Columbus was 41 years old when he sailed in 1492. He possessed a thick mane of white hair which had been with him since the age of 34. He had sailed further and farther, before his historic voyages, than any other European mariner. He had sailed as far north as Iceland (then called Thule), and as far south as the African Gold Coast, just north of the Equator. Also, he had journeyed Eastward as far as Asia Minor (the east coast of present day Turkey) and as far westward as the Azores by 1485.
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The Azores, far out in the Atlantic
off the northwest coast of Africa. |
These African connections have led some historians to believe that Columbus learned of the winds and currents he used in his voyages from African sailors and sources. Ancient African artifacts have been discovered in the Americas that predate the voyages of Columbus. Other theories: the ancient Egyptians, the Chinese, Polynesian sailors,…all or any of whom may have arrived in the Americas centuries before Columbus. Each of these ideas bear further investigation.
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Recreated ancient Egyptian ship that could
have sailed to the Americas long before Columbus. |
With the arrival of Columbus in the New World in 1492, an agricultural revolution began: the exchange of foods (plants and animals) between Europe and the New World (part of what we call the "Columbian Exchange"). Among those plants and animals that the early explorers introduced into the Americas were barley, citrus fruits, coffee, peas, sugar, wheat, cattle, rats, cats, goats, chickens, honeybees, the horse, pigs and sheep.
As a matter of fact, when the Native Americans first saw the early Conquistadores riding horses, they ran in terror, thinking what they were seeing was a monster, half man and half animal. The plants and animals which were discovered in the New World and which proved significant when brought back to Europe were the cacao plant (Columbus tasted cocoa on his 4th voyage to the New World in 1502 but was not impressed), corn (maize), peanuts, potatoes (at first, potatoes were thought disgusting and the cause of outbreaks of leprosy and syphilis), the rubber tree, sweet potatoes, tobacco, tomatoes, the gray squirrel and the guinea pig, the llama, muskrat and, of course, the turkey.
Here is a digression you may find of interest. The word "tomato" first appeared in English in 1595. It was brought back to Europe by the first Spanish and Portuguese explorers. The word itself is derived from the Nahuatl (Aztec) word "tomatl" which refers to the plant and fruit itself. For hundreds of years most everyone in Europe believed tomatoes to be poisonous and used them as decorative centerpieces at fancy dinner parties. They were referred to as "love apples" because of their red color. Tomatoes were not cultivated in North America until the 1700s, and then only in home gardens. Thomas Jefferson (who else?) was raising them at Monticello by 1782. However, many Americans still believed, like the Europeans, that they were poisonous and refused to eat them.
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An early condom, 1700s, made of material
that was tied onto the penis prior to intercourse. |
One of the darker aspects of Columbus' voyages to the Americas was the question of where syphilis originated. Did it come to the New World with Columbus' men and other early explorers, or did those same men bring it back to Europe with them? An epidemic of syphilis broke out in Europe beginning in the early 1500’s, and by the 2nd half of that century what we know of as the “condom” had been invented by a doctor/scientist named Fallopius (an Italian just as Columbus) to protect MEN from the disease, not a thought being given to the protecting of women or of preventing pregnancy. I am going to do a post on just this subject in the future.
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| Fallopius |
(NOTE: it was commonly believed that men carried tiny babies inside of them and deposited them in women during intercourse for them to bring to term). Connection - Columbus and the invention of the condom. Also, Fallopius gives his name to the two tubes which connect the ovaries with the uterus in women (an "eponym").
The onion came to the Americas with Columbus. It is one of the world's most universal flavoring and cooking ingredients. The onion, cultivated for more than 5,000 years, was held in high esteem by the ancient Egyptians. They offered up onions as a tribute to their gods, and gave them to their pyramid-building slaves/workers as payment for their work.
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| Onions as a form of pay for work? |
Columbus transported sugar cane from the Canary Islands to Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic) on his second voyage in 1493. By 1516 the first sugar cane mill began operation on Hispaniola, providing a strong motivation for the rapid expansion of the slave trade between Africa and the New World once the Native American population had been destroyed. Sugar cane plantations and mills quickly spread to Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico by the end of the 1500’s.
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| Sugar cane |
But where did this “sweet’ item, which caused such suffering and displacement in both Africa and the New World, originate? Sugar cane is believed to have originated in the South Pacific. It has been known to the historical record for approximately 2200 years. Alexander the Great’s army saw fields of sugar cane while conquering India in 326 B.C..
