Columbus' Fall from Grace.
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| Title: | Columbus' Fall from Grace. |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Rodriguez-Salgado, M. J. |
| Source: | Society. Jul-Aug 1992 29(5):48-52. |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 5 |
| Publication Date: | 1992 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Historical Materials Opinion Papers |
| Descriptors: | American Indians, Communication Problems, Conflict, Cultural Differences, History, Imperialism, Interpersonal Competence, Political Issues, Social Problems |
| ISSN: | 0147-2011 |
| Abstract: | Discusses cultural disintegration and religious, political, and social disputes in light of Columbus' quincentenary. Cites historical encounters between Europeans and native populations of the United States (inability to recognize the human nature of strangers, misunderstanding sexual mores, and rapid degeneration from friendship and simple exchanges to pressure, conflict, exploitation, and fear). (RLC) |
| Entry Date: | 1992 |
| Accession Number: | EJ449506 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Links: – Type: pdflink Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwFuGNquil___hMHMX-51RX6AAAA5DCB4QYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHTMIHQAgEAMIHKBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDOQFQqSI-2XWfGJQHgIBEICBnM4CzjFfSwvYCYp1w0vcaZzo2n30oJEWnzRc_MQRMx4G5O3rWO1s-Hu-YKE6NzyvPwM_4xeBfM7_WZNfIMMv16sLS99zUHUC14tUHGCWtU6c1uk4zTwv4O3QSWhBeewOhZSX0h1-th6HimhapVz_cPN4TkRkaQ4WLGjrVGPshCp2y0NiOI2cmMoD5xYPkyZOq3yA2SQP4lVJeJ94BQ== Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN9208176515;sty01jul.92;2005Oct04.11:35;v2.2.460</anid> <title id="AN9208176515-1">Columbus' Fall from Grace </title> <p>In the 1930s, the natives of Papua New Guinea encountered strange beings the like of which they had never seen before. The peculiar garments they wore, as well as their reluctance to be touched and stripped by the native women convinced them that the strangers must be hiding huge penises, and that the white men (who wore trousers), did not defecate. The lack of female companions suggested a form of supernatural procreation. Ultimately, cosmology enabled the natives to make sense of such an extraordinary experience: believing that after death their ancestors turned pale and lived over the mountains whence the men had come, they concluded that the white men were spirits. It took some time before they realized that these gold prospectors were indeed human and capable of all human functions and emotions. The native women, sold to the newcomers for shells and other trinkets, played a crucial role in the process of discovery. When mutual curiosity gave way to hostility, the prospectors showed the natives the destructive power of a gun fired at close range. By threatened and actual violence they secured cooperation and servility.</p> <p>This well-documented and relatively recent event has many of the elements that characterized the encounters between the Europeans and native populations of America from the 1490s: the inability to recognize the human nature of the strangers, misunderstanding of sexual mores, the rapid degeneration from friendship and simple exchanges to pressure, conflict, exploitation, and fear. The indigenous groups Columbus encountered had not seen men of such bizarre color and appearance. They were struck by the abundant body hair and the beards; by the close fitting clothing and armor. They reacted with terror to the fierce dogs and horses they saw for the first time. Without comparable experiences to draw on, they noted the absence of women which implied non-human forms of reproduction. The strange pale color of these creatures, their ability to speak silently with cloth (letters) and their use of the ultimate divine weapon, thunderbolts (guns), all pointed inexorably to the identification of these beings as gods. Columbus and his crew were hailed as gods. He was hard put on one occasion to deter some five hundred Indians from boarding his ship to accompany him to heaven.</p> <p>Even highly developed cultures could make the same mistake. In Mexico, Cortes appears to have been variously confused with two divinities: Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli. He was welcomed to Mexico as a god and furnished with the usual offerings--the best food, fruit, and fresh blood from a human sacrifice. In parts of Peru, legends of the return of the god Viracocha seemed fulfilled when Pizarro and his men arrived. Many of the apocalyptic details and supernatural portents surrounding these events may have been elaborated subsequently, but the failure to identify the true nature of the newcomers is well documented and had serious implications for the organization of effective resistance to the invaders, as they quickly realized.</p> <p>While invariably amused by the results of such mistaken identity, the Europeans considered the failure to distinguish between god and man to have a profound significance, not least because it impinged on their own problem of how to categorize the indigenous population. The question was simple: Were the natives human?</p> <p>The first indigenous peoples Columbus encountered were, in his words, "gentle and timid people, naked…without armaments or laws." They were easily contented with cheap baubles and easily controlled by superior knowledge and firepower. Later even the most peaceful groups would take up arms against the Europeans as their goods were seized and they were forced to mine gold or work the land. Neither Columbus nor his crew had expected to find such creatures. They were clearly not white, civilized beings like themselves. In looks and lifestyle they resembled the black inhabitants of Guinea who were considered sub-human and natural slaves; and, closer still, the natives of the Canary Islands, whose human status was less clear, large numbers of whom had been enslaved and their lands seized during the conquest. The graduations of human status carried important implications for personal freedom and the ownership of land.