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Honoring Christopher Columbus
Honoring Christopher Columbus
Warren H. Carroll, PH.D.
On this five hundredth anniversary of what we have always called the
discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, unprecedented attention is
being focussed by historians, journalists, and public opinion samplers
upon Columbus and what he did. Many are telling us that what Columbus
did is not an event that should be honored _ that it was not even a real
discovery at all, because there were people already in the Americas when
he found them. They tell us that this five hundredth anniversary should
be an occasion to condemn Columbus, not to praise him.
Let us begin, therefore, by defining the word "discovery"
in the context of history. A discovery is made when an individual or a
nation finds something or someone or some people or some places of
special importance, not previously known to them. When any previously
unknown people is first found by another people, that people may be said
to have been discovered. People as well as places can be discovered. The
fact that people live in places unknown to another people does not mean
that they, and the places where they live, cannot be discovered.
No people from any other part of the world ever discovered Europe;
but Europeans discovered all other parts of the world.
In all of history, only the Europeans and the Polynesians of the
south Pacific have been true discoverers, sailing for the explicit
purpose of finding new lands, trading with their people, and colonizing
them. And of all discoverers Christopher Columbus was the greatest,
because he accomplished the most against the highest odds.
Before Columbus' time all European voyages had followed coastlines,
or crossed open seas to lands previously known or at least sighted by
storm-driven ships. Only Columbus set off directly across a broad,
unknown sea with no specific knowledge of how far it extended or what
lay on the other side. To be sure, Columbus was convinced that he could
reach Asia from Europe within the time during which the provisions he
carried in his three ships would sustain his men. But he was wrong about
that. If America had not existed—had not been in
the way—Columbus would have had to turn back
long before reaching his goal, or he and every man on his ships would
have died.1
But Columbus undertook his voyage with more evidence that he could
complete it than his unfounded assumptions about the size of the world
and the distance to Asia. For most of his professional life as a seaman
he had ranged the eastern Atlantic, from West Africa to Iceland, in
particular spending much time on Portugal's Atlantic islands. He had
picked up reliable reports of strange vegetation and carved, hand-worked
objects drifting in from the west, even of two bodies of men who were
neither whites nor blacks. He had studied the wind patterns of the
Atlantic, noting that from the Canary Islands off the Atlantic coast of
North Africa the winds (now called trades) mostly blow from east to
west, while further north, on the coast of Portugal and northern Spain
and France, the winds (now called prevailing westerlies) blow just as
steadily from west to east. Therefore he could sail west with the trades
and home with the westerlies, with the winds fair both ways. No other
man of his time had thought of that.2
The vegetation and the carved objects and the bodies could not have
floated all the way from Asia to Europe if they were as far apart as the
experts claimed who believed the world to be larger than Columbus had
calculated. He was sure—and he was right—that there was land to the
west within reach of the sailing ships fifteenth-century Europe had. He
was convinced that God had chosen him to reach that land, hidden from
the Western world for ages, which the Roman philosopher Seneca had once
prophesied would be revealed. His discovery would bring the Catholic
Faith, to which he was devoted, to the people who lived in that land.3
It is for the boldness of his conception and his magnificent courage
in laying his life on the line to carry it out that Christopher Columbus
is most rightly honored. It was these qualities that Queen Isabel of
Spain recognized in him, that caused her to override the cautious advice
of counsellors doubtful that such an unprecedented enterprise could
succeed. Isabel knew nothing of navigation and little of world
geography, but she was a superb judge of men and women. It was to
Columbus the man and to Columbus the devoted Catholic that she gave her
support. She believed in him—believed that he could achieve the goal
to which he was so passionately committed.4
She was right. He did achieve it. In his epochal voyage from August
to October 1492, he did strike directly across the unknown Atlantic to
reach the previously unknown shore beyond.
