Chapter 7. Classroom
Present day. Emory University. Atlanta, Georgia.
"Good morning, class," said History Professor Charlie Winston, bending his tall frame over his Mac Book, which contained photo JPEGs for today's discussion.
"As you know, this class is called 'Who Owns the Past?' Many times in our classes together, I have pounded again and again on my thesis that the 'Winners' in life--and by that I mean the rich people, the powerful people, the vanquishers, and often times the successful oppressors-- create history in their own vision, often distorting the true events of the past and white-washing over their own crimes and misdeeds. Nothing could be a better example of that thesis than our topic of discussion today. Today is October 12, a day we celebrate as the anniversary of the day in 1492 when Christopher Columbus was supposed to have ‘discovered America.’” Winston clicked a slide on his Mac Book and a picture of the explorer appeared on the screen.
"And when we finish today, I would like you to ask yourself about this winner, Christopher Columbus, and whether American History has been badly re-written to accommodate him. Now, of course, we were all taught in grade school to remember the names of Columbus' three ships. What were they, Ms. Wallach?"
A young blonde woman with wet hair and a look which said, "Hey, I just woke up," focused her groggy eyes toward the professor and said, "The Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria."
"That's right!" exclaimed the energetic professor. He looked down to his computer, punching another photo showing the three ships.
"And can you tell us the rhyme about Columbus' discovery of America?"
The young woman, who was not very bright, lightened up. This class was going to be easy. That's two questions I already know the answer to, she thought. "In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue."
"Ha ha! Right again!" exclaimed Winston, hitting his fist on the desk. He put his pencil over his ear and looked out over the class.
"Now if we really wanted to be accurate, we would say this rhyme instead:
In fourteen hundred eighty-six
Columbus up to dirty tricks
Welcomed five men from the squall
Stole their maps and killed them all."
Morse looked around the class. He loved this part of the lecture. Columbus a murderer? The students were speechless.
"Yes, the story of Columbus begins in 1486, not 1492. In that year, Columbus was living on a small island off the western coast of Portugal called Madeira. In that year, a trader named Alonso Sanchez de Huelva left from Spain toward the Canary Islands in order to obtain sugar. A terrible sea storm blew his ship far off course to the west. De Huelva got lost and wound up in Santa Domingo, which he accidentally discovered a good six years before Columbus. The storm was devastating to the crew, and they lost twelve men from the original crew of seventeen. On de Huelva's return home, the crew managed to reach Terceira, one of the Azores Islands just west and north of Madeira.” Winston clicked the air mouse, and showed a map depicting the Azores Islands. “From there, they had limited rations, and some of the men were sick, so they sailed on to the south and east to the next island, which was Madeira. De Huelva knew Columbus from his reputation as an ocean pilot. We know that de Huelva brought with him certain maps in which de Huelva had charted the lands in the New World which he had just discovered. De Huelva told Columbus about the maps. That night, Columbus had a huge banquet for the men. They ate and drank and told stories from their ocean voyage. Plying them with wine, Columbus pumped the men for all the juicy tidbits of information related to their trip to the New World. We learn next from a reputable sixteenth century historian that, quote, 'They arrived so enfeebled by hardships that Christopher Columbus could not restore them to health despite his attentions, and they all died in his house, leaving him the heir to the hardships that had caused their death.' So let's see…. Five men come to his house. They spend the night drinking and eating and story-telling, and the next day all five men wind up dead, in his house, and they have conveniently all bequeathed their valuable maps of the New World to Columbus. If you were a Homicide Detective, would you buy that story? That sounds like Colonel Mustard with the Rope in the Library to me." Winston looked out into the crowd, hoping for a laugh. No one apparently had heard of the board game Clue. These kids were hopeless.
