Christopher Columbus Misconceptions Debunked

 
Below are links to many websites and articles that tell the real truth about Christopher Columbus
 
The official Christopher Columbus Web Site
The official Christopher Columbus Facebook page
The official Christopher Columbus Twitter page
The official Christopher Columbus YouTube page
Inexpensive books available on Amazon written by Rafael
USA Today article: We're quick to rewrite history and accuse Christopher Columbus of decimating Native Americans when the truth is so much more complex.
Neil deGrasso Tyson discussing the achievement of Christopher Columbus discovering Americas
An excellent website www.truthaboutcolumbus.com with extensive and accurate information
A video provided by Bill Aiello called In Defense of Columbus, An exaggerated Evil
An excellent and professional video called Columbus, Facts & Fiction by Rich DiSilvio
An Interview by Carol Delany, an author and scholar, who has studied Christopher Columbus
 

TARGETED BULLETS ON COLUMBUS MISCONCEPTIONS

 
 
  • Columbus was illiterate. Columbus had a basic grammar school education provided by his father’s merchant guild on Vico de Pavia Street as a young boy learning his father’s trade as a merchant and Christian theology. The school was not a university as some have claimed. Later when he arrived in Portugal he met his brother Bartholomeo and together enrolled in a school of navigation learning not only navigation but Latin, astronomy, mathematics, geography, cartography, and calligraphy.
    (Kling & West, Book of Prophecies, p.20) "The Worlds of Christopher Columbus" by Phillips, p. 91.
  • Columbus was accused of piracy. In the Spanish annals the word used was “corsario” which was a licensed privateer promoted by the Sovereigns, as well as other European monarchs, to raid enemy ships and bring the war booty back to the crown, a method of sea-faring warfare. In 1476 Columbus sailed with a corsair Genoese fleet that engaged in battle with a French fleet. Pirates (“Pirata”) were unlicensed renegades and rogues who pilfered for their own self-greed and gave nothing to their monarchs.
    (Rafael, Columbus The Hero, p. 37)
  • Columbus took “prisoners” or “slaves” soon after landfall in the Caribbean on his first voyage. Columbus’ scheme was to impress natives into service for legitimate purposes. They were taken to act as guides and interpreters in a land totally unfamiliar to him and his crew, and they were treated as part of the crew, given food and clothing. Columbus extracted from them an elementary understanding of their language while also teaching them the Castilian tongue for the ultimate purpose of eventually transmitting Christian theology to them. No forced labor aboard the ship took place.
    (Fusion, The Log of Christopher Columbus)
  • Columbus was greedy for gold. He was obsessed about finding gold as a means, not an end for him and his crew to benefit. The plan was to discover as much gold as possible for the purpose of financing a crusade to the East to wrest the Holy Land from the Moslems and spread Christianity.
    (Fusion, The Log of Christopher Columbus, p. 157)
  • Upon returning on his first voyage in 1493 Columbus brought native “prisoners” back to Spain. To show proof of his discoveries he brought natives back as trophies to show the Sovereigns of his unique contact with these people whom Europeans never saw before. He only took six, and more wanted to go. In Spain three were baptized with Columbus and the Sovereigns acting as godparents. They weren’t prisoners.
    (Delaney, Columbus and The Quest for Jerusalem, p. 110)
  • The mission of Columbus’ second voyage was to take slaves. The mission was to begin establishing settlement, trading outposts (similar to the Portuguese in Africa), finding gold to finance the East crusade, and begin conversion of the Indians to Christianity. Consequently, more ships (17) and more settlers (1,200) were enlisted this time. This was also the first voyage missionaries were brought on board.
    (Delaney, Columbus and The Quest for Jerusalem, p. 125-128)
  • Columbus brutalized the Indians. When Columbus first made landfall on his first voyage, he immediately distributed glass beads, red caps, and bonnets to the natives who in turn extended parrots and cotton balls. Columbus always instructed his men to trade with the Indians when offered a gift by them. When he took natives on board to act as guides and interpreters, they told other natives they came in contact with that Columbus’ men were men of peace from heaven and not to fear them. On his expeditions whenever he met natives he always extended gifts to them. Troubles with the Indians began when the crew left behind after the first voyage instigated plundering, raping, and abduction against Columbus’ strict orders to maintain cordiality and respect amongst the natives while Columbus was on his way back to Spain in 1493. Mosen Pedro Margarit, Francisco Roldan, Francisco de Bobadilla, and Nicolas de Ovando instigated atrocities in subsequent years while Columbus was either in the hinterlands establishing trading posts, making deals with Indians for more food for his crew, exploring other islands, marooned on Jamaica, or back in Spain organizing voyages. In other cases the natives so riled up by mistreatment attacked the settlement periodically, which forced Columbus to protect the settlement, his men and his life. Consequently, natives were taken as prisoners of war and shipped back to Spain or were forced to pay tribute as a vanquished people, nothing unusual for warfare at that time but rather expected by both sides.
    (Delaney, Columbus and The Quest for Jerusalem, p. 91-98)
    (Morison, Admiral of The Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, p. 562 & pp. 481-484)
  • Columbus ruled the settlement with an iron fist. He had to to control avaricious, wandering, ambitious men who carved out their own fiefdoms and captured women as concubines and men as slaves when he wasn’t present. Nobles on the expedition refused to work the land and relinquish the horses to move timber and stone while establishing the settlement, especially as more settlers succumbed to sickness. In those cases Columbus had them whipped, and those who committed atrocities against the natives were hung. While marooned on Jamaica during his fourth voyage, the crew actually built crude huts on the ship to keep the men off the land and make contact with the natives.
    (Morison, Admiral of The Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, pp. 570-572 & pp. 640-642)
  • Columbus ran a sex ring. When he sailed with the Portuguese in his early years, he noticed their captains allowed the sailors to bring their wives on board for the expeditions. Consequently, the men were happy, manageable, and obedient. Columbus used the same approach when he took natives on board as guides and interpreters, and when natives gave him 7 women as a gesture of friendship, he gave them to his men. When the men subsequently mistreated the women, he stopped the practice. On his fourth voyage natives had given him a 7 year old and an 11 year old girl who according to Columbus acted like harlots. He fed them, clothed them, and returned them to the natives. When Francisco Bobadilla arrested Columbus, put him in chains, and sent him back to face charges for executing renegade Spaniards, he told the settlers “to do what you want because we do not know how long this will last.” The men went on a rampage capturing women and auctioned them off to the highest bidder.
    (Rafael, Columbus The Hero, pp. 185-189)
  • Columbus was a terrible navigator. Amongst his own peers he was declared the best navigator of the age. He could read the wind, waves, the currents, and the clouds and predict storms. He was one of the first to use celestial navigation but sparingly. If he did, he focused on the North Star and the “Guards” ( the two last and brightest stars of the Little Dipper Constellation). He discovered magnetic north in the Western Hemisphere and took note of the change in weather and the constellations of the stars when he crossed the Prime Meridian. Modern-day mariners most particularly marvel at his uncanny ability to navigate through “dead reckoning” with just a compass, quadrant, and navigational charts and maps. He also was smart enough to realize that the way back to Spain on return voyages was to capture the force of the prevailing westerlies when so many of his peers and crew were terribly fearful of never being able to get back. Today cruise ships, military vessels, and merchant ships still use the route of his first voyage when traveling to the Caribbean.
    (Morison, Admiral of The Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus)

the truth about christopher columbus