</p> <p>Many aspects of Indian life and culture supported the premise that they were not truly human. Their irregular and minimal work habits were seen as proof of an animal-like ignorance of the need for future provision, and of their propensity to idleness. The European's sensitivity on this issue owed much to the concern over the evils of idleness in Europe, which was believed to breed disorder and give the devil ample cause to make mischief. It was also due to the concept of under-utilization of land. Lack of surplus production or developed economies over much of the New World justified transfer of this land to industrious people. The absence of recognizable political and social hierarchies in many native societies lent weight to the argument that Indians were not living in civil communities, as humans invariably did. The Maya, Aztec, and Inca empires did have complex social and political hierarchies, advanced economies, awe-inspiring cultures, taxes, wars, and other signs of civilized society, but they lacked coinage and were found to practice terrible crimes against God and nature.</p> <p>The worship of idols and, more especially, the use of human sacrifice disgusted the roughest explorers--even Pizarro was inspired to give an impromptu sermon at the sight of the temple of Pachacamac. Another major concern was cannibalism, believed to be widespread in the New World. The explorers drew powerful inspiration from the belief that God had chosen them to uncover and destroy such abominations against the law of God and nature. And there were others. From the outset the Europeans were fascinated and repelled by the sexual habits of the indigenous peoples and determined to bring them, as they were attempting to bring their own people, to strict obedience of ecclesiastical law. The very nakedness of the Indians proved that they lacked morality as they had no sense of shame. From this it was easy to conclude that they habitually violated other moral laws regarding incest, sodomy, and sexual practices unlikely to lead to procreation. Deviant sex--by definition anything other than heterosexual sex within marriage with a man on top of a woman--was a clear sign of degeneracy. Discoveries such as the mass-produced household pottery of Peru, adored with explicit depictions of varied sexual positions and practices, confirmed the jaundiced view that Indians had bestial rather than human instincts.</p> <p>Ultimately, for the majority of Europeans what defined the human being was reason, and the end of reason for a Christian was to attain knowledge of God. The Indians' failure to appreciate that Europeans were men was proof of their lack of reason. The unexpected difficulties of conversion and the dispiriting experiences of backsliding and recanting, especially due to revivals of indigenous religious cults such as sun worship in Peru, confirmed their low opinion of the natives. It is important to appreciate that there were cogent arguments based on Christian, classical, legal, and theological traditions to support the contention that the natives were not fully human and even that they fell within the Aristotelian definition of natural slavery. But there were individuals who, from the outset, argued that the Indians were fully human, if backward, peoples. These divergent opinions provoked an open debate that lasted over fifty years in Spain.</p> <p>Gradually those in favor of according the Indians full human status won, supported by the Pope who declared his agreement in 1537. The Spanish crown was unconvinced by the arguments for slavery; apart from theological reasons, it implied a loss of direct control over the distant empire. But it rejected arguments for full humanity, stopping just short of this and maintaining the Indians under permanent tutelage. This had the advantage of protecting the natives while leaving their lands in the possession of the monarch. Clearly, behind the theological and legal niceties there lay hard economic and political pressures that influenced both sides. The settlers, who dealt with the reality and not the theory, at last persuaded the monarch that their survival was utterly dependent on Indian labor. As the natives refused to work voluntarily, slavery or some other forced contribution was required. A compromise settlement was quickly reached and later refined. The Indians were not slaves, but they were required to pay dues, either in the form of tribute (gold, goods, and so on), or with their labor. Those benefitting from the Indians in return had a duty to protect them and to Christianize and civilize them.</p> <p>The system was open to abuse, especially in the brutal early years of conquest before the full panoply of bureaucratic and legal restrictions were in place. Yet even then most colonists realized that the Indians were the key to power and wealth. It was senseless and almost certainly ruinous to lose native workers; replacing them was costly and not always possible. Working the Indians to death or maiming them was inimical to the settlers' own interests--and yet this is the popular image of Spanish colonialism. The man most responsible for creating this image was Bartolomé de las Casas. He devoted his life after 1514 to one cause: recognition of the Indians as full human beings with dominion over their land and freedom from forced labor. He produced a number of works in which he idealized the Indians and painted the Spaniards in darkest colors, asserting that, blinded by gold fever and greed, the Spaniards wantonly and systematically abused and exterminated the indigenous population. His denunciations of unspeakable cruelties in the colonies led to royal investigations that failed to endorse his assessment of the situation. Despite lack of success, he persevered and was supported by powerful factions at court, principally the Columbus and Flemish interests which were both eager, albeit for different reasons, to denigrate their Spanish rivals.