After reading The Voyage of Christopher Columbus, I have been left with nothing more than mixed feelings. I really share his thoughts on how America could be a paradise, even today we can see how amazing the landscapes are, and how much richness there is in its soil. The way he describes all the islands starts with really beautiful descriptions. By the almost the end of his journal, he doesn’t have words to describe how magnificent the land is. However, he also compares them to the landscapes in Spain, maybe to give some value to his country’s resources?
Despite the fact that I pictured all this beauty in my mind when reading the text; I couldn’t help but to feel annoyed and angry every time he referred to the natives as cowards, naive, without any beliefs, and even more when he caught some of them as prisoners. The idea of him not writing the complete “truth” crossed my mind several times. One of those was when he wrote: “The Indians made gestures of resistance, indicating that they would not let any men land, but when they saw that the boats were approaching the shore and our men were not afraid they ran away from the sea. … Finally, all the Indians, men and boys, ran away”- Page 126. The natives were willing to defend themselves, they seemed pretty energetic and determined, there is no way that they would just run away like that. I felt like some sort of fight happened but for the sake of pleasing Christopher Columbus “Majesties”, he omitted the violent details. Who knows what else he didn’t share in his journal.
Christopher Columbus was ambitious, selfish, closed minded and blindly loyal to the Spanish crown. He lightly describes how he takes away the native’s possessions, the way an explorer would do so. “We took away all of the staffs away from them without difficulty”-Page 130. This phrase shows how ungrateful he is, considering that he was considered “from Heaven” by most of the natives, and welcomed with their “stuff” as he states it. It clearly reflects his ambitions for gold, possessions, and of course, his need to please the Spanish crown.
Some questions:
- Are C.C attitudes a good reflection of what Christianity is/was?
- How was the relationship of the Spanish people with the native women?
- Was C.C so loyal to the King and Queen because he was afraid they would execute him?
Hi Karen!
I agree… reading through the text there were two thoughts in my mind one focusing on Christopher’s point of view as he sees the “Islanders” and immediately thinks about the things he can do to change them to “help them.” My second thought correlates to what you said that annoyed you on how he kept referencing them with a negative connotation, as if he was superior. Before Columbus arrived, the people had a system, a religion, traditions, and culture but Columbus when he first saw them failed to recognize that and only had his mindset of what the people and the world should look like through his eyes.
I shared the same feeling of distrust for Columbus as I read his journal. I continuously grasped for the native account of Columbus’ arrival which unfortunately we will never have. We have no idea how much of the journey was omitted and how much was exaggerated to prove Columbus’ success to the King and Queen of Spain.