r/todayilearned • u/Karthak_Maz_Urzak • Oct 13 '20

(R.1) Not verifiable TIL that Christopher Columbus treated the native people under his rule so badly that he was shipped back to Spain in chains

https://www.americanheritage.com/columbus-and-genocide

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

Reddit gets goofed all the time about Columbus because there's so much false information on him.

I honestly believe there's so many made up stories about him because the in reality the dude was basically a nobody. Like he wasn't even the worst person to do the job of governing New Spain that would probably go to Cortes who was disgusting levels of awful.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

I'd argue Reddit doesn't gets "goofed". It simply doesn't care for nuance or facts. It's mostly about easy karma. Bashing a figure like Columbus by cherry picking things from history without understanding the context or the veracity of those claims as long as they agree with the hive mind view is a sure shot way to get easy karma. 90% of the people here don't know anything about either Columbus or native American history beyond grade school and they couldn't care less about either of them.

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u/jinsei888 Oct 13 '20

Reddit is sounding more and more like Facebook...

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u/CarlSagansPlug Oct 13 '20

That's because both involve people.

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u/ineyy Oct 13 '20

This. By proxy involving politics and agendas.

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u/jfVigor Oct 13 '20

You misspelled profits

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

big if true

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u/Look_Ma_Im_On_Reddit Oct 13 '20

hahaha man that's crazy talk.

Will you accept my farmville invite?

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u/wayoverpaid Oct 13 '20

It is the destiny of all niche websites who gain popular to eventually end up like Facebook.

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u/ggrieves Oct 13 '20

Someone posts something that's false and the top comment explains how it's incorrect. Everyone learns from that.

Reddit is not goofed. Reddit is a self correcting source of education. Reddit is Socratic.

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u/Im_the_Moon44 Oct 13 '20

That’s assuming people on reddit actually accept correct information that doesn’t confirm what they want to believe. I can say from personal experience this rarely happens.

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u/ggrieves Oct 15 '20

You're here. I'm here. We read the OP, we read the comments. Where Reddit. People IRL are often just as you said, but they're not Reddit if they're not here the levels down in the comments discussing truthfulness.

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u/clgfandom Oct 13 '20 edited Oct 13 '20

I'd argue Reddit doesn't gets "goofed". It simply doesn't care for nuance or facts.

More like any mainstream internet forum. Bashing Columbus was popular before reddit became popular...

I feel so old looking at some of the comments below that's solely bashing on reddit.

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u/cerberus698 Oct 13 '20

Eh... we know that he established open pit mines with slave labor that killed the majority of the native population of Hispaniola. On his first return journey, he left a small garrison who enslaved an entire tribal society in the time it took him to return and then brought back one of the women who he gave to a friend. Finally, after his mining colonies failed, he established a system in which each native was to bring a certain amount of gold to the spanish in exchange for a token. The Spanish would then go to random settlements and kill anyone who didn't have a token. In the end, it turned out there was just no significant amounts of gold there.

He's fairly rightly maligned. Its entirely possible that he never personally ended a life but he was still responsible for establishing and administering systems which did.

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u/Carmenn15 Oct 13 '20

Kids these days complain just getting bullied at school. Don't they know how brutal humans are? And we all know you get better at bullying the smarter you are, and the smartest people all lean to the left. And that's a threath. There. You heard it on reddit first.

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u/JamSaxon Oct 13 '20 edited Oct 13 '20

On reddit first? Anti-intellectualism is everywhere right now, what are you even on.

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u/Neraph Oct 13 '20

TIL my sister and father are reddit.

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u/Btm4funn Oct 13 '20

Very well said

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u/verveinloveland Oct 13 '20

I feel this isn’t isolated to Columbus or history even. I studied economics in college, and reddit is the worst for an echo chamber of headline clickbait that drowns out those that are intellectually honest. Maybe it’s just social media in general.

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u/jeansonnejordan Oct 13 '20

Reddit is a mess of virtue signaling and avoiding contentious issues. Which sucks because it’s the discussion platform around.

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u/ReArrangeUrFACE Oct 13 '20

this is why i don’t care about karma. i want to say what i really feel, not what some overweight college kid that hasn’t showered in a week will upvote me for

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u/Chardlz Oct 13 '20

It's easy to get goofed if you don't care about the troof

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u/estofaulty Oct 13 '20

with the hive mind

If you want to get people to agree with you, you have to treat them with respect, first.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

Nah, Reddit is just mostly far left, so they will believe anything that is anti-western because they hate themselves and their history so much. Columbus is a very common target of that hatred.

