| Below are links to many websites and
articles that tell the real truth about
Christopher Columbus |
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The
official Christopher Columbus Web Site |
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The
official Christopher Columbus Facebook page |
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The official Christopher Columbus Twitter page |
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The official Christopher Columbus YouTube page |
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Inexpensive books available on Amazon written by
Rafael |
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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. |
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Neil deGrasso Tyson discussing the achievement
of Christopher Columbus discovering Americas |
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An excellent website www.truthaboutcolumbus.com
with extensive and accurate information |
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A video
provided by Bill Aiello called In Defense of
Columbus, An exaggerated Evil |
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An excellent and professional video called
Columbus, Facts & Fiction by Rich DiSilvio |
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TARGETED BULLETS ON COLUMBUS MISCONCEPTIONS
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- 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.
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- 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)
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- 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)
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- 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)
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- 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)
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- 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)
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- 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)
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- 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)
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- 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)
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- 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)
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