Today is Columbus Day, not that one would know it to read the typical paper or to watch most newscasts. The Italian explorer’s reputation and legacy have been relentlessly eroded over the years by temporal chauvinists who apply spurious social and historical hindsight to justify unfair criticism of civilization’s heroes. Christopher Columbus deserves the honor this holiday bestowed on him. He was a visionary and an explorer who, like all transformative figures, possessed the courage and imagination to challenge conventional wisdom and seek new horizons of achievement.
Holding Columbus responsible for the predation of the Spanish and the devastation of native populations that were among the unanticipated consequences of his achievement is the equivalent of blaming Steve Jobs for technology’s elimination of occupations and the fact that our children are fat and have the attention span of mayflies. And of course, anyone who believes that the Stone Age populations of the Americas would have continued to prosper in Avatar bliss without Columbus’s intrusion is ignorant of both human nature and world history.
To celebrate Columbus Day is to extol the virtues of creativity, courage, fortitude, sacrifice, determination, diligence, perseverance, leadership and vision, as well as to acknowledge the debt our nation owes Columbus for its existence. Pronouncing him a villain, as it is now politically correct to do, encourages future generations to fear change, conflict, risk and innovation, all crucial to the American spirit and the advancement of humanity.
Today it is appropriate to reacquaint ourselves with the 19th Century poem that was once standard fare in elementary schools, but is now relegated to the same bin of forgetfulness as “Paul Revere’s Ride,” “Casey at the Bat” and “The Highwayman.” It is “Columbus,” by Joaquin Miller, himself a historical figure who deserves to be remembered, and it was one of my dad’s favorites.
Columbus
By Joaquin Miller (1837-1913)
Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores,
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said: “Now must we pray,
For lo! the very stars are gone.
Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?”
“Why, say, ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’”
“My men grow mutinous day by day;
My men grow ghastly wan and weak.”
The stout mate thought of home; a spray
Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.
“What shall I say, brave Admiral, say,
If we sight naught but seas at dawn?”
“Why, you shall say at break of day,
‘Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!’”
They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,
Until at last the blanched mate said:
“Why, now not even God would know
Should I and all my men fall dead.
These very winds forget their way,
For God from these dread seas is gone.
Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say”—
He said: “Sail on! sail on! and on!”
They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate:
“This mad sea shows his teeth to-night.
He curls his lip, he lies in wait,
With lifted teeth, as if to bite!
Brave Admiral, say but one good word:
What shall we do when hope is gone?”
The words leapt like a leaping sword:
“Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!”
Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,
And peered through darkness. Ah, that night
Of all dark nights! And then a speck—
A light! A light! A light! A light!
It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!
It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn.
He gained a world; he gave that world
Its grandest lesson:
“On! Sail On!”
[Many thanks to Democratic Thinker, for reminding me of this poem. It had been a long, long time since I read it.]
Ethics Alarms 
I had forgotten that poem. Thanks for reminding me. In these days of liberal cynicism, re-written history, and the attribution of evil to natural human curiosity and courage, it is important to remember the brave, the trail blazers, and the people who changed human life — for the better.
Blaming Columbus for what eventually happened to native Americans is the cheapest kind of hindsight. He discovered the New World: he didn’t try to kill it. I suppose Magellan is on the shit list as well…
WHY is it that ignorant individuals continue to claim he discovered something with 60 MILLION occupants????
If this is a joke, its an old one. If it is meant seriously…ridiculous. If Western civilization discovers a continent that it had previously not known about, that’s a discovery by any definition. Nobody argues that Columbus created North America, or that Peary created the North Pole, or that Watson and Crick created DNA, or that Ben Franklin created electricity, or that Ug created fire. They were all there all the time, but its took discoverers to find them for the culture and civilization the discoverers belonged to.
Your comment is ignorant, not the people who credit Columbus.
. They were all there all the time, but its took a discoverer to find them for the culture and civilization they belonged to.
You didn’t actually mean to imply that North America belongs to the Western Civilization of the 15th century, right?
Bad composition and dubious antecedent: “they” refers to “discoverer(s)”—thanks, I’ll fix it.
Ive never understood this. Its not like he was Fransisco Pizzaro who did all he could to wipe out the natives.
Columbus was accused by his own contemporaries of brutality, such as cutting of the hands of Taino natives if they failed to preset a quarterly tribute of gold, leaving them to bleed to death, and allowing his men to test the sharpness of their swords by seeing if they were capable of cutting native infants in half in a single stroke. He refused to baptize natives, in contradiction to his stated goal to gain converts, so that he could legally enslave them. Columbus was even arrested and arraigned in Spain on charges of corruption and brutality, with testimony from 23 witnesses cataloging his greed and cruelty, escaping punishment only due to the intervention of his royal patrons.
Sure, he was a great navigator and brave leader, and we shouldn’t judge historical figures with modern sensibilities, but even by his own people, in his own time, he was considered brutally cruel.
