we are now acknowledging the consequences.

[csziggy]

23. Actually the Vikings failure to permanently colonize Vineland

Was as much from climatic conditions as anything. There was a cooling period which increased icebergs and made sailing across the North Atlantic much more difficult. That is why the Viking settlements in Greenland were abandoned and the people there gradually died off. And it is why Iceland was somewhat isolated for a period instead of having regular commerce with North Europe as they had previously enjoyed.

The same climatic changes affected many other cultures all over the world. Evidence of cultural collapse around the same period is found in the American Southwest and Southeast, Central America, Southeast Asia, and Peru, just off the top of my head. In the more temperate areas, changes in rainfall, either reduction or increases changed the balance of the agriculture and the cultural norms.

The tail end of that climatic change also may have ushered in the Black Death in Europe, by the way. While cultures on other continents were hit hard enough by their collapse that they had not recovered their former status, European cultures responded to their crisis by becoming more combative and aggressive which produced pressures to expand and to search out resources to support their local wars. It also gave them the incentive to produce armies and war technologies that were a big advantage when invading other continents.

[imdjh]

27. And all this time I thought we were just mean.

[csziggy]

31. LOL, I've wondered how much of the dysfunctionality of European origin culture

Can be blamed on the trauma of the Black Death. When 30% of your people die, that has to leave lasting scars on a society. And a part of that may be responsible for the way that the Christian Church developed into such a rigid hierarchy.

[imdjh]

33. Not to mention that those of us who lived felt invincible.

And to this day there is speculation that the reason I am not infected with or dead from HIV is because of ancestors who survived the Plague. Personally, I think that when the Plague showed up my old lowland and Lothian ancestors simply said, "We'll have none of that, there's work to do here."

[csziggy]

40. Yes, I had heard about that village where the only deaths were the outsiders

Neat research that. I'm glad you inherited those genes!

[imdjh]

25. You could look at it another way.

The Romans pretty much wrote the book on European slavery, and they did indeed enslave nations in a time where nation and race were more in line than they might be today so to say that race didn't define slavery is to take a fairly narrow view of race. A better example of equal opportunity slavery might be in Thailand or China, but even there I think that subrace played a role.

The other way one might look at New World slavery is that the European nations had the technology to enslave technologically inferior peoples which happened to fall on color lines by that point. But even that wouldn't be competely fair when you consider that there was defacto slavery within European economies from peonage to prison labor to those transported for criminal, political, or military reasons.

American Indian slavery was also tribe based, which offers no distinction from racial classification other than degree.

The of course, there was the ruling from Rome that slavery was permissible as long as the slaves were not Christian, and Christianity was certainly not limited to white people even in that time.

I think it simply doesn't reduce to a slogan or snapshot no matter how much some folks would like to employ it in that way. All it really is, for all the wailing and moaning, is an old economic system of division of labor. Not a romantic part of history, but then most history isn't romantic when closely examined.

[Individualist]

63. Native Americans were here first.

[imdjh]

65. Someone always is, and human nature, culture, and circumstance conspire to decide the future.

[EFerrari]

74. You could say the same thing about murder.

"Someone is always alive first, and human nature, culture and circumstance conspire to decide the future."

[skygazer]

89. Absolutely right and I worded that poorly

Thanks.

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. Black legend in a new dress?

:-)

[imdjh]

26. Annual grudge match. :)

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. And the black legend is as old as US Historiography of the discovery

and colonization of the New World... and there were plenty of horrors, but geeze louis this is every year.

The part that amazes me about it is that people do not connect it between US Empire and its envy of other empires.

[L. Coyote]

37. How much credit goes to the Internet and the Information Age?

Some people don't know how difficult finding information used to be.

