On this date in history, Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic monarchs of Castile, signed the Capitulations of Santa Fe, by which they agreed to finance a voyage by Christopher Columbus, aged 41, to seek a passage across the ocean to Asia, and to keep 10% of all profits.
The Capitulations also provided that Columbus was to be admiral of all the land he discovered and acquired, and that he would have the power to “hear and dispatch all civil and criminal proceedings pertaining to the said offices of the admiralty, viceroyalty and governorship” and to “punish and castigate the delinquents.”
Columbus took this job to heart after sighting land in the Americas on October 12, 1492. He and his crew, traveling on three ships, first landed on the Bahamian island of Guanahaní, and a new era of European exploration and expansion began.
16th century depiction of Christopher Columbus landing in America. Theodore de Bry, Reisen in Occidentalischen Indien (Frankfurt, ca. 1590-1630). Copper plate engraving.
Not everyone considers this to be a cause for celebration. As Edward T. Stone in American Heritage Magazine (October 1975) noted, “The somber chronicle of the events that ended in the genocide of the peaceful Arawaks of the Caribbean islands is amply documented in Columbus’ own letters and journals.”
Upon his arrival in the New World, Columbus recorded of the natives:
“They have no weapons and are all naked without any skill in arms and are very cowardly so that a thousand would not challenge three. … Thus they are useful to be commanded and to be made to labor and sow and to do everything else of which there is need and build towns and be taught to wear clothes and learn our customs.”
On a second trip back to the Caribbean, Columbus brought “ferocious greyhounds” that could tear the Indians to pieces if they did not submit to the rape and slavery the Spaniards had in mind for them.
James Loewen pointed out in the book Lies My Teacher Told Me:
“Here now began a reign of terror in Hispaniola. Spaniards hunted American Indians for sport and murdered them for dog food. Columbus, upset because he could not locate the gold he was certain was on the island, set up a tribute system.”
Those who couldn’t pay had their hands cut off. Hands escalated to heads and then bodies. Suicides became rife. In a few years, the entire population was eliminated, and thus the Spaniards (deciding that this rape and slavery arrangement was a good thing) had to start importing Africans. Eventually, the island of Haiti came to be inhabited by a predominance of black Africans.
Christopher Columbus’ Soldiers Chop the Hands off of Arawak Indians who Failed to Meet the Mining Quota
It is said that Hitler studied and admired the treatment and decimation of the Arawaks by Columbus and his men.
Today, many Americans choose to forget, or never learned, the true nature of the conquest by Columbus.
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