The day Columbus selected for departure reflected his profound
Catholic faith and that of his crew. August 2, 1492 was the fiesta of
Our Lady of Angels, patroness of the Franciscan monastery of La Rábida
whose friars had supported Columbus and called for the realization of
his dream from the beginning; and protector of the people of Palos, from
which his ships would depart, when they were in danger at sea (as Pope
Eugenius IV had proclaimed 55 years before). It was a day of
thanksgiving for Our Lady's favors, and like all Spanish fiestas, a day
of special celebration. Columbus scheduled his departure on the morrow
of the fiesta, so that his men could join in thanksgiving and prayer
with their families and relatives on the feast-day especially dear to
them and to their people.5
When, after leaving the Canary Islands September 6, they had been out
of sight of land for a full month—a longer voyage out of sight of land
than any other in the history of the world up to that time—Columbus'
men became frightened and angry. During most of the voyage the wind,
often strong, had blown from astern or nearly so. How were they ever
going to get back, beating against it? Columbus knew that further north
the prevailing winds blew from the west, and planned to go north to
catch the westerlies before he returned. But his men knew nothing of
world geography; all they knew was what they had seen, that in these
strange and empty seas the winds almost always blew from the east or the
northeast. On October 10 the men of the Santa Maria came to the verge of
open mutiny.6 Columbus tells us in his Log how he answered
them:
They [the crew] could stand it no longer. They grumbled and
complained of the long voyage, and I reproached them for their lack of
spirit, telling them that, for better or worse, they had to complete
the enterprise on which the Catholic Sovereigns [Isabel and Fernando]
had sent them. I cheered them on as best I could, telling them of all
the honors and rewards they were about to receive. I also told the men
that it was useless to complain, for I had started out to find the
Indies and would continue until I had accomplished that mission, with
the help of Our Lord.7
That last sentence summed up the heart and essence of the whole life
and achievement of Christopher Columbus.
Upon the islands that he first discovered on the other side of the
Atlantic, Columbus found native inhabitants, whom he called Indians,
believing himself to be in "the Indies" of Asia. And here
began the long and troubled story of Columbus' interaction with the
native Americans.
Before going into the historical details of that interaction, it is
essential to clear away the fog of idealization and special pleading
that now surrounds so much talk about the American Indians. First of all
we have to understand the situation that existed in the world of the
Indian of the Caribbean and mid-America when Columbus arrived.
It seems to be true, as is so often repeated today, that when
Columbus found them, the Indians inhabiting the Bahama Islands, Cuba,
Puerto Rico, and the great island the Spanish called Hispaniola (now
divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic) were a gentle, happy,
attractive people living peacefully in good ecological balance with
their surroundings. They were known as Taino, or Arawaks.8
But they were not destined to remain in their Eden-like situation for
long, even if Columbus and the Spanish had not come. Advancing steadily
northward from the long chain of Caribbean islands called the Antilles
was one of the most ferocious people in recorded history, the Caribs.
They were savage conquerors who practiced cannibalism, not as an
occasional cultic ritual, but as a regular diet. Captured prisoners were
immediately eaten. Conquered peoples were systematically devoured. On
every island they seized, the Caribs soon exterminated every Taino. On
no island did the two tribes coexist.9
Across the island-studded Caribbean Sea lay Mexico. Though
politically and culturally advanced beyond most other Indian cultures—the
Mexica had a large army, a well-developed governmental administration, a
system of writing, and stone temples—their empire, which we call
Aztec, carried out ritual human sacrifice on a scale far exceeding any
recorded of any other people in the history of the world. The law of the
Mexica empire required a thousand human sacrifices to the god
Huitzilopochtli in every town with a temple, every year; there were 371
subject towns in the empire, and the majority had full-scale temples.
There were many other sacrifices as well. The total number was at least
50,000 a year, probably much more. The early Mexican historian
Ixtlilxochitl estimated that one out of every five children in Mexico
was sacrificed. When in the year 1487 the immense new temple of
Huitzilopochtli was dedicated in Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), more
than 80,000 men were sacrificed, at fifteen seconds per man, for four
days and four nights of almost unimaginable horror.10
It must be emphasized that there is no serious dispute about these
facts and figures. All reputable and informed historians of pre-
Columbian Mexico11 accept their essential accuracy, though
some prefer not to talk about them. These facts of history totally
dispose of the romantic fantasy of a hemisphere full of peaceful,
nature-loving Indians who threatened no one until the cruel white man
came.