</p> <p>Las Casas is best known for his thankfully brief account of the destruction of the Indies, published in 1552. Within the first few pages the reader is treated to gory descriptions of torture, rape, savage beatings, people ripped apart, and babies dashed against walls. It is a gruesome and relentless catalogue of savagery intended to lead the reader to conclude that the dramatic decline of the indigenous population was due primarily to Spanish cruelty. Nevertheless even he admits that there were other reasons for the demographic disaster: the separation of men and women for work purposes; the death of infants as mothers suffering from trauma, excessive work, and despair failed to produce milk to nurture them; famines caused by warfare and disruption of old patterns of production; as well as the mass suicides that so appalled Christian observers. There were soon serious problems relating to widespread alcoholism, but the greatest killer of all was disease. The Europeans brought smallpox, measles, influenza, perhaps even plague, and unwittingly caused devastating epidemics that transformed and traumatized the society of the New World as dramatically as the Black Death had done in Europe in the fourteenth century.</p> <p>Since Las Casas insisted that the most significant factor in the fatal conjunction was Spanish greed and cruelty, his works became a crucial weapon in the propaganda wars by England and the Dutch against Spain. They were translated and widely disseminated. In the 1590s, at the height of the war against Philip n, Theodore de Bry produced Latin and Dutch editions of the Very Brief Destruction of the Indies with striking, gruesome illustrations that made it a bestseller for centuries. At least one edition reduced the text to captions of eight lines per picture. These works continue to be used uncritically as "historical facts" without appreciation that they were in essence a crude propaganda ploy.</p> <p>Such is the enduring power of the apocalyptic vision of Spain's arrival in the New World, that the mere suggestion of celebrating the quincentenary of Columbus "discovery" of America aroused widespread opposition. Indigenous groups are inclined to identify with the idealized image of their ancestors. They made the obvious point that they had discovered the continent long before Columbus, and that after his arrival they had experienced nothing but genocide and exploitation. It is ironic that the one European power to tackle seriously the thorny problem of defining the humanity of the indigenous groups and decide against their enslavement should now be condemned for bringing slavery into the Americas and blamed for the subsequent problems with black slaves.</p> <p>Spain's decision to launch a vast and costly international program of events commemorating the year 1492 has reawakened unpleasant memories of imperial and cultural supremacy, particularly as it has openly declared its intention to play a leading role in the revitalization of the "Ibero-American" world. Pro-indigenous groups in retaliation have suggested alternative commemorations, such as the last day of freedom for the Indians, or celebrating five hundred years of resistance to tyranny, to give but two examples. Most would agree with the 1987 Latin American Episcopal Conference which demanded the cancellation of festivities and appealed for an act of contrition: "Begging the pardon of the indigenous groups for what happened."</p> <p>The focus of the debates has been die cultural encounters and conflicts. But Columbus has not been left unscathed by the vehement condemnation of European colonialism and calls for vindication of indigenous peasant rights to the land. For centuries Columbus enjoyed a particularly good press, helped by his own assiduous cultivation of a heroic image. In countless works, both fictional and otherwise, he has been exalted as the embodiment of many virtues. We know this Columbus of old: the noble, intrepid explorer who dared to go where no man had gone before; the man of vision and courage fighting against overwhelming odds on the turbulent seas as well as in the dark corridors of the court, where narrow-minded opponents plotted his destruction. Here was a fit subject of many good yams and riveting adventures. In time he came to personify the virtues and ideals of many nations, particularly of Italy, Spain, and later the United States. Yet he remained an international figure. It was after all a Frenchman, backed by the Knights of Columbus of the United States, who led the movement to have him canonized. It failed, but public esteem of this unofficial saint and belief in the value of his venture led to the adoption of the 12th of October as a public holiday in the Americas and in Spain.</p> <p>No doubt in 1992 some of the old romantic nonsense will be revived, but most major official acts, including the great exhibition in Washington and the Spanish commemorations have studiously avoided using his name. At first this is puzzling. Logically a commemoration in 1992 would have to relate to a specific event: Columbus' arrival in the Caribbean. It seems the Vikings visited America, and other Europeans may have subsequently touched the islands and mainlands--the evidence is most unsatisfactory--but the fact remains that 1492 is, by any standards, a turning point. It marks a decisive moment in the process of discovery and settlement of America by Europeans and the incorporation of America and its peoples, for better or for worse, into the political, cultural and economic structures of the world. One can only speculate as to why Columbus has been set aside. It may well owe something to the scholarly revisionism that has stripped him of some of the mythical trappings that gave his story such color. The solitary visionary, sailing into the unknown with funds from the queen's pawned jewels, is now known to have been advancing a project others had promoted, and that he was well supported by courtiers and merchants who funded the expedition. A millenarian who thought the world had little more than 150 years left, he was prone to heavenly visions in times of stress. This, as much as his obsession with status and honor and other strange ideas, is perfectly compatible with the mentality of his time, but it is not the stuff of untarnished latter-day heroes.