Christopher Columbus

Spencer Lambert
ENGL 48A
Journal for Christopher Columbus
November 30, 2009

"Of Espanola, Paria, and the other lands, I never think without weeping. I believed that their example would have been to the profit of others; on the contrary, they are in an exhausted state."

Internet Quotation: "By his toil another world emerged from the unsearched bosom of the ocean: hundreds of thousands of mortals have, from a state of blindness, been raised to the common level of the human race, reclaimed from savagery to gentleness and humanity" - Pope Leo XIII

Summary: The first quotation is the opening lines from the second letter. I find it fitting because it shows Columbus's downtrodden state after years of not only the harsh seas but also the declining state of his enterprise. What he once saw as a noble pursuit has been taken over by people hoping to make a quick buck in the New World. What is most interesting is the way such profit-driven colonization continued even after the preeminent colonizer wrote this letter against it.

The second quotation is from Pope Leo XIII, from an encyclical issued 400 years after Columbus's discovery. He essentially speaks of the explorer as a wonderful Catholic motivated by God, despite some of the policies he employed to govern in the New World. An interesting view of the explorer, in my opinion.

My Ideas: We have reached the man himself: Mr. Columbus, whose voyage in 1492 "discovered" America. This is, of course, a debatable and somewhat ridiculous claim (I think the natives may have been the proper discoverers of the continent, though what do I know) but it has also stood the test of time in elementary schools nationwide. "In 1492, Columbus sailed..." The fact that you are chanting out the rest of this jingle proves that Columbus is still alive and well in the America mythology.



But he wasn't always well. These letters are interesting peeks into his life. We get one in which he describes the beauty, the natives, and the bounty he has found. It is a picturesque vision of discovery, a piece of childlike wonder and curiosity at what the great expanse of these new lands could provide him and his people. Ending simply with "Espanola is a marvel," we see that Columbus is so totally enamored with the new lands.

Skip forward ten years to 1503 to a letter written to Ferdinand and Isabella, monarchs of Spain, as well as financiers of the voyages. His precious discoveries have been pillaged and ruined, and "are in an exhausted state." He himself has grown old and weary, tired of the constant struggle that his career has given him. Riches, once the primary reason to go across treacherous seas, mean nothing. Now, he wants only the permission to get away and go on a religious pilgrimage as his final act. The man credited with discovering America was left with nothing of value. He died three years later.

This is an interesting selection because we see the beginning and the end, the high and the low. His life isn't the sing-song fun we typically associate with the man; it is actually quite sad, especially when he tells of when he was taken prisoner and tortured after having given so much. Yet one must also remember the torture he himself used on the natives to govern Hispanola. In fact, torture may be putting it lightly; in researching this journal, genocide popped up more than once. This is who we celebrate year after year, remember.



Reading these letters makes for conflicting emotions. On the one hand, he effectively found the New World for the Europeans (read: white people like me) and we still honor that today. Such a discovery, which connected the Americas and Europe, cannot be understated. But this is also the problem. For what came from Columbus's voyages was hundreds of years continued oppression towards Native peoples, along with all of the cultural, social, and societal problems that brings. I look at Columbus, like most early explorers, with an uncomfortable ambivalence.