did columbus travel alone

By AD.  F. Bandelier Transcribed by Janet van Heyst Dedicated in honor of Fr. Moses M. Nagy, O. Cist.

(Italian CRISTOFORO COLOMBO; Spanish CRISTOVAL COLON.) Born at Genoa, or on Genoese territory, probably 1451; died at Valladolid, Spain, 20 May 1506.

The early age at which he began his career as a sailor is not surprising for a native of Genoa, as the Genoese were most enterprising and daring seamen. Columbus is said in his early days to have been a corsair, especially in the war against the Moors, themselves merciless pirates. He is also supposed to have sailed as far south as the coast of Guinea before he was sixteen years of age. Certain it is that while quite young he became a thorough and practical navigator, and later acquired a fair knowledge of astronomy. He also gained a wide acquaintance with works on cosmography such as Ptolemy and the “Imago Mundi” of Cardinal d’Ailly, besides entering into communication with the cosmographers of his time. The fragment of a treatise written by him and called by his son Fernando “The Five Habitable Zones of the Earth” shows a degree of information unusual for a sailor of his day. As in the case of most of the documents relating to the life of Columbus the genuineness of the letters written in 1474 by Paolo Toscanelli, a renowned physicist of Florence, to Columbus and a member of the household of King Alfonso V of Portugal, has been attacked on the ground of the youth of Columbus, although they bears signs of authenticity. The experiences and researches referred to fit in satisfactorily with the subsequent achievements of Columbus. For the rest, the early part of Columbus’s life is interwoven with incidents, most of which are unsupported by evidence, though quite possible. His marriage about 1475 to a Portuguese lady whose name is given sometimes as Doña Felipa Moniz and sometimes as Doña Felipa Perestrella seems certain.

Columbus seems to have arrived in Portugal about 1471, although 1474 is also mentioned and supported by certain indications. He vainly tried to obtain the support of the King of Portugal for his scheme to discover the Far East by sailing westward, a scheme supposed to have been suggested by his brother Bartholomew, who is said to have been earning a livelihood at Lisbon by designing marine charts. Columbus went to Spain in 1485, and probably the first assistance he obtained there was from the Duke of Medina Celi, Don Luis de la Cerda, for whom he performed some services that brought him a compensation of 3000 maravedis in May, 1487. He lived about two years at the home of the duke and made unsuccessful endeavors to interest him in his scheme of maritime exploration. His attempts to secure the help of the Duke of Medina Sidonia were equally unproductive of results. No blame attaches to the noblemen for declining to undertake an enterprise which only rulers of nations could properly carry out. Between 1485 and 1488 Columbus began his relations with Doña Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, or Harana, of a good family of the city of Cordova, from which sprang his much beloved son Fernando, next to Christopher and his brother Bartholomew the most gifted of the Colombos.

Late in 1485 or early in 1486, Columbus appeared twice before the court to submit his plans and while the Duke of Medina Celi may have assisted him to some extent, the chief support came from the royal treasurer, Alonzo de Quintanilla, Friar Antonio de Marchena (confounded by Irving with Father Perez of La Rábida), and Diego de Deza, Bishop of Placencia. Columbus himself declared that these two priests were always his faithful friends. Marchena also obtained for him the valuable sympathy of Cardinal Gonzalez de Mendoza. Through the influence of these men the Government appointed a junta or commission of ecclesiastics that met at Salamanca late in 1486 or early in 1487, in the Dominican convent of San Esteban to investigate the scheme, which they finally rejected. The commission had no connection with the celebrated University of Salamanca, but was under the guidance of the prior of Prado. It seems that Columbus gave but scant and unsatisfactory information to the commission, probably through fear that his ideas might be improperly made use of and he be robbed of the glory and advantages that he expected to derive from his project. This may account for the rejection of his proposals. The prior of Prado was a Hieronymite, while Columbus was under the especial protection of the Dominicans. Among his early friends in Spain was Luis de Santangel, whom Irving calls “receiver of the ecclesiastical revenues of Aragon”, and who afterwards advanced to the queen the funds necessary for the first voyage. If Santangel was receiver of the church revenues and probably treasurer and administrator, it was the Church that furnished the means (17,000 ducats) for the admiral’s first voyage.

It would be unjust to blame King Ferdinand for declining the proposals of Columbus after the adverse report of the Salamanca commission, which was based upon objections drawn from Seneca and Ptolemy rather than upon the opinion of St. Augustine in the “De Civitate Dei”. The king was then preparing to deal the final blow to Moorish domination in Spain after the struggle of seven centuries, and his financial resources were taxed to the utmost. Moreover, he was not easily carried away by enthusiasm and, though we now recognize the practical value of the plans of Columbus, at the close of the fifteenth century it seemed dubious, to say the least, to a cool-headed ruler, wont to attend first to immediate necessities. The crushing of the Moorish power in the peninsula was then of greater moment than the search after distant lands for which, furthermore, there were not the means in the royal treasury. Under these conditions Columbus, always in financial straits himself and supported by the liberality of friends, bethought himself of the rulers of France and England. In 1488 his brother Bartholomew, as faithful as sagacious, tried to induce one or the other of them to accept the plans of Christopher, but failed. The idea was too novel to appeal to either. Henry VII of England was too cautious to entertain proposals from a comparatively unknown seafarer of a foreign nation, and Charles VIII of France was too much involved in Italian affairs. The prospect was disheartening. Nevertheless, Columbus, with the assistance of his friends, concluded to make another attempt in Spain. He proceeded to court again in 1491, taking with him his son Diego. The court being then in camp before Granada, the last Moorish stronghold, the time could not have been more inopportune. Another junta was called before Granada while the siege was going on, but the commission again reported unfavourably. This is not surprising, as Ferdinand of Aragon could not undertake schemes that would involve a great outlay, and divert his attention from the momentous task he was engaged in. Columbus always directed his proposals to the king and as yet the queen had taken no official notice of them, as she too was heart and soul in the enterprise destined to restore Spain wholly to Christian rule.

The junta before Granada took place towards the end of 1491, and its decision was such a blow to Columbus that he left the court and wandered away with his boy. Before leaving, however, he witnessed the fall of Granada, 2 January, 1492. His intention was to return to Cordova and then, perhaps, to go to France. On foot and reduced almost to beggary, he reached the Dominican convent of La Rábida probably in January, 1492. The prior was Father Juan Perez, the confessor of the queen, frequently confounded with Fray Antonio Marchena by historians of the nineteenth century, who also erroneously place the arrival of Columbus at La Rábida in the early part of his sojourn in Spain. Columbus begged the friar who acted as door-keeper to let his tired son rest at the convent over night. While he was pleading his cause the prior was standing near by and listening. Something struck him in the appearance of this man, with a foreign accent, who appeared to be superior to his actual condition. After providing for his immediate wants Father Perez took him to his cell, where Columbus told him all his aspirations and blighted hopes. The result was that Columbus and his son stayed at the convent as guests and Father Perez hurried to Santa Fe near Granada, for the purpose of inducing the queen to take a personal interest in the proposed undertaking of the Italian navigator.

Circumstances had changed with the fall of Granada, and the Dominican’s appeal was favourably received by Isabella who, in turn, influenced her husband. Columbus was called to court at once, and 20,000 maravedis were assigned him out of the queen’s private resources that he might appear in proper condition before the monarch. Some historians assert that Luis de Santangel decided the queen to espouse the cause of Columbus, but the credit seems rather to belong to the prior of La Rábida. The way had been well prepared by the other steadfast friends of Columbus, not improbably Cardinal Mendoza among others. At all events negotiations progressed so rapidly that on 17 April the first agreement with the Crown was signed, and on 30 April the second. Both show an unwise liberality on the part of the monarchs, who made the highest office in what was afterwards the West Indies hereditary in the family of Columbus. Preparations were immediately begun for the equipment of the expedition. The squadron with which Columbus set out on his first voyage consisted of three vessels–the Santa Maria, completely decked, which carried the flag of Columbus as admiral, the Pinta, and the Niña, both caravels, i.e. undecked, with cabins and forecastles. These three ships carried altogether 120 men. Two seamen of repute, Martín Alonso Pinzon and his brother Vicente Yanez Pinzon, well-to-do-residents of Palos commanded, the former the Pinta. the latter the Niña, and experienced pilots were placed on both ships. Before leaving, Columbus received the Sacraments of Penance and Holy Eucharist, at the hands (it is stated) of Father Juan Perez, the officers and crews of the little squadron following his example. On 3 August, 1492, the people of Palos with heavy hearts saw them depart on an expedition regarded by many as foolhardy.

Las Casas claims to have used the journal of Columbus’s first voyage, but he admits that he made an abridged copy of it. What and how much he left out, of course, is not known. But it is well to bear in mind that the journal, as published, is not the original in its entirety. The vessels touched at the Canaries, and then proceeded on the voyage. Conditions were most favourable. Hardly a wind ruffled the waters of the ocean. The dramatic incident of the mutiny, in which the discouragement of the crews is said to have culminated before land was discovered, is a pure invention. That there was dissatisfaction and grumbling at the failure to reach land seems to be certain, but no acts of insubordination are mentioned either by Columbus, his commentator Las Casas, or his son Fernando. Perhaps the most important event during the voyage was the observation, 17 September, by Columbus himself, of the declination of the magnetic needle, which Las Casas attributes to a motion of the polar star. The same author intimates that two distinct journals were kept by the admiral, “because he always represented [feigned] to the people that he was making little headway in order that the voyage should not seem long to them, so that he kept a record by two routes, the shorter being the fictitious one, and the longer the true one”. He must therefore either have kept two log-books, or he must have made two different entries in the same book. At any rate Las Casas seems to have had at his command both sets of data, since he gives them almost from day to day. This precautionary measure indicates that Columbus feared insubordination and even revolt on the part of the crews, but there is no evidence that any mutiny really broke out. Finally, at ten o’clock, p.m., 11 October, Columbus himself described a light which indicated land and was so recognized by the crew of his vessel. It reappeared several times, and Columbus felt sure that the shores so eagerly expected were near. At 2 a.m. on 12 October the land was seen plainly by one of the Pinta’s crew, and in the forenoon Columbus landed on what is now called Watling’s Island in the Bahama group, West Indies. The discoverers named the island San Salvador. The Indians inhabiting it belonged to the widespread Arawak stock and are said to have called the island Guanahani. Immediately after landing Columbus took possession of the island for the Spanish sovereigns.

The results of the first voyage, aside from the discovery of what the admiral regarded as being approaches to India and China, may be summed up as follows: partial recognition of the Bahamas; the discovery and exploration of a part of Cuba, and the establishment of a Spanish settlement on the coast of what is now the Island of Haiti or Santo Domingo. Cuba Columbus named Juana, and Santo Domingo, Hispaniola.

It was on the northern coast of the large island of Santo Domingo that Columbus met with the only serious mishap of the first voyage. Having established the nucleus of the first permanent Spanish settlement in the Indies, he left about three score men to hold it. The vicinity was comparatively well peopled by natives, Arawaks like those of the Bahamas, but slightly more advanced in culture. A few days previous to the foundation Martin Alonso Pinzon disappeared with the caravel Pinta which he commanded and only rejoined the admiral on 6 January, 1493, an act, to say the least, of disobedience, if not of treachery. The first settlement was officially established on Christmas Day, 1492, and hence christened “La Navidad”. On the same day the admiral’s ship ran aground. It was a total loss, and Columbus was reduced for the time being to the Niña, as the Pinta had temporarily deserted. Happily the natives were friendly. After ensuring, as well as he might, the safety of the little colony by the establishment of friendly relations with the Indians, Columbus left for Spain, where, after weathering a frightful storm during which he was again separated from the Pinta, he arrived at Palos, 15 March, 1493.

From the journal mentioned we also gather (what is not stated in the letters of Columbus) that while on the northern shores of Santo Domingo (Hispaniola) the admiral “learned that behind the Island Juana [Cuba] towards the South, there is another large island in which there is much more gold. They call that island Yamaye. . . . And that the island Española or the other island Yamaye was near the mainland, ten days distant by canoe, which might be sixty or seventy leagues, and that there the people were clothed [dressed]”. Yamaye is Jamaica, and the mainland alluded to as sixty or seventy leagues distant to the south (by south the west is meant), or 150 to 175 English miles (the league, at that time, being counted at four millas of 3000 Spanish feet), was either Yucatan or Honduras. Hence the admiral brought the news of the existence of the American continent to Europe as early as 1493. That he believed the continent to be Eastern Asia does not diminish the importance of his information.

Columbus had been careful to load his ship with all manner of products of the newly discovered countries and he also took some of the natives. Whether, among the samples of the vegetable kingdom, tobacco was included, is not yet satisfactorily ascertained. Nor is it certain that, when upon his return he presented himself to the monarchs at Barcelona, an imposing public demonstration took place in his honour. That he was received with due distinction at court and that he displayed the proofs of his discovery can not be doubted. The best evidence of the high appreciation of the King and Queen of Spain is the fact, that the prerogatives granted to him were confirmed, and everything possible was done to enable him to continue his explorations. The fact that Columbus had found a country that appeared to be rich in precious metals was of the utmost importance. Spain was poor, having been robbed, ages before, of its metallic wealth by the Romans. As gold was needed the discovery of a new source of that precious metal made a strong impression on the people of Spain, and a rush to the new regions was inevitable.

Columbus started on his second voyage to the Indies from Cadiz, 25 September, 1493, with three large vessels and thirteen caravels, carrying in all about 1500 men. On his first trip, he had heard about other, smaller islands lying some distance south of Hispaniola, and said to be inhabited by ferocious tribes who had the advantage over the Arawaks of being intrepid seafarers, and who made constant war upon the inhabitants of the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas, carrying off women and children into captivity. They were believed to practice cannibalism. These were the Caribs and the reports about them were true, outside of some exaggerations and fables like the story of the Amazons. Previous to the arrival of Columbus the Caribs had driven the Arawaks steadily north, depopulated some of the smaller islands, and were sorely pressing the people of Hispaniola, parts of Cuba, Porto Rico, and even Jamaica. Columbus wished to learn more about these people. The helpless condition of the Arawaks made him eager to protect them against their enemies. The first land sighted, 3 November, was the island now known as Dominica, and almost at the same time that of Marie Galante was discovered. Geographically the second voyage resulted in the discovery of the Caribbean Islands (including the French Antilles), Jamaica, and minor groups. Columbus having obtained conclusive evidence of the ferocious customs of the Caribs, regarded them as dangerous to the settlements he proposed to make among the Arawaks and as obstacles to the Christianization and civilization of these Indians. The latter he intended to make use of as labourers, as he soon perceived that for some time to come European settlers would be too few in numbers and too new to the climate to take advantage of the resources of the island. The Caribs he purposed to convert eventually, but for the time being they must be considered as enemies, and according to the customs of the age, their captors had the right to reduce them to slavery. The Arawaks were to be treated in a conciliatory manner, as long as they did not show open hostility. Before long, however, there was a change in these relations.

