Here. And especially in this room, which i dont use this were very often, but this is an incredible room. Given that we are going to be talking about Christopher Columbus and his meetings with theindians on this side of world, i think i had better watch what i say. Any italians or ish people up there, so i think one of the reasons why publishers wanted me to consider this topic is because i do have a foot in both worlds. Geneticround, my background, my cultural background is english, irish, and there are located along the Missouri River primarily along the south side. They eventually ended up in a county that at the time the whites thought was worthless. Infected was sitting on top of a large oil dome. Fell. St they were the richest tribe in america because of that oil. Sometimes justice does work out. In this turning point series, for the most part they are called upon people and writers and other occupations to take up talking us take up topics that are not their specialty. I am a colombian scholar only that i happen to live in columbia missouri. When i came to take on the subject i was fascinated with it. I was also motivated by the fact that i really did not know about columbus. Perhaps you are in the same state i was at this time. Had heard the name columbus so many times. I, like you had heard a little ditty. I think there was more to it. I was filled with misconceptions about what had happened and certainly i was filled with the a hero. Hat columbus was we knew since before then. There are other considerations we must bring about when we think of columbus. Anybody here from the knights of columbus . Did you have to go through and at strata get here . To make worked hard this a fair account. At times it is hard to be entirely fair from the point of view of an italian or a spaniard. Nevertheless, the things i say in here which some remain at be too happy come from his own words were people who were there. I think the fact they deal with here are arguable. I stay away from those topics. This is the basic material. Was this really worth writing . Its like a short story it seems to me. Some of the questions that motivated me. Answer i to would like you to answer quickly in your own head as i did and compare what you think now about columbus and what im going to try to present to you tonight. The first thing i was curious about is why did he come here . How many times did he come to the americas . His views and attitudes toward the indians that he met. What did all his exploration gain him by the end of his life . I heard many times he died in poverty. And did he succeed in what he wanted to do . He came to the americas or times. I want to give you the first three voyages. I want to spend most of the time on the fourth voyage. It would make a marvelous movie. It would have a great deal of bloodshed and misery in it. I need to set up a few details before we get there. We have none of those logs remaining. Queen isabella had a copy made of his log. He went off with a copy. They disappear not too long afterwards. Bishop, i can say christian because at that time everybody who is christian was catholic. Named Arthur Lemieux made a redaction. We probably have the key material that he thought was important. Many times he would paraphrase what is going on. When columbus gets into an then fromg situation, the log exactly. If you have the sources that we primary one. The i am happy to say it never has been fully translated into english. Editor, considering this. History of the indies and an incredible account. An incredible account of what is going on. Spanisharly with explorers and conquistadors. Its fascinating if you have a bit of a taste for blood. Its important to keep in mind that columbus left apollo spain theig things that happened, ferdinand and isabella, king and queen had just succeeded in driving the moors out of spain so that the influence had been reduced to architecture and art. When i say spain, keep in mind spain wasnt constituted as it is today. We are of two principalities. Probably rankandfile spaniards a great deal of sense and power and belief that they can influence the world in ways they could couldnt that they couldnt before. When you read the history of columbus and the struggles in the middle east, so much of it is deja vu. Reading this research is in some ways how far we have come. We are doing the same things we were doing then. On the day before columbus set last jews were being expelled from spain. Convert wereld not forced to go someplace else. Many jews pretended to convert, many did, but many lost everything they had. Certainly reminiscent of nazi is him. His goal, at least one he played heart, yes it was in his he does talk about this. He wanted to helping about the convergence of any new people he would meet. Into the to bring them influence of rome. He also wanted to bring enough money back through spain to underwrite the retake jerusalem to bring it back into christian hands. Mind that as with the last several hundred years are. Waysyou look at it so many , he is a man right out of the middle ages. He is there in both ways. Probably of greater interest, this is my notion of any rate. Nobody would argue it wasnt theoretically possible to go far east. The notion that the world was flat, nobody had any sense at all. Up on thehad to look sky. He was 40s two years old. Thats 42 years old. The year at curves and you can see further. The reason ucsc, you see the mast of a approaching ship before the whole is the curve the earth takes care of it. They knew the earth was round. And they did argue. He lost those arguments. He went to spain as a second and the court put every man against columbus. He had little formal education. Certainly selftaught. He held based on sources here at study that the atlantic was only itut 4000 miles wide area was not north america, south america. Therewas another ocean that was bigger. They argued about the width of the atlantic. Finally columbus prevailed with the help of isabella. Side. S much more on his the last thing was money, commodities. They are hoping for gold and silver and pearls. Bey thought there would other commodities. Discovered mbus he was never quite aware of it. By the end of the last voyage he was beginning to catch on. The thing he stumbled into was a great atlantic gyre. If you want to go west, you dont sail directly west. A loop down and back up. By going west the first voyage to the new world was 33 days want to get past the atlantic islands. Repeat the route that you came, you swing back up north. Coming back up, he caught it almost up right but on later returns he didnt catch it right. The sailors were not concerned about sailing off the edge of the world. They were concerned about sea monsters. They