The Real History behind Christopher Columbus

This is one of those few quotes the children of all ages know by heart from history. Unfortunately though, our history books, from elementary all the way to high school, have whitewashed the real story behind Columbus. We have made him a hero. We even celebrate him in the United States. We give him credit for "discovering" America though he never set foot on our land. Maybe, perhaps if we gave him credit for "discovering" the Americas it would be a little better. But the face of the matter is that he didn't discover anything. The area that he landed on had actually been "discovered" 100 years prior by West Africans. The fact that this area of the world had been traversed for thousands of years before Columbus is barely mentioned in the books. But our country has so glorified Columbus that today it would be tantamount to heresy to state otherwise.

Columbus had sailed to several countries trying to convince them that he knew of a different route to get to India by going west which would prove that the world was round. It took a second attempt with Queen Isabela before he was given money to try. One of the reasons that has been given in history books is that after the disastrous Crusades that saw the Turks take control of Constantinople and thus the Silk Road, the Turks had closed off the road. That is simply not true, the road remained open because it meant a lot of money to the Turks. It has also been whitewashed that Jewish and Christian people that lived in Muslim controlled lands were left to believe as they wished, something that cannot be said for Christian Europe at the time.

Columbus had promised that he would return to Spain with Indian spices, but the truth of the matter is that he was after gold. Nothing really wrong with that. So off went Columbus in his three undersized ships, Santa Maria, Pinta, and the Nina to traverse the ocean. What is not mentioned in the textbooks is that this was not a great voyage. On at least two separate occasions his crews attempted mutiny and nearly threw him overboard. When they finally did land Columbus came ashore and declared all that he saw as his, damn the indigenous peoples that were already there. He began almost immediately looking for gold. His mission was to also to convert the savages to Christianity or kill them. What Columbus didn't know, and subsequent other explorers, is that by interacting with the indigenous people they were already killing them, because of the diseases they brought with them.

In fact, the reason we call all indigenous people in the Americas, Indians, is because Columbus went back to Spain proclaiming that he had landed in India.

It is so bad in the United States that in textbooks the time period in the Americas before Columbus is actually called pre-Columbian.

I am not disputing Columbus' place in history. It was partly because of him that Europe stepped up it's efforts to explore and colonize the world and that's why we are here today. But honestly this part of the world was going to be "discovered" large scale at some point.

Some people on this site like to trash the American Education System because our children are behind other countries. As far as History, as a History teacher, I can give ground on this, because our History books don't teach children. They too many times idolize people and make them bigger than they actually are. For an example, Betsy Ross, she had little to do with the creation of our first flag, but you wouldn't know that reading a public school textbook.

Fortunately, some textbooks are starting to de emphasize the worshipping of Christopher Columbus, and that's a start.

Portions of what I have written were taken from the book "Lies my Teacher Told Me" written by James W. Loewen.