After a rapid survey of Jamaica, Columbus hastened to the northern coast of Haiti, where he had planted the colony of La Navidad. To his surprise the little fort had disappeared. There were to be seen only smouldering ruins and some corpses which were identified as Spanish. The natives, previously so friendly, were shy, and upon being questioned were either mute or contradictory in their replies. It was finally ascertained that another tribe, living farther inland and hostile to those on the coast, had fallen upon the fort, killed most of the inmates and burnt most of the buildings. Those who escaped had perished in their flight. But it also transpired that the coast people themselves had taken part in the massacre. Columbus, while outwardly on good terms with them, was on his guard and, in consequence of the aversion of his people to a site where only disaster had befallen them, moved some distance farther east and established on the coast the larger settlement of Isabella. This stood ten leagues to the east of Cape Monte Cristo, where the ruins are still to be seen.

The existence of gold on Haiti having been amply demonstrated on the first voyage, Columbus inaugurated a diligent search for places where it might be found. The gold trinkets worn by the Indians were washings or placeres, but mention is also made, on the first voyage, of quartz rock containing the precious metal. But it is likely that the yellow mineral was iron pyrites, probably gold-bearing but, in the backward state of metallurgy, worthless at the time. Soon after the settlement was made at Isabella the colonists began to complain that the mineral wealth of the newly discovered lands had been vastly exaggerated and one, who accompanied the expedition as expert in metallurgy, claimed that the larger nuggets held by the natives had been accumulated in the course of a long period of time. This very sensible supposition was unjustly criticized by Irving, for since Irving’s time it has been clearly proved that pieces of metal of unusual size and shape were often kept for generations by the Indians as fetishes.

A more important factor which disturbed the Spanish was the unhealthiness of the climate. The settlers had to go through the slow and often fatal process of acclimatization. Columbus himself suffered considerably from ill-health. Again, the island was not well provided with food suitable for the newcomers. The population, notwithstanding the exaggerations of Las Casas and others, was sparse. Isabella with its fifteen hundred Spanish immigrants was certainly the most populous settlement. At first there was no clash with the natives, but parties sent by Columbus into the interior came in contact with hostile tribes. For the protection of the colonists Columbus built in the interior a little fort called Santo Tomas. He also sent West Indian products and some Carib prisoners back to Spain in a vessel under the command of Antonio de Torres. Columbus suggested that the Caribs be sold as slaves in order that they might be instructed in the Christian Faith. This suggestion was not adopted by the Spanish monarchs, and the prisoners were treated as kindly in Spain as the friendly Arawaks who had been sent over.

The condition of affairs on Hispaniola (Haiti) was not promising. At Isabella and on the coast there was grumbling against the admiral, in which the Benedictine Father Buil (Boil) and the other priests joined, or which, at least, they did not discourage. In the interior there was trouble with the natives. The commander at Santo Tomas, Pedro Margarite, is usually accused of cruelty to the Indians, but Columbus himself in his Memorial of 30 January, 1494, commends the conduct of that officer. However, he had to send him reinforcements, which were commanded by Alonzo de Ojeda.

Anxiously following up his theory that the newly discovered islands were but outlying posts of Eastern Asia and that further explorations would soon lead him to the coast of China or to the Moluccas, Columbus, notwithstanding the precarious condition of the colony, left it in charge of his brother Diego and four counsellors (one of whom was Father Buil), and with three vessels set sail towards Cuba. During his absence of five months he explored parts of Cuba, discovered the Isle of Pines and several groups of smaller islands, and made the circuit of Jamaica, landing there almost every day. When he returned to Isabella (29 September, 1494), he was dangerously ill and in a stupor. Meanwhile his brother Bartholomew had arrived from Spain with a small squadron and supplies. He proved a welcome auxiliary to the weak Diego, but could not prevent serious trouble. Margarite, angered by interference with his administration in the interior, returned to the coast, and there was joined by Father Buil and other malcontents. They seized the three caravels that had arrived under the command of Bartholomew Columbus, and set sail in them for Spain to lay before the Government what they considered their grievances against Columbus and his administration.

That there was cause for complaint there seems to be no doubt, but it is almost impossible now to determine who was most at fault, Columbus or his accusers. He was certainly not as able an administrator as he was a navigator. Still, taking into consideration the difficulties, the novelty of the conditions, and the class of men Columbus had to handle, and placing over against this what he had already achieved on Haiti, there is not so much ground for criticism. The charges of cruelty against the natives are based upon rather suspicious authority, Las Casas being the principal source. There were errors and misdeeds on both sides, which, however, might not have brought about a crisis had not disappointment angered the settlers, who had based their expectations on the glowing reports of Columbus himself, and disposed them to attribute all their troubles to their opponents.

TBC – Before the return of Columbus to Isabella, Ojeda had repulsed an attempt of the natives to surprise Santo Tomas. Thereupon the Indians of various tribes of the interior now formed a confederation and threatened Isabella. Columbus, however, on his return, with the aid of firearms, sixteen horses, and about twenty blood-hounds easily broke up the Indian league. Ojeda captured the leader, and the policy of kindness hitherto pursued towards the natives was replaced by repression and chastisement. According to the customs of the times the prisoners of war were regarded as rebels, reduced to slavery, and five hundred of these were sent to Spain to be sold. It is certain that the condition of the Indians became much worse thereafter, that they were forced into unaccustomed labours, and that their numbers began to diminish rapidly. That these harsh measures were authorized by Columbus there can be no doubt.

While the Spanish monarchs in their dispatches to Columbus continued to show the same confidence and friendliness they could not help hearing the accusations made against him by Father Buil, Pedro Margarite, and the other malcontents, upon their return to Spain. It was clear that there were two factions among the Spaniards in Haiti, one headed by the admiral, the other composed of perhaps a majority of the settlers including ecclesiastics. Still the monarchs enjoined the colonists by letter to obey Columbus in everything and confirmed his authority and privileges. The incriminations, however, continued, and charges were made of nepotism and spoliation if royal revenue. There was probably some foundation for these charges, though also much wilful misrepresentation. Unable to ascertain the true condition of affairs, the sovereigns finally decided to send to the Indies a special commissioner to investigate and report. Their choice fell upon Juan de Aguado who had gone with Columbus on his first voyage and with whom he had always been on friendly terms. Aguado arrived at Isabella in October, 1495, while Columbus was absent on a journey of exploration across the island. No clash appears to have occurred between Aguado and Bartholomew Columbus, who was in charge of the colony during his brother’s absence, much less with the admiral himself upon the latter’s return. Soon after, reports of important gold discoveries came from a remote quarter of the island accompanied by specimens. The arrival of Aguado convinced Columbus of the necessity for his appearance in Spain and that new discoveries of gold would strengthen his position there. So he fitted out two ships, one for himself and one for Aguado, placing in them two hundred dissatisfied colonists, a captive Indian chief (who died on the voyage), and thirty Indian prisoners, and set sail for Spain on 10 March, 1496, leaving his brother Bartholomew at Isabella as temporary governor. As intercourse between Spain and the Indies was now carried on at almost regular intervals. Bartholomew was in communication with the mother country and was at least tacitly recognized as his brother’s substitute in the government of the Indies. Columbus reached Cadiz 11 June, 1496.

The story of his landing is quite dramatic. He is reported to have gone ashore, clothed in the Franciscan garb, and to have manifested a dejection which was wholly uncalled for. His health, it is true, was greatly impaired, and his companions bore the marks of great physical suffering. The impression created by their appearance was of course not favourable and tended to confirm the reports of the opponents of Columbus about the nature of the new country. This, as well as the disappointing results of the search for precious metals, did not fail to have its influence. The monarchs saw that the first enthusiastic reports had been exaggerated, and that the enterprise while possibly lucrative in the end, would entail large expenditures for some time to come. Bishop Fonseca, who was at the head of colonial affairs, urged that great caution should be exercised. What was imputed to Bishop Fonseca as jealousy was only the sincere desire of an honest functionary to guard the interests of the Crown without blocking the way of an enthusiastic but somewhat visionary genius who had been unsuccessful as an administrator. Later expressions (1505) of Columbus indicate that the personal relations to Fonseca were at the time far from unfriendly. But the fact that Columbus had proposed the enslaving of American natives and actually sent a number of them over to Spain had alienated the sympathy of the queen to a certain degree, and thus weakened his position at court.

Nevertheless, it was not difficult for Columbus to organize a third expedition. Columbus started on his third voyage from Seville with six vessels on 30 May, 1498. He directed his course more southward than before, owing to reports of a great land lying west and south of the Antilles and his belief that it was the continent of Asia. He touched at the Island of Madeira, and later at Gomera, one of the Canary Islands, whence he sent to Haiti three vessels. Sailing southward, he went to the Cape Verde Islands and, turning thence almost due west, arrived on 31 July 1498, in sight of what is now the Island of Trinidad which was so named by him. Opposite, on the other side of a turbulent channel, lay the lowlands of north-eastern South America. Alarmed by the turmoil caused by the meeting of the waters of the Orinoco (which empties through several channels into the Atlantic opposite Trinidad) with the Guiana current, Columbus kept close to the southern shore of Trinidad as far as its south-western extremity, where he found the water still more turbulent. He therefore gave that place the name of Boca del Drago, or Dragon’s Mouth. Before venturing into the seething waters Columbus crossed over to the mainland and cast anchor. He was under the impression that this was an island, but a vast stream of fresh water gave evidence of a continent. Columbus landed, he and his crew being thus the first Europeans to set foot on South American soil. The natives were friendly and gladly exchanged pearls for European trinkets. The discovery of pearls in American waters was important and very welcome.

A few days later, the admiral, setting sail again, was borne by the currents safely to the Island of Margarita, where he found the natives fishing for pearls, of which he obtained three bags by barter.

Some of the letters of Columbus concerning his third voyage are written in a tone of despondency. Owing to his physical condition, he viewed things with a discontent far from justifiable. And, as already said, his views of the geographical situation were somewhat fanciful. The great outpour opposite Trinidad he justly attributed to the emptying of a mighty river coming from the west, a river, so large that only a continent could afford its space. In this he was right, but in his eyes that continent was Asia, and the sources of that river must be on the highest point of the globe. He was confirmed in this idea by his belief that Trinidad wasnearer the Equator than it actually is and that near the Equator the highest land on earth should be found. He thought also that the sources of the Orinoco lay in the Earthly Paradise and that the great river was one of the four streams that according to Scripture flowed from the Garden of Eden. He had no accurate knowledge of the form of the earth, and conjectured that it was pear-shaped.

On 15 August, fearing a lack of supplies, and suffering severely from what his biographers call gout and from impaired eyesight, he left his new discoveries and steered for Haiti. On 19 August he sighted that island some distance west of where the present capital of the Republic of Santo Domingo now stands. During his absence his brother Bartholomew had abandoned Isabella and established his head-quarters at Santo Domingo so called after his father Domenico. During the absence of Columbus events on Haiti had been far from satisfactory. His brother Bartholomew, who was then known as the adelantado, had to contend with several Indian outbreaks, which he subdued partly by force, partly by wise temporizing. These outbreaks were, at least in part, due to a change in the class of settlers by whom the colony was reinforced. The results of the first settlement far from justified the buoyant hopes based on the exaggerated reports of the first voyage, and the pendulum of public opinion swung back to the opposite extreme. The clamour of opposition to Columbus in the colonies and the discouraging reports greatly increased in Spain the disappointment with the new territorial acquisitions. That the climate was not healthful seemed proved by the appearance of Columbus and his companions on his return from the second voyage. Hence no one was willing to go to the newly discovered country, and convicts, suspects, and doubtful characters in general who were glad to escape the regulations of justice were the only reinforcements that could be obtained for the colony on Hispaniola. As a result there were conflicts with the aborigines, sedition in the colony, and finally open rebellion against the authority of the adelantado and his brother Diego. Columbus and his brothers were Italians, and this fact told against them among the malcontents and lower officials, but that it influenced the monarchs and the court authorities is a gratuitous charge.

As long as they had not a common leader Bartholomew had little to fear from the malcontents, who separated from the rest of the colony, and formed a settlement apart. They abused the Indians, thus causing almost uninterrupted trouble. However, they soon found a leader in the person of one Roldan, to whom the admiral had entrusted a prominent office in the colony. There must have been some cause for complaint against the government of Bartholomew and Diego, else Roldan could not have so increased the number of his followers as to make himself formidable to the brothers, undermining their authority at their own head-quarters and even among the garrison of Santo Domingo. Bartholomew was forced to compromise on unfavourable terms. So, when the admiral arrived from Spain he found the Spanish settlers on Haiti divided into two camps, the stronger of which, headed by Roldan, was hostile to his authority. That Roldan was an utterly unprincipled man, but energetic and above all, shrewd and artful, appears from the following incident. Soon after the arrival of Columbus the three caravels he had sent from Gomera with stores and ammunition struck the Haitian coast where Roldan had established himself. The latter represented to the commanders of the vessels that he was there by Columbus’s authority and easily obtained from them military stores as well as reinforcements in men. On their arrival shortly afterward at Santo Domingo the caravels were sent back to Spain by Columbus. Alarmed at the condition of affairs and his own importance, he informed the monarchs of his critical situation and asked for immediate help. Then he entered into negotiations with Roldan. The latter not only held full control in the settlement which he commanded, but had the sympathy of most of the military garrisons that Columbus and his brothers relied upon as well as the majority of the colonists. How Columbus and his brother could have made themselves so unpopular is explained in various ways. There was certainly much unjustifiable ill will against them, but there was also legitimate cause for discontent, which was adroitly exploited by Roldan and his followers.