heard tales about men with heads in their chests. They heard about the legend of the amazon women with breasts cut off. All of these things out of various writers. What they were really worried was the winds would be against them as they try to return. Water, outrun out of of food. Worried they were going to go too far in die. The ocean sea is not a repetition of the name of it. We can do this. Let me step along with the first voyage. Considered with the uncertainty increasing, it was a piece of cake. When they started getting near enough they began seeing signs of the land. We all heard the stories about the floating sticks. Columbus would throw for pieces of wood, i never found any evidence in things i read. Any bird columbus would say that they river bird, leopard only comes out a little bit to see. Occasionally he was right, most of the times he wasnt. I dont know what that would translate to today. Plus the new coat. There were no women along. For the man who first spotted land. As they got closer and closer and began to feel close to land, many sailors will testify that you can smell land when you are at sea just like when you are on land you can smell the sea. They were sure they were getting close. Manlly columbus at the next it sounds like you is getting back. He was protecting himself because this man had confidence in himself and as you guess a person of this stature had a certain amount of ego. He spent a good portion of his life finding this route to the indies. He wanted a name that would go with it. He finally did spot land and this was land they did set a foot set foot upon the next day. Columbus said i had already seen that earlier, so he took the reward. Roderigo was so upset by this that when he got back he was disgusted with the whole system and he gave up christianity and became a muslim. Say here when columbus uses the word indies it means a lot of territory. We could refer to as the east indies, to china, to japan, and even some parts of eastern africa. Im going to try to avoid the term as much as i can. If i use the term new world, forgive me for that. I also understand there were People Living here for leased 20,000 years before columbus ever came this way. I will speak from using those popular terms. There have been recent movies about Columbus Landing in the world and i found them reasonably accurate. A couple of tales i like that never got mentioned, columbus had brought an interpreter along. Heading from japan to china or india. You know the huge distance were talking about here. Its like saying i would go to the moon or maybe the sun instead. Large gaps. Hebrewerpreter spoke text spoke hebrew and arabic. Spoke hebrew and arabic. In china when they found him there, you can imagine the scene going to shore in which the scholar is off, talking to these people with the shaved heads and the dark skin in hebrew. I would guess the indians were nodding yes and saying yes to anything they got asked. Columbus could use a yes to his advantage, he does so throughout his travels there. Bothirst descriptions of the landscape and the human beings he met for the most part were warm statements. Come in from the likes of cortez and balboa. Columbus did have this good side that he could see some of these things. See at the back of his mind, he envisioned an Economic System that would be based on serfdom for the people they met. These would serve as servants. A few people aboard the ships were not spanish. Primarily spaniards. Columbus was an italian. I dont think the evidence supports that. The first meeting went very well. Enough on october 12, when these people looked out that morning with the sun coming through these masks, some of the sales and these huge ships out tribes orike other parts of tribes that columbus would meet, these people would not go running off back into the woods. Boatsit in until the long brought some of the men ashore. They didnt back away at all. They welcomed then. Some of the later hostile meetings came up because word was spread throughout the caribbean. Like the were native american, i consider anybody who was born on the shores a native american. Of my friends and colleagues, who are full blood, have no trouble at all with the term indian. Thing they do not hold against columbus. Use the word native americans are people who have about as much blood as i do. Myself indian,r just because you have indian background does not make one an indian. They begin immediately trading things. Branch of along to a larger group. It really depends on your definition. I see the tribal roles there. If you sit long enough and watch, you have enough blonde blueeyed indians to come in and collect their checks. How many exist today . Think many Authorities Say they are gone. Those that came out of the northeast south america around venezuela, they still exist. Well int meeting went that the treating started there. Fortunately they didnt have any goal any cold to speak of. They were happy to part with those, even though it would have taken them generations to get its to make these ornaments. They happily traded them for some of the trinkets. Most were based on what had been successive that what had been successful. Items was aig hawksbill. Those were very popular among the indians. Can ey decided they they had given up enough of those, they were treating broken glass and take an old shirt and shred the material and give a piece of cloth. They were given small gold items for this. Occasionally columbus would protest the sailors did this. Most of the time he said nothing about it. Much of the gold the europeans textgathering, much of the went into private pockets. It really was a nice meeting. These indians comported themselves so well, you have to sympathize with them, knowing the later history. Did pretty well. He kept them reasonably in check. In the navy myself, you can imagine soon enough what had been happening there with men who had been on or ship for more than a month. One of the reasons they would take on this trip was excitement. These were men in the vigor of their youth. So yes, that happened. Here is a debate about where landed. I think it comes down to one of two southern ends of the bermudas. I cant decide which it is. Im not sure it is that important. They go by different names. The british in the 20s, i think it was, changed the name. Use with the indians used he sailed among the lower bermudas and began sailing along cuba. Keep in mind he is still exploring now. He is keen me looking for gold at this point. Theyre trying to follow the trail of gold. They had reasonably good meetings there. They found the cubans were bit more advanced. If you can call a breech cloth of elaborate. They had slightly better weapons. A bit more sophisticated