Most people don't yet know how much effort went into covering up everything about the conquest and the Indians:

===============
The Council of Trent decisions and their implementation by the Inquisition in Spain (1576-1577) resulted in direct repression of writing on pre-Columbian civilizations (Dibble 1982:36). New royal orders demanded confiscation of manuscripts and delivery of books to crown authorities. Sahagún's General History was singled out in a royal decree dated on April 22, 1577. The Royal Decree relative to the General History of the Things of New Spain reads (my translation from the Spanish in the Codice Franciscano):

"The King. - Mr. Martin Enriquez, our Viceroy, Governor and Captain General of New Spain, and President of our Royal Audience thereof. From some letters which you have written us we have understood that Brother Bernardino of Sahagún of the Order of Saint Francis has composed a Universal History of the most noted things of New Spain, which is a very copious computation of the rites, ceremonies and idolatries which the indians used in their infidelity, divided into twelve books and in the Mexican language; and though it is understood that the zeal of said Brother Bernardino has been good, and with the wish that his work bear fruit, it does not seem convenient that this book be printed or distributed in any form in those parts, for (some origins of consideration) several reasons; and so we command you that after you receive this our decree, with much diligence you procure those books and without there remaining original or some translation, you send them with good security on the first occasion to our Council of the Indies, for their review; and you are given notice to not consent that in any form some person write things which appertain to superstitions and the way of life which these indians had, in any language, because so agrees with service to God, our Lord, and (with) our (service)." Madrid, 22nd of April of 1577. Signed: "I the King"

Sahagún naively wrote to King Philip II in 1578, saying he could copy the books again if the volumes had not been properly delivered. This prompted renewed, stricter orders depriving Sahagún of all manuscripts still in his possession (Dibble 1982:35-36) including the Florentine Codex. The originality of the text is questionable due to the confiscations and control of the documents. The veracity is questionable because of the influences on the original writing and the degree of control over writing exercised by the Inquisition and the Council of the Indies. These factors must be considered in addition to the biases on the parts of authors.

Dibble, Charles E. 1982 Sahagún's Historia. In Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain Edited by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble. Monographs of the School of American Research, Number 14, Part I, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

[MellowDem]

39. You can thank Columbus for the internet...

so ha!

[RobinA]

41. I Thought

that was Al Gore?

[L. Coyote]

42. Maybe he'll get a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize!

:rofl: You know, bringing two worlds together :rofl:

[PVnRT]

59. I see the apologists have arrived

With all of the usual excuses. No surprise.

[Rebubula]

62. This Just In....

....shocking news reports show that all nations were built on the backs and blood of the natives. Further reports show human history as a long string of horrific stories of one culture raping and burying another culture.

In this reporters mind...all humans suck.



Just sayin....

[imdjh]

67. +1

[dana_b]

70. oh well

as long as everyone has one. Let EVERY nation get a day without mail, banking and some school closures in celebration of the raping genocidal freaks.

[EFerrari]

71. The "everybody does it" rationalization.

I wonder how many of these "all nations" continued their rapine for 500 years. It would be an interesting question to look into.

[imdjh]

76. Spain is raping Haiti and the Bahamas?

[EFerrari]

79. Spain? Try France, the US and Canada for Haiti.

Or even better, run down the business dealings of United Fruit who in their present incarnation are backing the coup in Honduras. Yes, they're still at it.

[dugaresa]

83. Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Assyrians, Persians, and those that didn't have a 500 year run typically

refer to any period where they plundered and achieved great wealth as the pinnacle of their culture. Kind of perverse but that is the way it was and seems to still be.

However today the powers that be are the corporations. Companies that have dominant global standing are those that are the "empires" of today. The fall of GM is a corporate fall of Rome.

Walmart, is trying hard to be everywhere and dominate and appears to be on the uptick so far.

Look at the Fortune 100 and you have the dominant empires of today.

[imdjh]

85. Think of Egypt as ADM - they cornered grain before the market was invented.

[dugaresa]

88. and they were in their later period the target of hostile takeovers

because owning the grain was a key to success.

[EFerrari]

86. Yes, I think you're right. And it would be something to go back

and trace that network.

[lumberjack_jeff]

81. "Bossy"? That's nuance?

If you think bossiness was Columbus' biggest sin, you haven't been paying attention.

[lebkuchen]

82. a slave trader who fed Arawaks to the dogs

and/or chopped of their hands if they didn't find gold.