That the conversion of the people he found was a central purpose of
Christopher Columbus is made unmistakably clear by an entry in his log
book written November 6, when he was exploring the coast of Cuba. It is
addressed directly to Isabel and Fernando:
I have to say, Most Serene Princes, that if devout religious
persons know the Indian language well, all these people would soon
become Christians. Thus I pray to Our Lord that Your Highnesses will
appoint persons of great diligence in order to bring to the Church
such great numbers of peoples, and that they will convert these
peoples. . . . And after your days, for we are all mortal, you will
leave your realms in a very tranquil state, free from heresy and
wickedness, and you will be well received before the Eternal
Creator.12
Columbus was entranced by the beauty and promise of the lands he had
found, but greatly disappointed to find no gold anywhere but on
Hispaniola, and only a little there. It is easy for us, with universally
accepted paper money and a computerized banking system, to mock or scorn
the Spanish search for gold. But gold was then the essence of wealth,
the only universally acceptable medium of exchange, both for governments
and individuals, throughout Europe and the Middle East. To pay for
Columbus' expeditions it was necessary to find gold, for it would be
many years before a profitable transatlantic trade in any other
commodity could be developed—even apart from his greater hopes for
giving his adopted country of Spain a large return on the investment
made in him and his project.
Exploring these totally unknown coasts—it is worth taking a moment
to attempt seriously to imagine the risks of taking a sailing ship along
a coast where no large ship has ever gone before, where there are no
buoys, no lighthouses, and no charts—Columbus and his men became so
exhausted that on Christmas Eve of 1492, no one was left awake on Santa
Maria but one sleepy cabin boy. With him at the wheel where he was
never supposed to have been, the ship ran aground, and could not be
freed. Columbus had to abandon her, and leave most of her crew behind in
a fort made from her timbers.13
On the return voyage, the two surviving ships became separated, and
barely survived. The final crisis came as Columbus was approaching the
coast of Portugal through a furious storm on the evening of March 3,
1493. His little ship Niña was hurtling eastward under bare
poles; the roaring northwest wind blew her solely by its pressure on her
stern. Columbus' superb dead reckoning, and signs visible even in the
tempest, warned him that he was approaching land. Just after sunset
"the waves came from two directions, and the wind appeared to raise
the ship in the air, with the water from the sky and the lightning in
every direction."14 But the wind was tearing at the
clouds as well as the waters, so that occasionally the full moon shone
through. Between the moon and the lightning, at seven o'clock land was
sighted dead ahead, high enough to mean cliffs. A rockbound lee shore in
a near-hurricane for a ship driven before the wind means certain death
if its course cannot be changed.
There is no more dramatic moment in all of maritime history. They had
one sail left. Columbus and his men must get it up the mast without its
being shredded as the others had been, and wear ship at a right angle to
take the gale abeam. They must do it quickly, for the cliffs were close
ahead. They must do it in the dark, except for the bursts of unearthly
brilliance from the cloud-wracked moon and the lighting bolts. We may
visualize Columbus on the thundering deck, directing the men at the
halyards in the raising of the sail; then, as the wild wind caught it
with a snap that set hearts racing, the Admiral going back to stand
above the helmsman. The helmsman of a caravel could not see forward, and
only a little of the sky; he steered by feel, and by orders from above.
The slightest error in turning into the monster waves rolling up from
behind would swamp the ship and sink it like a stone. They could not do
it in trough or on crest, but only on the upward roll, when there was
moonlight or lightning to show them their opportunity.15
The sail was drawing hard, adding its pressure to the pull on the
helm. The tall Admiral, his once red hair bleached white by sun and
strain, stood with feet braced, waiting for his moment. So far as he
knew, his ship and men and they alone bore the secret of the greatest
geographical discovery of all time. Their lives and its fate depended on
what would happen in the next few minutes.