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Alexander on his legendary horse
Bucephalus. |
It spread northward into China by the first century A.D., and reached westward into Persia by the sixth century A.D.. The Arab conquests of the areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea in the 7th century A.D. took sugar cane into Egypt, Syria and eventually it reached Europe in the 8th century with the invasion and occupation of Spain by the Moors. Spain and Portugal developed substantial sugar industries by the 12th century, and by the 1400s the Portuguese had spread it to Madeira, the Canary Islands, the Azores and, finally, to West Africa.
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| Triangular trade roiutes. |
Thus, the introduction of sugar cane into the New World by Columbus in 1493 set the stage for the development of the “Triangular Trade” (see map above) that would develop many years later. The economies of the New England colonies, centuries later, depended largely on the sugar plantations of the West Indies. Shipping, slave trading, ship building, distilleries (rum) - the ramifications were tremendous. How ironic, then, that New England became the center of anti-slavery sentiment in the 18th and 19th centuries. And the coincidence of sugar moving westward to the New World as chocolate was traveling eastward to Europe cannot be overlooked. A historical coincidence with tremendous consequences for our taste buds.
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| Columbus didn't think much of cocoa beans. |
Columbus was obsessed with the idea of finding a shorter sea route to the riches of the Far East, Yes, he was desirous of gathering wealth for himself, but, some historians claim, his ultimate goal was religious rather than monetary. His wish, according to these scholars, was that he wanted to amass enough wealth in order to finance the liberation of the Holy Land from Islamic rule. A resumption of the Crusades after a lapse of over 200 years? An interesting possibility to contemplate.
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| King Ferdinand |
It’s no secret that Columbus enslaved the native peoples that he met on his journeys. When he brought them back to Spain to show Ferdinand and Isabella, the monarchs were severely troubled by this issue. Was it moral and right, according to God’s law, for these people to be slaves? Unable to come to a decision, they referred the question to the Church. Officials of the Church were unable to agree on the issue, and, finally, the Queen ordered the slaves sent home.
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| Nicholas V |
She did this despite the fact that, in 1450, Pope Nicholas V sanctioned slavery when he gave permission to the Portuguese to, “attack, subject, and reduce to perpetual slavery the Saracens (Moslem Turks), pagans and other enemies of Christ…” The end result of this papal decree was that Christian Europe felt fully justified in engaging in the slave trade when the vast opportunities of the New World opened up less than 50 years later.
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Teen-age, illiterate boys made up much of the
crew which sailed with Columbus
across the Atlantic. |
Kids have been an important part of our national story (post WW II youth, especially) from the beginning. An interesting fact is that on Columbus’ 4th and final voyage to the New World, 56 of the 99 members of his crew were 18 years old or younger. Most, if not all, were illiterate.
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Did a drink of water change history? |
In 1492, Columbus was absolutely discouraged. He was convinced that the Spanish monarchy would never grant him the money and ships he needed for his voyage, so he decided to leave Spain and seek help elsewhere. After leaving the royal Spanish court and traveling on a ferociously hot day, he finally was forced to stop for a drink of water at a monastery on his way to the Spanish border. A monk, kindly and with the patience to listen to Columbus’ story, sympathetically responded to the frustrated mariner as he poured out his heart, his hopes and his plans. Unknown to Columbus, this particular monk was the personal confessor of Queen Isabella. He was so impressed with Columbus’ intensity of purpose that he asked his guest to stay at the monastery while he traveled to the royal court to tell the Queen of his encounter.
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| Taking confession. |
As a result, Columbus was granted another opportunity to present his plans to the King and Queen. Finally, they said yes. If Columbus had not stopped for that drink of water at that particular monastery on that day, would he have ever had the opportunity to make his voyages to the New World?? A drink of water changed history. The genesis of many historical events rest upon such small stories. Of course, the Spanish success in finally expelling the Moors from Spain in 1492 also freed up some money for the financing of Columbus' voyage.
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Columbus arrives in Cuba, in late October of
1492 and meets the Canibales, the native islanders. |
When Columbus landed in what we now call Cuba, he wanted to know what the natives there called themselves. Using their own language, they responded by saying that they were “Canibales”, which meant “people of Caniba”, the island we now refer to as Cuba. As other explorers followed Columbus to the New World, and the West Indies in particular, they began to refer to any and all of the peoples of the West Indies as “Canibales.” The ferocity and lifestyles of some of he newly encountered tribes surprised the Spanish. Some of the peoples encountered even engaged in the eating of human flesh as either a ritual or for food.
