Hey Chicago! Can We Talk About Christopher Columbus?

So I attended Chicago Public Schools until the end of 7th grade (Go Morgan Park High School), and up until that last year, I was always told that Christopher Columbus was a hero to be celebrated.

He discovered America.

Now, as a child, I didn't quite have the cognitive abilities to raise or tackle with the multitude of questions that should arise in that statement;

How do you discover something that already has tenants?
What happened to the people who already lived there.

It was in 7th grade, while attending Morgan Park High School as part of their middle school magnet program, that I received an alternate perspective of Columbus.

He committed genocide, likely leading to the deaths of millions, as well as overseeing the rape and torture of countless people.

Now let's stop and acknowledge how those two views of one person can't possibly be any further away from each other.

And it is in this chasm in which we find ourselves now. As you likely heard, a few months back there was a protest in the Grant Park area, that led to protestors attempting to pull down the statue of Columbus that exists there. The Chicago Police Department offered an aggressive response, resulting in multiple injuries of both officers and protestors, including an 18-year-old recent graduate having several teeth knocked out.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot went on to condemn both protestors and police in the violent clashes, and said that the city would begin “developing a plan to pursue that public conversation & to engage in a comprehensive review of our public icons to identify which should change, and where we need new monuments and icons to be erected to ensure our full, robust history is told.”

It's also important to note that several alderman as well as state officials condemned the use of force to protect the statue in a statement that read,

“We unequivocally condemn Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s decision to send the Chicago police to beat, arrest, and terrorize the demonstrators and journalists gathered in Grant Park tonight. We have seen all too clearly this summer that police are not, can not, and will not quell the terrible and tragic violence in our neighborhoods. Instead, they use their batons and pepper spray to defend luxury retail shops and statues of genocidal figures.”

Some time later, members of the Italian American community gathered at the statue for a a press conference. While they insinuated that the message of their press conference was to call for peace, they immediately followed that up by threatening war if Columbus continued to be attacked.

“Why are you picking on Christopher Columbus" one of the speakers at the press conference said.

So, can we take a few minutes and talk about Columbus?

One of the best ways to examine the attitude, actions and nature of Christopher Columbus is to look at the primary sources we have on his arrival to the Americas. Most famously known are the words written in the logs of his ship by Columbus himself, and in the writings of Bartolomé de Las Casas, a young priest accompanying the voyage., excerpts from both can be found here.

Upon arrival, Columbus talks about how pleasant the Arawak people are. They come offering parrots, and cotton, and spears, rather than attacks. Her mentions that they are both well-built, and have handsome features. He mentions how some of the Arawaks accidentally cut themselves on his sword because they have no idea what the weapon is.

Of course, however, he surmises how these people would make good servants, and how probably as few as 50 men could subjugate them all.

The Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were known (noted again and again by Europeans) for being extremely hospitable, and having a strong belief in sharing.

So why am I to believe that the European approach of wanting to take for ones own benefit and desire was a superior opinion? That strikes me as overtly ass backwards.

Beyond those initial observations, Columbus goes on to sour on his opinion of the people, because you can’t think favorably of people as you enslave, rape and murder them by the truckload…which is exactly what he and his men went on to do…and with exceptionally noted barbarism.

Las Casas, in his writings, goes on in detail as to how Columbus and his men went on to treat the Arawaks.

“Endless testimonies…prove the mild and pacific temperament fo the natives…But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then…The admiral, it is true, was blond as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians.”

And the treatment that befell the natives could definitely be described as a campaign of terror, including everything from beheadings to simply using men to test the sharpness of their blades by slicing off bits, to beheadings simply for fun.

Why don't we teach these things to children? Because they're ugly, but that certainly doesn’t mean we have to teach students that Columbus had a heroic adventure and that he is to be celebrated. The point of looking at his actions, openly and honestly, is that we must change the way we historically look at “winners” and “losers”. The Native Americans were not savages, nor did they need to be improved upon by the practices or sensibilities of the Europeans that came to their shores, looking for wealth and power, and completely willing to shed blood to get it, and indulge in their basest desires in the interim.

As Howard Zinn so eloquently puts it in his book, A People’s History of the United States,

“My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress - that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth. We have learned to give them exactly the same proportion of attention that teachers and writers often give them in the most respectable of classrooms and textbooks. This learned sense of moral proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more easily than when it comes from politicians at press conferences. It is therefore more deadly.”

History has always been written by the “winners”, and those writers bent the story of time to fit their moral character, and to justify their often insidious actions as a necessary part of progress…but that’s not necessarily true, it certainly isn’t the way we should continue to tell history. Columbus very easily could have lived in peace with the indigenous people he encountered, and been something of a gentleman about this new relationship. The fact that not even everyone on his expedition with him viewed his and his mens’ behavior favorably shows that there was at least an air of decency amongst them.

I’ve come to learn that Italian Americans value the history of Columbus because his successes offered them a great sense of acceptance in this new America. In short, his victories added to their “whiteness” and made them a part of this new American pie. I’m sorry if viewing Columbus in a more honest light of his actions feels like an assault on their heritage and ethnic identity. At least from my perspective, as a historian, that’s not the case. However, as a black man in America, I’ve had my heritage, history and racial identity assaulted damn near daily for the last 40 years. Walk it off…you’ll be ok.

What are your thoughts on Columbus? Taking into consideration his actual actions, can we still consider him a hero? Does that offer a distorted narrative of what makes a “hero”?

Offer your thoughts in the comments below.

~ DM

Thumbnail photo by Blaz Erzetic on Unsplash