Columbus - A man you can drool over

The Raucous Royals has been kind of hard on Christopher Columbus, so it may come as a surprise that I would recommend Christopher Columbus by one of my favorite authors Marion Day Bauer. I do have a soft spot for Columbus and this book hits it hard. Christopher Columbus tells the story of Columbus as the “dreamer” who had the courage to brave the unknown and the temerity to never give up on his goals. Liz Goulet Dubois’s charming boy-like depictions of Columbus pull at my childhood memories and remind me how much I loved this story as a kid.

When I read my daughter this book, she most liked that Columbus kept asking Isabella and Ferdinand until he got his yes - a concept every child can relate to.  Her favorite spread was when Columbus discovered “tierra” (land) with seagulls flying above his head.

This book definitely has the “drool factor”.

(The drool factor:  when you find your child asleep with their face stuck to a book and a puddle of drool forming across their favorite page. )

When it comes down to it, convincing my daughter Chris was a nice guy is just one of those essential lies that all parents tell their kids. Is it any more harmful than -  “Santa Claus is watching you” or “eat it, it’s chicken” or “darn it…the tv is broken?”  (I recommend that one.)

In the end, I want my daughter to love history and Christopher Columbus is the perfect first love. Sure, he will break her heart when she finds out her first love was most likely a syphilitic, marauding thug, but for now…. I am going to let her drool over Chris. 

How Columbus was like a 7 year old brat

How Christopher Columbus got his own holiday might be one of the seven wonders of history. I confess that I have a bit of a bone to pick with Chris. My disenchantment goes back to my third grade history report in which I sentimentally droned on about what a fabulous guy he was, only to find out later I had been fed a pack of lies.

Smarty pants
Let’s start with the story we know and love. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue from Spain to the islands of the Caribbean while looking for a sea route to the Indies. No, he didn’t believe the earth was flat. No one thought the earth was flat. But Columbus also certainly didn’t expect to hit the Americas instead of his desired destination. Unfortunately, when anyone tried to tell him he hadn't arrived in the Indies, the naysayer ended up with their tongue cut off.

Go ahead and make me
His voyages were also not as harmonious as my history books led me to believe. After weeks of being lost at sea, his crew begged him to turn around, but Columbus refused. The desperate crew soon came to the conclusion that it would just be better for everyone if they threw Columbus overboard. But there was one problem. No one but Columbus knew the way home and their captain’s last dieing words were not going to include directions. Everyone believed that they would die. So you can imagine the rejoicing when the crew landed in the Caribbean. That’s when the fun began.

Mine, Mine, Mine
As soon as Columbus’s crew got off the boat, they slapped down a Spanish flag claiming the unknown territory. Unfortunately, the land already belonged to some confused Native Americans of the Arawak tribe. According to Columbus’s log, the Arawaks thought Columbus’s crew were straight out of heaven accept they couldn’t quite understand why angels stunk so much and why they were wearing so much darn clothes. Then, they became even more confused when the angels turned out to be no-good thieves.

Indian Givers
We first must understand how the Arawak culture worked. The natives sort of remind me of my grandmother (god rest her soul). I would say, “nice necklace grandma” and she would immediately insist that I have it. Tell her you like her cookies and she would send you home with every last crumb. The Native Americans demonstrated the same generosity. If you complimented anything they owned, then they would immediately give it away. But there was a catch. The Indians would give things away….but then they would expect them back. To them, humans didn’t own things. Columbus saw things a bit differently. Once someone gave you something (or you stole it), it was yours to keep. He called the natives “Indian Givers”, (a phrase we still use today), and couldn't understand why they would want their gifts back.

Yuck, Cooties!
And what did the natives get in return for their generosity? Columbus’s crew gave some very special gifts to them in the form of measles, tetanus, typhoid, influenza, pneumonia, dysentery, whooping cough, smallpox and pork chops. The last one was Queen Isabella’s idea. She knew a fattened pig was the perfect food source. Unfortunately, the pigs also spread trichinosis. All those poor Native Americans knew is that one minute they were living happily smoking their peace pipe with perfectly working bowel movements and the next they had a bad case of the runs and some wild pigs running through their homes. Fair? Hardly.

oooouuuuuu shiny things
By now, the honeymoon was over. The Indians soon had enough and attacked Columbus’s crew killing many of them. Columbus just got more men to come over and enslaved the Indians forcing them to mine for gold. Meanwhile, the Indians just couldn’t understand why Europeans got so worked up over shinny things. It would be like a bunch of aliens landing in New York and demanding large quantities of bobble head dolls. Sure, bobble head dolls are amusing, but they have no monetary value. To the Indians, gold was not currency, and certainly not something that they were willing to die for.

