Blaming Columbus

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS kept a journal of his experiences, and reading it is endlessly fascinating, because of the incredible experiences he described, and because of his apparent attitude toward them. He was not ashamed of anything he did. Quite the contrary. It was he who saddled us forever with the mistaken word "indians" to describe the natives living on the islands in the Caribbean. He never accepted the fact that he had not landed in India, but rather, in a continent in the way, on the way to India. None of his ships could possibly have made it all the way across the huge pacific Ocean, so, in a sense, he was fortunate. What he wrote in his journal after he first laid eyes on the natives is hilarious, roughly paraphrased : THEY ARE IMPRESSIVE PEOPLE, ATTRACTIVE, STRONG, AND CHEERFUL. THEY SHARE EVERYTHING, WILL GIVE OR TRADE WHATEVER THEY HAVE, AND DO NOT HAVE ANY WEAPONS, NOR DO THEY WANT ANY. THEY WOULD MAKE GREAT SERVANTS, AND IF I HAD A FEW MORE MEN, I COULD CAPTURE THEM ALL, AND MAKE THEM DO WHATEVER I WANT: Honest to goodness, that's pretty much what he said. Isn't it hilarious? And, make no mistake, so very very human. So normal. The indians were smart enough to not give a damn about gold; they just wore it as earrings sometimes, sometimes they wore seashells. They gave all they had to Columbus, but he wAnted more, much more, so the enslavement, the killing, the torture began, and it did Columbus little good, because he was not on the South American mainland, withits abundant gold and silver mines, but rather, on small, mostly gold free islands in the Caribbean. The big gold from the mainland would come later, with other monster-conquerers, other men like Columbus. But Columbus had borrowed the money from the Spanish government for the his purely capitalistic venture, and was desperate to pay dividends to his investors. Returning to Europe after the first voyage, he lied through his teeth to the king of Spain about how much wealth he had found, and the king, duped, gave him many more ships and men for his next voyage, and this time, he really went to work, killing millions of people, enslaving tens of thousands, racking up some really bad karma, one would think. Several other people kept diaries of these adventures, and one priest in particular wrote something like this in his diary "IN THE FUTURE NOBODY WILL BELIEVE WHAT WE DID HERE, BECAUSE IT WAS TO HORRENDOUS TO BELIEVE" He turned out to be right, because all through American history we have ignored it. And its extremely relevant today, what Columbus did, because it set the pattern for all of American history; seize, develop, and exploit all available resources, land, mineral, and human, to produce the greatest possible amount of wealth and profit. That's pretty much our mantra today, isn't it? The next time you have to take a detour to get to your bank or stocker broker because a bunch of dirty smellly liberals are having an "Occupry Wall STreet" protest outside your gated estate, blame Columbus, both for your hollow life trapped within your wealth, and the violent chaotic world around you.