Seeing himself almost powerless against his opponents on the island, the admiral stooped to a compromise. Roldan finally imposed his own conditions. He was reinstated in his office and all offenders were pardoned; and a number of them returned to Santo Domingo. Columbus also freed many of the Indian tribes from tribute, but in order still further to appease the former mutineers, he instituted the system of repartimientos, by which not only grants of land were made to the whites, but the Indians holding these lands or living on them were made perpetual serfs to the new owners, and full jurisdiction over life and property of these Indians became vested in the white settlers. This measure had the most disastrous effect on the aborigines, and Columbus has been severely blamed for it, but he was then in such straits that he had to go to any extreme to pacify his opponents until assistance could reach him from Spain. By the middle of the year 1500 peace apparently reigned again in the colony, though largely at the expense of the prestige and authority of Columbus.

Meanwhile reports and accusations had reached the court of Spain from both parties in Haiti. It became constantly more evident that Columbus was no longer master of the situation in the Indies, and that some steps were necessary to save the situation. It might be said that the Court had merely to support Columbus whether right or wrong. But the West Indian colony had grown, and its settlers had their connections and supporters in Spain, who claimed some attention and prudent consideration. The clergy who were familiar with the circumstances through personal experience for the most part disapproved of the management of affairs by Columbus and his brothers. Queen Isabella’s irritation at the sending of Indian captives for sale as slaves had by this time been allayed by a reminder of the custom then in vogue of enslaving captive rebels or prisoners of war addicted to specially inhuman customs, as was the case with the Caribs. Anxious to be just, the monarchs decided upon sending to Haiti an officer to investigate and to punish all offenders. This visitador was invested with full power, and was to have the same authority as the monarchs themselves for the time being, superseding Columbus himself, though the latter was the Viceroy of the Indies. The visita was a mode of procedure employed by the Spanish monarchs for the adjustment of critical matters, chiefly in the colonies. The visitador was selected irrespective of rank or office, solely from the standpoint of fitness, and not infrequently his mission was kept secret from the viceroy or other high official whose conduct he was sent to investigate; there are indications that sometimes he had summary power over life and death. A visita was a much dreaded measure, and for very good reasons.

The investigation in the West Indies was not called a visita at the time, but such it was in fact. The visitador chosen was Francisco de Bobadilla, of whom both Las Casas and Oviedo (friends and admirers of Columbus) speak in favourable terms. His instructions were, as his office required, general and his faculties, of course, discretionary; there is no need of supposing secret orders inimical to Columbus to explain what afterwards happened. The admiral was directed, in a letter addressed to him and entrusted to Bobadilla, to turn over to the latter, at least temporarily, the forts and all public property on the island. No blame can be attached to the monarchs for this measure. After an experiment of five years the administrative capacity of Columbus had failed to prove satisfactory. Yet, the vice-regal power had been vested in him as an hereditary right. To continue adhering to that clause of the original contract was impracticable, since the colony refused to pay heed to Columbus and his orders. Hence the suspension of the viceregal authority of Columbus was indefinitely prolonged, so that the office was reduced to a mere title and finally fell into disuse. The curtailment of revenue resulting from it was comparatively small, as all the emoluments proceeding from his other titles and prerogatives were left untouched. The tale of his being reduced to indigence is a baseless fabrication.

A man suddenly clothed with unusual and discretionary faculties is liable to be led astray by unexpected circumstances and tempted to go to extremes. Bobadilla had a right to expect implicit obedience to royal orders on the part of all and, above all, from Columbus as the chief servant of the Crown. When on 24 August, 1500, Bobadilla landed at Santo Domingo and demanded of Diego Columbus compliance with the royal orders, the latter declined to obey until directed by the admiral who was then absent. Bobadilla, possibly predisposed against Columbus and his brothers by the reports of others and by the sight of the bodies of Spaniards dangling from gibbets in full view of the port, considered the refusal of Diego as an act of direct insubordination. The action of Diego was certainly unwise and gave colour to an assumption that Columbus and his brothers considered themselves masters of the country. This implied rebellion and furnished a pretext to Bobadilla for measures unjustifiably harsh. As visitador he had absolute authority to do as he thought best, especially against the rebels, of whom Columbus appeared in his eyes as the chief.

Within a few days after the landing of Bobadilla, Diego and Bartholomew Columbus were imprisoned and put in irons. The admiral himself, who returned with the greatest possible speed, shared their fate. The three brothers were separated and kept in close confinement, but they could hear from their cells the imprecations of the people against their rule. Bobadilla charged them with being rebellious subjects and seized their private property to pay their personal debts. He liberated prisoners, reduced or abolished imposts, in short did all he could to place the new order of things in favourable contrast to the previous management. No explanation was offered to Columbus for the harsh treatment to which he was subjected, for a visitador had only to render account to the king or according to his special orders. Early in October, 1500, the three brothers, still in fetters, were placed on board ship, and sent to Spain, arriving at Cadiz at the end of the month. Their treatment while aboard seems to have been considerate; Villejo, the commander, offered to remove the manacles from Columbus’s hands and relieve him from the chains, an offer, however, which Columbus refused to accept. It seems, nevertheless, that he did not remain manacled, else he could not have written the long and piteous letter to the nurse of Prince Juan, recounting his misfortunes on the vessel. He dispatched this letter to the court at Granada before the reports of Bobadilla were sent.

The news of the arrival of Columbus as a prisoner was received with unfeigned indignation by the monarchs, who saw that their agent Bobadilla had abused the trust placed in him. The people also saw the injustice, and everything was done to relieve Columbus from his humiliating condition and assure him of the royal favour, that is, everything except to reinstate him as Governor of the Indies. This fact is mainly responsible for the accusation of duplicity and treachery which is made against King Ferdinand. Critics overlook the fact that in addition to the reasons already mentioned no new colonists could be obtained from Spain, if Columbus were to continue in office, and that the expedient of sending convicts to Haiti had failed disastrously. Moreover, the removal of Columbus was practically implied in the instructions and powers given to Bobadilla, and the conduct of the admiral during Aguado’s mission left no room for doubt that he would submit to the second investigation. He would have done so, but Bobadilla, anxious to make a display and angered at the delay of Diego Columbus, exceeded the spirit of his instructions, expecting thereby to rise in royal as well as in popular favour.

In regard to the former he soon found out his mistake. His successor in the governorship of Haiti was soon appointed in the person of Nicolas de Ovando. Bobadilla was condemned to restore to Columbus the property he had sequestered, and was recalled. The largest fleet sent to the Indies up to that time sailed under Ovando on 13 February, 1502. It is not without significance that 2500 people, some of high rank, flocked to the vessels that were to transport the new governor to the Indies. This shows that with the change in the administration of the colony faith in its future was restored among the Spanish people. By this time the mental condition of Columbus had become greatly impaired. While at court for eighteen months vainly attempting to obtain the restoration to a position for which he was becoming more and more unfitted, he was planning new schemes. Convinced that his third voyage had brought him nearer to Asia, he proposed to the monarchs a project to recover the Holy Sepulchre by the western route, that would have led him across South America to the Pacific Ocean. He fancied that the large river he had discovered west of Trinidad flowed in a direction opposite to its real course, and thought that by following it he could reach the Red Sea and thence cross over to Jerusalem. So preoccupied was he with these ideas that he made arrangements for depositing part of his revenue with the bank of Genoa to be used in the reconquest of the Holy Land. This alone disposes of the allegations that Columbus was left without resources after his liberation from captivity. He was enabled to maintain a position at court corresponding to his exalted rank, and favours and privileges were bestowed on both of his sons. The project of testing the views of Columbus in regard to direct communication with Asia was seriously considered, and finally a fourth voyage of exploration at the expense of the Spanish Government was conceded to Columbus. That there were some misgivings in regard to his physical and mental condition is intimated by the fact that he was given as companions his brother Bartholomew, who had great influence with him, and his favourite son Fernando. Four vessels carrying, besides these three and a representative of the Crown to receive any treasure that might be found, about 150 men, set sail from San Lucar early in May, 1502. Columbus was enjoined not to stop at Haiti, a wise measure, for had the admiral landed there so soon after the arrival of Ovando, there would have been danger of new disturbances. Disobeying these instructions, Columbus attempted to enter the port of Santo Domingo, but was refused admission. He gave proof of his knowledge and experience as a mariner by warning Ovando of an approaching hurricane, but was not listened to. He himself sheltered his vessels at some distance from the harbour. The punishment for disregarding the friendly warning came swiftly; the large fleet which had brought Ovando over was, on sailing for Spain, overtaken by the tempest, and twenty ships were lost, with them Bobadillo, Roldan, and the gold destined for the Crown. The admiral’s share of the gold obtained on Haiti, four thousand pieces directly sent to him by his representative on the island, was not lost, and on being delivered in Spain, was not confiscated. Hence it is difficult to see how Columbus could have been in need during the last years of his life.

The vessels of Columbus having suffered comparatively little from the tempest, he left the coast of Haiti in July, 1502, and was carried by wind and current to the coast of Honduras. From 30 July, 1502, to the end of the following April he coasted Central America beyond Colon to Cape Tiburon on the South American Continent. On his frequent landings he found traces of gold, heard reports of more civilized tribes of natives farther inland, and persistent statements about another ocean lying west and south of the land he was coasting, the latter being represented to him as a narrow strip dividing two vast seas. The mental condition of Columbus, coupled with his physical disabilities, prevented him from interpreting these important indications otherwise than as confirmations of his vague theories and fatal visions. Instead of sending an exploring party across the isthmus to satisfy himself of the truth of these reports, he accepted this testimony to the existence of a sea beyond, which he firmly believed to be the Indian Ocean, basing his confidence on a dream in which he had seen a strait he supposed to be the Strait of Malacca. As his crews were exasperated by the hardships and deceptions, his ships worn-eaten, and he himself emaciated, he turned back towards Haiti with what he thought to be the tidings of a near approach to the Asiatic continent. It had been a disastrous voyage; violent storms continually harassed the little squadron, two ships had been lost, and the treasure obtained far from compensated for the toil and the suffering endured. This was all the more exasperating when it became evident that a much richer reward could be obtained by penetrating inland, to which, however, Columbus would not or perhaps could not consent.

On 23 June, 1503, Columbus and his men, crowded on two almost sinking caravels, finally landed on the inhospitable coast of Jamaica. After dismantling his useless craft, and using the material for temporary shelter, he sent a boat to Haiti to ask for assistance and to dispatch thence to Spain a vessel with a pitiful letter giving a fantastic account of his sufferings which in itself gave evidence of an over-excited and disordered mind.

Ovando to whom Columbus’s request for help was delivered at Jaragua (Haiti) cannot be acquitted of unjustifiable delay in sending assistance to the shipwrecked and forsaken admiral. There is no foundation for assuming that he acted under the orders or in accordance with the wishes of the sovereigns. Columbus had become useless, the colonists in Haiti would not tolerate his presence there. The only practical course was to take him back to Spain directly and remove him forever from the lands the discovery of which had made him immortal. In spite of his many sufferings, Columbus was not utterly helpless. His greatest trouble came from the mutinous spirit of his men who roamed about, plundering and maltreating the natives, who, in consequence, became hostile and refused to furnish supplies. An eclipse of the moon predicted by Columbus finally brought them to terms and thus prevented starvation. Ovando, though informed of the admiral’s critical condition, did nothing for his relief except to permit Columbus’s representative in Haiti to fit out a caravel with stores at the admiral’s expense and send it to Jamaica; but even this tardy relief did not reach Columbus until June, 1504. He also permitted Mendez, who had been the chief messenger of Columbus to Haiti, to take passage for Spain, where he was to inform the sovereigns of the admiral’s forlorn condition. There seems to be no excuse for the conduct of Ovando on this occasion. The relief expedition finally organized in Haiti, after a tedious and somewhat dangerous voyage, landed the admiral and his companions in Spain, 7 November, 1504.

A few weeks later Queen Isabella died, and grave difficulties beset the king. Columbus, now in very feeble health, remained at Seville until May, 1505, when he was at last able to attend court at Valladolid. His reception by the king was decorous, but without warmth. His importunities to be restored to his position as governor were put off with future promises of redress, but no immediate steps were taken. The story of the utter destitution in which the admiral is said to have died is one of the many legends with which his biography has been distorted. Columbus is said to have been buried at Valladolid. His son Diego is authority for the statement that his remains were buried in the Carthusian Convent of Las Cuevas, Seville, within three years after his death. According to the records of the convent, the remains were given up for transportation to Haiti in 1536, though other documents placed this event in 1537. It is conjectured, however, that the removal did not take place till 1541, when the Cathedral of Santo Domingo was completed, though there are no records of this entombment. When, in 1795, Haiti passed under French control, Spanish authorities removed the supposed remains of Columbus to Havana. On the occupation of Cuba by the United States they were once more removed to Seville (1898).

Columbus was unquestionably a man of genius. He was a bold, skilful navigator, better acquainted with the principles of cosmography and astronomy than the average skipper of his time, a man of original ideas, fertile in his plans, and persistent in carrying them into execution. The impression he made on those with whom he came in contact even in the days of his poverty, such as Fray Juan Perez, the treasurer Luis de Santangel, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and Queen Isabella herself, shows that he had great powers of persuasion and was possessed of personal magnetism. His success in overcoming the obstacles to his expeditions and surmounting the difficulties of his voyages exhibit him as a man of unusual resources and of unflinching determination.

Columbus was also of a deeply religious nature. Whatever influence scientific theories and the ambition for fame and wealth may have had over him, in advocating his enterprise he never failed to insist on the conversion of the pagan peoples that he would discover as one of the primary objects of his undertaking. Even when clouds had settled over his career, after his return as a prisoner from the lands he had discovered, he was ready to devote all his possessions and the remaining years of his life to set sail again for the purpose of rescuing Christ’s Sepulchro from the hands of the infidel.

OTHER MEMBERS OF THE COLUMBUS FAMILY

Other members of the Columbus family also acquired fame:

Diego, the first son of Christopher and heir to his titles and prerogatives, was born at Lisbon, 1476, and died at Montalvan, near Toledo, 23 February, 1526. He was made a page to Queen Isabella in 1492, and remained at court until 1508. Having obtained confirmation of the privileges originally conceded to his father (the title of viceroy of the newly discovered countries excepted) he went to Santo Domingo in 1509 as Admiral of the Indies and Governor of Hispaniola. The authority of Diego Velazquez as governor, however, had become too firmly established, and Diego was met by open and secret opposition, especially from the royal Audiencia. Visiting Spain in 1520 he was favourably received and new honours bestowed upon him. However, in 1523, he had to return again to Spain to answer charges against him. The remainder of his life was taken up by the suit of the heirs of Columbus against the royal treasury, a memorable legal contest only terminated in 1564. Diego seems to have been a man of no extraordinary attainments, but of considerable tenacity of character.