than the smaller islands. That is haiti and the Dominican Republic. Thats where they begin finding gold. Thats where the story starts to get a little ugly. Bring money and women into the lives of men and the evil begins. Things went pretty well. It was about time to begin heading home on Christmas Eve in what is now the north coast of haiti. E stood watch after watch he got very little sleep when there was exploring. Is one of the ways he ruined his health. He turned the watch over to another man who is tired. It was a quiet easy night. And andchristmas got on a reef and got caught and conducted off. And down lifted her up on top of that reef until it broke her whole open it broke her hull open. Whatever is left of the center merida is down on the north coast of haiti. Columbus thought we are in deep trouble now. One of his ships had gone off on another expedition of his own, violating his orders. . Ho came to his rescue a cacique. If his soul is here, i bake his forgiveness. He came forward and helped columbus as best he could. He told columbus after a few days of assisting the spaniards to try to salvage what they could off the santa maria that hehe would combat and visit would have a lifesize statue made up lump is entirely in gold. There is no way in the world she could have done that. He had promised the promise was a good one to make to european. The indian cacique showed great generosity and columbus decided to build a fort there because he could not take all the men on the one ship he had, the nina. He would leave half of the men there. They took some of the timbers of the santa maria and with indian labor built a fort, which they called the nativity. This is right around christmas. The plan was they would return within the year and relieve that fort. Across off and came columbus had a great deal of lock, more of it good than bad. He happened to cross the path of the pinta and the two captains made up and they had two ships to return. As they got near the eastern atlantic, they got into terrible tempests. I will not tell you what happened during these tempests, i think it is a fascinating part of the tale, but somehow diminished to survive. When columbus returned to spain in 1493 after 96 days, just 96 days in the new world, word had gone ahead about what he had done and he was a hero. A procession from the seaport to the court was a great moment for him. Never would it be better in his life. That is what it all came together for him and he reaped the fame who did desire he did desire. This was a man who was not content on modesty. Later he would wear franciscan robes, maybe as penance for his pride. The second voyage, which lasted from 1493 to 1496, got underway only months after he got back. The poll was to establish trading colony, not a colony of settlement, the kind the english were attempting to do in this country later, this was just to be a trading colony to bring gold and silver and pearls out of this new land. It consisted of 17 ships and more than a thousand men. His first crew was about 90 men and three ships. He headed to dominica and landed there, which is a little farther south in the caribbean from where he was, and then he began sailing up the curve of the island until he came to st. Croix, which is today american territory. That is the only time you ever set foot on anything we might say is america. The indians on st. Croix were not tainos. Onre is a degree of debate the degree of capitalism they practiced on tainos. I believe they did practice capitalism, the people who tried they did practice cannibal ism. They were much more warlike than the tainos and immediately trouble started. The spanish were in one conflict after another. After one particular nasty andunter, it is very bloody described in the tale by a couple different people, this happened. I want to read you this because it is one of the most remarkable accounts i know of the conquest of the americas. It comes from a very long letter , this is essentially a small pamphlet which was published not long after the second voyage ended written by a childhood friend of Christopher Columbus,. Nd italian named michael in this letter, she talks about the battle they had and capturing some of the caribs. Columbus made it a practice whenever he met a new tribe of impressing capturing capturing a local tribe to serve as a guide and serve as translators. He did take about a half a dozen indians back so they might learn spanish and come back and work as translators. Caribs aboard. This is what michael writes, in italian. While i was in the boat, i captured a beautiful pair of woman who columbus gave to me and with whom, she being naked according to custom, i conceived desire to take pleasure. I wanted to put my desire into execution, but she did not want it and treated me with fingernails in such a manner i wished i had never begun. Seeing that, i took a rope and thrashed her well, for which she raised such screams you would not have believed your ears. Finally, we came to an agreement in such manner that i can tell you see she seemed to have been brought up in a school of harlots. I do not know of any accounts written by anybody who landed in the new world that is so frank in terms ofg rape sexual intercourse and in terms of pillaging of society that is more symbolic. If you read the letter, otherwise he comes across as a very decent fellow, the kind of person you would not mind sitting down and having a martini with, with the exception of this one frank account. He writes this without shame at all. It was columbus who gave him the woman. Went on to not be god to the nativity to see how the fort was coming along. They put torches up trying to signal the fort, the next morning at sunrise they looked over and the fort was gone. They went ashore in the long boats and found that it had been burned great they found the anchor of the santa maria, they found numerous oddities numerous bodies only recently decomposing. They found out later that the spanish men who had gone from sailors to soldiers, in occupying that fort, simply do not behave very well and began making raids and were stealing women and children to use as servants, they were stealing whatever goal they had, they had no food of their own so they had to either steal food or barter for it, they were pillaging the land and they came across one cacique who said i am not going to tolerate this and rather than taking the spanish on headfirst, picked them off a few at a time. When he got there numbers down to such an extent that the indians at night could go in and attacked the fort and kill the rest of the spaniards and learn the nativity. Who came to columbuss aid . , whoriendly cacique again honestly claim to yet tried to defend the fort, but