Goodbye Columbus

I never could understand why Italian-Americans embraced Columbus.  Yes, he was Italian, but had no idea where he was, and never set foot on what is now the United States.  Columbus came to Haiti, which he had previously named Hispaniola, floated around the Caribbean on four voyages, eventually making it to the Mexican isthmus, but was still convinced these were all islands in the Pacific Ocean.  Meanwhile, another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, mapped a large piece of what is now the Brazilian coastline, and determined that this was a new continent, not Cipango, the islands of Japan, which is what Columbus thought the Caribbean islands were, even if the inhabitants didn't look very Asian.

Yet, we are loaded with references to Columbus, from the District of Columbia, to the Columbia River to Columbus, Ohio, not to mention all the statues across this great land of ours.  Governor Andrew Cuomo got very defensive when it was suggested that the state should take down the statue of Columbus at Columbus Circle, citing the reverence Italian-Americans like himself have for Columbus.

I suppose it is the idea of being the first that is so appealing, even if he wasn't the first.  The Vikings had long discovered the Canadian coastline, which was given several names including Vinland, or land of wine.  Viking settlements stretched down to the Bay of Fundy.  Even before the Vikings, Farley Mowat was convinced the Albans had made their way to Canada, which he wrote in The Farfarers.

However, this is all very Eurocentric, as what we now call the native Americans had long before crossed over the Bering Sea and made their way into North America, eventually peopling the entire twin continents from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego.  Darwin noted the indigenous people of this godforsaken land in his Voyages of the Beagle.  Ironically, they are of Asian descent, largely Mongolian, although the Hopi are thought to be of ancient Japanese descent.

It is pretty clear neither Columbus nor the Vikings discovered America.  Yet, these myths endure largely because Americans of Scandinavian and Italian descent like to point to these early explorers as having been here long before the English colonists set foot on American soil.  It's about staking your claim.  I have a Danish friend who is convinced the Vikings discovered potatoes long before Columbus, and brought them back to Denmark.  There is a Purple Viking potato but it is an American variation created in the 1960s at a North Dakota experiment station.  Maybe this is what he was thinking about?

In both cases, Columbus and earlier Vikings had no real idea where they were.  The Vikings pretty much saw the Canadian coastline as an extension of their own coastline, even as they encountered new people.  As they moved further south, they found more fertile lands, but they never made anything more than beachheads.  Columbus was far more enterprising, building permanent settlements and exploiting the local natives, determined to find the gold he sought in the Orient.  The Ottoman Empire had cut off land access to Asia.  Other Spanish explorers soon followed, who would find the gold and silver and other precious minerals that had eluded Columbus.  Most notable among them being Cortez and Pizarro, who conquered the Aztecs and Incans, and brought back these vast fortunes to the King of Spain.

British and Dutch traders caught wind of these galleons laden with gold, and soon began raiding the Spanish ships on their way back across the Atlantic.  Walter Raleigh was one of these early "privateers," who set up his base of operations at Roanoke, Virginia, in the late 16th century.  They had smaller, faster ships that could easily outmaneuver the heavily laden Spanish galleons.  The problem with the Spanish is that there "possessions" soon became so far flung that they had no way to protect them, making them easy prey to these privateers.

No one much thought about the Italians at this time.  Their great age of exploration was over.  It had now become a battle between the English, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese traders, ever building better ships to circumnavigate the globe in search of more treasures.  It was the Spanish who eventually set themselves up in the Philippines and traded with China, giving them one of the few things they didn't have - silver. Chinese became so obsessed with silver that they would trade almost anything for it.  Soon Europe was awash in the finest porcelain, silks and other precious objects.  This made the peso the first form of international currency.

I suppose Columbus does deserve some credit for getting the ball rolling, so to speak, but given that this Silver Era became the Great Age of Exploitation, it is not the type of legacy we really want to be celebrating 500+ years later.  This is why there is a concerted move to make Columbus Day into Indigenous People Day, giving the native Americans their due as truly being the first people to discover this land.