</p> <p>It may also be more difficult--given the greater sophistication of the public--to promote a hero whose navigational skills were great, but who ultimately could not decide if he had discovered a new continent. At one stage he did admit to this, but later recanted, refusing to accept that his original theories were mistaken and obdurately restating that Cuba was Japan, America Asia, and the world about a three quarters of its real size, shaped like a pear with a woman's nipple at its end, where the earthly paradise was situated. We are still hampered by lack of important information. We do not know what he looked like, nor do we know the exact dates of his birth and death, what language he spoke, what his route to the Indies really was, nor where he landed. Even the date depends on whether he used sailors' reckoning for a day that begins with midday, or the more usual mid-night. He might well have landed on the 11th of October.</p> <p>These factors go some way toward explaining Columbus' fall from grace, but ultimately a satisfactory answer can only be found by reference to the complex cultural changes we are experiencing, and particularly to our attitudes toward colonialism and imperialism. The fundamental problem with Columbus in 1992 is that, while perfectly normal by the standards of his day, his attitude toward indigenous populations is currently unfashionable and politically incorrect. He is also fatally and indissolubly linked to the subsequent disaster. It is not unusual now to hear him accused of genocide.</p> <p>A century ago, 1492 was celebrated, not commemorated, with parades in which Europeans donned plumes and pseudo-Indian costumes. Countless cultural acts glorified Western expansion, extolled the superiority of its Christian culture and the benefits it brought to the world. Now, the United Nations is one of many major organizations seeking to distance itself from the event, unable to reconcile conflicting views and claims. We feel guilty for even fleeting mirth when we read Seller and Yeatman's mordant satirical depiction of Britain's arrival in Australia--they fell first on their knees, then on the aborigines.</p> <p>Yet it was precisely this fusion of religious validation and aggression that gave the Europeans, and later the Americans, the sense of overwhelming confidence that underlay their vast colonial and imperial ventures. Whatever the initial cost, the ultimate benefits of Christianity and Western civilization for any indigenous group were not in doubt. Now, every aspect is questioned. Attitudes toward colonial ventures and the impact of European culture on the world have changed radically and Columbus lies, a broken idol.</p> <p>Reflecting on his lost world, a converted Maya wrote: "The former gods were mortal, yet they were gods." Gods and heroes had embodied the ideal order of the world; they embodied the past, present, and future of that society, its virtues and vices. We have learned that the collapse of indigenous cultures frequently hinges on their loss of faith. In a cry redolent with despair an Aztec exhorted his people: "Let us die then/ Let us perish then/ For our gods are already dead!" If gods and heroes fall, it is hard for a society to find its identity, to express its values, to make sense of the past or perceive where it is heading in the future. The disputes and divisions generated by the Columbus quincentenary have highlighted the gradual disintegration of our own culture; its loss of gods and heroes is reflected in its loss of confidence, direction, and identity. Few can mourn the passing of the aggressive and intolerant spirit that underpined European colonial expansion, but the void created by its demise is all too evident and potentially dangerous. The final irony is that five hundred years on, recent publications and various ecological groups are calling for the adoption of the indigenous traditions destroyed in and after 1492. They argue that unless we replace our conceptual framework and recover the intuitive knowledge and love of the earth which these primitive societies possessed, we may not survive to commemorate the next centenary.</p> <hd id="AN9208176515-2"> READINGS SUGGESTED BY THE AUTHOR: </hd> <p>J. H. Elliott. The Old World and the New, 1492-1650. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970.</p> <p>F. Fernandez-Armesto. Columbus. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.</p> <p>N. Wachtel. The Vision of the Vanquished. Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1977.</p> <aug> <p>By M. J. Rodriguez-Salgado</p> <p></p> <p>M.J. Rodriguez-Salgado is lecturer in the department of international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has written widely on early modern Spanish history. Among her books are The Changing Face of Empire: Charles V, Philip II and Habsburg Authority, 1551-1559; Armada. The Official Catalogue of the National Maritime Museum Exhibition. She is also co-editor (with Simon Adams) of England, Spain, and the Gran Armada, 1585-1604. Essays from the Anglo-Spanish Conferences, London and Madrid, 1988.</p> </aug> |
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