he was no match for this cheap this chief who eventually drowned at sea on a spanish ship. Columbus realized that is not a good location for a fort so they established a new one which he called isabella. ,hat was not a good location they moved inland and established another for called st. Thomas. Perhaps because columbus was making a mockery of those who had mocked him in this enterprise. St. Thomas was a better location, this was in haiti, and the Dominican Republic. Columbus is no longer functioning as an explorer, he is functioning as a conquistador , and i do not know what you are caught as a child, but i was not taught columbus was a conquistador. When you consider much of what he did, he was the first conquistador. Point, he does several things. Men to engageer in robbery, kidnapping, rapes, punishments, they go after the indians with spanish war dogs, the kind of dogs that the indian wereere berkeley stocks barkless dogs. The indians kept them to eat. The spanish war dogs were terrible. There are figures that one war dog was equivalent to about 20 indian fighters. This is conquest. This is depopulating an island. We have not even brought up the issue of disease. Im notething sure we can blame that on columbus, but certainly as commander of these things, these other things he does bear responsibility. To my mind, the most horrifying thing of all is he captured tainos and brought and down to the isabella picked off the 500 best men, women, and children and put them on ships and sent them to the slave market in seville. Any of the spaniards who were still there and wanted to take some of the rest of the indians were free to choose among themselves to take what was left. Wese who were not chosen, must be talking about people who were disabled in some way, in homely, those people were permitted to run for the hills and they survived for a while. Time was alsois extorting gold from the indians. They were forced to work to produce a certain amount of gold each month and if they failed to produce that amount of gold, the punishment could be a severing of years or noses or hands. The penalties were very severe for not coming in with enough gold. Wasproblem was gold extremely hardtofind. It was there, but you had to work to get much of it. Up indians first had to give all of their family jewels, and once those were gone they were scratching in the earth trying to dig up enough old. Think dig up enough gold. They cannot meet the quota. Columbus realized yet the start a better town than what he had. His Middle Brother often found what eventually became Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, the oldest city in the western hemisphere. They went off in the ship to explore, and whenever columbus was on land he was not a particularly good human being, commander. A good the most Serious Problems occurred while he was on land. On see, he did much better. He went off west, leaving the island in the hands of some of these grisly characters, things got even worse while he was gone. When he came back, he was ready to head for home. Later, hehalf years had a rough time getting home because he missed the atlantic by the time time they pulled into spain, the ships were beat all to hell and people knew who he was looked at these beat up ships with the sales ragged and broken and leaking and they looked at the sick man up or the ship, the six sailors, they looked at the the sick sailors, they looked at the dying indians and it became hard for columbus to get others to go with him. The third voyage did come about and lasts from 1498 to 1500. The purpose was to assist the new colonies, to help them along and to explore to the south of caribbean four a rumored for a rumored large pot to the south. First voyage to include to include women, it also included minor criminals, people who were in prison for debt or pickpockets, prostitutes, any number of crimes that would be considered lesser crimes. Those people could go to the new world and if they survived, which was a good question, if they survived and came back to spain, that a certain amount of money for them and they received amnesty. The kind ofre not people you would want to take a cruise with. There were seven ships. They went to trinidad and met up with some caribs there, but the carrots who came out to the ships to a certain distance stopped in their dugout canoe. We associate canoe with the western united states. Columbus wanted to talk to them and ask where the bold and iarls were, he thought maybe can lore them here so we had men come on deck with chamber pots and bank anything shiny. So heid not seem to work brought out a fight and drum corps of some sort that he had with them. The indians in the canoes interpreted this as a war dance, so they launched arrows at this. They stop thegh, launch of arrows and columbus did not retaliate. Usually he would retaliate. The caribs came on and came up to the boats, one very bold christian jumped into one of the dugouts and gave somebody a trinket, so trading started. Nothing serious. Those people never came back the next day. Columbus went on and ended up along the coast of venezuela. About that time he had a serious eye infection. He cannot see, he did not feel well, he stayed aboard most of the time during this sailing as a result,ela, he wanted to claim any land he saw for spain. He would send envoys ashore. As a result, columbus never set foot in south america. His men did, but he did not. As he moved along, he noticed , he the orinoco river noticed off this water coming in and he noticed how long the shoreline was going. He did not see any end. This was apparently not an island, so he decided this is an unknown continent. He called it another world. Not a new world, but another world. He sailed along and thought this was what it has to be. This is one of the mysteries he did not stop and go into this. He decided that this was the garden of eden. I do not know what kind of sailor you would be, and if i were sailing and i thought that was the pardon of eden that was the garden of eden. Is in there, i would like to at least take a look. I want to see those apples, i want to see those trees. He did know that his brother in the new town of Santa Domingo did need help. He was moving to get there. When he arrived, he found out the conditions were just horrible. The spanish were fighting among themselves and they were taking it out on the indians, they were well into their campaign of decimating the tainos. Disease was starting to affect both cultures. Columbus got involved and did what he could to rectify it. He cannot do much, he was not that kind of a leader. What he did was become at the end, maybe if you had been tyrannical at the front end that wouldve worked, but it was too