Niña made the turn flawlessly, and squared away on her new
course. "God protected us until daylight," Columbus says,
"but it was with infinite labor and fright."16
It is in this scene, above all, that we see the hero Columbus best,
and understand why for five hundred years men of all races knowing of
him honored him, before today's debunkers began their work.
Returning home to Spain to the wonder and admiration of his
sovereigns and of all Christendom, Columbus was soon provided with a
veritable armada of 17 ships and 1,500 men, departing from the port of
Cádiz on his second voyage to America bedecked in flags and colors,
with cannon firing and trumpets and harps playing.17 Everyone
sensed that history had been made, that their world would never be the
same again. As the famous writer and scholar Peter Martyr de Anglería,
an Italian who had gone to live in Spain, said in a letter that month:
"Now—O happy event!—under the auspices of my kings [Isabel and
Fernando], there is becoming known that which from the beginning of
creation had been hidden from us."18
&*%Making his landfall this time further south, in the Antilles,
Columbus encountered the cannibalistic Caribs and lost several of his
men to them. Upon returning to Hispaniola he found that the men from
wrecked Santa Maria whom he had left behind had broken
discipline, attacked the Indians, and been massacred. Though later
investigation established with reasonable clarity that the Spaniards
were to blame, at the time—in view of the continuing difficulty of
communication—no one could be sure, and many blamed the Indians.
Columbus—by royal grant governor of all the lands he found—established
a new and larger colony, and a fort in the gold-producing region of
Hispaniola, selecting Pedro Margarit to command its garrison.19
Soon Columbus left for more exploration, without waiting to see how
his men would behave on the island or even making it clear just how much
authority his brother Bartholomew, who was put in command of the colony,
had over it and especially over Margarit and his garrison of the distant
fort in the gold-producing region. It was the first example of the
unfortunate but hardly surprising fact that this great explorer much
preferred being at sea to being ashore, that his immense talents did not
include a capability for administration. Furthermore, he tended to be
disliked by many Spanish because he was a foreigner, an Italian.20
Exploring Cuba almost to its western tip and then beating his way
slowly back against the trade winds, Columbus was absent from his new
colony for no less than five months, which proved more than time enough
for disaster. Pedro Margarit ravaged the countryside around his fort,
extorting gold, food, and women. Bartholomew Columbus tried to stop him,
but Margarit claimed he had independent authority from his brother. When
Margarit had collected a considerable amount of gold he simply seized
three of Columbus' ships and sailed back to Spain in them. When Columbus
finally returned from his five months' voyage, he was prostrated by a
severe fever; after recovering from that, he was crippled for weeks with
arthritis.21
Sick, frustrated, angry, and unable to control the Spaniards on the
island, Columbus blamed the Indians for his troubles and the very small
production of gold. In January 1495 he seized over a thousand Indians to
make them slaves. There can be no excuse for this, but it is very
important to remember that it was contrary to Spanish law and vigorously
countermanded by Queen Isabel as soon as she found out about it. She
declared firmly that no one had authorized her Admiral to treat
"her subjects" in this manner, released the Indian captives
who had been brought to Spain, and made clear her unalterable opposition
to enslavement of the Indians. She then sent a former member of her
household named Juan Aguado to investigate what Columbus was doing as
governor of Hispaniola and report back to her.22
Before Aguado could reach Hispaniola, full-scale war with its Indians
had broken out because of Columbus' seizure of the slaves. The Spaniards
easily won all military engagements with the Indians, demanded from them
a tribute in gold too much for them to collect, and ravaged their lands
and pursued them into the mountains when they did not collect it.