"Anyway, it certainly suggests the possibility that Columbus murdered them all and took their maps in the morning." The professor eyed a student in the back row. "Mr. Morse, what do you think of that?" Zach Morse was the son of the famous UCLA history and anthropology professor, John Morse, who had startled the world with his discovery last year of the lost Nostradamus prophecies. Zach had been involved with his father’s adventures and was somewhat of a celebrity as well. Zach was in the back row, leaning back his desk against the wall, closing his eyes, and jamming to some music in his ear phones. Professor Charlie Winston, looking over his glasses, scowled as he looked at the young Morse, realizing that he was not paying attention. Charlie Winston then reached into his desk, and rewarded the other students with a trademarked move for which he was known all over campus. He removed a Georgia peach from the desk, and held it up to the class, smiling. The students all laughed, knowing what was coming next. With the accuracy of Nolan Ryan, Winston whipped the peach at the long-haired teenager, hitting him in the head.
Zach Morse put down his desk, stunned and surprised by the projectile's direct hit. "Hey! WTF!" The other students laughed. Zach Morse, with his California blonde-streaked hair covering his blue eyes and knockout smile, was well-liked by most of the students…well, at least by the female students.
"Mr. Morse, may I ask you to put away your music and listen to the lecture, please?"
"Sure, no problem, sorry," said Zach, taking out his ear plugs.
"Mr. Morse, what would you say if you learned that five people came to Christopher Columbus' house seeking shelter from a storm; that the next morning, all of them were dead, and that all of the men's valuables had been fortuitously bequeathed to Columbus?"
"I'd say he whacked 'em all," said Zach.
"I think you are right, Mr. Morse. And tell us why you think that?"
Zach Morse replied, in an innocent tone at first, "Well Professor, I guess I'd say…." Morse began to smile. He put on his sunglasses. He loved showing off in front of the other students, and enjoyed beat-boxing and making up spontaneous rap lyrics. He stood up and sang:
"Oonce, oonce, oonce.
Five dudes comin' and they're all actin' tough
But Chris C capped 'em, and took their stuff,
Then to the Po-Po, he told a little fib,
Said they all died sudden right there in his crib.
Oonce, oonce, oonce."
The students all laughed hysterically, and Professor Winston raised his hands to calm them down. Winston did not like being upstaged.
"You call that a rap?" asked Professor Winston. He was not going to be outdone by this kid, no matter how popular he was.
"Straight up," said Zach.
With that, Professor Winston pulled out his own sunglasses and put them on.
"Oooooooo!" said some of the girls in the class, clearly sensing that the Professor was throwing down the gauntlet.
Professor Winston adjusted his Mac Book, made a few clicks, and then played some loud rap music from his computer.
"There once was a teacher, who tried to teach a course
But he kept getting' hassled by this kid Zach Morse,
No matter what he did, this kid don't pay attention,
So that's why he's goin'-- right off to School Detention!
Ooonce, ooonce, oonce!"
The class went wild clapping and yelling "You’ve been served!" and "He got you, Zach!" Professor Winston took off his glasses and smiled, taking a bow.
Zach Morse said, "That's lame!" under his breath, unhappy with the detention comment and not sure if the professor was really going to give him detention. In fact, Zach wasn’t even sure if they had detention in college. But he had to admit to himself that it was a pretty clever comeback.
"OK, where was I?” asked Professor Winston. “Oh yes, Christopher Columbus whacked his five guests and took all of their maps. The next thing that happens is that Columbus takes these maps from de Huelva to the King of Portugal and demands that the King pay him a healthy ransom to go 'discover' these new lands for Portugal—the lands that de Huelva already discovered. But the King of Portugal knew Columbus. He knew that Columbus was an untrustworthy pirate. So he turned him down, and that's how Columbus wound up going to the King and Queen of Spain instead."
One of the students, a preppy, skinny eighteen year-old with wire rim glasses, wasn't buying it and raised his hand.
"Yes, Mr. uh…"
"Jasper," said the young man.
"Yes, Mr. Jasper."
"It sounds to me like your evidence is a little thin to call him a murderer. I mean, you said the crew became sick as a result of their encounter with the storm and the long voyage. Isn't it possible they all just died of sickness? You don't know for certain that Columbus was a murderer, do you?"