Ferdinand, better known as Fernando Colon, second son of Christopher, by Doña Beatriz Enriquez, a lady of a noble family of Cordova in Spain, was born at Cordova, 15 August, 1488; died at Seville, 12 July 1539. As he was naturally far more gifted than his half-brother Diego, he was a favourite with his father, whom he accompanied on the last voyage. As early as 1498 Queen Isabella had made him one of her pages and Columbus in his will (1505) left him an ample income, which was subsequently increased by royal grants. Fernando had decided literary tastes and wrote well in Spanish. While it is stated that he wrote a history of the West Indies, there are now extant only two works by him: “Descripción y cosmografía de España”, a detailed geographical itinerary begun in 1517, published at Madrid in the “Boletin de la Real Sociedad geográfica” (1906-07); and the life of the admiral, his father, written about 1534, the Spanish original of which has been lost. It was published in an Italian translation by Ulloa in 1571 as “Vita dell’ ammiraglio”, and re-translated into Spanish by Barcia. “Historiadores primitivos de Indias” (Madrid, 1749). As might be expected this biography is sometimes partial, though Fernando often sides with the Spanish monarchs against his father. Of the highest value is the report by Fray Roman Pane on the customs of the Haitian Indians which is incorporated into the text. (See ARAWAKS.) Fernando left to the cathedral chapter of Seville a library of 20,000 volumes, a part of which still exists and is known as the Biblioteca Columbina.

Bartholomew

Bartholomew, elder brother of Christopher, born possibly in 1445 at Genoa; died at Santo Domingo, May, 1515. Like Christopher he became a seafarer at an early age. After his attempts to interest the Kings of France and England in his brother’s projects, his life was bound up with that of his brother. It was during his time that bloodhounds were introduced into the West Indies. He was a man of great energy and some military talent, and during Christopher’s last voyage took the leadership at critical moments. After 1506 he probably went to Rome and in 1509 back to the West Indies with his nephew Diego.

Diego, younger brother of Christopher and his companion on the second voyage, born probably at Genoa; died at Santo Domingo after 1509. After his release from chains in Spain (1500) he became a priest and returned to the West Indies in 1509.

The tract of CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, De prima in mari Indico lustratione, was published with the Bellum Christianorum principum of ROBERT ABBOT OF SAINT-REMI (Basle, 1533).–Codice diplomatico-Colombo-Americano, ossia Raccolia di documenti spettanti a Cr. Col., etc. (Genoa, 1823); ANON., Cr. Col. aiutato dei minorite nella scoperta del nuovo mondo (Genoa, 1846); SANGUINETTI, Vita di Colombo (Genoa, 1846); BOSSI, Vita di Cr. Col. (Milan, 1818); SPOTORNO, Della origine e della patria di Cr. Col. (Geonoa, 1819); NAVARRETE, Coleccion de los viajes y descubrimientas. . .desde fines del siglo XV (Madrid, 1825), I, II; AVEZAC-MACAYA, Annee veritable de la naissance de Chr. Col. (Paris, 1873); ROSELLY DE LORGNES, Vie et voyages de Chr. Col. (Paris, 1804), from which was compiled by BARRY, Life of Chr. Col. (New York, 1869); COLUMBUS, FERDINAND, French tr. by MULLER, Hist. de la vie et des decouvertes de Chr. Col. (Paris, s.d.); MAJOR (tr.), Select Letters of Chr. Col. (London, 1847 and 1870); HARRISSE, Fernando Colon historiador de du padre (Seville, 1871); VIGNAUD, La maison d’Alba et les archives colombiennes (Paris, 1901); l’HAGON, La Patria dr Colon segun los documentos de las ordenes militares (Madrid, 1892); UZIELLO in Congresso geografico italiano; Atti for April, 1901, Tascanelli, Colombo e Vespucci (Milan, 1902); WINSOR, Christopher Columbus (Boston, 1891); ADAMS, Christopher Columbus, in Makers of America (New York, 1892); DURO, Colon y la Historia Postuma (Madrid, 1885); THACHER, Christopher Columbus: His Life, His Work, His Remains (3 vols., New York, 1903-1904); IRVING, Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (3 vols., New York, 1868); PETER MARTYR, Dr orbe nova (Alcala, 1530); LAS CASAS, Historia de las Indias in Documentas para la historia de Espana; OVIEDO, Hist. general (Madrid, 1850). The last three authors had personal intercourse with Columbus, and their works are the chief source of information concerning him. CLARKE, Christopher Columbus in The Am. Cath. Quart. Rev. (1892); SHEA, Columbus, This Century’s Estimate of His Life and Work (ibid.); U.S. CATH. HIST. SOC., The Cosmographier Introductio of Martin Waldseemuller (New York, 1908).

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IV Copyright © 1908 by Robert Appleton Company Online Edition Copyright © 1999 by Kevin Knight Nihil Obstat. Remy Lafort, Censor Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

Christopher Columbus

Italian explorer Christopher Columbus discovered the “New World” of the Americas on an expedition sponsored by King Ferdinand of Spain in 1492.

c. 1451-1506

Quick Facts

Where was columbus born, first voyages, columbus’ 1492 route and ships, where did columbus land in 1492, later voyages across the atlantic, how did columbus die, santa maria discovery claim, columbian exchange: a complex legacy, columbus day: an evolving holiday, who was christopher columbus.

Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer and navigator. In 1492, he sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain in the Santa Maria , with the Pinta and the Niña ships alongside, hoping to find a new route to Asia. Instead, he and his crew landed on an island in present-day Bahamas—claiming it for Spain and mistakenly “discovering” the Americas. Between 1493 and 1504, he made three more voyages to the Caribbean and South America, believing until his death that he had found a shorter route to Asia. Columbus has been credited—and blamed—for opening up the Americas to European colonization.

FULL NAME: Cristoforo Colombo BORN: c. 1451 DIED: May 20, 1506 BIRTHPLACE: Genoa, Italy SPOUSE: Filipa Perestrelo (c. 1479-1484) CHILDREN: Diego and Fernando

Christopher Columbus, whose real name was Cristoforo Colombo, was born in 1451 in the Republic of Genoa, part of what is now Italy. He is believed to have been the son of Dominico Colombo and Susanna Fontanarossa and had four siblings: brothers Bartholomew, Giovanni, and Giacomo, and a sister named Bianchinetta. He was an apprentice in his father’s wool weaving business and studied sailing and mapmaking.

In his 20s, Columbus moved to Lisbon, Portugal, and later resettled in Spain, which remained his home base for the duration of his life.

Columbus first went to sea as a teenager, participating in several trading voyages in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas. One such voyage, to the island of Khios, in modern-day Greece, brought him the closest he would ever come to Asia.

His first voyage into the Atlantic Ocean in 1476 nearly cost him his life, as the commercial fleet he was sailing with was attacked by French privateers off the coast of Portugal. His ship was burned, and Columbus had to swim to the Portuguese shore.

He made his way to Lisbon, where he eventually settled and married Filipa Perestrelo. The couple had one son, Diego, around 1480. His wife died when Diego was a young boy, and Columbus moved to Spain. He had a second son, Fernando, who was born out of wedlock in 1488 with Beatriz Enriquez de Arana.

After participating in several other expeditions to Africa, Columbus learned about the Atlantic currents that flow east and west from the Canary Islands.

The Asian islands near China and India were fabled for their spices and gold, making them an attractive destination for Europeans—but Muslim domination of the trade routes through the Middle East made travel eastward difficult.

Columbus devised a route to sail west across the Atlantic to reach Asia, believing it would be quicker and safer. He estimated the earth to be a sphere and the distance between the Canary Islands and Japan to be about 2,300 miles.

Many of Columbus’ contemporary nautical experts disagreed. They adhered to the (now known to be accurate) second-century BCE estimate of the Earth’s circumference at 25,000 miles, which made the actual distance between the Canary Islands and Japan about 12,200 statute miles. Despite their disagreement with Columbus on matters of distance, they concurred that a westward voyage from Europe would be an uninterrupted water route.

Columbus proposed a three-ship voyage of discovery across the Atlantic first to the Portuguese king, then to Genoa, and finally to Venice. He was rejected each time. In 1486, he went to the Spanish monarchy of Queen Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon. Their focus was on a war with the Muslims, and their nautical experts were skeptical, so they initially rejected Columbus.

The idea, however, must have intrigued the monarchs, because they kept Columbus on a retainer. Columbus continued to lobby the royal court, and soon, the Spanish army captured the last Muslim stronghold in Granada in January 1492. Shortly thereafter, the monarchs agreed to finance his expedition.

In late August 1492, Columbus left Spain from the port of Palos de la Frontera. He was sailing with three ships: Columbus in the larger Santa Maria (a type of ship known as a carrack), with the Pinta and the Niña (both Portuguese-style caravels) alongside.

On October 12, 1492, after 36 days of sailing westward across the Atlantic, Columbus and several crewmen set foot on an island in present-day Bahamas, claiming it for Spain.

There, his crew encountered a timid but friendly group of natives who were open to trade with the sailors. They exchanged glass beads, cotton balls, parrots, and spears. The Europeans also noticed bits of gold the natives wore for adornment.

Columbus and his men continued their journey, visiting the islands of Cuba (which he thought was mainland China) and Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which Columbus thought might be Japan) and meeting with the leaders of the native population.

During this time, the Santa Maria was wrecked on a reef off the coast of Hispaniola. With the help of some islanders, Columbus’ men salvaged what they could and built the settlement Villa de la Navidad (“Christmas Town”) with lumber from the ship.

Thirty-nine men stayed behind to occupy the settlement. Convinced his exploration had reached Asia, he set sail for home with the two remaining ships. Returning to Spain in 1493, Columbus gave a glowing but somewhat exaggerated report and was warmly received by the royal court.

In 1493, Columbus took to the seas on his second expedition and explored more islands in the Caribbean Ocean. Upon arrival at Hispaniola, Columbus and his crew discovered the Navidad settlement had been destroyed with all the sailors massacred.

Spurning the wishes of the local queen, Columbus established a forced labor policy upon the native population to rebuild the settlement and explore for gold, believing it would be profitable. His efforts produced small amounts of gold and great hatred among the native population.

Before returning to Spain, Columbus left his brothers Bartholomew and Giacomo to govern the settlement on Hispaniola and sailed briefly around the larger Caribbean islands, further convincing himself he had discovered the outer islands of China.

It wasn’t until his third voyage that Columbus actually reached the South American mainland, exploring the Orinoco River in present-day Venezuela. By this time, conditions at the Hispaniola settlement had deteriorated to the point of near-mutiny, with settlers claiming they had been misled by Columbus’ claims of riches and complaining about the poor management of his brothers.

The Spanish Crown sent a royal official who arrested Columbus and stripped him of his authority. He returned to Spain in chains to face the royal court. The charges were later dropped, but Columbus lost his titles as governor of the Indies and, for a time, much of the riches made during his voyages.

After convincing King Ferdinand that one more voyage would bring the abundant riches promised, Columbus went on his fourth and final voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 1502. This time he traveled along the eastern coast of Central America in an unsuccessful search for a route to the Indian Ocean.

A storm wrecked one of his ships, stranding the captain and his sailors on the island of Cuba. During this time, local islanders, tired of the Spaniards’ poor treatment and obsession with gold, refused to give them food.

In a spark of inspiration, Columbus consulted an almanac and devised a plan to “punish” the islanders by taking away the moon. On February 29, 1504, a lunar eclipse alarmed the natives enough to re-establish trade with the Spaniards. A rescue party finally arrived, sent by the royal governor of Hispaniola in July, and Columbus and his men were taken back to Spain in November 1504.

In the two remaining years of his life, Columbus struggled to recover his reputation. Although he did regain some of his riches in May 1505, his titles were never returned.

Columbus probably died of severe arthritis following an infection on May 20, 1506, in Valladolid, Spain. At the time of his death, he still believed he had discovered a shorter route to Asia.

There are questions about the location of his burial site. According to the BBC , Columbus’ remains moved at least three or four times over the course of 400 years—including from Valladolid to Seville, Spain, in 1509; then to Santo Domingo, in what is now the Dominican Republic, in 1537; then to Havana, Cuba, in 1795; and back to Seville in 1898. As a result, Seville and Santo Domingo have both laid claim to being Columbus’ true burial site. It is also possible his bones were mixed up with another person’s amid all of their travels.

In May 2014, Columbus made headlines as news broke that a team of archaeologists might have found the Santa Maria off the north coast of Haiti. Barry Clifford, the leader of this expedition, told the Independent newspaper that “all geographical, underwater topography and archaeological evidence strongly suggests this wreck is Columbus’ famous flagship the Santa Maria.”

After a thorough investigation by the U.N. agency UNESCO, it was determined the wreck dates from a later period and was located too far from shore to be the famed ship.

Columbus has been credited for opening up the Americas to European colonization—as well as blamed for the destruction of the native peoples of the islands he explored. Ultimately, he failed to find that what he set out for: a new route to Asia and the riches it promised.

In what is known as the Columbian Exchange, Columbus’ expeditions set in motion the widespread transfer of people, plants, animals, diseases, and cultures that greatly affected nearly every society on the planet.

The horse from Europe allowed Native American tribes in the Great Plains of North America to shift from a nomadic to a hunting lifestyle. Wheat from the Old World fast became a main food source for people in the Americas. Coffee from Africa and sugar cane from Asia became major cash crops for Latin American countries. And foods from the Americas, such as potatoes, tomatoes and corn, became staples for Europeans and helped increase their populations.

The Columbian Exchange also brought new diseases to both hemispheres, though the effects were greatest in the Americas. Smallpox from the Old World killed millions, decimating the Native American populations to mere fractions of their original numbers. This more than any other factor allowed for European domination of the Americas.

The overwhelming benefits of the Columbian Exchange went to the Europeans initially and eventually to the rest of the world. The Americas were forever altered, and the once vibrant cultures of the Indigenous civilizations were changed and lost, denying the world any complete understanding of their existence.

As more Italians began to immigrate to the United States and settle in major cities during the 19 th century, they were subject to religious and ethnic discrimination. This included a mass lynching of 11 Sicilian immigrants in 1891 in New Orleans.