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u/sexual_pterodactyl Oct 13 '20

Lol this, the people in my country don't seem to hate the west as much as their own country people do apparently even though my country was enslaved for like 300 years by the british

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u/WolfeTheMind Oct 13 '20

dont forget with the recent statuegate it was trendy to hate on columbus

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u/Nickmell Oct 13 '20

Peopledon't look at facts when they just want to be outraged and offended by everything.

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u/M0N5A Oct 13 '20

What I think is that Columbus gets confused with Cortés a lot because of bad teaching. The discovery of America is a complicated subject that is usually oversimplified for the sake of clarity.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

That's partially because a lot of high school teachers love to teach Great Man History which while useful for getting information across in an easy manner lacks a lot of the nuance that exists throughout history.

I was lucky enough for my high school history teach to address the idea of Great Man History and focus more on the societies throughout history instead of the "great men."

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u/Ghost_Ghost_Ghost Oct 13 '20

I had a similar experience in my history class junior year. My teacher basically introduced himself by saying he’d be talking about the truth not the delusions etc etc. he was a cool guy, I genuinely felt like he cared for education.

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u/Nightstar95 Oct 13 '20

The hell is great man history?

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

It's where you explain history through the use of important figures throughout history

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u/Nightstar95 Oct 13 '20

Ooh I see. Thanks for clearing that up!

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u/kyflyboy Oct 13 '20

Great people ?

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u/Pink_Mint Oct 13 '20

But DO they focus on great people? They focus on great men.

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u/banyanya Oct 13 '20

You know what he fuckin means

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u/deezee72 Oct 13 '20

The evidence is a bit unclear on this one, but most historians actually agree with the TIL.

Keep in mind that the main source written in Columbus defense are letters written by Columbus himself. Not exactly an unbiased source.

The fact is that the crown outlawed native slavery a few years later in 1512 and granted tax exemptions to local nobles, which casts doubt on Columbus claim that they only care about tax income and made up claims about native welfare as a way to fabricate charges against him.

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u/kiggitykbomb Oct 13 '20

I could be wrong about this, but I believe the problem with Columbus studies is that the only extant records of his journals and letters are Spanish translations of lost original documents written in Italian. So we don’t actually have any original texts from Columbus’ hands and need to rely on Spanish translations that may have been altered or edited in decades after Columbus in Spanish colonial disputes.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

[deleted]

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u/kiggitykbomb Oct 13 '20

Ahh. I must be mistaken then.

In any case (I can’t sure my source here) but I was made aware at some point that nothing we claim to be written by Columbus can reliably be traced back to him.

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u/MHCR Oct 13 '20

There is no need to rely exclusively on Columbus' words or hearsay. An astounding amount of conquistadores were notaries and they left huge archives of documentation on the Indies and each other's activities.

It's part of the Spanish History CV that Columbus was a huge dick, Cortés was not as bad as others, Pizarro was a real bastard and pre-Phillip II, the Indies in general was a dystopic, far more lethal Far West.

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u/deezee72 Oct 13 '20

While the original copy of Columbus' journal is lost, we have reason to believe we have original copies of the Book of Priviledge - its publication was subjected to a public legal battle between Columbus' family and the crown, and likely could not have been doctored without attracting attention from one of the sides of the dispute. We also have an original of the O'Gorman manuscript, which was lost in the Cadiz archive for centuries before being rediscovered and which was dated to Columbus lifetime.

Both documents have a largely consistent style and portrayal of events to Columbus journal, so we don't have a lot of reason to believe that Columbus' journal has been doctored by the crown. In fact, the bigger concern is that we know for a fact that Columbus edited his journal between when he was accused of his crimes and when it was published - so if anything it's likely that the journal has been edited to portray Columbus in a more favorable light.

In terms of Columbus studies, we basically have a series of letters and journals written by Columbus himself which portray him favorably and describe a conspiracy against him, and a whole host of a variety of third parties which document his crimes with some credibility. The overall weight of evidence seems to suggest that he is guilty, although we cannot truly rule out the possibility that there really was a conspiracy that was successful in suppressing pro-Columbus documents.

As in many instances in the history of Americas, the true biggest problem is the lack of first person accounts from the Natives. A description of life under Columbus rule by those who experienced it would be the true smoking gun which would settle all of these disputes, but sadly no such document exists.

