In the secular historical attack, Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) is the symbol of European greed and genocidal imperialism. In reality, Columbus was a man of his time—a devout Catholic with an interest in evangelization, motivated by religious and personal goals.
During his lifetime, Columbus’s achievements were criticized and downplayed, and he waned in the public memory until preparations to celebrate the quadricentennial of his first voyage were undertaken in the United States. Irish and Italian Catholic immigrants embraced him and revived his memory, but the man and his motivations became lost in a political, societal, and cultural conflict, anchored by the secular historical attack, which culminated in slandering him as deliberately genocidal—a harbinger of destruction, enslavement, and death upon the happy and prosperous people of the Americas.
Russell Means, a leader of the American Indian Movement, characterized this sentiment with his opinion on the explorer: “Columbus makes Hitler look like a juvenile delinquent” (40). Other critics liken Columbus’s voyage to opening a new front in the Crusades as that movement to the east became impossible with the rise of the Ottoman Turks.
In the United States, the vitriol directed against Columbus produces annual protests every October with the observance of Columbus Day. A growing movement wants to abolish Columbus Day as a federal holiday, and several cities already celebrate instead “Indigenous Peoples Day.” Columbus has become a Catholic symbol of the modern Western world’s obsession with a sanctimonious, victimhood-focused narratives rooted in anti-Catholic bias.
The real story of Christopher Columbus and his voyages to the New World begins in Portugal, with the actions of Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460). Henry studied ocean currents and wind movement to improve navigation for sailing ships and sent Portuguese vessels and sailors down the West African coast, seeking a trade route to India. He also invented the caravel, a light ship that was perfect for long-distance, uncharted exploration.
Henry and his sailors inaugurated the great age of explorers finding new lands and creating shipping lanes for the import and export of goods, including consumables never before seen in Europe. Their efforts also created intense competition among the sailing nations of Europe, each striving to outdo the others in finding new and more efficient trade routes.
It was into this world of innovation, exploration, and economic competition that Columbus was born. A native of the Italian city-state of Genoa, Columbus became a sailor at the age of fourteen. He learned the nautical trade sailing on Genoese merchant vessels and became an accomplished navigator.
Finally, in May 1486, he secured a royal audience with King Fernando and Queen Isabel of Spain. The queen was intrigued by Columbus’s proposal to seek the east by going west. The explorer requested a patent of nobility, the titles of admiral of the Ocean Sea and viceroy and governor of all discovered lands, and ten percent in dividends of all future trade for his daring trip. Isabel agreed, and queen and sailor signed an agreement in April 1492.
Columbus embarked from Spain on August 3, 1492, with ninety men on three ships: the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María. The crew comprised mostly Spanish sailors, with no soldiers, illustrating that the voyage was bent on not conquest, but exploration.
After thirty-three days at sea, Columbus’s flotilla spotted land (the Bahamas), which he claimed in the name of the Spanish monarchs. Columbus’s modern-day detractors view that as a sign of imperial conquest. It was not; it was simply a sign to other European nations that they could not establish trading posts on the Spanish possession.
On this first voyage, Columbus also reached the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola. He stayed four months in the New World and arrived home on March 15, 1493. The Santa María ran aground on Hispaniola, so Columbus was forced to leave forty-two men behind. He ordered the Spaniards to treat the indigenous people well and especially to respect the women, but he discovered on his second voyage that his order had not been heeded.
Columbus made four voyages to the New World, and each brought its own discoveries and adventures. Columbus left on his second voyage in September 1493 with a fleet of seventeen ships and 1,200 crewmen, including five missionaries. The third voyage was the most difficult for Columbus, as he was arrested on charges of mismanagement of the Spanish trading enterprise in the New World and sent back to Spain in chains (though he was later exonerated). Columbus’s fourth and final voyage took place in 1502-1504, with his son Fernando among the crew. The crossing of the Atlantic was the fastest ever: sixteen days. The expedition visited Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica and was marooned for a time on Jamaica.
Most modern accounts of Columbus’s voyages mistake his motives by focusing narrowly on the “what”—usually pecuniary or political—rather than on the “why” behind his expeditions. Columbus embraced the Catholic worldview of his age. In a letter to King Fernando and Queen Isabel in December 1492, Columbus encouraged the monarchs to “spend all the profits of this my enterprise on the conquest of Jerusalem” (vii). And so his primary motive was to find gold . . . but to finance a crusade to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims and fulfill the conditions he believed were necessary for the Second Coming of Christ![1]
Columbus considered himself a “Christ-bearer” like his namesake, St. Christopher, and believed that the evangelization of all peoples was a condition for Jesus’ return. His first words to the people of Hispaniola illustrated his focus on evangelization: “The monarchs of Castile have sent us not to subjugate you, but to teach you the true religion” (27). The explorer recognized that the native peoples of the New World required catechesis and was angered by the chief missionary who accompanied his second voyage, who believed that baptism with no further instruction was sufficient for the new converts. In a 1502 letter to Pope Alexander VI (r. 1492-1503), Columbus asked the pontiff to send missionaries to the indigenous peoples of the New World so they could accept Christ. Columbus desired the evangelization efforts in the New World to continue after his death, and he established an evangelization fund in his will to finance missionary efforts to the lands he discovered.
Columbus’s interactions with the indigenous peoples of the New World generate significant interest among modern people and are the foundation of much myth-making from the secular historical attack. Contrary to the popular myth, Columbus initially treated many of the native peoples with great respect and friendship. He was impressed by their “generosity, intelligence, and ingenuity” (see Delaney, 97). He recorded in his diary that “in the world there are no better people or a better land. They love their neighbors as themselves, and they have the sweetest speech in the world and [they are] gentle and always laughing” (107).
Columbus demanded that his men exchange gifts with the natives they encountered and not just take what they wanted. He enforced this policy rigorously: on his third voyage in August 1500, he hanged men who disobeyed him by harming the native people.
The secular historical attack posits that Columbus sailed to the New World intent on the enslavement of the native peoples. That myth is widely believed and difficult to eradicate despite the evidence in the historical record.
Columbus had no plan to enslave native peoples when he began his expeditions, but circumstances during the second and third voyages drove him to implement harsh measures, “including enslavement of Indians captured in military actions when there seemed no other way to restore order. But this was not a policy intended to establish a regime of slavery” (see Royal, 66).
Columbus’s views concerning the native peoples changed over the course of his multiple voyages based on his interaction with the various tribes and with unruly Spanish settlers. He was a brilliant sailor, navigator, and fearless explorer, but he was not an able administrator. He was not a violent man, but he utilized violence at times when his poor leadership led to preventable crises. His intentions were good, as his contemporaries, including Bartolomé de las Casas, who knew him, maintained, but he made critical errors in judgment from which the indigenous peoples suffered.
Columbus and his actions in the New World are not immune to legitimate criticism, but the use of this daring explorer, who fundamentally altered world history, as a Catholic target to attack the Church and Western history is a travesty of justice. There is no doubt that Columbus was a complex man, and his actions in the New World reflected the complexities of his experiences and the time in which he lived. He is neither the saint nor the genocidal fanatic portrayed by different groups with their own agendas in the modern world.
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[1] Near the end of his life, Columbus compiled a book, Libro de las profecías (Book of Prophecies), about the connection between the liberation of Jerusalem and the Second Coming of Christ.