The Crimes of Christopher Columbus

First Things and other sources ^ | November, 1995

[Chad Fairbanks]

Ya know, I have no problem with people celebrating the achievements of Columbus - it's their right to do so. However, I also believe that people have the right to point out his flaws - and they were many - if they so choose.

The bottom line is, I am interested in truth, not a whitewash of history one way or another.

It's an interesting and difficult position, being who and what I am, when the Columbus issue comes up. I can understand the feelings that Columbus invokes in my fellow American Indians, as he really did change things for us and not really in a good way. He was a cruel greedy man that caused a lot of destruction... By the same token, however, I also find that if it wasn't for him and his voyages, there probably never would have been a United States of America - the greatest nation on Earth - and the world would be a far worse place without the U.S.

It's a difficult question. However, I stand by what I said - the truth, no matter how brutal it is, is better than lies, embellishments, and leaving things out...

By the way, on a completely unrelated note (or is it?) - regarding The Bush Doctrine? The Iroquois used to have that doctrine, too - "You are either allied with us, or you are against us" - no middle ground, no neutrality. Period. It's a great policy, and am glad to see President Bush going back to historical ideas in the modern world ;0)

[Chad Fairbanks]

Of course - Ben Franklin was well aquainted with the political and military confederation my ancestors created BEFORE the Europeans arrived. He figured if a bunch of ignorant savages could build such a successful political system, why couldn't the "Americans"?

Many of the founders were familiar with the 5, later 6, Nations - they were the dominant political power on the North American Continent (the "empire" stretched from Northeastern Canada, down well south of Virginia, and east to the Mississippi/Missouri River) prior to and during the colonial period...

[Chad Fairbanks]

***So why did European attitudes toward the Indian, initially so favorable, subsequently change? ***

One word. BRUTALITY.

Wrong word. The word should be "Greed".

[Chad Fairbanks]

I notice that none of the multicultural whiners and American Indian guilt-givers ever mention the Vikings, who also had an early hostile encounter with the natives.

And everyone knows that it had to be those savage indians who were at fault, too, because they could have had no reason for being hostile with the fuzzy cuddly teddy bear-like peace-loving vikings, right? ;0)

[Juana la Loca]

ping

[Polybius]

King Ferdinand of Aragon and his wife and co-ruler, Queen Isabella of Castile, sponsored his venture. The king was grumpy about it but Isabella furnished three ships.

Actually, King Ferdinand took a pass. Ferdinand believed, and correctly so, that Columbus' estimate on how far the Orient was westward from Spain was ridiculously underestimated.

Isabel then sponsored the venture in the name of her own Kingdom of Castile and Leon.

Pure blind luck then trumped navigational common sense.

As a result, the right of colonization of the New World and commerce with the new colonies was initially restricted to the subjects of Castile and Leon. Even after Isabella's death, when Ferdinand was no longer joint King of Castile and Leon but was the Regent for his daughter Juana, Ferdinand respected Castile and Leon's New World monopoly to the exclusion of Aragon.

Thus the motto associated with the coat of arms granted to Columbus:

"A Castilla y a Leon, Nuevo Mundo dio Colon." (To Castile and Leon, Columbus gave a New World.)

[midftfan]

Christopher Columbus has always been the lightning rod for all of these multiculturalists. They just don't want to admit that European traditions and institutions made western civilization great. I doubt that these overeducated and mostly rich multicultural supporters would enjoy living under primitive "native" conditions today. These people need to get lives.

[Coleus]

The last of the Moorish rulers was expelled from the Iberian peninsula in the reconquista of 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella, Los Reyes Catolicos (The Catholic Monarchs), expelled the last of the Moorish rulers, Boabdil of Granada, from the peninsula, uniting most of what is now Spain.

[ZULU]

Today Columbis, tommorrow George Washington, Adams, and Jefferson.

[pepsionice]

One of the great misunderstandings of Chris Columbus...is that once he arrived there in the Caribbean....he came to grasp that his dream of the orient was a failure. He left a bunch of guys there...hoping that pity would cause the royal family to pay for another trip back...which it did. He took back some gold and some Indians....and the gold more or less convinced the royal family to front a second and third mission. Columbus returned in the second trip to find his sailors all dead...because of alittle misunderstanding probably (too many Indian babes). The new world map is based on a failed mission, and a sales job for gold. It stayed that way for well over 100 years.

[Coleus]

Today Columbus, tomorrow George Washington, Adams, and Jefferson.>>>

In New Jersey: Old White Men: Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Religious Freedom, Taken out of NJ Curriculum, during a REPUBLICAN (RINO) Administration

It's not only the democrats who are PC and want to demonize our Western Civilization. These RepbuliCRATS will stop at nothing for votes and to pad their pensions.

[Coleus]

In other words...he was the first liberal (c8   >>>

He was about 5,000 years too late.