late. Spain sent executives to check on him, those people became his enemies and dealt with the people in authority. This is the trip in which company went back to spain in chains. Both of his brothers went with him. The captain of the ship said he would take the chains off, and columbus who could play the martyr role said no, only the queen can remove these changes these chains. I will keep them on. He traveled in chains for this rather long trip home. I find considerable irony in that he was going back as a slave in the same way he had sent so many indians at that point back to spain. He defendedback himself in court as did his two brothers. They did a good job and the queen and king restored some of their perks and he was doing all right again. Each time this would happen, he would become more and more disaffected with royalty, with bureaucracies, if not with humankind itself. He put together the fourth voyage, this when he called the high voyage. This was the one that was to bring things in. Up,ook some time to set it he had a great many obstacles. The main thing he was running up against was people do not want to travel with him anymore. He has a reputation as a bad block as bad luck. He did find that teenagers would go. Teenagers would do anything. Ongot a lot of teenagers this trip, including ferdinand, his young son. Ferdinand left an account of the fourth voyage. The goal was to explore and the western caribbean, primarily with the idea of trying to find the presumed straight to the indian ocean. He couldound that, enter the indian ocean and was on his way to china. That was the key thing. Queen isabella made it clear there was to be no slaving on this voyage. Thank heavens she did that. She had been opposed all along but finally came clearly with that edict. He sailed to Santo Domingo because that was the headquarters of spain in the new world. Arrived, he knew what a caribbean hurricane was like. He could smell it, he could feel it, he could look at the clouds, he knew the hurricane was coming and he told the governor of the that a hurricane was coming and they should get the ships into protection. The governor laughed at him and said the old man has now become a soothsayer. The governor sent off 30 ships back to spain with some of the including, at the order of the royal court, the worst ship with columbuss gold on it. The idea is that this ship is not going to make it so columbus is going to lose his gold. Those ships caught the tornado as columbus said they would, columbus went the other way and found a safe place for his four ships. Only a couple ships of that 30 managed to survive. One of the ships that did survive was the one with his gold on it. It got back to spain and that money remained his, he had gotten away with it. He had beaten the governor. He did not beat him very often. He knew he was not wanted in Santa Domingo so he went west to find the straight and headed toward honduras. Cities that lost are in the yucatan and the jungles of belize and honduras and guatemala, he never heard anything about those. The indians also it often gave him accurate directions and directions, but never mentioned these lost cities, but whether they were hiding them or did not know, i have no idea. Columbus missed all that and all the wealth that went with those semilost civilizations. The first indians he met on theuras, he brought out bold and the silver and the andls and show them to them the language had changed and they were having to deal with signs and poor communication. He wanted to know where he could find these, but the indians did not know and they wanted to trade for the gold and silver and pearls and columbus said we want them. He went on. Moving along the east side of Central America. What he found is that the indians there, their medium of exchange was the cocoa bean. That was extremely viable to know. Columbus found no value in that. In the first voyage she had encountered a weed that the tainos would roll up and put up their nose and inhale and blow out and he saw no value in that. Crops the columbus missed. The gold and silver spain would take out of the new world was tremendous. In the long run the valuable things to come out of their were things like tobacco and chocolate cocoa. Columbus missed all of that, although he encountered it. The word cigar word. If youre putting some bars up your nose, it might not be quite as alluring if youre putting cigars up your nose, it might not be quite as alluring. In august, he finally set his foot on the continent of north america, if you want to call Central America separate on it you may if you want to call Central America a separate continent you may. He never reached north america proper or south america. He thought he was on more islands off the coast of china. He still had no idea where he was. Keep in mind this is one of the finest navigators of the day. He could out navigate anybody, he did not know where he was. He could get pointtopoint, but where that was in terms of the whole globe he cannot shake very he wass he had not a man who used inductive thinking. He got into lots of bad weather as he sailed down and tour the ships apart. They cannot pull the ships ashore as they needed to do, roll the ships on their side and scrape the barnacles off. They cannot do that. The weather be the devil out of them and then they began having trouble with the indians here and there. Clearly dissatisfaction among the crew began to grow. It was a wretched trip. Perhaps the worst of all is four voyages. He got into a situation where there was some strife but it seemed to smooth out. After some struggles, the cacique did what was common and descentlture two girls to the ship as offerings. When i say girls, i mean girls. One was eight years old and the other was 14. You can imagine these men at sea for this time under great deprivation, the incredible danger these two children were but columbus is ferdinand, he says columbus protected these girls and sent them back to the chief which he assumed was right thing to do. This is rare for columbus to do anything like this, he did a few other times. The chief was insulted because that was not the proper use of these children. Sometimes even when he wanted to do the ethical thing, it would backfire on him. His son saw his father behave admirably. He got down as far as panama and at that point he could begin to see the mountains and he began to realize there is going to be no straight through those mountains, this whole straight must be a myth. I wouldve thought at this point , his heart wouldve been broken, he wouldve been depressed, but that is not what you see. Perhaps because about that time they came across a tribe of indians who had gold and a fair amount of it. The