Aguado's arrival forced Columbus to stop all of this, and he returned to
Spain in June 1496.23
In August 1497, sailing from Spain on his third voyage, Columbus
discovered the American continental mainland in what is now Venezuela,
and recognized for the first time that he had in fact discovered an
"other world."24 Arriving at Hispaniola a year
later, he found the island in a state of rebellion and virtual anarchy,
with the authority of his brother Bartholomew disregarded almost
everywhere. The letters Columbus wrote to Queen Isabel about this
problem demonstrated that he was incapable of resolving it; even in the
writing of the letters, his mind kept wandering to new projects of
exploration and colonization.25
On Hispaniola, Columbus eventually agreed to grant each Spaniard a
substantial tract of cultivated land with a number of Indians to till
it.26 This was the origin of the repartimiento or encomienda
system, formalized into law on Hispaniola in 1503, which Bartholomew de
Las Casas, the "apostle to the Indians," spent his life
fighting, and which Isabel's grandson, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, was
to struggle desperately and with only limited success to eliminate. If
not quite slavery, the repartimiento system was certainly
serfdom, imposed upon a people who had no custom or tradition of regular
hard work on the land and would often die quickly if forced to do it.27
However, by no means all or even most of the Indians lived and worked
as encomenderos. Others worked in the mines, and although
sometimes this was forced labor, a substantial number worked voluntarily
there for pay. Others fled to the mountains where they long remained
entirely free of the Spanish government. Many Indian women entered
Spanish households, not only as servants and mistresses but as wives.
The oft-denounced oppression existed, but so did good treatment and
opportunity.28
Finally deciding that Columbus was simply not competent to govern a
colony, Isabel relieved him of that duty and sent Francisco de Bobadilla
to replace him. Bobadilla arrived in Hispaniola in August 1500, put
Columbus under arrest, seized his papers and property, and sent him back
to Spain in chains. When he arrived, Isabel had the chains removed at
once; but she did not reinstate Columbus as governor, even when
Bobadilla also began to abuse the Indians. A third governor, Nicholas de
Ovando, was sent out in 1501 with orders to force Bobadilla to restore
the property he had taken from Columbus.29
In 1502 Columbus sailed on his fourth and last voyage. After
surviving a hurricane with all four of his ships that sunk every ship
but one of the returning flotilla carrying Bobadilla and his ill-gotten
gains, Columbus reached the Central American mainland at Honduras, where
he landed and took formal possession of this previously unknown coast
for Spain. Through September he beat southward along the coasts of what
are now Nicaragua and Costa Rica, hoping to find a strait which would be
a sea approach to civilized Asia. All during the fall and on into the
winter he explored the coasts of Panama, where the American continent is
in fact at its narrowest—though it does not appear Columbus knew that—in
the hope of finding the desired strait.30
He carried on until Easter of 1503, when his ships were so riddled by
holes made by the teredo or shipworm (previously unknown to European
mariners) that he had to beach them on Jamaica. By the time he was
finally rescued and returned to Spain, the great Queen Isabel was dying.31
Ten days after her death Columbus wrote to his son Diego:
The most important thing is to commend lovingly and with much
devotion the soul of the Queen our lady, to God. Her life was always
Catholic and holy, and prompt in all things in His holy service.
Because of this we should believe that she is in holy glory, and
beyond the cares of this harsh and weary world.32
Columbus knew how much he owed Queen Isabel, and repaid her with
these words of appreciation and devotion even as he knew that his own
work was finished and his life nearly so. He died two years later, in
near-poverty and already almost forgotten by the court.33
From this record it should be clear that, despite occasional lashing
out at the Indians, Columbus was never their systematic oppressor, but
simply unable to control the Spaniards on land who were supposed to be
under his command. If he had only been willing to confine himself to
what he did so superlatively well—sailing and exploring— few if any
could have traduced his memory. But because he insisted on remaining
governor of the lands he had discovered, his reputation was blackened by
the atrocities that occurred during the period when he still had final
responsibility for their governance. But it is Columbus the discoverer
and explorer whom we truly celebrate and honor, not Columbus the civil
governor. His personal influence on the ultimate fate of the Indians of
the Caribbean was slight; in no significant way did he change what their
history would have been without him, once the discovery was made.