This was the Spain of the Inquisition—I take their judgments with a grain of salt, as do most historians. But yes,Columbus was a man of his time, and his treatment of natives reflected a prevailing view that they were lesser humans….we don’t celebrate him for humanitarianism, but his contributions to human knowledge and exploration.
Kind of like the Vikings!
Yeah, but they kept it secret. There were some European whales that visited North America too, but we don’t know their names.
They eventually wrote about their experiences in the Vinland sagas. People didn’t take them very seriously. Even before they wrote about their voyages, the news got around (“Winland” was mentioned by Adam of Bremen).
The whales, on the other hand, have kept quieter. Perhaps if you listen carefully to their low, plaintive songs, you will hear about their great explorations.
I’ve never really understood the adoration of Columbus in America. Aside from Puerto Rico, he never made it to the USA. He was not the first European to get to the Americas (Leif Erikson and the Vikings beat him to it by almost 500 years). He did something unintelligent and got lucky (every good navigator knew that you couldn’t sail west from Europe to get to Asia given the maritime technology of the time). If he hadn’t found the Americas somebody else probably would have within the next few years (probably the Portuguese, by accident, on a voyage to India). His discovery wasn’t particularly spectacular at the time (not compared to the discoveries of the Portuguese in the Orient). Yet somehow he gets all the credit.
I agree with eyebeam that Columbus was a bad man, but then again, a lot of bad men did great things. In Columbus’s case, I do not think that the great outweighed the bad.
I believe that he did a pretty good job of showing that we wouldn’t sail of the end of the earth at a time when that was the prevailing view. Those who followed him benefited from his boldness.I think you wildly under-rate his importance, Most historians feel he was the catalyst for European exploration of the New World…that’s plenty to justify a holiday.
That’s a myth. People have known that the Earth was round since the ancient Greeks. Eratosthenes even calculated its circumference to at least within 20% (and possibly to within 2%) in the third century B.C. Columbus initially couldn’t get funding because the Portuguese already knew how to get to the Orient and because everyone knew that the distance to Asia westwards was too great for the seafaring technology at the time. Columbus made a big mistake and got lucky.
Because once a scientific theory is demonstrated clearly, it is never contested by the general public (see the warm acceptance of Galileo and the complete lack of dispute about evolution).
The shape of the Earth was not a controversial position at the time of Columbus. The Ptolemaic model of the universe (the one generally accepted before the heliocentric model) assumed a spherical earth. Galileo’s position was controversial because it conflicted with religious orthodoxy and because reasonable observers (e.g. Tycho Brahe) could find evidence against it (If the Earth moves, then either the fixed stars should appear to move or the stars must be extremely far away. Many found it inconceivable at the time that anything could be that far away).
Evolution was controversial because it too conflicted with religious orthodoxy and because it was very hard to observe. Fossil evidence could be proffered, but this evidence is much harder to interpret than the evidence for the roundness of the Earth (anyone can observe evidence for the roundness of the earth during a lunar eclipse). While the general public may not accept evolution, important and expensive government projects to which evolution is relevant pretty much assume evolution is a fact (e.g. developing drugs to deal with evolved immunities to antibiotics).
It’s a silly argument. Educated people knew, or thought they knew, the shape of the earth. Uneducated people didn’t think about it. In any event, whether it was falling off the edge, running out of food or being eaten by sea monsters, nobody thought it was wise or sane to sail West until you hit land.
What’s a silly argument?
People were right. You couldn’t get to Asia by sailing West. You would run out of food. Columbus was wrong because he thought Asia was much closer than it really was. He was lucky there was a land mass in between Asia and Europe or else he would have starved. Given the extent to which the Portuguese were exploring, they would have found America as well (probably during a voyage to India).
It’s a silly argument because WHY nobody thought it was safe and sane to sail west doesn’t matter. What matters is that a man chose to do it when everyone thought it was crazy or foolish, and accomplished something by taking a risk nobody else would at that time.
It doesn’t matter that it actually was silly and foolish?
It would to me, but I’m not that type of risk-taker.
All adventurers/explorers/ pioneers are silly and foolish. The whole idea of “let’s see what’s out there” is irrational. Thank goodness some people are willing to throw their lives away in the exploration of the unknown, with uncertain rewards.
No THAT’s a myth. Most of the public and the ruling class in Europe did not acknowledge that the earth was round. Was the story of Galileo a myth too? The far reaches of the Atlantic were deemed too dangerous to explore.
It’s really unfair and facile to dismiss visionaries with “they got lucky.” Newton got lucky. Edison got lucky. They had to be in a position to get lucky, and they deserve credit for doing so.
De sphaera mundi, the most widely accepted astronomical text of the Middle Ages posited a spherical world. Look at this picture from the book: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sacrobosco-1550-B3r-detail01.jpg. Educated Europeans would have known this, and the ruling class would have had access to educated men when deciding whether to invest in a voyage. This is why Portugal refused to fund Columbus (see p. 13 of Ralph Davis’s The Rise of the Atlantic Economies for an explanation). The far reaches of the Atlantic were considered not worth exploring because it was known that you could not get to Asia by sailing west (it was too far).