As a result, less than a hundred years after Columbus’ voyages to the New World the word “Canibales” was associated with the practice of eating human flesh. Thus, the word “cannibal” is born and enters the English language, even though there is no evidence the people of the island of Caniba/Cuba/Hispanola ever engaged in the practice.
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You might lose your hand
if you did not come up with
your quota of gold dust. |
Columbus’ voyages were not based upon nobility of purpose or patriotism, he was an Italian sailing for Spain, after all. He was motivated, as many were who came after him, by MONEY. Little do history students realize that Columbus negotiated for himself a hefty 10% of the profits for any and all of his voyages. Is it any wonder, then, that he used such ruthless methods to extort gold from the natives he encountered in the New World? The threat of having one’s hand cut off if you do not deliver your assigned amount of gold to Columbus and his minions is not a pleasant fact to contemplate.
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| Islamic flag. |
There were a number of other reasons for Columbus’ drive to sail westward to seek the East Indies. With the spread of Islam throughout the Middle East and the residual hostility between Christian Europe and the Muslim kingdoms, the trade routes overland were now denied to Europeans. European monarchs and businessmen, and Columbus in particular, were eager to find an alternative route to the spices and riches of the East.
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| Cinnamon, more valuable than gold. |
Columbus harbored a deep seated belief that his efforts were dictated to him by God, that he was doing God’s work in planning and executing his voyages. He was convinced that his plans were a manifestation of God’s purpose. In fact, Columbus believed that the world was going to end in 150 years and that as many pagan peoples as possible had to be brought to God (his god) before then.
Was this just an excuse for the depredations visited upon the cultures he encountered in the New World? For example, every three months each Taino native of Puerto Rico over the age of 14 had to give the Spanish/Columbus three ounces of gold or have one of their ears cut off. Hands were also known to be sacrificed for failure to produce the desired amount of gold. Yet, always, Columbus believed that he had gifts from God that justified many of his decisions and actions
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| Gold dust. |
Columbus has been given credit with beginning the slave trade in the New World when he forced hundreds of natives of the West Indies to return to Spain on Spanish ships to be shown to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella. As a result, Native Americans, for this reason and many others that followed, look upon Columbus’ arrival in the New World as the beginning of a holocaust that continued into the 20th century. October 10th is not a day of celebration for those of Native American ancestry.
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"Into thy hands, O Lord,
I commend my spirit." |
During Columbus’ second voyage to the New World in 1494 many of his men came down with syphilis, and some historians even believe that Columbus himself was victimized by the disease, thus explaining his increasingly messianic vision of himself as the “Ambassador of God” and the hearing of heavenly voices giving him encouragement and advice. His last words before he died in 1506 were, “Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit”, Christ’s dying words on the cross. Arrogance? A deteriorating mind? Syphilis was known as the “Great Pox”, to distinguish it from that other great killer of the age, smallpox.
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| Smallpox victim. |
So, for example, when, in a play by Shakespeare, a character hurls an insult at another character by saying, “A pox on you,” he means that he wishes a person to suffer the pain and embarrassment of skin and mouth lesions, genital sores, mental debilitation, blindness, nerve damage, senility and death. It was, in a way, the 16th century equivalent of the present day “fuck you!”
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Girolamo Francastoro, physician,
astronomer and poet who gave us
the word "syphilis." |
And here is a major digression:
And where does the term/name “syphilis” come from? It was the invention of a physician and astronomer from Verona, Italy, named Girolamo Francastoro. He was also a writer and published in 1530 a poem in Latin titled “Syphilis sive Morbus Callicus.” (translation: “Syphilis or the French Disease). In this poem he told the story of a handsome and amorous shepherd named Syphilis who, because of his many sexual encounters, became an early victim of the disease. And how did 16th century physicians treat patients with syphilis? More often than not they didn’t. They looked upon the disease as a judgment by God. People who contracted the disease suffered not only from painful physical symptoms, but also from extreme social ostracism. So it was left to barbers, charlatans and other fringe practitioners to devise a cure. The method developed involved the use of mercury, sometimes in the form of a salve applied directly to affected areas, or immersion in a heated concoction containing a high amount of mercury which would seep into all bodily orifices and skin lesions.