Within thirty to forty years the Indians of the Caribbean islands had
disappeared as a distinct population, the greater part of them dying
from diseases brought first by the white men, then by the black slaves
they began to introduce. There were not nearly as many Caribbean natives
as the Indians' champion Las Casas believed; modern researchers estimate
a population of about 100,000 for Hispaniola when Columbus arrived, and
substantially less than that for Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica. The
great population decline did not begin until 1508, after Columbus'
death. Smallpox and malaria, the most deadly plagues in the history of
Europe except for the Black Death, along with yellow fever from Africa,
were the principal killers. In the state of medical knowledge of that
time, there was no help for this mortality and no escape from it. The
mingling of the peoples of the Old and New World, never before brought
into contact with one another, carried this heavy and unavoidable price.34
But ultimately the American Indians as well as the Europeans
benefitted from Columbus' great discovery. An interracial culture
developed in much of Latin America, notably in Mexico, Peru, and
Venezuela. Human sacrifice and cannibalism were ended, and the Indians
were almost all converted to Christianity. Large-scale evangelization
began with the arrival of a group of Franciscans in Hispaniola in 1500
and continued steadily from then on.35 Though many Indians
were long held in a state of virtual serfdom and some were forced
contrary to law to work against their will for long periods of time in
gold and silver mines, none were enslaved after the first colonial
generation. Spanish law never recognized Indian slavery. And, back in
Spain, a prolonged debate at the highest levels of Church and state
finally convinced the highest authorities of both—the bishops and the
King-Emperor Charles V—that the Indians had souls equal before God to
the souls of white men, and rights equal before the law to the rights of
any Spaniard.36
Columbus was a flawed hero—as all men are flawed, including heroes—and
his flaws are of a kind particularly offensive to today's culture. But
he was nevertheless a hero, achieving in a manner unequalled in the
history of exploration and the sea, changing history forever. For some
strange reason heroism is almost anathema to our age, at least to many
of its most vocal spokesmen. But heroes and the inspiration they give
are essential to uplift men and women; without them, faceless mediocrity
will soon descend into apathy and degradation. Heroes need not be
perfect; indeed, given the fallen nature of man, none can be perfect. It
is right to criticize their failings, but wrong to deny their greatness
and the inspiration they can give.
Christopher Columbus is the discoverer of America, and by that
discovery ultimately responsible for America's evangelization; and for
this we should forever honor him.
ENDNOTES
1 Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea (Boston,
1942), pp. 65-69.
2 Paolo Taviani, Christopher Columbus; the Grand Design
(London, 1985), pp. 127-163, 383-388, 393-427.
3 Morison, <Admiral of the Ocean Sea>, p. 54; John S. Collis, Christopher
Columbus (London, 1976), pp. 45-49.
4 Juan Manzano Manzano, Cristóbal Colón; siete años decisivos
de su vida, 1485-1492 (Madrid, 1964), pp. 67-79, 193-196, 263-277.
5 Manzano, Cristóbal Colón, pp. 397-400.
6 Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, pp. 220-221.
7 The Log of Christopher Columbus, ed. Robert H. Fuson (Camden
ME, 1987), p. 72.
8 Ibid., p. 138; Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, p. 291.
9 Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, pp. 405-407; Troy S.
Floyd, The Columbus Dynasty in the Caribbean, 1492-1526
(Albuquerque NM, 1973), pp. 12, 97.
10 R. C. Padden, The Hummingbird and the Hawk (New York,
1970), pp. 71-74.
11 See, for example, in addition to R. C. Padden cited above, Burr C.
Brundage, A Rain of Darts; the Mexican Aztecs (Austin TX, 1972);
C. A. Burland, The Gods of Mexico (London, 1967); Miguel Leon-Portilla,
ed. The Broken Spears; the Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico
(Boston, 1962); Laurette Sejourne, Burning Water; Thought and
Religion in Ancient Mexico (New York, 1960); George C. Vaillant, Aztecs
of Mexico (Garden City NY, 1950).
12 Log of Columbus, ed. Fuson, p. 105.
13 Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, pp. 294-302.
14 Log of Columbus, ed. Fuson, p. 192.
15 Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, pp. 338-339.
