From Awe and Wonder to Pain of Plunder: Columbus's Two Letters by John Little

Any person who has ever entered a school knows the name and popular personage of Christopher Columbus: he is credited with the discovery of the “New World” by the Eurocentric world, enslaving and thieving from the Natives he encountered.  However, how is Columbus remembered by his own hand? He wrote many letters and memoirs of his escapades, but two letters in particular capture the gist of his travels. Christopher Columbus’ Letter to Luis de Santangel regarding the First Voyage was considered the first account of the Americas: a joyous discovery of luscious green lands with primitive people. The second letter of importance regarding his Fourth Voyage is of stark contrast. It is not a merry frolic through the Americas as the first was, but instead a harsh and blunt truth of his many woes. His two letters circumscribed in the Norton canon give more than a notion to the idea of white male privilege and victimization as it is called today. He is able to go on a trip around the world and take what he wants but then pout to the King when any injustice is served to him.

Christopher Columbus did not see the Natives of the Caribbean as people of importance upon his arrival as worded in his first letter to Luis de Santangel. “They traveled three days’ journey and found an infinity of small hamlets and people without number, but nothing of importance.” (Columbus, Letter to Luis de Santangel, 1493) Here, Columbus is referring to when he sent scouts to survey the land and they returned with said news. The scouts did not find large cities or great kings such as the Europeans were accustomed to and therefore their findings were nothing of importance. This shameful world view of power and wealth determining personhood extends to today. However, interestingly Columbus does refer to the Natives as “people” despite their lack of importance, to his understanding. In the comparing letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, the language referring the Natives is crude in word choice, which explains the ideals behind the corruption that must exist in mind and soul in order to commit the atrocities that Columbus did to Native Americans. However, the focus of that letter was not on his actions in the 10 years between the two letters but his own state of being as a result of wrongdoings to his person.

“Alone in my trouble, sick, in daily expectation of death, and encompassed about by a million savages, full of cruelty and our foes, and so separated from the holy Sacraments of the Holy Church, my soul will be forgotten if it here leaves my body.” (Columbus, Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, 1503) What great woe begets the person of Christopher Columbus in this passage. Ravaged by his voyages and accosted by injustice and mutiny, here he plainly states that is a pained and dying man. However, what I see past his personal pains is a white male victimhood. He does not account for his tragic actions that harmed millions and affect billions to this day. He is only aware of the pains made evident in his own mind and body by what others have done to him. It dictates his worldview because one sees that he no longer refers to Natives as “people” (even unimportant ones at that) but as “savages.” This gives proof that white privilege and victimization are much older than the contemporary conversation. In 1503, a white man who was supremely privileged enough to voyage across seas (an extremely costly and laborious venture in itself) sees himself as the sole victim in this second letter without atonement for his wrongdoings toward people he oppressed, raped and murdered. Contemporarily, this manifests itself as white social media bashes Colin Kaepernick for not pledging proud allegiance to the American flag. It is his right to act as he pleases, but as it is a Black man in protest of a flag that represents oppression to people of color to this day, his protest is abjectly hated by white mainstream media. Just as Columbus ignores his own faults and privilege, modern media ignore the racist overtones in the pledge of allegiance and the fact that America is still not a safe place to be Black. Their privilege blinds them, their victimhood protects them in their mind. However, the truth of Columbus and protest undoes Eurocentricity i.e. the privilege and victimhood.

Christopher Columbus was weak in identity through his 10 years of exploration in the Americas. His linguistic alteration from “people” to “savage” was not the only thing that articulates it: the fact that as a devout Christian he does not ask forgiveness of his sins but simply begs mercy for his own suffering shows a dangerous shortsightedness of character. His shortsighted morality thrives through white culture today. It is still the task of the oppressed to remind the oppressor of our humanity because the oppressor only sees its own woe. Thus the nature of Black Lives Matter, Civil protest will live as long as white victimhood and privilege exist.