I know you are, but what am I
Columbus seemed to take a sadistic delight in the rape, pillage and murder of innocent people. The rape and pillaging part is generally scratched out of the history books because it makes a far less picturesque tale then the tiny ships of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria merrily sailing across the ocean. Any Indian who didn’t give Columbus enough gold immediately had his hands cut off or was bled to death. By the time Columbus was done being a fabulously swell guy, 250,000 Indians had died. ok ok, we must remember that this was part of exploration and he did nothing more horrible than any other explorer of his time. But like my grandmother always said…. just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean you have to do it.

When you look at all the mayhem Columbus caused, you can’t help but wonder why school children everywhere still have to write reports on such a big jerk. But if there is one thing that the kids at home should learn from this blog it is this - the person with the most toys gets to write the history books and Columbus certainly brought back his share of new toys. His spoils included gold, slaves, chocolate, peanuts, potatoes, tobacco and possibly syphilis.**

Maybe Columbus' appeal to school kids is because he kind of acted like a spoiled brat. He didn't share. He spread countless germs. He bullied others. He is the kind of guy that we teach are children not to grow up and become. So why then do we honor him in classrooms across America?

** Some historians even argue that good old Chis spent his last days suffering from some itchiness. The other side of the debate is that Columbus did not bring back syphilis to Europe. Syphilis may have randomly mutated into a virulent pathogen at the end of the 15th century and the fact that it began to wreak havok on the population at the time of Columbus’s return home was mere coincidence.

Sources and Further Reading:
Hayden, Deborah. Pox: Genius, Madness, And The Mysteries Of Syphilis, New York, NY: Basic Books, 2003.
Christopher Columbus: Explorer of the New World. DVD. History Channel. 2005.
Cook, Noble David, “Sickness, Starvation, and Death in Early Hispaniola”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Winter, 2002), pp. 349-386.

Swine Flu: Blame Isabella of Castile

Except for the unfortunate Egyptian pigs, the swine flu never became the tragedy it was predicted to become a month ago. Some very sad cases did emerge. A pregnant woman in MN became a victim. A baby in TX died. Over 100 other people succumbed to the virus. As most hotdog lovers know, these deaths were not the fault of the pigs. Although rare, past outbreaks of Swine Influenza were transmitted from pigs to humans, but the origins of the recent influenza outbreak are unknown. It is thought to be a mutation of the influenza A virus found in either humans, birds or pigs. Thus, it was renamed the far less dramatic name of “H1N1 virus” which can roughly be translated from science jargon as “we don’t know where the heck this thing came from.”

Still, I am fingering Isabella of Castile for causing all this mess.

Why it is Isabella’s fault (sort of)
It all began with Columbus’ second voyage to America in June 1493. For this voyage, he was given more funds and a larger crew consisting of 1500 settlers. Because Isabella was bankrolling the voyage, she wanted to make sure her business venture was profitable. So she advised Columbus to do the sensible thing when taking a long voyage….make sure to pack some pigs.

The pig suggestion proved even smarter than packing spare underwear for several reasons:

1. The pigs became a valuable source of protein for hungry settlers. I have no idea why anyone would want to eat the star of Charlotte’s Web, but if you are so inclined, a pig’s flesh yields 65-85 percent meat and I am told it tastes pretty good too.


2. They were pretty self-sufficient. Have you seen what a pig will eat? It’s not pretty. They also will run you over for food. The Native American certainly didn’t appreciate them eating all their corn and named them “Spanish beasts.”


3. They are prolific. Female pigs will start breeding as young as nine months and will give birth to as many as twelve little piglets. That makes for an ongoing food supply.


4. They poop everywhere. No need for chemical fertilizers.


5. The Spanish used them as piggy inquisitors. Jewish people obviously didn't eat pork so if Columbus saw someone passing on the pork chop then he immediately pinned them for a Jew. Darn snitching pigs!

Those were the advantages to the Spanish. The bad news is that the pigs also spread diseases and killed off much of the Native American population and many Europeans too by transmitting anthrax, brucellosis, leptospirosis, trichinosis, tuberculosis and eventually influenza.

So there you have it. Blame Isabella. Or blame Columbus. Put please don't blame the pigs.

Sources and Further Reading:
Davis, C, Kenneth. America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation, New York, NY: Harper Paperbacks, 2009.
PBS, American Experience: We Shall Remain, 2009