Christopher Columbus

Everyone knows the saying, "In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Columbus is considered by many, including American textbooks, to be one of the greatest heroes of all time. In fact, Columbus is one of only two people the United States honors by name in a national holiday. As a result of this great honor, Columbus is presented with a significant amount of space in America’s texts. According to James Leowen, the heroic collective account of Columbus from various textbooks goes something like this:

"Born in Genoa, Italy, of humble parents, Christopher Columbus grew up to become an experienced seafarer. He sailed the Atlantic as far as Iceland and West Africa. His adventures convinced him that the world must be round. Therefore the fabled riches of the East - spices, silk, and gold - could be had by sailing west, superseding the overland route through the Middle East, which the Turks had closed off to commerce.

To get funding for his enterprise, Columbus beseeched monarch after monarch in western Europe. After at first being dismissed by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Columbus finally got his chance when Queen Isabella decided to underwrite a modest expedition. Columbus outfitted three pitifully small ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, and set forth from Spain. The journey was difficult. The ships sailed west into the unknown Atlantic for more than two months. The crew almost mutinied and threatened to throw Columbus overboard. Finally they reached the West Indies on October 12, 1492. Although Columbus made three more voyages to America, he never really knew he had discovered a New World. He died in obscurity, unappreciated and penniless. Yet without his daring American history would have been very different, for in a sense Columbus made it all possible."

Textbooks present Columbus as a brave and daring individual, claiming that he "had the humanist’s belief that people could do anything if they knew enough and tried hard enough." His message portrays to schoolchildren that anything can be accomplished if it is truly believed and truly strived for.

Unfortunately, textbooks exclude at least half of the facts of Columbus’ life, as they do to a majority of the people in history. The following are a few facts in the life of Columbus that are never found in any textbook:

• Columbus was not the first person to suspect that the world was round (http://marauder. millersv.edu/~Columbus/data/art/LAUFER02.ART). Sailors knew this fact long before 1492 because they could see it as not flat when ships disappeared into the horizon, hull first, and then the sails.
• Columbus was not the first person to "discover" America. There are currently fourteen documented potential explorers of America before 1492. These records, however, may be incomplete. Furthermore, not all of the documentation has a high quality of evidence, but several do. For example, from 9000 B.C. to the present, people are believed to have moved from Siberia to Alaska, based on continuing contact by Inuits across the Bering Sea. Also, from 1000 - 1350, people are believed to have traveled from Greenland and Iceland to Labrador, Baffin Land, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and possibly Cape Cod or further south based on oral sagas which are confirmed by archeology on Newfoundland.
• The main purpose for Columbus’ voyages was the desire to find gold and wealth. In 1499, he made a major gold strike on Haiti. As a result, he forced the native people to mine the gold for him. Furthermore, Columbus became upset when he couldn’t find the gold he believed existed, so he set up a tribute system with the native people. They had to find a certain amount of gold within a given time, or else they would be severely punished.
• Christopher Columbus and his crew mistreated and abused the native people they met. Hundreds of thousands of native people were forced to mine gold for Columbus. On his first voyage, Columbus kidnapped between 10 and 25 Indians to take back to Spain. After his second voyage, he sent 500 Indians back to Spain as slaves. He and his crew stole food, land, and raped the native women. If an Indian committed even a minor offense, that person’s ears or nose was cut off to set an example.

Many textbooks briefly discuss the other two voyages made by Columbus, but they fail to explain to the students how he treated the people and the lands he "discovered." There is never any mention in textbooks of how Columbus’ mistreatment of the Native people created a racial underclass through his abuse and method of demeaning an entire race of people. Perhaps a more appropriate saying that describes the voyages of Columbus would be, "In fourteen hundred and ninety-three, Columbus stole all he could see."

Textbooks have exaggerated the story of Columbus (http://www.illinmedia.com/di/ archives/1995/october/18/letter1.html) to make him appear as a great hero, a "man of vision, energy, resourcefulness, and courage." These texts ignore and exclude all of the negative facts of his life because these facts show that he is not the hero they make him out to be. Consequently, a man who knowingly stole, raped, and murdered is shown as a hero, and his violent, cruel acts are trivialized. The history of Columbus should be taught to students accurately and honestly. It is just as important for students to know and learn of his accomplishments as it is for them to learn of his cruel acts and injustices, for only then can students accurately learn and assimilate history into an overall picture. When students are able to question what they learn, and therefore, learn more accurately, they will be able to develop a better sense of "nationality," based on factual information and not false representation.