The basic story of Galileo is not a myth, but the traditional narrative has taken on many mythical elements. His persecution by the Catholic Church had a lot to do with the fact that he insulted the Pope (who had been his friend) in a book he used to advance his theory. Like most scientists of the day, the Pope believed in a geocentric universe, and made several arguments against the heliocentric theory. Galileo included them in his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems as coming from the mouth of a character named Simplicio. He generally made the Pope look like an idiot. The Church couldn’t let this stand.
I don’t know to what you are referring when you say that Newton got lucky. While Newton may have seen an apple fall, it probably didn’t lead him to all of his ideas about gravitation. His notebooks still exist, and there is evidence that he spent a lot of time and effort. thinking about gravitation. Newton liked to be self-aggrandizing, and told the apple story himself, probably to make himself look like an even greater genius (it sounds a lot more impressive to imply that you came up with a theory in a moment of genius than to say that you spent years working it out).
All innovators and geniuses are lucky—they all have to make the right choices, at the right time. Even if you spend years working it out—you can take a million roads that may lead to dead ends and waste years. And some major moments of enlightenment are just that…they come out of nowhere. That doesn’t make their generatorsowners less impressive or noteworthy.
What did Columbus do that qualified him as a genius?
I didn’t say Columbus was a genius…he was an discoverer/explorer/ visionary/entrepreneur with a theory. He had a moment of discovery because he had the gust to look somewhere nobody else had. The argument that someone would have done it eventually is unfair—that applies to every human advance. Slavery would have been ended sooner or later; the steam engine was being invented in four places at once. So what? Whoever did it did it. Columbus is no different than anyone else.
If taking risks, getting lucky and being the first to do something is what is required for recognition, then it should really be Leif Erikson day (or unknown Siberian hunter day).
Leif Erickson Day was yesterday! Skol Vikings!
I think the difference is that Columbus was the one whose voyage actually led to the mass colonization of the Americas, a historically significant event no matter how you slice it. While I do understand how those whose ancestors did not come in the last few hundred years from Asia, Africa, or Europe would feel a bit peeved, the date itself is still worthy of observance, even if Columbus himself was a bad man.
To elaborate on Eric’s history lesson, by the High Middle Ages, the ONLY major Eurasian culture which still thought the Earth was flat was China; the Europeans, the Muslims, and the Indians all knew that the Earth was round.
Awesome. Leif Erikson was great. Of course, I’m a bit biased, given my name.
Wouldn’t that have to be “Erik”?
Okay.
That’s better.
Me too! Full blooded Scandinavian here!
There is, I think, an aspect of “print the legend” here. The timing of Columbus’s discovery,contrasted with the horrors of the Inquisition going on at the same tine, pointed to hope and new horizons—as Julian says, the symbolism of Columbus is more important than the reality, which doesn’t invalidate the significance of the symbolism one bit. From
Samuel Eliot Morison’s Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, (via Instapundit)
“At the end of 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. . . .”
“Yet, even as the chroniclers of Nuremberg were correcting their proofs from Koberger’s press, a Spanish caravel named Nina scudded before a winter gale into Lisbon with news of a discovery that was to give old Europe another chance. In a few years we find the mental picture completely changed. Strong monarchs are stamping out privy conspiracy and rebellion; the Church, purged and chastened by the Protestant Reformation, puts her house in order; new ideas flare up throughout Italy, France, Germany and the northern nations; faith in God revives and the human spirit is renewed. The change is complete and startling: “A new envisagement of the world has begun, and men are no longer sighing after the imaginary golden age that lay in the distant past, but speculating as to the golden age that might possibly lie in the oncoming future.”
“Christopher Columbus belonged to an age that was past, yet he became the sign and symbol of this new age of hope, glory and accomplishment. His medieval faith impelled him to a modern solution: Expansion.”
Remember, great explorers and visionaries are not necessarily the nicest people in the world. Nice, kind people probably wouldn’t have survived such a journey with a group of sailors at the time and definitely couldn’t have kept the sailors going day after day with no land in sight. It took a man who wasn’t nice to do this.
Newton was a terrible human being, but this fact doesn’t lessen the importance of F=ma. It also doesn’t matter that he stole ‘his’ other two laws from other scientists.
Right—I’ll go farther yet: most visionaries are not nice at all. Edison was a pretty heartless guy, neglectful of his family, and a ruthless businessman. There are exceptions (Einstein seems to have been one), but we don’t celebrate explorers, inventors and visionaries for their character. The key passage in my post was:
“Pronouncing him a villain, as it is now politically correct to do, encourages future generations to fear change, conflict, risk and innovation, all crucial to the American spirit and the advancement of humanity”.
That doesn’t assert any saintly qualities for the man. But using his other flaws to minimize his achievements is a distortion.