Just one year after this horrific event, President Benjamin Harrison called for the first national observance of Columbus Day on October 12, 1892, to mark the 400 th anniversary of his arrival in the Americas. Italian-Americans saw this honorary act for Columbus as a way of gaining acceptance.

Colorado became the first state to officially observe Columbus Day in 1906 and, within five years, 14 other states followed. Thanks to a joint resolution of Congress, the day officially became a federal holiday in 1934 during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt . In 1970, Congress declared the holiday would fall on the second Monday in October each year.

But as Columbus’ legacy—specifically, his exploration’s impacts on Indigenous civilizations—began to draw more criticism, more people chose not to take part. As of 2023, approximately 29 states no longer celebrate Columbus Day , and around 195 cities have renamed it or replaced with the alternative Indigenous Peoples Day. The latter isn’t an official holiday, but the federal government recognized its observance in 2022 and 2023. President Joe Biden called it “a day in honor of our diverse history and the Indigenous peoples who contribute to shaping this nation.”

One of the most notable cities to move away from celebrating Columbus Day in recent years is the state capital of Columbus, Ohio, which is named after the explorer. In 2018, Mayor Andrew Ginther announced the city would remain open on Columbus Day and instead celebrate a holiday on Veterans Day. In July 2020, the city also removed a 20-plus-foot metal statue of Columbus from the front of City Hall.

• I went to sea from the most tender age and have continued in a sea life to this day. Whoever gives himself up to this art wants to know the secrets of Nature here below. It is more than forty years that I have been thus engaged. Wherever any one has sailed, there I have sailed.
• Speaking of myself, little profit had I won from twenty years of service, during which I have served with so great labors and perils, for today I have no roof over my head in Castile; if I wish to sleep or eat, I have no place to which to go, save an inn or tavern, and most often, I lack the wherewithal to pay the score.
• They say that there is in that land an infinite amount of gold; and that the people wear corals on their heads and very large bracelets of coral on their feet and arms; and that with coral they adorn and inlay chairs and chests and tables.
• This island and all the others are very fertile to a limitless degree, and this island is extremely so. In it there are many harbors on the coast of the sea, beyond comparison with others that I know in Christendom, and many rivers, good and large, which is marvelous.
• Our Almighty God has shown me the highest favor, which, since David, he has not shown to anybody.
• Already the road is opened to gold and pearls, and it may surely be hoped that precious stones, spices, and a thousand other things, will also be found.
• I have now seen so much irregularity, that I have come to another conclusion respecting the earth, namely, that it is not round as they describe, but of the form of a pear.
• In all the countries visited by your Highnesses’ ships, I have caused a high cross to be fixed upon every headland and have proclaimed, to every nation that I have discovered, the lofty estate of your Highnesses and of your court in Spain.
• I ought to be judged as a captain sent from Spain to the Indies, to conquer a nation numerous and warlike, with customs and religions altogether different to ours.

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us !

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us

Tyler Piccotti first joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor in February 2023, and before that worked almost eight years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor. He is a graduate of Syracuse University. When he's not writing and researching his next story, you can find him at the nearest amusement park, catching the latest movie, or cheering on his favorite sports teams.

Watch Next .css-avapvh:after{background-color:#525252;color:#fff;margin-left:1.8rem;margin-top:1.25rem;width:1.5rem;height:0.063rem;content:'';display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;}

Possible Evidence of Amelia Earhart’s Plane

Charles Lindbergh

Was Christopher Columbus a Hero or Villain?

History & Culture

27 Essential Memoirs That Will Leave You Inspired

Who Designed the American Flag?

Hunter Biden

Karl Lagerfeld

Plane Flown by ‘Ace of Aces’ Pilot Finally Found

Barron Trump

Alexander McQueen

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Think You Know The Real Christopher Columbus?

Columbus Day is a national holiday, celebrated with parades and songs. While most Americans know that Columbus sailed the ocean blue, many of the facts surrounding the voyage remain misunderstood. Guest host Tony Cox speaks with historian William Fowler to set the record straight on some of the popular myths surrounding Christopher Columbus and his voyage.

Copyright © 2011 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Christopher Columbus

He's famous for 'discovering the new world', but did Columbus actually set foot in North America?

Explorer Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) is known for his 1492 ‘discovery’ of the 'new world' of the Americas on board his ship Santa Maria .

In actual fact, Columbus did not discover North America. He was the first European to sight the Bahamas archipelago and then the island later named Hispaniola, now split into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. On his subsequent voyages he went farther south, to Central and South America. He never got close to what is now called the United States.

Where was Christopher Columbus born?

Columbus was born in the Italian seaport of Genoa in 1451, to a family of wool weavers. He went to sea from an early age, and was an experienced sailor by his twenties.

In 1476 Columbus moved to Lisbon, Portugal, and for many years attempted to gain support for a journey he was planning to find new trade routes to the Far East. Eventually Ferdinand and Isabella, the King and Queen of Spain, agreed to finance him.

What did Columbus aim to do?

In the 15th and 16th centuries, Europeans wanted to find sea routes to the Far East. Columbus wanted to find a new route to India, China, Japan and the Spice Islands. If he could reach these lands, he would be able to bring back rich cargoes of silks and spices. Columbus knew that the world was round and realised that by sailing west – instead of east around the coast of Africa, as other explorers at the time were doing – he would still reach his destination.

What ships did he use?

In 1492 Columbus set sail from Palos in Spain with three ships. Two, the Nina and the Pinta, were caravels – small ships with triangular sails. The third, the Santa Maria , was a nao – a larger square-rigged ship. The ships were small, between 15 and 36 metres long. Between them they carried about 90 men.

What did he discover?

After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean for 10 weeks, land was sighted by a sailor called Rodrigo Bernajo (although Columbus himself took the credit for this). He landed on a small island in the Bahamas, which he named San Salvador. He claimed the island for the King and Queen of Spain, although it was already populated.

Columbus called all the people he met in the islands ‘Indians’, because he was sure that he had reached the Indies. This initial encounter opened up the 'New World' to European colonisation, which would come to have a devastating impact on indigenous populations.

What was the return journey like?

On Christmas Day 1492, the Santa Maria hit a rock and was wrecked. Columbus transferred to the Nina and left behind the 39 crewmembers of the Santa Maria on the island of Hispaniola. He wanted them to start a new settlement. Columbus reached Spain in March 1493, and claimed his reward in riches. He was also given new titles. He was made Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Governor of the Indies.

What other journeys did Columbus make?

Columbus made three more journeys across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. He was sure that he had found Cipangu (Japan), but it was actually Cuba. He visited Trinidad and the South American mainland before returning to the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, where the ‘Indian’ inhabitants had staged a revolt against the Europeans.

Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities had to send a new governor to take over. Columbus was arrested, returned to Spain and stripped of his titles. He did make one last voyage to the Americas, however, this time to Panama – just miles from the Pacific Ocean.

What is Columbus’s legacy?

Columbus died in 1506, still believing that he had found a new route to the East Indies. Today his historic legacy as a daring explorer who discovered the New World has been challenged. His voyages launched centuries of European exploration and colonisation of the American continents. His encounters also triggered centuries of exploitation of Indigenous Peoples.

Shop nautical gifts

Browse our best selling books, or pick up nautical inspired homewares

The Second Voyage of Christopher Columbus

Second Voyage Adds Colonization and Trading Posts to Exploration Goals

Preparations for the Second Voyage

Dominica, guadalupe and the antilles, hispaniola and the fate of la navidad, cuba and jamaica, columbus as governor, the start of the enslaved indigenous peoples trade, people of note in columbus’ second voyage, historical importance of the second voyage.

• Ph.D., Spanish, Ohio State University
• M.A., Spanish, University of Montana
• B.A., Spanish, Penn State University

Christopher Columbus returned from his first voyage in March 1493, having discovered the New World—although he didn’t know it. He still believed that he had found some uncharted islands near Japan or China and that further exploration was needed. His first voyage had been a bit of a fiasco, as he had lost one of the three ships entrusted to him and he did not bring back much in the way of gold or other valuable items. He did, however, bring back a group of Indigenous people he had enslaved on the island of Hispaniola, and he was able to convince the Spanish crown to finance the second voyage of discovery and colonization.

The second voyage was to be a large-scale colonization and exploration project. Columbus was given 17 ships and over 1,000 men. Included on this voyage, for the first time, were European domesticated animals such as pigs, horses, and cattle. Columbus’ orders were to expand the settlement on Hispaniola, convert the population of Indigenous people to Christianity, establish a trading post, and continue his explorations in search of China or Japan. The fleet set sail on October 13, 1493, and made excellent time, first sighting land on November 3.

The island first sighted was named Dominica by Columbus, a name it retains to this day. Columbus and some of his men visited the island, but it was inhabited by fierce Caribs and they did not stay very long. Moving on, they discovered and explored a number of small islands, including Guadalupe, Montserrat, Redondo, Antigua, and several others in the Leeward Islands and Lesser Antilles chains. He also visited Puerto Rico before making his way back to Hispaniola.

Columbus had wrecked one of his three ships the year of his first voyage. He had been forced to leave 39 of his men behind on Hispaniola, in a small settlement named La Navidad . Upon returning to the island, Columbus discovered that the men he left had raped Indigenous women and angered the population. Indigenous people had then attacked the settlement, slaughtering the Europeans to the last man. Columbus, consulting his Indigenous chieftain ally Guacanagarí, laid the blame on Caonabo, a rival chief. Columbus and his men attacked, routing Caonabo and capturing and enslaving many of the people.

Columbus founded the town of Isabella on the northern coast of Hispaniola, and spent the next five months or so getting the settlement established and exploring the island. Building a town in a steamy land with inadequate provisions is hard work, and many of the men became sick and died. It reached the point where a group of settlers, led by Bernal de Pisa, attempted to capture and make off with several ships and go back to Spain: Columbus learned of the revolt and punished the plotters. The settlement of Isabella remained but never thrived. It was abandoned in 1496 in favor of a new site, now Santo Domingo .

Columbus left the settlement of Isabella in the hands of his brother Diego in April, setting out to explore the region further. He reached Cuba (which he had discovered on his first voyage) on April 30 and explored it for several days before moving on to Jamaica on May 5. He spent the next few weeks exploring the treacherous shoals around Cuba and searching in vain for the mainland. Discouraged, he returned to Isabella on August 20, 1494.

Columbus had been appointed governor and Viceroy of the new lands by the Spanish crown, and for the next year and a half, he attempted to do his job. Unfortunately, Columbus was a good ship’s captain but a lousy administrator, and those colonists that still survived grew to hate him. The gold they had been promised never materialized and Columbus kept most of what little wealth was found for himself. Supplies began running out, and in March of 1496 Columbus returned to Spain to ask for more resources to keep the struggling colony alive.

Columbus brought back many enslaved Indigenous people with him. Columbus, who had once again promised gold and trade routes, did not want to return to Spain empty-handed. Queen Isabella , appalled, decreed that the New World Indigenous people were subjects of the Spanish crown and therefore could not be enslaved. However, the practice of enslaving Indigenous populations continued.

• Ramón Pané was a Catalan priest who lived among the Taíno people for about four years and produced a short but very important ethnographic history of their culture.
• Francisco de Las Casas was an adventurer whose son Bartolomé was destined to become very important in the fight for the rights of Indigenous people.
• Diego Velázquez was a conquistador who later became governor of Cuba.
• Juan de la Cosa was an explorer and cartographer who produced several important early maps of the Americas.
• Juan Ponce de León would become governor of Puerto Rico but was most famous for his journey to Florida in search of the Fountain of Youth .

Columbus’ second voyage marked the start of colonialism in the New World, the social importance of which cannot be overstated. By establishing a permanent foothold, Spain took the first steps toward its mighty empire of the centuries that followed, an empire that was built with New World gold and silver.

When Columbus brought back enslaved Indigenous peoples to Spain, he also caused the question of whether to practice enslavement in the New World to be aired openly, and Queen Isabella decided that her new subjects could not be enslaved. But although Isabella perhaps prevented a few instances of enslavement, the conquest and colonization of the New World was devastating and deadly for Indigenous peoples: their population dropped by approximately 80% between 1492 and the mid-17th century. The drop was caused mainly by the arrival of Old World diseases, but others died as a result of violent conflict or enslavement.

Many of those who sailed with Columbus on his second voyage went on to play very important roles in the trajectory of history in the New World. These first colonists had a significant amount of influence and power over the span of the next few decades.

• Herring, Hubert. A History of Latin America From the Beginnings to the Present . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962.
• Thomas, Hugh. "Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to Magellan." Hardcover, 1st edition, Random House, June 1, 2004.
• What Was the Age of Exploration?
• The Third Voyage of Christopher Columbus
• Biography of Christopher Columbus
• 10 Facts About Christopher Columbus
• Biography of Christopher Columbus, Italian Explorer
• La Navidad: First European Settlement in the Americas
• The First New World Voyage of Christopher Columbus (1492)
• The Truth About Christopher Columbus
• Biography of Juan Ponce de León, Conquistador
• Biography of Bartolomé de Las Casas, Spanish Colonist
• The Fourth Voyage of Christopher Columbus
• Biography of Diego Velazquez de Cuellar, Conquistador
• Where Are the Remains of Christopher Columbus?
• The Florida Expeditions of Ponce de Leon
• The Controversy Over Columbus Day Celebrations

Columbus’ Confusion About the New World

The European discovery of America opened possibilities for those with eyes to see. But Columbus was not one of them

Edmund S. Morgan

In the year 1513, a group of men led by Vasco Núñez de Balboa marched across the Isthmus of Panama and discovered the Pacific Ocean. They had been looking for it—they knew it existed—and, familiar as they were with oceans, they had no difficulty in recognizing it when they saw it. On their way, however, they saw a good many things they had not been looking for and were not familiar with. When they returned to Spain to tell what they had seen, it was not a simple matter to find words for everything.

For example, they had killed a large and ferocious wild animal. They called it a tiger, although there were no tigers in Spain and none of the men had ever seen one before. Listening to their story was Peter Martyr, member of the King's Council of the Indies and possessor of an insatiable curiosity about the new land that Spain was uncovering in the west. How, the learned man asked them, did they know that the ferocious animal was a tiger? They answered "that they knewe it by the spottes, fiercenesse, agilitie, and such other markes and tokens whereby auncient writers have described the Tyger." It was a good answer. Men, confronted with things they do not recognize, turn to the writings of those who have had a wider experience. And in 1513 it was still assumed that the ancient writers had had a wider experience than those who came after them.

