Monday, October 9, 2017

Happy Columbus Day

Robert Royal's well-researched volume, 1492 and All That, is an admirable corrective to the long-term accretion of white-man-as-plague balderdash. I believe it's currently out of print, but if you can find a used copy, I recommend it.

Here is an essay by Royal on the same theme, a review of Kirkpatrick Sale's The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy.

3 comments:

RebeccaH said...

Very interesting indeed.

HAL9000 said...

Samuel Elliopiot Morison's Admiral of the Ocean Sea is a bio of Colombus and a very interesting read. It includes much information about Spanish seafaring at the time, including the lyrics of a long=haul sea chantey in Spanish that is virtually untranslatable.

Deborah said...

It is interesting that the point of contention, discovery, is only applied to Columbus. Most hashings of the Columbus narrative include the Taino, but not the Guanahacabibes, the tribe
they "displaced" (ran off). Yet one of the two tribes had to "discover" the other. Royal continues with a description of Octavio Paz and friends discovery of a small pyramid. There's that word again. Paz and friends get a pass.

Columbus didn't proclaim the discovery for the entire world, only Spain, and did recognize the presence of natives.

The anti-Columbus/pro-indigenous people do not acknowledge that Native peoples have a full month of recognition. Ask them who Columbus encountered and most can't answer, but if they do, it will only be Taino.

As most people here know, I am of Native heritage. Perhaps it would be better to have a national day of celebration of the USA, in addition to Independence Day.