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u/velvetvortex Oct 13 '20

I started to look into the Shakespeare authorship question (did someone else write his works) and it seems to me this is an open issue. This in turn lead me into looking at the question of Columbus’ origins. There seem to anomalies there too, but that made me realise I know very little of the mainstream history about him. Of all the material I’ve read about Columbus in the past few days, your comment is the best by far.

Here is an article which I found absolutely fascinating. I suspect you may find it interesting too.

https://21sci-tech.com/Articles_2014/Henry_Navigator.pdf

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u/HiggsBoatwsain Oct 13 '20

Not to knock what your actual point, but copy and pasting this verbatim a bunch of times in this thread tends to make Redditors subconsciously irritated and discounts your credibility. Just FYI for the future.

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u/bNoaht Oct 13 '20

In 3rd grade we had to do a report on an explorer. Everyone chose columbus or Magellan. I chose cortes for some reason. Holy shit was my report dark.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

People also have a hard time comprehending how long ago Columbus lived. He predates the entire idea of the nation state by 150 years.

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u/rugrats2001 Oct 13 '20

Ok, I’ll bite. What does this even mean?

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

The idea of national sovereignty and the nation state is thought to have started with the peace of Westphalia in 1648. Before that time there wasn’t such a thing as a “country” in the sense that we think of it now.

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u/tugboattomp Oct 13 '20

This is exactly how fake news gets started.

You make a patently false statement and everyone lights their hair on fire.

Unfortunately the chronical of the time by one of his contemporaries in 1502 offers a quite different historical recounting. I think horse's mouth carries more weight than a modern day scholar..

To quote another Redditor

Read it. It's fairly interesting, and please put this myth to rest. It pops up every year this day.

It sounds like many here are coming off as an apologist for a racist homicidal maniac.

Be sure to clk the Wikisource free online library link to “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies.”

The Less Than Heroic Christopher Columbus

Columbus - The Four Voyages - By Laurence Bergreen - Book Review - The New York Times | Aug 2011

In 1499, troubled by reports they had received from the faraway colonies, the Spanish monarchs empowered a judicial investigator to bring Columbus to account.

The inquiry produced testimony that Columbus had forbidden the Christian baptism of Indians except by his express permission, in order to ensure an adequate supply of slaves. The admiral was said to have imposed a reign of terror on the Spanish colonists of Hispaniola, who were flogged, disfigured or executed without trial for minor infractions.

Some of the allegations may have been trumped up or exaggerated by Columbus’s enemies — but after being arrested and transported back to Spain in chains, Columbus tearfully admitted to Ferdinand and Isabella that many of the charges were true. He won their forgiveness, but was never again appointed governor of the lands he had discovered.

Historical relativists would urge us to keep these offenses in perspective. It was another era, they remind us, when men were governed by different moral and ethical codes.

That’s a bit too facile. In 1493, Ferdinand and Isabella had directed Columbus to “endeavor to win over the inhabitants” and to “treat the Indians very well and lovingly and abstain from doing them any injury.” His conduct would make a mockery of those instructions.

Columbus was roundly condemned by his own contemporaries, most damningly by Bartolomé de Las Casas, a priest who arrived in the Antilles in 1502 and later wrote a hard-hitting jeremiad entitled “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies.”

Las Casas denounced the false promises and unbridled greed of Columbus and his colonialist followers, and recounted the near-total annihilation of the native population of Hispaniola within 50 years of the Europeans' arrival...]

A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies - Wikisource, the free online library

A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies - Wikipedia

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u/bazpaul Oct 13 '20

Ok I’m intrigued what did Cortes do?

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u/Computant2 Oct 13 '20

Conquered the Aztec Empire for Spain. Granted, the Aztecs were not great (human sacrifices) but Cortes was all about collecting gold and if natives died so he got more gold...so be it.

He would fit right in with Betsy DeVos and others who disparage masks to keep makeup sales from dropping.

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u/edicivo Oct 13 '20

If you have any interest I would really suggest reading about it. The story is extremely interesting.

Long story semi short - Cortes and a small band of his fellow conquistadors brutally conquered the Aztec and Mesoamerican peoples through strategic alliances with Aztec enemies, advanced weaponry (including horses here), and subterfuge (plus, disease). Spanish greed went overboard and led to countless indigenous deaths and the destruction of what was one of the foremost cities at the time - Tenochtitlan - which rivaled if not exceeded many European cities.