Columbus himself had made that assumption. His discoveries posed for him, as for others, a problem of identification. It seemed to be a question not so much of giving names to new lands as of finding the proper old names, and the same was true of the things that the new lands contained. Cruising through the Caribbean, enchanted by the beauty and variety of what he saw, Columbus assumed that the strange plants and trees were strange only because he was insufficiently versed in the writings of men who did know them. "I am the saddest man in the world," he wrote, "because I do not recognize them."

We need not deride Columbus' reluctance to give up the world that he knew from books. Only idiots escape entirely from the world that the past bequeaths. The discovery of America opened a new world, full of new things and new possibilities for those with eyes to see them. But the New World did not erase the Old. Rather, the Old World determined what men saw in the New and what they did with it. What America became after 1492 depended both on what men found there and on what they expected to find, both on what America actually was and on what old writers and old experience led men to think it was, or ought to be or could be made to be.

During the decade before 1492, as Columbus nursed a growing urge to sail west to the Indies—as the lands of China, Japan and India were then known in Europe—he was studying the old writers to find out what the world and its people were like. He read the Ymago Mundi of Pierre d'Ailly, a French cardinal who wrote in the early 15th century, the travels of Marco Polo and of Sir John Mandeville, Pliny's Natural History and the Historia Rerum Ubique Gestarum of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II). Columbus was not a scholarly man. Yet he studied these books, made hundreds of marginal notations in them and came out with ideas about the world that were characteristically simple and strong and sometimes wrong, the kind of ideas that the self-educated person gains from independent reading and clings to in defiance of what anyone else tries to tell him.

The strongest one was a wrong one—namely, that the distance between Europe and the eastern shore of Asia was short, indeed, that Spain was closer to China westward than eastward. Columbus never abandoned this conviction. And before he set out to prove it by sailing west from Spain, he studied his books to find out all he could about the lands that he would be visiting. From Marco Polo he learned that the Indies were rich in gold, silver, pearls, jewels and spices. The Great Khan, whose empire stretched from the Arctic to the Indian Ocean, had displayed to Polo a wealth and majesty that dwarfed the splendors of the courts of Europe.

Polo also had things to say about the ordinary people of the Far East. Those in the province of Mangi, where they grew ginger, were averse to war and so had fallen an easy prey to the khan. On Nangama, an island off the coast, described as having "great plentie of spices," the people were far from averse to war: they were anthropophagi—man-eaters—who devoured their captives. There were, in fact, man-eating people in several of the offshore islands, and in many islands both men and women dressed themselves with only a small scrap of cloth over their genitals. On the island of Discorsia, in spite of the fact that they made fine cotton cloth, the people went entirely naked. In one place there were two islands where men and women were segregated, the women on one island, the men on the other.

Marco Polo occasionally slipped into fables like this last one, but most of what he had to say about the Indies was the result of actual observation. Sir John Mandeville's travels, on the other hand, were a hoax—there was no such man—and the places he claimed to have visited in the 1300s were fantastically filled with one-eyed men and one-footed men, dog-faced men and men with two faces or no faces. But the author of the hoax did draw on the reports of enough genuine travelers to make some of his stories plausible, and he also drew on a legend as old as human dreams, the legend of a golden age when men were good. He told of an island where the people lived without malice or guile, without covetousness or lechery or gluttony, wishing for none of the riches of this world. They were not Christians, but they lived by the golden rule. A man who planned to see the Indies for himself could hardly fail to be stirred by the thought of finding such a people.

Columbus surely expected to bring back some of the gold that was supposed to be so plentiful. The spice trade was one of the most lucrative in Europe, and he expected to bring back spices. But what did he propose to do about the people in possession of these treasures?

When he set out, he carried with him a commission from the king and queen of Spain, empowering him "to discover and acquire certain islands and mainland in the ocean sea" and to be "Admiral and Viceroy and Governor therein." If the king and Columbus expected to assume dominion over any of the Indies or other lands en route, they must have had some ideas, not only about the Indies but also about themselves, to warrant the expectation. What had they to offer that would make their dominion welcome? Or if they proposed to impose their rule by force, how could they justify such a step, let alone carry it out? The answer is that they had two things: they had Christianity and they had civilization.

Christianity has meant many things to many men, and its role in the European conquest and occupation of America was varied. But in 1492 to Columbus there was probably nothing very complicated about it. He would have reduced it to a matter of corrupt human beings, destined for eternal damnation, redeemed by a merciful savior. Christ saved those who believed in him, and it was the duty of Christians to spread his gospel and thus rescue the heathens from the fate that would otherwise await them.

Although Christianity was in itself a sufficient justification for dominion, Columbus would also carry civilization to the Indies; and this, too, was a gift that he and his contemporaries considered adequate recompense for anything they might take. When people talked about civilization—or civility, as they usually called it—they seldom specified precisely what they meant. Civility was closely associated with Christianity, but the two were not identical. Whereas Christianity was always accompanied by civility, the Greeks and Romans had had civility without Christianity. One way to define civility was by its opposite, barbarism. Originally the word "barbarian" had simply meant "foreigner"—to a Greek someone who was not Greek, to a Roman someone who was not Roman. By the 15th or 16th century, it meant someone not only foreign but with manners and customs of which civil persons disapproved. North Africa became known as Barbary, a 16th-century geographer explained, "because the people be barbarous, not onely in language, but in manners and customs." Parts of the Indies, from Marco Polo's description, had to be civil, but other parts were obviously barbarous: for example, the lands where people went naked. Whatever civility meant, it meant clothes.

But there was a little more to it than that, and there still is. Civil people distinguished themselves by the pains they took to order their lives. They organized their society to produce the elaborate food, clothing, buildings and other equipment characteristic of their manner of living. They had strong governments to protect property, to protect good persons from evil ones, to protect the manners and customs that differentiated civil people from barbarians. The superior clothing, housing, food and protection that attached to civilization made it seem to the European a gift worth giving to the ill-clothed, ill-housed and ungoverned barbarians of the world.

Slavery was an ancient instrument of civilization, and in the 15th century it had been revived as a way to deal with barbarians who refused to accept Christianity and the rule of civilized government. Through slavery they could be made to abandon their bad habits, put on clothes and reward their instructors with a lifetime of work. Throughout the 15th century, as the Portuguese explored the coast of Africa, large numbers of well-clothed sea captains brought civilization to naked savages by carrying them off to the slave markets of Seville and Lisbon.

Since Columbus had lived in Lisbon and sailed in Portuguese vessels to the Gold Coast of Africa, he was not unfamiliar with barbarians. He had seen for himself that the Torrid Zone could support human life, and he had observed how pleased barbarians were with trinkets on which civilized Europeans set small value, such as the little bells that falconers placed on hawks. Before setting off on his voyage, he laid in a store of hawk's bells. If the barbarous people he expected to find in the Indies should think civilization and Christianity an insufficient reward for submission to Spain, perhaps hawk's bells would help.

Columbus sailed from Palos de la Frontera on Friday, August 3, 1492, reached the Canary Islands six days later and stayed there for a month to finish outfitting his ships. He left on September 6, and five weeks later, in about the place he expected, he found the Indies. What else could it be but the Indies? There on the shore were the naked people. With hawk's bells and beads he made their acquaintance and found some of them wearing gold nose plugs. It all added up. He had found the Indies. And not only that. He had found a land over which he would have no difficulty in establishing Spanish dominion, for the people showed him an immediate veneration. He had been there only two days, coasting along the shores of the islands, when he was able to hear the natives crying in loud voices, "Come and see the men who have come from heaven; bring them food and drink." If Columbus thought he was able to translate the language in two days' time, it is not surprising that what he heard in it was what he wanted to hear or that what he saw was what he wanted to see—namely, the Indies, filled with people eager to submit to their new admiral and viceroy.

Columbus made four voyages to America, during which he explored an astonishingly large area of the Caribbean and a part of the northern coast of South America. At every island the first thing he inquired about was gold, taking heart from every trace of it he found. And at Haiti he found enough to convince him that this was Ophir, the country to which Solomon and Jehosophat had sent for gold and silver. Since its lush vegetation reminded him of Castile, he renamed it Española, the Spanish island, which was later Latinized as Hispaniola.

Española appealed to Columbus from his first glimpse of it. From aboard ship it was possible to make out rich fields waving with grass. There were good harbors, lovely sand beaches and fruit-laden trees. The people were shy and fled whenever the caravels approached the shore, but Columbus gave orders "that they should take some, treat them well and make them lose their fear, that some gain might be made, since, considering the beauty of the land, it could not be but that there was gain to be got." And indeed there was. Although the amount of gold worn by the natives was even less than the amount of clothing, it gradually became apparent that there was gold to be had. One man possessed some that had been pounded into gold leaf. Another appeared with a gold belt. Some produced nuggets for the admiral. Española accordingly became the first European colony in America. Although Columbus had formally taken possession of every island he found, the act was mere ritual until he reached Española. Here he began the European occupation of the New World, and here his European ideas and attitudes began their transformation of land and people.

The Arawak Indians of Española were the handsomest people that Columbus had encountered in the New World and so attractive in character that he found it hard to praise them enough. "They are the best people in the world," he said, "and beyond all the mildest." They cultivated a bit of cassava for bread and made a bit of cottonlike cloth from the fibers of the gossampine tree. But they spent most of the day like children idling away their time from morning to night, seemingly without a care in the world. Once they saw that Columbus meant them no harm, they outdid one another in bringing him anything he wanted. It was impossible to believe, he reported, "that anyone has seen a people with such kind hearts and so ready to give the Christians all that they possess, and when the Christians arrive, they run at once to bring them everything."

To Columbus the Arawaks seemed like relics of the golden age. On the basis of what he told Peter Martyr, who recorded his voyages, Martyr wrote, "they seeme to live in that golden worlde of the which olde writers speake so much, wherein menne lived simply and innocently without enforcement of lawes, without quarreling, judges and libelles, content onely to satisfie nature, without further vexation for knowledge of things to come."

As the idyllic Arawaks conformed to one ancient picture, their enemies the Caribs conformed to another that Columbus had read of, the anthropophagi. According to the Arawaks, the Caribs, or Cannibals, were man-eaters, and as such their name eventually entered the English language. (This was at best a misrepresentation, which Columbus would soon exploit.) The Caribs lived on islands of their own and met every European approach with poisoned arrows, which men and women together fired in showers. They were not only fierce but, by comparison with the Arawaks, also seemed more energetic, more industrious and, it might even be said, sadly enough, more civil. After Columbus succeeded in entering one of their settlements on his second voyage, a member of the expedition reported, "This people seemed to us to be more civil than those who were in the other islands we have visited, although they all have dwellings of straw, but these have them better made and better provided with supplies, and in them were more signs of industry."

Columbus had no doubts about how to proceed, either with the lovable but lazy Arawaks or with the hateful but industrious Caribs. He had come to take possession and to establish dominion. In almost the same breath, he described the Arawaks' gentleness and innocence and then went on to assure the king and queen of Spain, "They have no arms and are all naked and without any knowledge of war, and very cowardly, so that a thousand of them would not face three. And they are also fitted to be ruled and to be set to work, to cultivate the land and to do all else that may be necessary, and you may build towns and teach them to go clothed and adopt our customs."

So much for the golden age. Columbus had not yet prescribed the method by which the Arawaks would be set to work, but he had a pretty clear idea of how to handle the Caribs. On his second voyage, after capturing a few of them, he sent them in slavery to Spain, as samples of what he hoped would be a regular trade. They were obviously intelligent, and in Spain they might "be led to abandon that inhuman custom which they have of eating men, and there in Castile, learning the language, they will much more readily receive baptism and secure the welfare of their souls." The way to handle the slave trade, Columbus suggested, was to send ships from Spain loaded with cattle (there were no native domestic animals on Española), and he would return the ships loaded with supposed Cannibals. This plan was never put into operation, partly because the Spanish sovereigns did not approve it and partly because the Cannibals did not approve it. They defended themselves so well with their poisoned arrows that the Spaniards decided to withhold the blessings of civilization from them and to concentrate their efforts on the seemingly more amenable Arawaks.

The process of civilizing the Arawaks got underway in earnest after the Santa Maria ran aground on Christmas Day, 1492, off Caracol Bay. The local leader in that part of Española, Guacanagari, rushed to the scene and with his people helped the Spaniards to salvage everything aboard. Once again Columbus was overjoyed with the remarkable natives. They are, he wrote, "so full of love and without greed, and suitable for every purpose, that I assure your Highnesses that I believe there is no better land in the world, and they are always smiling." While the salvage operations were going on, canoes full of Arawaks from other parts of the island came in bearing gold. Guacanagari "was greatly delighted to see the admiral joyful and understood that he desired much gold." Thereafter it arrived in amounts calculated to console the admiral for the loss of the Santa Maria , which had to be scuttled. He decided to make his permanent headquarters on the spot and accordingly ordered a fortress to be built, with a tower and a large moat.

What followed is a long, complicated and unpleasant story. Columbus returned to Spain to bring the news of his discoveries. The Spanish monarchs were less impressed than he with what he had found, but he was able to round up a large expedition of Spanish colonists to return with him and help exploit the riches of the Indies. At Española the new settlers built forts and towns and began helping themselves to all the gold they could find among the natives. These creatures of the golden age remained generous. But precisely because they did not value possessions, they had little to turn over. When gold was not forthcoming, the Europeans began killing. Some of the natives struck back and hid out in the hills. But in 1495 a punitive expedition rounded up 1,500 of them, and 500 were shipped off to the slave markets of Seville.

The natives, seeing what was in store for them, dug up their own crops of cassava and destroyed their supplies in hopes that the resulting famine would drive the Spaniards out. But it did not work. The Spaniards were sure there was more gold in the island than the natives had yet found, and were determined to make them dig it out. Columbus built more forts throughout the island and decreed that every Arawak of 14 years or over was to furnish a hawk's bell full of gold dust every three months. The various local leaders were made responsible for seeing that the tribute was paid. In regions where gold was not to be had, 25 pounds of woven or spun cotton could be substituted for the hawk's bell of gold dust.