16 Log of Columbus, ed. Fuson, p. 192.
17 Alonso de Santa Cruz, Crónica de los Reyes Católicos, ed.
Juan de Mata Carriazo, (Sevilla, 1951), I, 98.
18 Peter Martyr de Anglería to Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, Sept. 13,
1493 (Barcelona), Documentos ineditos para la historia de España,
published by the Duke of Alba et al, Volume IX (Madrid, 1955), p. 244.
19 Dr. Diego Alvarez Chanca to the City of Sevilla, in Cecil Jane,
ed., Select Documents Illustrating the Four Voyages of Columbus
(London, 1930), I, 20-72; Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, pp.
401-433, 437-447.
20 Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, pp. 437-447, 483;
Ferdinand Columbus, The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus,
tr. & ed. Benjamin Keen (New Brunswick NJ, 1959), pp. 128-130;
Floyd, Columbus Dynasty in the Caribbean, pp. 24-27; Andres
Bernáldez, Memorias del reinado de los Reyes Católicos, ed.
Manuel Gómez Moreno and Juan de Mata Carriazo (Madrid, 1962), pp.
307-308.
21 Bernáldez, Memorias (1962 ed.), pp. 308-332; Morison, Admiral
of the Ocean Sea, pp. 447-480, 483-484.
22 Michele de Cuneo to Hieronymo Annari, October 15, 1495, in Samuel
Eliot Morison, Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages
of Christopher Columbus (New York, 1963), pp. 226- 227; letter of
Isabel and Fernando, April 16, 1495, in Antonio Rumeu de Armas, La
Politica Indigenista de Isabel la Católica (Valladolid, 1969), p.
315; Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, pp. 484-487, 493.
23 Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, pp. 488-501.
24 Journal of Columbus' third voyage, in Morison, ed. Journals and
Other Documents of Columbus, p. 276.
25 Ibid., p. 289; Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, pp.
561-570.
26 Floyd, Columbus Dynasty in the Caribbean, pp. 44-45;
Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, pp. 567-570.
27 Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest
of America (Boston, 1965), pp. 19-20, 83-105; Floyd, Columbus
Dynasty in the Caribbean, pp. 64-65, 165-166.
28 Floyd, Columbus Dynasty in the Caribbean, pp. 59, 74-75,
222, 230.
29 Columbus to Juana de Torres, October 1500, in Morison, ed. Journals
and Other Documents on Columbus, pp. 289-299; Isabel and Fernando to
Nicolás de Ovando, September 16, 1501, in Rumeu de Armas, Politica
indigenista de Isabel, pp. 373-377; Morison, Admiral of the Ocean
Sea, pp. 569-572, 576-580.
30 Santa Cruz, Crónica, I, 278-280; Bernáldez, Memorias
(1962 ed.), pp. 473-474; Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, pp.
591- 592.
31 Ferdinand Columbus, Life of Christopher Columbus, pp.
250-282.
32 Columbus to his son Diego, December 3, 1504, in Vicente Rodríguez
Valencia, Isabel la Católica en la Opinion de Españoles y
Extranjeros (Valladolid, 1970), I, 254.
33 Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, pp. 666-669.
34 Floyd, Columbus Dynasty of the Caribbean, pp. 12-13,
189-192; F. D. Ashburn, ed. The Ranks of Death; a Medical History of
the Conquest of America (New York, 1947), passim.
35 Floyd, Columbus Dynasty in the Caribbean, pp. 83-85.
36 Hanke, Spanish Struggle for Justice, pp. 17-36, 111-132.
Warren H. Carroll holds his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University
and is Chairman of the History Department at Christendom College in
Front Royal, Virginia, which he founded in 1977, serving as its
President until 1985. Dr. Carroll is the author of numerous historical
works including Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness
and Isabel of Spain: The Catholic Queen (available from
Christendom Press).
This article was taken from the Summer 1992 issue of "Faith
& Reason". Subscriptions available from Christendom Press,
Rt 3 Box 87, Ft. Royal, VA 22630, (800) 877-5456.
Electronic Copyright © 1999 EWTN
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