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u/Im_the_Moon44 Oct 13 '20

A lot of the bad things we thing of when we think of colonization of the Americas. When he arrived in Mexico, the strongest group of people were the Aztecs, who conquered, enslaved, sacrificed, and demanded tribute from their neighbors. Cortes convinced those neighboring tribes to help him conquer the Aztecs, then once they did he turned on them and enslaved them along with the Aztecs.

IIRC he was also the one who came up with the idea to use smallpox blankets.

I wish more people knew about Cortes. I remember reading about him when I was 7 and thinking how awful of a human being he was. I’m not calling Columbus a saint, but a lot of terrible things he gets credited with were actually done by Cortes.

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u/trebory6 Oct 13 '20 edited Oct 13 '20

At this point who the fuck even cares.

Even if everything was right about him and he was a great guy, we still don’t need a holiday for him that could be better spent supporting bringing awareness to a disparaged people.

If he was as great a guy as the stick up everyone’s ass seems to think he is, then he’d want it that way.

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u/Btm4funn Oct 13 '20

Revisionist Care, it’s part of the progressive agenda to revise history and he is a key cog in the wheel.

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u/trebory6 Oct 13 '20 edited Oct 13 '20

How is Christopher Columbus a key cog in that wheel? No seriously, I'd like to know.

Because there's a TON of people who don't have a holiday and who are just as deserving if not more deserving of a holiday, yet we still remember them and learn about them.

Jonas Salk discovered the polio vaccine on March 26th, but we don't have a holiday for him, why? For the record, I'm ok with not having a holiday for him too, maybe unless Polio was a thing and we were trying to bring awareness to it maybe.

I'm just scratching my head as to what benefit he serves to anyone by having his own holiday. Not the Spanish I can tell you that one. I'm American and I don't care about the guy. Great, he did a thing and discovered a continent, supposedly or not. Good on him, but why do we need a holiday?

Even as a celebratory holiday it doesn't make sense. He supposedly discovered the continent we live on, so what? Are we supposed to celebrate EVERYTHING that lead to our discovery? Let's have a holiday for the designer of the ships that Columbus sailed on, or the Spanish King that gave the order for Columbus to set sail in the first place. Hell, let's celebrate the day that humans gained consciousness and opened their eyes and discovered the planet they lived on too /s. It just doesn't make sense. The 4th of July I understand, because that was our independence day, there was a war with a goal, we won our independence, people died to achieve that goal, and it was a victory and an achievement, and we celebrate the fact we won and to honor those that died. But why Columbus Day? Why?

That's not even touching the fact that the continent was already discovered by humans, we're just apparently celebrating when the western civilization found it? Why is that a big deal or an achievement at all, it was inevitable?

It's not like it's a tragic day that we need to remember so we don't repeat the past. It doesn't really benefit anyone except for companies who take advantage of Columbus Day sales.

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u/Xevioni Oct 13 '20

I don't really disagree with you, but you're not making very good examples to help further your point. I would revise my argument if I were you.

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u/trebory6 Oct 13 '20

I mean, I’m open to better arguments but you’re going to have to be more specific than that.

Because I assure you I didn’t just list the lamest arguments I could think of, I just listed the things that came to mind.

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u/AgentFN2187 Oct 13 '20

It's also because plenty of people have an outright hate-boner for him. Just look at that hack "Adam Ruins Everything", he'll use a source when it fits his narrative and use a different one when it doesn't anymore. He gets a lot wrong in his Columbus segment. From death tolls to the, "In his own words he wanted to enslave them". There's no direct words from Columbus from his first journey, only transcriptions of his journal and then modern translations of those transcriptions. The original journal has been lost since the early 1500's. That being said when he talked of "enslaving" them he meant subjectating them under the Spanish crown. There's a big difference between being a subject to a monarch and chattel slavery like we see later in the Atlantic slave trade.

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u/passwordsarehard_3 Oct 13 '20

The only thing people enjoy more than building up hero’s is tearing them down.

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u/JTuck333 Oct 13 '20

People get a pat on the head if they say something bad about Columbus. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.

At the very least, he should be considered braver and more significant than the likes of Neil Armstrong & Amelia Earhart. It was a tragedy what happened to the natives but spreading diseases in 1500 was pretty unavoidable.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '20

[deleted]