Lucifer, The First Liberal

 

[Antoninus]

By the way, on a completely unrelated note (or is it?) - regarding The Bush Doctrine? The Iroquois used to have that doctrine, too - "You are either allied with us, or you are against us" - no middle ground, no neutrality. Period. It's a great policy, and am glad to see President Bush going back to historical ideas in the modern world ;0)

Not true. The Iroquois had a neutral relationship with the "Neutral" tribe for a long time. Indeed, the great Neutral confederacy was named such by the French because of the strict neutrality they practiced in the decades long wars between their neighbors, the Iroquois and the Huron confederacies. Of couse, that all broke down in the late 1650s when the Iroquois totally overran and destroyed the Neutrals, killing, torturing, and enslaving thousands and casting the rest out of their ancestral lands--the same thing they did to the Hurons a few years prior and would do to the Eries, Algonquins, Montagnais, Susquehannocks, and many others.

As long as we're pointing out flaws...

[Chad Fairbanks]

It was just prior to the time it broke down the the Iroquoian policy of "You are with us or against us" came about - it was a power play designed to get the French Allies to join the Iroquois against the French, who the Iroquois disliked with a passion.

The destruction of the Neutrals was the result of that policy... The bottom line is, the Neutrals brought it all on themselves - When the (French allies) Huron were being destroyed by their Iroquois bretheren, the supposed "Neutrals" allowed the surviving Hurons to move into their villages. Stupid mistake, and even more stupid was when the Iroquois basically said "Turn them over, or else" the Neutrals chose the "or else" part... They found out exactly what "or else" meant. Sorta like the Taliban did ;0)

[Antoninus]

Many of the founders were familiar with the 5, later 6, Nations - they were the dominant political power on the North American Continent (the "empire" stretched from Northeastern Canada, down well south of Virginia, and east to the Mississippi/Missouri River) prior to and during the colonial period...

And the Iroquois enforced their domination by musket, blood, and fire. They were indeed the mightiest of the Eastern nations by far. But their ceaseless wars, raids, and depradations againt their Indian brethren did much to depopulate the Northeast, the Ohio Valley, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi Valley--basically leaving this land open for the European settlers.

There is little evidence that the founders based the mechanisms of the new republic on the Iroquois confederacy. There were no checks and balances in the confederacy, short of the vengeance raid. The colonial system of justice was not based on wampum gifts. There was no fire to be covered over in the Halls of Congress if a consesus couldn't be reached. Don't get me wrong--the Iroquois had a brilliant system that held them together and made them more powerful than their enemies for a long, long time. But to consider it the basis for the US Constitution is not tenable anywhere outside a PC highschool classroom.

[Chad Fairbanks]

And it should be pointed out that enslavement was NOT something the Iroquois were known for. Instead, they practiced "mass adoptions" of captured enemies (which led to the other policy, the "Great Pursuit policy that would eliminate the threat of rebellion internally by those adopted) which meant that while other indian populations were dwindling, the Iroquois population was booming...

However, adopted indians were not enslaved. They, too, were protected by the Great Law of Peace...

[Antoninus]

And everyone knows that it had to be those savage indians who were at fault, too, because they could have had no reason for being hostile with the fuzzy cuddly teddy bear-like peace-loving vikings, right? ;0)

Chad, you know as well as I that Europeans have had their share of savages. But let's face it--the Iroquois as they exist today are little like their predecessors. They do not go raiding and killing on the merest whim. They do not bring captives home, chew off their fingers and burn them to death in the most gruesome ways. They do not still eat the flesh of their enemies with gusto. And they are not still tortured and eaten by their enemies with the same gusto.

Indeed, there are more Iroquois alive today than there ever were before Columbus set foot in the New World. And they no longer live in a perpetual state of war and carnage. Praise be to God!

[Chad Fairbanks]

I certainly never said we were peace-loving, tree-hugging nature warshipping hippies - we were warriors. Period. Our system allowed us to avoid warfare among ourselves - it didn't apply to other tribes...

I never claimed that there is a massive amount of evidence that the Iroquoian system was an inspiration for the U.S. Constitution - our system was based on a myriad of influences, and it may be possible that the Iroquoian confederacy could have played a small role nonetheless - especially when you consider some founders lived among the 5 nations for a time... I'm not saying it's written in stone that there was influence, but to completely ignore the 5 nations as THE dominate power in North America during the early colonialization period, and even up into the French and Indian wars and beyond, would be ignore truth.

Enough founders were aware of, and understood, the nature of the condeferacy to make it a valid question, though - how much influence was there? To just flat out say "None" is to be in denial that such savages could possibly be worth anything...

[Chad Fairbanks]

I'm not denying that my ancestors were brutal. However, I'm also not denying that the Viking were brutal, either. ;0)