Unfortunately Española was not Ophir, and it did not have anything like the amount of gold that Columbus thought it did. The pieces that the natives had at first presented him were the accumulation of many years. To fill their quotas by washing in the riverbeds was all but impossible, even with continual daily labor. But the demand was unrelenting, and those who sought to escape it by fleeing to the mountains were hunted down with dogs taught to kill. A few years later Peter Martyr was able to report that the natives "beare this yoke of servitude with an evill will, but yet they beare it."

The tribute system, for all its injustice and cruelty, preserved something of the Arawaks' old social arrangements: they retained their old leaders under control of the king's viceroy, and royal directions to the viceroy might ultimately have worked some mitigation of their hardships. But the Spanish settlers of Española did not care for this centralized method of exploitation. They wanted a share of the land and its people, and when their demands were not met they revolted against the government of Columbus. In 1499 they forced him to abandon the system of obtaining tribute through the Arawak chieftains for a new one in which both land and people were turned over to individual Spaniards for exploitation as they saw fit. This was the beginning of the system of repartimientos or encomiendas later extended to other areas of Spanish occupation. With its inauguration, Columbus' economic control of Española effectively ceased, and even his political authority was revoked later in the same year when the king appointed a new governor.

For the Arawaks the new system of forced labor meant that they did more work, wore more clothes and said more prayers. Peter Martyr could rejoice that "so many thousands of men are received to bee the sheepe of Christes flocke." But these were sheep prepared for slaughter. If we may believe Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Dominican priest who spent many years among them, they were tortured, burned and fed to the dogs by their masters. They died from overwork and from new European diseases. They killed themselves. And they took pains to avoid having children. Life was not fit to live, and they stopped living. From a population of 100,000 at the lowest estimate in 1492, there remained in 1514 about 32,000 Arawaks in Española. By 1542, according to Las Casas, only 200 were left. In their place had appeared slaves imported from Africa. The people of the golden age had been virtually exterminated.

Why? What is the meaning of this tale of horror? Why is the first chapter of American history an atrocity story? Bartolomé de Las Casas had a simple answer, greed: "The cause why the Spanishe have destroyed such an infinitie of soules, hath been onely, that they have helde it for their last scope and marke to gette golde." The answer is true enough. But we shall have to go further than Spanish greed to understand why American history began this way. The Spanish had no monopoly on greed.

The Indians' austere way of life could not fail to win the admiration of the invaders, for self-denial was an ancient virtue in Western culture. The Greeks and Romans had constructed philosophies and the Christians a religion around it. The Indians, and especially the Arawaks, gave no sign of thinking much about God, but otherwise they seemed to have attained the monastic virtues. Plato had emphasized again and again that freedom was to be reached by restraining one's needs, and the Arawaks had attained impressive freedom.

But even as the Europeans admired the Indians' simplicity, they were troubled by it, troubled and offended. Innocence never fails to offend, never fails to invite attack, and the Indians seemed the most innocent people anyone had ever seen. Without the help of Christianity or of civilization, they had attained virtues that Europeans liked to think of as the proper outcome of Christianity and civilization. The fury with which the Spaniards assaulted the Arawaks even after they had enslaved them must surely have been in part a blind impulse to crush an innocence that seemed to deny the Europeans' cherished assumption of their own civilized, Christian superiority over naked, heathen barbarians.

That the Indians were destroyed by Spanish greed is true. But greed is simply one of the uglier names we give to the driving force of modern civilization. We usually prefer less pejorative names for it. Call it the profit motive, or free enterprise, or the work ethic, or the American way, or, as the Spanish did, civility. Before we become too outraged at the behavior of Columbus and his followers, before we identify ourselves too easily with the lovable Arawaks, we have to ask whether we could really get along without greed and everything that goes with it. Yes, a few of us, a few eccentrics, might manage to live for a time like the Arawaks. But the modern world could not have put up with the Arawaks any more than the Spanish could. The story moves us, offends us, but perhaps the more so because we have to recognize ourselves not in the Arawaks but in Columbus and his followers.

The Spanish reaction to the Arawaks was Western civilization's reaction to the barbarian: the Arawaks answered the Europeans' description of men, just as Balboa's tiger answered the description of a tiger, and being men they had to be made to live as men were supposed to live. But the Arawaks' view of man was something different. They died not merely from cruelty, torture, murder and disease, but also, in the last analysis, because they could not be persuaded to fit the European conception of what they ought to be.

Edmund S. Morgan is a Sterling Professor emeritus at Yale University.

Get the latest Travel & Culture stories in your inbox.

• ALL OVER THE MAP

A 500-year-old map used by Columbus reveals its secrets

Newly uncovered text opens a time capsule of one of history’s most influential maps.

This 1491 map is the best surviving map of the world as Christopher Columbus knew it as he made his first voyage across the Atlantic. In fact, Columbus likely used a copy of it in planning his journey.

The map, created by the German cartographer Henricus Martellus, was originally covered with dozens of legends and bits of descriptive text, all in Latin. Most of it has faded over the centuries.

But now researchers have used modern technology to uncover much of this previously illegible text. In the process, they’ve discovered new clues about the sources Martellus used to make his map and confirmed the huge influence it had on later maps, including a famous 1507 map by Martin Waldseemuller that was the first to use the name “America.”

MARTELLUS AND COLUMBUS

Contrary to popular myth, 15th-century Europeans did not believe that Columbus would sail off the edge of a flat Earth, says Chet Van Duzer, the map scholar who led the study. But their understanding of the world was quite different from ours, and Martellus’s map reflects that.

Its depiction of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea is more or less accurate, or at least recognizable. But southern Africa is oddly shaped like a boot with its toe pointing to the east, and Asia is also twisted out of shape. The large island in the South Pacific roughly where Australia can actually be found must have been a lucky guess, Van Duzer says, as Europeans wouldn’t discover that continent for another century. Martellus filled the southern Pacific Ocean with imaginary islands, apparently sharing the common mapmakers’ aversion to empty spaces .

Another quirk of Martellus’s geography helps tie his map to Columbus’s journey: the orientation of Japan. At the time the map was created, Europeans knew Japan existed, but knew very little about its geography. Marco Polo’s journals, the best available source of information about East Asia at the time, had nothing to say about the island’s orientation.

Martellus’s map shows it running north-south. Correct, but almost certainly another lucky guess says Van Duzer, as no other known map of the time shows Japan unambiguously oriented this way. Columbus’s son Ferdinand later wrote that his father believed Japan to be oriented north-south, indicating that he very likely used Martellus’s map as a reference.

When Columbus made landfall in the West Indies on October 12, 1492, he began looking for Japan, still believing that he’d achieved his goal of finding a route to Asia. He was likely convinced Japan must be near because he’d travelled roughly the same distance that Martellus’s map suggests lay between Europe and Japan, Van Duzer argues in a new book detailing his findings.

Van Duzer says it’s reasonable to speculate that as Columbus sailed down the coast of Central and South America on later voyages, he pictured himself sailing down the coast of Asia as depicted on Martellus’s map.

You May Also Like

Gettysburg was no ordinary battle. These maps reveal how Lee lost the fight.

These enigmatic documents have kept their secrets for centuries

This European map inspired a playful cartography craze 500 years ago

Restoring a time capsule.

The map is roughly 3.5 by 6 feet. Such a large map would have been a luxury object, likely commissioned by a member of the nobility, but there’s no shield or dedication to indicate who that might have been. It was donated anonymously to Yale University in 1962 and remains in the university’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Over time, much of the text had faded to almost perfectly match the background, making it impossible to read. But in 2014 Van Duzer won a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities that allowed him and a team of collaborators to use a technique called multispectral imaging to try to uncover the hidden text.

The method involved taking many hundreds of photographs of the map with different wavelengths of light and processing the images to find the combination of wavelengths that best improves legibility on each part of the map (you can play around with an interactive map created by one of Van Duzer’s colleagues here ).

Many of the map legends describe the regions of the world and their inhabitants. “Here are found the Hippopodes: they have a human form but the feet of horses,” reads one previously illegible text over Central Asia. Another describes “monsters similar to humans whose ears are so large that they can cover their whole body.” Many of these fantastical creatures can be traced to texts written by the ancient Greeks.

The most surprising revelation, however, was in the interior of Africa, Van Duzer says. Martellus included many details and place names that appear to trace back to an Ethiopian delegation that visited Florence in 1441. Van Duzer says he knows of no other 15th-century European map that has this much information about the geography of Africa, let alone information derived from native Africans instead of European explorers. “I was blown away,” he says.

The imaging also strengthens the case that Martellus’s map was a major source for two even more famous cartographic objects: the oldest surviving terrestrial globe , created by Martin Behaim in 1492, and Martin Waldseemuller’s 1507 world map , the first to apply the label “America” to the continents of the western hemisphere. (The Library of Congress purchased Waldseemuller’s map for a record $10 million in 2003.)

Waldseemuller liberally copied text from Martellus, Van Duzer found after comparing the two maps. The practice was common in those days—in fact, Martellus himself apparently copied the sea monsters on his map from an encyclopedia published in 1491, an observation that helps date the map.

Despite their commonalities, the maps by Martellus and Waldseemuller have one glaring difference. Martellus depicts Europe and Africa nearly at the left edge of his map, with only water beyond. Waldseemuller’s map extends further to the west and depicts new lands on the other side of the Atlantic. Only 16 years had passed between the making of the two maps, but the world had changed forever.

Greg Miller and Betsy Mason are authors of the forthcoming illustrated book from National Geographic, All Over the Map . Follow the blog on Twitter and Instagram .

Related Topics

• AGE OF DISCOVERY

The lost continent of Zealandia has been mapped for the first time

Legendary Spanish galleon shipwreck discovered on Oregon coast

Vlad the Impaler's thirst for blood was an inspiration for Count Dracula

Magellan got the credit, but this man was first to sail around the world

Swastika Mountain needed a new name. Here’s how it got one.

• Environment
• History & Culture

History & Culture

• Gory Details
• Mind, Body, Wonder
• Adventures Everywhere
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Your US State Privacy Rights
• Children's Online Privacy Policy
• Interest-Based Ads
• About Nielsen Measurement
• Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
• Nat Geo Home
• Attend a Live Event
• Book a Trip
• Inspire Your Kids
• Shop Nat Geo
• Visit the D.C. Museum
• Learn About Our Impact
• Support Our Mission
• Advertise With Us
• Customer Service
• Renew Subscription
• Manage Your Subscription
• Work at Nat Geo
• Sign Up for Our Newsletters
• Contribute to Protect the Planet

Copyright © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society Copyright © 2015-2024 National Geographic Partners, LLC. All rights reserved

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

Christopher Columbus Never Set Out to Prove the Earth was Round

By: Erin Blakemore

Updated: August 10, 2023 | Original: October 6, 2017

In 1492, Christopher Columbus was shocked when his ship made landfall in a land Europeans had never explored. Along the way, he proved that Earth isn’t flat after all. Right?

Wrong: Despite a persistent legend, neither Columbus nor his Spanish patrons thought Earth was a finite plane instead of a round planet. And you can blame one of the United States’ greatest authors for creating a myth that still surrounds one of history’s best-known figures.

When Columbus set sail in 1492, he predicted he’d make landfall in Asia. Legend has it that he defied Spanish officials to do so, sailing west instead of East because he was certain the world was round.

There’s just one problem: It’s almost certain that in the 1490s, nobody thought the earth was flat.  According to historian Jeffrey Burton Russell, “no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the Earth was flat.”

That was thanks to scientists, philosophers and mathematicians who, as early as around 600 B.C., made observations that Earth was round. Using calculations based on the sun’s rise and fall, shadows and other physical properties of the planet, Greek scholars like Pythagoras and Aristotle determined that the planet is actually a sphere.

During Columbus’ time, educated people carefully studied knowledge passed down by the ancient Greeks. Thus, it’s nearly impossible—and completely implausible—that rich Spaniards of the late 15th century thought Columbus would fall off the edge of the map.

However, Columbus ran into resistance when he tried to get funding for his landmark journey for a different reason. He  mistakenly believed that the circumference of Earth was very small and that by traveling west toward what he thought was China, he’d open up new trade routes. After years of negotiation and argument over the actual length of the proposed journey, he finally convinced Ferdinand II of Spain and his wife Isabella to finance the expedition.

The myth of Columbus’ supposed flat earth theory is tempting: It casts the explorer’s intrepid journey in an even more daring light. Problem is, it’s completely untrue. The legend doesn’t even date from Columbus’ own lifetime. Rather, it was invented in 1828, when Washington Irving published The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus .

Irving, a master storyteller, was already famous for tales like “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” when he tackled the life of Columbus. His inspiration came after his friend, Alexander Hill Everett, the United States’ minister to Spain, invited Irving to stay with him in Madrid. While visiting the city, Irving was tempted by a giganticarchive of documents about Columbus and decided to write the explorer’s biography.

The archive may have been extensive, but Irving couldn’t help from adding fictional flourishes to Columbus’ already fascinating life. Crucially, he  claimed that when the explorer told Spanish geographers the earth was not actually flat, they refused to believe him, even questioning his faith and endangering his life.

“Is there anyone so foolish, as to believe [in] people who walk with their heels upward, and their head hanging down?” one of the Catholic geographers supposedly exclaimed when Columbus told him the Earth was a circle and not a flat line.

The real fools were Irving’s readers, who were taken in by his inaccurate account. And when his book became a runaway bestseller, the supposed confrontation between the rational explorer and the dogmatic official was accepted as truth.

Over the years—and with the help of  Antoine-Jean Letronne , a French author—the legend took hold. Even today, it’s a commonly held belief…even though it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Though Columbus never proved Earth was round, he did manage to upset long-held dogma in another way when he ran across a continent nobody in Europe even knew was there. (Of course, his “discovery” wasn’t new either as the Americas had been known to indigenous people for thousands of years, and Vikings since the 11th century.) He didn’t think Earth was flat, but by jumpstarting the Age of Exploration, he changed the course of human history.

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

clock This article was published more than  8 years ago

Opinion Five myths about Christopher Columbus

As Columbus Day gives way to "fall break" and drops off many workers' calendars altogether, it has become easy to overlook a perennial teaching moment. When Christopher Columbus does come up in the media or the classroom, he is usually simply bashed or praised, depending on the viewpoint of the speaker. In either case, he remains more myth than man. Let's revisit some of the biggest misconceptions about the explorer Monday's federal holiday is named for.

1 . Columbus proved the “flat Earth” theory wrong.