voyageon of suddenly goes to gold and exploration seems to fall away. Again with the bold, the skirmish again with the gold the skirmishes became more and more severe. They were being equal live by the ship worms. There being eaten alive by the ship worms. The food the mariners were eating was going bad. Many took to eating their gruel at night because they did not want to see the maggots had to eat. To eat in daylight was to see this and probably lose your lunch, literally. Things getting more and more tense. Columbus decided to turn back and head up the coast of Central America and the anchored in and he anchored in panama. If you have ever gone through the panel mock and now, you know that is the eastern end of the panama canal. The indians told them lots of water over the mountains. He was less than 50 miles from the Pacific Ocean. This is what he had come to find. He did not know was a Pacific Ocean, he thought it was the indian ocean. What does he do . Nothing. He does not send anybody to look. You can argue he was not equipped to make a landward exploration. Nevertheless, that was what he had come for. You can imagine what wouldve happened if he had found the Pacific Ocean instead of balboa. They came up the northern coast of jamaica and took everything they could they could offload from the ships, anything they could raft to shore and on a incoming tide they let the ships run as far as they could on a reef together so the two ships were almost touching each other and columbus turned that into a fortification. At the time, having no idea how long he would have to live on those two ships. He had not had good receptions in jamaica before from the tainos there, but he knew better how to deal with them so things went well. Fortunately for both the christians and the indians, there was not any gold around, so that took that element of conflict away. Women wearing little more than what our lady eve here is wearing. These are natures who are probably coming up to 18 or 19 years of age. These are teenagers who are probably coming up to 18 or 19 years of age. Columbus knew this was a lit fuse. No one could go ashore without permission. He controlled how many men could be at liberty at any one time. It worked for a while. The spanish had come equipped on this voyage without a ship right or tools to repair ships. They were stranded. What they had to do was trade with the tainos for food. Columbus realized it is going to take only so long before the indians get all the hawk bills and glass beads they want, then what will we do for food . Maybe we will be rescued before that happens. It was 500 miles to Santa Domingo. Let me read you one statement i find revealing. Was probably at the lowest point in his life here. Everyonemagine that there figured this is probably that end of it for us. Dashed,s had been everything he had hoped to find had failed, he was not going to find the straight to the indian ocean. He was ill when he wrote this. He wrote a letter to the king and queen that he hoped one day they would see. He says, i have no hair upon me that is not white and my body is infirm and exhausted. All that is left to me and my brothers has been taken away and sold, even to the cloak that i wore, to my great dishonor. I believe this was not done by your royal command, but the restitution of my honor and losses and the punishment of those who have of collected them and plundered me of my pearls and disparaged my admirals privileges will rebound to the honor of your royal dignity if they enacted. Have pity on me heaven and weep for me. Death,d, expecting surrounded by a million savages full of cruelty, how neglected will be the sole if youre bit part from the body. Weep for me, whoever has charity, truth, and justice. To my mind, an incredible statement. It was by the generosity of the indians that he had survived during all of these years. He had met with warfare when he had taken things that were not his, but to speak of savages full of cruelty, and yet forgotten his friend who had tried to save him when the santa maria roca. When the santa maria broke up. Diego a man aboard named who had began saving columbus time and again. This is the kind of shipmate that if one is captain you want to have worried you want to have. Diego took a suit of armor and traded for a canoe with the tanioinos. The modified it so he could sail with help between jamaica and the Dominican Republic and tried to alert them in Santa Domingo of what was going on. The first try he failed to make it, he had to come back, he lost the canoe. Not to be stopped, he found another canoe and took off a second time. It took them four days, but they finally did reach the island of haiti, hispaniola on the haitian end of things. This was a piece of bad colombian block. Lockpiece of bad colombian bad colombian luck. He puts himself into columbuss great adversary, the governor. Wasgovernor thought this perfect, he is stranded, he is not going to survive. Something is going to get him. Diego i will help you, but lets see what happens. It took months, and he effectively stranded diego on that island. Diego could get no word to columbus that he had reached civilization. The tensions on jamaica among the men had reached a breaking point and they split into two , the mutineers led by a few brothers who were not seamen entered been appointed to this voyage through political appointments. They had no understanding of how to conduct themselves or deal with things such as this. They convinced half the men that columbus was refusing to go back to Santo Domingo because he was want to their. What began to happen was conflict between the two. At first, the mutineers took their frustrations out on the indians and began pillaging the tainos. They commandeered 10 dugout canoes and decided they would paddle to haiti or the Dominican Republic. To do theostly tainos heavy work. Tainos weree the not huge people, they were strong, but still these are not heavily built people. They were not used to being overworked in the way europeans would work. These tainos made paddle and paddle under relentless sun, then these over the dugouts, the indians working water. On exhausted their soon the tainos begin dying off and then they got into rough seas. Low, so to were too light in the christians began throwing the tainos overboard. Onto thed try to hold dugouts and the spanish would pullout their swords and chop their hands off. They manage to keep themselves afloat and it returned to jamaica, minus their paddlers. By then, their blood lust was up and they were suited to pillage more of the island. Food was getting harder to come realizede the tainos they cannot help the people anymore. Happened, img not sure you can believe this story, we have it from