Winston enjoyed it when his students participated in the lecture. "Mr. Jasper, I would answer your question 'Yes and No.' No, we cannot say beyond a reasonable doubt that he murdered de Huelva's men, although it looks very suspicious that he did, but I can tell you without question that Columbus was a murderer. In fact, I would go beyond that and suggest to you that he was a mass murderer of thousands of people." The class was silent and skeptical.
"That's right, I said thousands of people killed. When Columbus first landed in the Bahamas in 1492, the Santa Maria had sunk in the harbor. But the Taino and Arawak Indians were there to help. For hours, they helped the men on the sunken ship get their supplies to the shore. Columbus noted in his diary that these Indians were a 'kind people,' and the gentle Arawaks 'offered to share with anyone and when you ask for something, they never said no.' He remarked that their 'eyes are very large and beautiful.' The Indians possessed no weapons. Columbus writes in his ship logs that the Indians did not even know what a sword was, and they tested it by handling the sharp end in their hands, accidentally cutting themselves out of ignorance. They were hard-working and friendly. Columbus rewarded them by enslaving them all and putting them to work to mine precious metals.
“Some historical scholars put the original Taino population on the island of Hispaniola to be just under eight million. That's probably too high. The historian Kirkpatrick Sale put the number at three million. The real number is probably closer to two million. In any event, by the year 1500, that number had dropped to five hundred thousand. By 1516, only twelve thousand Indians remained. Soon after that, there were none at all. That is two million people wiped out in the span of twenty-four years. How did they all die? While it is certain that many Indians died from diseases brought by the Europeans, such as swine flu from the pigs Columbus brought to the island, the numbers of dead cannot merely be explained away by pig disease, and it is historically certain that hundreds of thousands, and probably millions of Indians, were murdered by Columbus and his men. We know this from the logs of Columbus himself, from Columbus’ son’s writings, from an excellent tome called History of the Indies by Catholic priest Bartolomé de las Casas, and from other historical sources.
"After arriving on the island in 1492, Columbus saw that some of the natives had pieces of metal in their noses and around their necks. He believed that somewhere close there was a native king who possessed a substantial amount of gold. In an effort to find this gold, Columbus quickly began a campaign of abusing the Indians. If an Indian resisted, Columbus would cut off his nose or his ear. Soon, the Indians tried to revolt, with pitiful weapons like stones and sticks. Columbus construed the meager revolt as an act of war by the Indians and decided that the revolt was a sufficient basis to conquer and subjugate everyone on the islands. He kidnapped twenty-five Arawaks and brought them back as slaves to Spain to show the king. The King of Spain was impressed, and authorized a substantial return trip to the islands. Although Columbus once bragged that he could subdue the entire island with fifty armed men, he brought much more than that. On his second voyage in 1493, Columbus brought seventeen war ships fully loaded with over fifteen hundred soldiers, a unit of cavalry lancers and horses, canons, and vicious attack dogs. When they returned to the islands, Columbus and his crew began slaughtering Indians. In a biography of his father, Christopher Columbus' son Ferdinand wrote (Winston clicked the air mouse to show the quote on the screen):
'The soldiers mowed down dozens with point-blank volleys, loosed the dogs to rip open limbs and bellies, chased fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer them on sword and pike, and with God's aid soon gained a complete victory, killing many Indians….'
“In 1495, having found no significant amount of gold yet, Columbus decided to bring slaves back to Spain. He rounded up fifteen hundred Arawaks, then selected the best five hundred physical specimens and brought them back to Spain as slaves. One eyewitness described it this way:
'Among them were many women who had infants at the breast. They, in order the better to escape us…left their infants anywhere on the ground, and started to flee like desperate people….'