In an early scene in the 1992 Ridley Scott film " 1492: Conquest of Paradise ," Columbus, played by Gérard Depardieu, gazes out at the Atlantic Ocean with his son. He tells the boy the world is like the orange he is peeling: round, not flat. In this traditional rendering, Columbus is an enlightened scientific figure, a pre-Galileo surrounded by obscurantists determined to scuttle his plans. We owe this myth to Washington Irving, who Americanized Columbus in a best-selling 1828 biography . Already known for Rip Van Winkle and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Irving was a dedicated Hispanophile who researched Columbus's life and voyages while living in Spain in the 1820s. Despite careful scholarship, Irving peddled the "all American" idea that Columbus was a hands-on seafaring man willing to challenge immobile academics who couldn't see past the horizon.

In reality, that the Earth is more or less spherical was not news in Columbus’s day. The question was size, shape and how much of it was covered by oceans. Columbus would eventually opt for a smaller, pear-shaped world vs. the rounder orange.

Florentine mathematician Paolo Toscanelli is credited with inspiring Columbus’s voyage, but neither Toscanelli nor Columbus could convince Portugal’s court of its feasibility. Spanish cosmographers were similarly unmoved when Columbus met them in 1486, but the Catholic monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand, were intrigued. They gave Columbus a stipend and kept him on hold. Portugal was pushing east to Asia by rounding Africa. Would Spain be left out? The monarchs granted Columbus another audience in early 1492. In April, an agreement was signed in the shadow of the Alhambra. Columbus was now “admiral of the ocean sea.”

2 . Columbus was Italian.

The National Italian American Foundation calls the Columbus Day parade in New York "the most visible and accessible manifestation of our Italian American Pride," and Italian Americans have led efforts to oppose changes to the holiday's focus nationwide.

But when Columbus lived, there was no such thing as an Italian; Italy did not exist until 1861. The best evidence suggests that the explorer was born in a village near Genoa, which is part of Italy today. To his deathbed, he proudly claimed Genoa as home. In Columbus's lifetime, Genoa was a fiercely independent republic with its own language , currency and overseas colonies. Its commercial ties to Castile and Aragon, in modern-day Spain, were intimate. Genoese trading colonies in Seville, Barcelona and Lisbon were sizable. Some Genoese who married locally were naturalized Castilian, Catalan or Portuguese subjects.

Those cozy relationships helped give rise to a crop of Columbus "birthers." Catalan , Majorcan , Ibizan , Portuguese , Greek , Sephardic Jewish , Sardinian , Polish and even Scottish claims have been made by a mix of serious scholars and crackpot theorists. Most historians believe that Columbus was Genoese, but they hesitate to call him "Italian," partly for the reasons stated above, and partly because Columbus left home early and moved around a lot.

3 . Columbus was a successful businessman and a model leader.

An early American archetype, Columbus has long served as a model entrepreneur . Columbus Day blog posts and articles have included " 3 Business Lessons Learned from Christopher Columbus " and " 5 Lessons in Leadership Effectiveness from Christopher Columbus ." These inspirational essays boil down to memorable bullet points such as: "Find an opportunity where the wind is at your back." One asks, " Do you have a Columbus in your company? "

By all accounts, Columbus was a confident risk-taker who knew hot commodities. He sailed the West African coast seeking gold in the early 1480s, then moved on to the sugar of the Madeiras, where he married a Portuguese noblewoman, Filipa de Perestrello. Columbus also knew the North Atlantic’s cod fisheries, but there was no romance in fish. He wanted the spices of Asia, lovingly described by Marco Polo.

Had Columbus reached Asia, perhaps he'd have proved a keen entrepreneur. As it happened, he landed on Caribbean shores, in a densely populated region that was economically impenetrable for an Old World trader. Some gold was available, but it was not used as currency. Captives could be had, but they weren't sold in open markets. Columbus presumed soon after landing that he could make friends and trade for gold and slaves following Portuguese practices in West Africa, yet with a few exceptions, there was no market economy in the Americas to match those of the Old World.

Failing to understand this, Columbus quickly made managerial mistakes, some fatal. He planted a colony on the north shore of Haiti and named it La Navidad. When he returned on his second voyage, everyone at “Christmas town” was dead. Columbus launched another settlement, named La Isabela for his royal patron, that met much the same fate.

Archaeologists have found that La Isabela was constructed like a hybrid Genoese-Portuguese trading post of the sort found in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Africa. It was intended to survive by trade rather than self-sufficiency, prompting inhabitants to engage in suicidal raids on neighboring indigenous villages. Columbus’s misunderstanding of local economies and his failure to adapt to local conditions cost not only Spanish lives but also countless indigenous ones.

4 . Columbus committed genocide.

On Columbus Day in 1989, the late Native American activist Russell Means led an American Indian Movement protest, pouring buckets of fake blood over the Columbus statue in downtown Denver while Italian Americans paraded in the streets. (Columbus Day was inaugurated in Denver in 1907.) The city's parades were canceled for a decade . AIM activists are not alone in charging Columbus with mass murder, and in recent years several cities and states have instead started celebrating " Indigenous People's Day " or "Native American Day."

But if we judge Columbus on what we know from the historical record, is that the right charge? He definitely saw profit in enslaving and selling native peoples kidnapped from Caribbean shores. Once he made allies among what he called “good Indians,” Columbus advocated fighting and enslaving native groups he presumed to be cannibals. By 1500, he and his brothers had sent nearly 1,500 enslaved islanders to European markets to be sold. Even “friendly” indigenous peoples were forced to mine gold en masse, speeding death from malnourishment, overwork and disease.

Columbus was clearly no friend of native peoples, but a document discovered 10 years ago in Simancas, Spain, suggests he was an equal-opportunity tyrant. Witnesses testified that his brief government of Hispaniola was marked by routine cruelty not only to the native Taínos but also to Spaniards who defied or mocked him. A woman who reminded Columbus that he was the son of a weaver had her tongue cut out. Others were executed for minor crimes.

Colonialism is never pretty, and in his treatment of native peoples, Columbus was following Spanish and Portuguese trading and slaving practices. We may charge him with genocide by negligence (if there is such a thing), but it is harder to prove intent. Columbus wanted living and multiplying subjects to tax and govern. He was not interested in depopulating newly acquired territories.

Was Columbus an active protector of Native Americans? No. Did he wish to eliminate them? No. Did genocide directly result from his decrees and his family’s commercial aims? Yes.

5 . Columbus believed he had discovered America.

For decades, U.S. schoolchildren learned that in "fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue" on his way to "discovering" the New World. By the 1992 quincentennial , though, new academic scholarship had begun to seep into elementary and secondary history lessons. Today, few people claim that Columbus was the first European to sail to the Americas. Evidence for medieval Norse voyages and colonization is overwhelming.

What did Columbus himself think he was doing, though? He never believed he had landed somewhere that Europeans weren’t otherwise aware of, and thus America was named for another navigator, the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci, who recognized the “newness” of South America. Columbus thought he was discovering some parts of Asia not described by Marco Polo or other Western authorities. He also believed he had found a new maritime route to the East Indies that would circumvent Muslim-controlled land routes and waterways.

As Nicolás Wey-Gómez has recently shown , sailing south to the tropics was perhaps Columbus's main innovation, since he wanted to reach the Spice Islands first. From there, he could travel to China from a safe commercial base — the fortified trading post he had tried to establish on Hispaniola. Columbus's geographical stubbornness seems strange today, but he was hardly alone in refusing to believe that he had stumbled onto continents that were unknown to contemporary authorities. The fact of an entirely new world inhabited by many millions of previously unknown people was simply too much for most educated Europeans to grasp.

If Columbus did discover something, it was the true extent of the North Atlantic trade wind circuit. Portuguese mariners had already observed this wind-and-current system, but Columbus went much further, proving over his four voyages that transatlantic sea travel in the age of sail was far more certain than anyone had imagined.

For true discovery, we must go back at least 13,000 to 14,000 years before Columbus. Recent research confirms that the first humans to reach the Americas migrated from northeast Asia to North America via a temporary isthmus or by short island hops in the Bering Strait and along the Alaskan and British Columbian coasts. In several waves, these earliest Americans made their way south and east, rapidly settling and altering two vast continents and numerous islands.

For Native Americans, Columbus’s fateful arrival prompted 523 years of resistance. Whether we call it Columbus Day or Indigenous People’s Day, Oct. 12 merits reflection.

[email protected]

Five myths is a weekly feature challenging everything you think you know. You can check out previous myths , read more from Outlook or follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter .

Christopher Columbus and the Transition from Pan American Day to Indigenous People’s Resistance Day in Belize

• October 15, 2023
• by belizehubstaff +

October 12th is when the various countries of the Americas celebrate Indigenous People’s Resistance Day, formerly known as Columbus Day or Pan American Day. This event is both a national and bank holiday within Belize and commemorates the survival, struggle and resistance efforts of Belize’s indigenous peoples against colonization. The day falls on October 12th as that is when Columbus first landed in the Americas back in 1492. This day is also known as Dia de la Raza, a “day of the race” that celebrates diversity between Europeans and Native Americans.

Columbus’ efforts ignited European interest in colonizing the Americas and while his first voyage was of considerable significance, he did not reach the mainland until 1498, his third voyage. Rather than seeking a sea route to India, Columbus happened to make landfall on a Bahamian island he christened San Salvador. Despite his influence on global trade and governance, Columbus was not the first European to reach the Americas-multiple accounts attribute the Norse to arriving centuries earlier but without establishing colonies.

About the Changed Name

In 2021, Belize’s government decided to rebrand Pan-American Day as Dia de la Raza. Later that year, in November, this term was discovered to be a misunderstanding; Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs and New Growth Ministries clarified that the government press office published a list of holidays, with pressure coming from the calendar printers to have a good idea of what holidays to list. This resulted in the initial list having Dia de la Raza as a holiday name despite little thought having been put into the name. Due to the vaguely racist phrasing of this name, the holiday’s proper name is now known as Indigenous People’s Resistance Day in honor of Belize’s many indigenous peoples, especially the Mayas.

A Refresher

Columbus voyaged the New World a total of four times, from 1492 to 1504. These voyages brought him to San Salvador, Cuba, Haiti, Guadaloupe, Montserrat, Antigua, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Trinidad, mainland South America and lastly, Honduras and Nicaragua. The revelation of an entire new megacontinent encouraged European nations to expand their empire at the expense of many people who were doing just fine before.

Belize uses October 12 to celebrate the journey taken by Mestizos and Hispanics from the Yucatan into Belize during the mid-1800s. These people were escaping war and eventually found a safe place to re-establish themselves (the present-day districts of Corozal and Orange Walk). While they thrived throughout northern Belize, they eventually influenced the entire nation, especially with regard to Catholicism, Spanish as a language, and sugar cultivation.

Columbus’ Three Ships

• The Santa Maria was a small carrack that served as Columbus’ flagship on his first expedition. It held 40 men and was initially named “La Gallega” in recognition of its Galician construction. “Marigalante” was another name its sailors called it, which means “Gallant Mary.” Despite these nicknames, Bartolomé de Las Casas’ accounts only call it “La Capitana” or “La Nao.”She had one deck and three masts and while she performed well, was also the slowest of the fleet. She wrecked off the coast of Haiti on Christmas Day, 1492, and was lost. Timbers from the craft were later used for establishing the site of Môle Saint-Nicolas, Haiti, initially known as “La Navidad” due to the shipwreck’s timing.
• The Niña, meaning “The Child,” was a caravel nicknamed after owner Juan Niño’s name; its actual name was Santa Clara. Despite being Columbus’ favorite ship, we have no proper documentation for its design. She carried 24 men on the first expedition and was captained by Vicente Yáñez Pinzón. During the first voyage, her men slept on the deck but subsequent trips incorporated hammocks after noticing their use by indigenous peoples. This ship would later serve as the flagship of a 17-vessel fleet to Cuba and was the sole survivor of a hurricane in 1495.This ship was later chartered for an unofficial trip to Rome, was captured by pirates and brought to Sardinia. Captain Alonso Medel managed to escape and sail off with the ship back home. Her final voyage involved trading with the Pearl Coast and she is known to have logged over 25,000 nautical miles under Columbus’ endeavors.
• The Pinta, meaning “Painted,” was a caravel and Columbus’ fastest ship. Her design was square-rigged and smaller than the Santa Maria. She carried 26 men and was captained by Martín Alonzo Pinzón. Crewman Rodrigo de Triana was the first person to notice the New World.

Two things that these ships had in common is that none were first-hand vessels nor were they ever intended for naval explorations. Replicas of the trio exist, with the replica Niña serving as a sailing museum since 1992.

Featured Belize Resort

Featured tour company.

Real Estate Opportunities

Belize in October: Where to Go and What to Do

21 Reasons to Buy Real Estate in Belize

Welcome! Login in to your account

Don't have account. Register

Lost Password

Back to Login

White Light Behavioral Health

Photos & videos.

See all 1 photos

You Might Also Consider

Reborn Health & Aesthetics

*Treating GUT issues at the Roots *Fast and Effective Weight Loss Plans *Facial Balancing & Rejuvenation by expert injector *Tone/Texture Repair *Wellness & Anti-Aging Call today for more information 614-425-7468 read more

in Weight Loss Centers, Nurse Practitioner, Aestheticians

Options Medical Weight Loss Clinic

9.4 miles away from White Light Behavioral Health

Our board-certified doctors custom-tailor each weight loss program to fit the specific needs of each patient. Using biomarkers and medical history, a program is created just for you. And as your weight loss journey progresses, our… read more

in Health Coach, Weight Loss Centers, Dietitians

Location & Hours

Suggest an edit

4040 E Broad St

Columbus, OH 43213

Recommended Reviews

• 1 star rating Not good
• 2 star rating Could’ve been better
• 3 star rating OK
• 4 star rating Good
• 5 star rating Great

Select your rating

1 review that is not currently recommended

People Also Viewed

Grove City Psychological Services

Columbus Womens Wellness

Basecamp Recovery Center

Affirmations Psychological Services

Holistic Wellness Solutions

Columbus Springs East

Mount Carmel Behavioral Health

Dove Recovery

Concord Counseling Services

Emerald Psychiatry & TMS Center

Browse Nearby

Restaurants

Pain Management

Psychiatrists

Other Places Nearby

Find more Addiction Medicine near White Light Behavioral Health

Find more Behavior Analysts near White Light Behavioral Health

Find more Counseling & Mental Health near White Light Behavioral Health