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Sailing and Murder on the Ocean Blue
“Can you believe they named a holiday for me?” said Christopher Columbus, now 569 years old. “Truth be known, I was the biggest screw up, ever.”
“And quite a cold, blooded killer, rapist and slave dealer, too,” said his bud and fellow crew member, Jack.
“We don’t need to talk about that,” said Chris. “We were just doing our jobs. We were collecting slaves. What? So? It was a long time ago. It’s easy to say now that we were bad guys but we didn’t have the luxury of 20–20 hindsight.”
“You knew then that it was savage and wrong,” said Jack. “We all knew it was wrong but we did it anyway.”
It was back in 1492 when the Spaniards sailed the ocean blue and now, 528 years later, there are super sales at Kohls and happy children with a day off from school all across the nation, all in the name of the made-up, mythological exploits of the great explorer who started one of the worst genocides in history.
The fabled explorers were recently relaxing in their lounge chairs in Spain, talking about how they “discovered” what they euphemistically called the “new world,” ignorant at the time of the reality that the land was home for centuries to millions of indigenous people who would soon be dead through the holocaust that was known as the Spanish conquest.
Follow the money. The Queen and King of Spain, Isabella and Ferdinand, had sponsored Columbus to find a western ocean route so they could get to China, India, and the priceless gold and spice islands of Asia.
Columbus was 41 years old when he and his trio of small sailing ships, the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, spied land and believed they had made it to either China or Japan when they actually ended up on Watling Island in the Bahamas. That’s like saying you’re going to Connecticut and ending up in Moscow.
Anybody else who sails a half a world in the wrong direction would be known, historically, as not a very good sailor. But not Chris. He is a folk hero.
Jack remembered that first day of landing on the coast of the island. The natives, known as the Lucayan, didn’t know who their new visitors were but they gave them the benefit of the doubt and reacted warmly, offering them all kinds of food and water, all in the name of being friendly. Columbus and the gang thanked them by killing many of them with no more feelings than when you swat a fly. The women and children who weren’t murdered were taken by the explorers as slaves for sex and labor.
In less than 30 years, all of the Lucayan would be dead from the coming genocide.
“Remember, it was the new world,” said Columbus. “We didn’t know what we were getting into and we had to protect ourselves.”
“It wasn’t new and you massacred a whole nation of natives,” said Pedro. “What were we protecting ourselves from? “
“Yes, we killed a lot of the savages but it was our job and we were just following orders,” said Chris.
“Bull,” said Pedro. “You knew it was wrong. I knew it was wrong. We all knew it was wrong. Murder is murder is murder. We wanted slaves and gold. I just don’t get how they were able to paper over the truth for so many years. We massacred them. I remember hearing their screams and watching the women grabbing their kids and running for their lives. There was blood everywhere. It was horrible but we just kept on killing. For God’s sake, Chris, we annihilated them because we could all in the name of God and the queen and gold.”
After conquering the Lucayans, the heavily armed Spaniards sailed to nearby Hispaniola where they met the Taino, who were related to the Lucayans. There were an estimated 60,000 to 8 milion Tainos on the island.
Columbus built a fort, left some crew members, killed a few Tainos, and returned to Spain. He later returned from Spain with 17 ships and 1,200 men, hell bent on finding gold for the king and queen. They didn’t find gold but they figured slaves were just as good, so they loaded the Tainos on ships bound for Spain. Most died on the trip or after being sold into slavery.
Undaunted, Columbus returned and tried again for the gold, but this time he ordered all Taíno people 14 and older to deliver a required amount of gold dust every three months or their hands would be cut off.
The Columbus conquest set the tenor for years of destruction by the Spaniards. They say that 12 million to 15 million indigenous people were killed during that period.
By the way, Columbus never made it to the mainland of what is now the U.S.
He was honored with federal holiday in 1937. Since 1991, dozens of cities and a growing number of states have celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a holiday to highlight the history and contributions of Native Americans.