columbuss son ferdinand. If you read aad mark twain and connecticut yankee in king arthurs court, you may remember when he is about to be executed. A man from the 19th century goes back to the time of king arthur and carries around his almanac. He may have gotten the idea from this incident, i do not know. Columbus had a nautical almanac and noticed we are going to have a lunar eclipse. That day he brought the leaders and according to ferdinand, dave this speech about how the great white god was displeased with these people because he had they had stopped bringing food. If they did not start bringing food, the great god was going to turn the moon into blood. Theres been a great deal of scoffing and off went the tainos. As the eclipse started, they came back and said please great white father, we will bring you food or it we will bring you food. Ive trouble with that story because i believe people have seen and a clips before. And eclipse before. They knew what it was. It saves the expedition, they did get more food grade they did get more food. The governor sent a spy ship to see how the men were doing. He brought paid in for them to eat, but he refused to pick anybody up. He was checking to see if columbus was alive. Finding that he was, he returned, reported to the governor, and the man said lets give them some more time. The mutineers decided to attack their fellow europeans and a war broke out, if you can call that, a skirmish broke out. The tainos watch this. For once they could watch the europeans tried to kill each for once they could watch the europeans tried to kill each other. I can imagine the delight they had watching these butchers go at each other, probably taking pleasure with each slice of the sword. 1504, diego finally got permission to send a leaky rescue ship. Columbus put down the moot the mutineers and put the leaders in chains. Who had was still alive not died from disease or warfare. This leaky rescue ship arrived and off the men went to Santo Domingo. Columbus was able to hire a ship to take himself and his brothers on despain. On to spain. When he got back to spain in november, 12 years and a month to the date he first set foot in america, everything that happened in terms of lummis in america happened in just 12 years that happened in terms of columbus in america happened in just 12 years. The first thing he did was to seek compensation for his men. If youve read about lewis and clark or watched the ken burns pbs series on that, you may be Meriwether Lewis and William Clark when they returned to st. Louis in 1806 spent a great deal of time trying to get money for the soldiers from the boys across the street in congress. It was hard then and it is hard now. Columbus was relentless and trying to protect his men. Three weeks after he returned, this is bad colombian luck, Queen Isabella died. Ferdinand was not his supporter and had little sympathy. Things got much harder. For the next few years, columbus try to put things together, he kept working at trying to restore rights and privileges the crown had promised him. He spent a lot of time dealing with bureaucracy. His health was continuously getting worse, primarily from some form of arthritis. At the same time, a mandate Amerigo Vespucci a man named exacto vespucci the nature of what he did is difficult to ascertain, but if you believe the popular story he did a fair amount of exploring around south america. He did two things columbus did not do. The first thing is yet written a book, he stated that between spain and china was not one ocean but two oceans and in between was a giant landmass. Yet no idea how big it was, but he knew it was huge. This landmass he was able to place accurately pretty well. Columbus never did either one of those things. When columbus died in 1506, he was 55 years old and he still believed he had set foot in the indies, was not quite sure what it was but thought it was close to malaysia. He believed he had accomplished most of what he had set out to do. He had not done that. He died believing he had succeeded but in truth what he had succeeded was he did set himself up financially, he died a reasonably wealthy man and left a nice estate to his heirs. If we judge him by his own goals, we can say this. He did not reach the indies, he did not find the straight to the indian ocean, he did not convert more than two or three indians during that time. Conversions would come later. He did not see jerusalem returned to the hands of the christians. All those things he wanted to do, he did not do them. He considered he had done pretty well. If we take the longer view, we can see that some of those things did come about. Knowledgee him by our , things we cannot expect them to know, we can say this. He missed what was to become the most powerful nation on earth entirely, he got close to the florida keys but he never got there. He was never able to set foot on the continental u. S. He missed south america. He missed the Pacific Ocean entirely. He missed the real sources of wealth that would come out of the world other than gold and silver, the longterm resources, those he missed. It gives American Indians a certain amount of satisfaction to think that one of the great resources to come out of this new world, tobacco is an indians revenge considering how may people it has killed and second and sickened. He did initiate the Columbian Exchange where he brought some good things to the new world and the new world sent many good things to the old. Itebody else would have done had he not done it himself, but he in fact was the man that initiated that. I think we can forgive him for those things he failed to do. Those seem to be very human that somebody he was as good as columbus was in other ways could miss. I want to conclude with this. Ive trouble forgiving him for setting up an Economic System and an ethical system that would lead to the greatest genocide the world has ever seen. Started, andat he we can say if he had not, some of the else would have. Had he not started what he did, George Catlin would not of gone into the west. He would not of gone out with the motivation of trying to preserve this way of life that he knew then in the 1830s was dying. I want to close with this quotation from a bishop. Impressed with what religious people say, i am not in the habit of putting bishops of quoting bishops with admiration. I have great admiration for Bartholomew Diaz kosice worth if moore had come to the shores with his mind, we would have a very different society. I think what happened to American Indians wouldve been far different, what happened to american blacks wouldve been far different, i think issues of genocide and slavery wouldve been far different. People who say we cannot condemn