Columbus wrote letters to the King and Queen of Spain bragging about the number of slaves on the way. Frustrated, however, by the lack of gold, Columbus instituted a tribute system among the Indians. Columbus' son Ferdiand described the system. Columbus required each native over the age of fourteen to fill a hawk's bell full of gold from the gold mine in Cibao every six weeks. If an Indian was successful, he received a brass or copper token which he was required to wear around his neck as proof of payment. The token would immunize the Indian from penalty for three months. If an Indian, however, did not deliver his quota of gold dust by the deadline set by Columbus, Columbus would order his soldiers to cut off the man's hands and let them hang off the arms by the skin, or tie the hands around the native's neck, as a lesson to the others. It is not surprising that once amputated, many of these Indians died of lack of blood, infection, or disease. If a native tried to escape, Columbus would hunt him down and burn him alive. There are some reports that when Columbus' crew ran short of meat for the dogs, the soldiers would actually butcher Arawak babies for dog food. One group of one hundred Indians was so terrified by the violence that they committed mass suicide to avoid the torture and brutality. The historian Bartolomé de las Casas, wrote in his History of the Indies that the men following Columbus would make bets as to who could cut a native in half with one swing of the sword. De Las Casas personally witnessed Columbus’ soldiers, dismember, behead or rape over 3,000 native people.
“Columbus himself was an avid slave trader. He allowed young native girls nine or ten years old to be given to his men, who raped them.” Professor Winston clicked the air mouse again, showing a new quote. “Columbus seemed utterly devoid of conscience when he wrote in his diary that:
'A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls: those from nine to ten are now in demand.'
When Columbus and his men had utterly wiped out the Indian population through murder, and they needed more slaves, they turned to black slaves. In fact, Columbus' son became the first American slave trader of Africans in 1505." Several black students looked at each other, surprised and skeptical of the revelation.
"Columbus' atrocities were so well known that Governor Francisco de Bobadilla arrested Columbus and his two brothers, shackled them in chains and sent them to Spain to answer for criminal charges related to the treatment of the Indians. But when the King and Queen of Spain saw their coffers from the New World filling with Columbus' gold, they pardoned him, allowing him to return and pillage more Indians. One famous historian once quipped that 'a ship without compass, chart or guide, but only following the trail of dead Indians who had been thrown from the ships could find his way from the Bahamas to Hispaniola.'
"And this is the man that we name our national capital after. This is the man after whom we name cities in Ohio and South Carolina. This is the man to whom we dedicate a national holiday every year and treat as a hero.” Charlie Winston, clicked an air mouse, showing pictures of Present George Herbert Walker Bush, President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, and House Speaker Nanci Pelosi. “In 1989, President George Herbert Walker Bush praised Columbus as a hero, saying: 'Christopher Columbus not only opened the door to a New World, but also set an example for us all by showing what monumental feats can be accomplished through perseverance and faith.' In 1999, the Clinton Administration established a Millenium Fund which donated American funds to restore Columbus' home in Genoa, Italy. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, an Italian American, was present, and gave glowing remarks about the importance of restoring Columbus' house. On October 9, 2002, President George W. Bush issued a presidential proclamation celebrating ‘Columbus' bold expedition [and] pioneering achievements,’ directing that ‘the flag of the United States be displayed on all public buildings on the appointed day in honor of Christopher Columbus.’"
Winston clicked the air mouse again, showing the picture of Christopher Columbus. “Columbus was a Winner in History." Unfortunately, however, Native Americans, and ultimately, all Americans, are the losers. And that is our lecture for today. Happy Columbus Day and may God Bless America!"
All the students clapped. Zach Morse went up to the professor after class.
"Are you really sending me to detention?"
"No, I will give you a stay of execution this time. But next time, no more raps in class, OK?"
"OK, sure," said Zach. Zach began to walk out of class, holding his history books under his arm, but then turned back to face the professor.
"Hey, Professor Winston."
"Yes, Zach?"
"That was a pretty good rap."
"Thanks, Zach. Yours was pretty good too." The professor pulled out another Georgia peach and underhanded it to Zach, who caught it mid-air.
"Eat your peaches, Zach. They have lots of Vitamin C."
Zach Morse smiled and left the classroom.