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16th century apothecary
jar of mecury ointment for
the treatment of syphilis. |
These treatments were repeated regularly for long periods of time. The second treatment, immersion, produced a cure for the disease, but in a cruel piece of irony, set the stage for the patients death from mercury poisoning. Here is a partial list of historical personalities who have suffered from syphilis: Christopher Columbus, Captain James Cook, composers Franz Schubert and Ludwig von Beethoven, Paul Gauguin, Francisco Goya, Toulouse- Lautrec, John Keats, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Baudelaire, Alexander Dumas, Guy de Maupassant, James Joyce. Oscar Wilde, Fredrich Neitzsche, Peter the Great, Henry VIII, Mary Tudor, Napoleon Bonaparte, Pope Alexander Borgia, Pope Julius II,…for just a start.
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Columbus meeting the Taino Indians whom he would
soon victimize and enslave. |
Columbus believed that Native Americans could serve as slaves not only in the New World but also on the sugar cane plantations off the western coast of North Africa. He transported over 500 Taino Indians to Spain from the Caribbean in 1495. Over 200 0f them died on the Eastward voyage across the Atlantic. This gruesome death rate would be repeated again and again when, at a later time, the slave trade changed directions and moved at least 10-15 million Africans from their homelands to the New World in the years 1492 to 1820.
Another digression:
By the mid 1400’s the Portuguese had established a trade in slaves with tribes living along the western coast of Africa. In 1444 a Portuguese businessman/explorer purchased 230 Africans from West Africa and thus began the construction of the brutal institutional apparatus that was to fuel the economies of Europe and the Americas for the next 400 years. Africans began appearing in Europe as servants and slaves of the wealthy.
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Slave fort in Ghana where Africans sold other
Africans to white Europeans. |
Slaves could be purchased cheaply and these African tribes set up a system in which whites were not allowed access to anything but coastal areas. Africans preyed upon Africans, with the Portuguese encouraging them by offering weapons, trade goods and money. The first African slaves were brought to the Caribbean as early as 1502. The convenience factor for the Spanish and Portuguese was overwhelming. Slaves were cheap to buy, but very valuable if brought to the New World.
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| Conditions on slave ships werte brutal and widely fatal. |
Prevailing westerly winds and ocean currents made it easy to transport them as “cargo.” Also, the Africans brought westward across the Atlantic came from highly developed agricultural societies and were familiar with the work to be done in the New World on the sugar, coffee and tobacco plantations awaiting their arrival.
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Marco Polo, also known as
"Marco the Liar." |
In the year 1298 a book was released to the public in Europe called Description of the World by Marco Polo. It described his journey to China and the court of the great Kublai Khan, his life and experiences there as an advisor and ambassador to the great Khan, and, finally, his journey home. He had been 17 years old when he undertook the 3 year journey to China, and returned at the age if 31. He returned with wealth, riches and stories which amazed the citizens of his home city, Venice.
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| Venice, Marco Polo's home. |
Ivory, jade, jewels, porcelain, silk and other valuables made him an immensely rich man. He told tales of Kublai Khan’s advanced and sophisticated empire: an elaborate postal system composed of a network of horse-mounted couriers that reached throughout the empire; the use of coal as fuel, which he referred to as “burning rocks” (coal had not yet been used in Europe); the use of paper money (invented by the Chinese in the 1100‘s and considered by some historians to be the best and most creative financial innovation of the last 1000 years), which was much easier to use than gold and silver coins, especially for long distance trade; gunpowder and cannon used as military weapons; and fireworks.
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Chinese Emperor
Kublai Khan. |
His stories seemed so unbelievable to the citizens of Venice that Marco Polo became known as “Marco the Liar” and he was ridiculed as a teller of tales. Later, all his tales would be confirmed, but only after his death. His book, however, influenced many individuals during the Age of Exploration, including Christopher Columbus.
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A page from Marco Polo's book.
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The New World was not as sparsely populated as we are led to believe when Columbus began the European onslaught of the Americas. The were, probably, anywhere from 7-12 million Native American inhabitants in the New World in 1492. Within a century of Columbus’ arrival, the Indian population of the Caribbean and Mexico had been reduced by more than 90% This pattern would be replicated by other European nations in other parts of the Americas in the centuries to come.
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Recently cut tobacco plants.
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Here is a list of word in English which derive from the languages of the "Arawak" and "Carib” Native American peoples experienced by Columbus on his first and second voyages: barbecue, hammock, iguana, potato, tobacco, cannibal, canoe, hurricane, macaw, maize, manatee, papaya, yucca.
So there are a few interesting facts, and related topics, having to do with Christopher Columbus that are never, or rarely, addressed in a history book. To me, everything relates to everything else, and I hope you find some satisfaction in reading my "connections."
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