columbus because he was a man of his time, the facts do not support it. Many of the things columbus and the other producer doors were doing, they knew they were wrong. Thing bartholomew after one of the skirmishes between the christians and the europeans and the indians. This opinion mise is the prizes this up pitomizes the question this book raises. The indians fell into the most wretched way of living, some took refuge in the mountains while others since the violence on the part of the christians never ceased this is a Christian Bishop saying this killed some of the christians for special damages and tortures the indians suffered. Then straightaway against them was taken by the christians vengeance which they call punishment. Not only the murders but as many might be in that village or region were punished with execution or torture. To think how far we have not, about that very thing, to punish a whole village. ,n the museum of the holocaust and nazi germany this same thing russia, in stalinist vichy france, you have an informer, we will take the whole village. This is the darkest talk ive ever given and i apologize to be in this wonderful room talking about issues so dark, but that was my motivation because we as americans do not know what happened in our history, we are must more we are much more likely to be condemned to repeating these things. I would like for the people in the house that is painted white to read some of these issues and know that swords do not get the job done. Education, that has a chance. [applause] william thank you. If there are couple brief questions, i will have a go. Could you elaborate more on the Historical Records of columbus giving orders of a drink used to door of a confused to door of a conquistador nature . I think the bishop gives the fullest record of that. Are you asking because you want good evidence that that happened . About ifjust curious in the letters of his son or others there was direct documentation of him giving orders. William he says some of these things. He thought he was conducting proper action as a military leader. Some of his adversaries later brought legal charges against him and there is a large fraction of people who said he did this or did not do that. So complex, i do not know what the truth is there so i just stayed away from that. What you think of getting together with the other writers a show of force to [indiscernible] i do not know how to answer that. It is a wonderful idea. The problem with writers is we are like the protest this weekend, there were so many different viewpoints going on. It was spread all over the place. I think writers tend to do that not because of different viewpoints, but because we tend to be loaned souls. We are the wrong people to do it other than through our work, our books. There are certainly conferences that happen, i do not think conferences do any good at all. There is been some suggestion that columbus may have sailed to the grand banks, is there any evidence to indicate that may have been true . William not that i am aware of. Thule,s about ultimate which was iceland. If he went that far, im not aware we have anything he wrote that would confirm that. We have to treat that as a fable at this point. I am from st. Croix and the area where columbus landed is now a National Park. The department of the interior says there were both tainos and caribs. I am wondering what source material you consulted. It is not something we have ever been clear about. My favorite source for this is an outofprint two volume book about columbus which focuses entirely on the voyages. He was a great naval historian and also a sailor say get the point of view of the sailor. He talks about a great deal. O a book called the tainos i am jawing a prank on the authors neck im drawing a blank on the authors name. He has done some other works about the caribbean indians, and there is another one by David Stannard called american holocaust, columbus and the conquest of the new world. Those were the three things for that element i used most heavily. One more closing question, maybe one i can answer. Asked us to imagine what wouldve happened if columbus had discovered the pacific instead of balboa. Can you imagine what wouldve happened . William i do not imagine it wouldve been that different. Rebounded to his name today. In terms of the history of the new world and the western hemisphere i do not think it wouldve been changed by that. The europeans coming here was a juggernaut and there was little that was going to stop that. The time had, and history had turned and escape was impossible for the native peoples. That is what happens when Technology Meets a lesser technology. We need to keep that in mind with columbus. If it was not him, it would be somebody else. Of the keys to doors of the tadors, he is one of the best. Still, it is not a happy picture. Im getting the hook sign. Thank you for coming out tonight. [applause] history bookshelf, here from the countrys bestknown history writers of the past decade every saturday at 4 00. You can watch any of our programs at any time when you visit our website, www. Cspan. Org history. Youre watching American History tv, all weekend every weekend on cspan3. History,n lectures in professor teaches a class on the evolution of the National Park system and the effort to preserve roosting wilderness. Here is a preview to preserve pristine wilderness. Here is a preview. All landscapes have histories. Even places we think of as Natural Landscapes have histories. Were shaped by other peoples lives, whether that be native americans or more recent settlers like the ranchers. I think there is a need to have, if not a formal recognition of the relationship, at least a respect for the ways in which their work has made these places. The reason there are grassy fields, which are very green this time of year is because of burning for hundreds of thousands of years and because cattle ranching has been taking place since then. If you take the cattle off and the burning off, just like at the Yosemite Valley with the conifers moving in, here you have coastal brush moving in. Are notastal grasslands in themselves Natural Landscapes. They are created landscapes. Grasslands are not Natural Landscapes. They are created landscapes through peoples work. You can watch the entire lectures inght on history at 8 p. M. And midnight eastern on cspan3. This is American History tv. Ohio State University talks all the history of Mass Violence in American History. He is the author of massive suicide. Mass this is about 20 minutes. We are joined by randolph mass here to talk about violent and domestic violence. Mass violence has a certain connotation today. How would it have been different in the 1850s