True History Is More Inspiring Than Well-Meaning FictionTall ships arrive in Muskegon August 27, among them replicas of the Nia and

the Pinta, from Christopher Columbuss first voyage. Both the ships and the historicreplicas conjure fond memories of youth near Muskegon Lake sailing, prior visitsby such vessels, and studying in elementary school the history of early contactbetween Europeans and Native Americans.

One year, we read aloud a dramatization of Columbuss advocacy to KingFerdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, for financial support for his first expedition. The dramatization portrayed Columbus as a rare rational man of science, virtuallyalone in Spain, where still-Medieval rulers and peasants alike all believed that theworld was flat and a ship sailing too far would fall off the edge of the world. Columbuss triumphant return, we were told, enlightened everyone that the Earthreally is round.

Turns out, the history told by American writer Washington Irving, is not thesame as what actually happened.

The Columbus-as-rational-man-of-science narrative was developed by Irving,while he was in Spain between 1826 and 1828, mostly as an attach to the AmericanEmbassy. He would later return there as Ambassador under John Tylers presidency.This was at a time when anti-Catholic passions still ran high throughout most of theUnited States. And it is perhaps not surprising that a narrative pitting rational,Enlightenment, thinking against the perceived retrograde traditionalism then prevalentin monarchial Spain, might emerge from a patriotic American at that time.

But in reality, virtually all educated people in King Ferdinands court, not onlyknew the world was round, but how big around it was. At least as early as 430 BCE,a Greek named Anaxagoras inferred from the shape of the Earths shadow on the Moonduring a partial lunar eclipse, that the Earth is spherical in shape. Likely, others hadthis insight even sooner. Later, Eratosthenes of Cyrene, the Chief Librarian atAlexandria, around 200 BCE, devised a clever strategy to estimate how big around theworld is. His measurement turned out to be surprisingly accurate.

The problem Columbus was trying to solve was how to find a substitute for theoverland trade route between Europe and the Orient. European access to the Silk Roadhad been cut off in 1453 as a result of the fall of Constantinople to the OttomanEmpire. Columbus, seeking support for his initial voyage, tried to argue that the world

is actually quite a bit smaller than Eratosthaness estimate. Columbus turned out to bewrong. Fortunately for Columbus, he stumbled upon previously unknown islands,where he had supposed that the coastline of Asia would be.

But imagine what might have been different if Irvings version of the tale hadreally been true. What if Columbus, in March, 1493, had returned to Europe, to proveto a whole continent of flat-earthers that the Earth is actually round? Perhaps, 107years later, in 1600, Giordano Bruno would not have been burned alive in Rome, forsupporting the heliocentric views of Copernicus (that the Earth revolves around theSun, not the Sun round the Earth), among other heresies. Perhaps Galileo Galileiwould not have been forced to renounce his writings about the four moons of Jupiterthat he had observed through a telescope Ganymede, Io, Callisto, and Europa andforced to live out his life under house arrest. Perhaps American-style democracywould have emerged sooner in this world. But the reality of history was not so kind.

What happened next, after Columbus arrived in what is now known as theBahamas, was celebrated in Europe, but devastating to native populations in theAmericas. Not only did the Europeans bring a host of diseases with them, but atColumbuss urging, they set about enslaving natives of Hispaniola and other Caribbeanislands.

Upon arrival, Columbus and his companions discovered a land populated withnative Lucayans, Tanos and Arawaks, whose friendly, peaceful, ways surprised theEuropeans. They offered to share with anyone and when you ask for something, theynever say no, wrote Columbus.

Columbus almost immediately regarded them as primitive rubes, ripe forconquest. With only 50 soldiers, he wrote in his journal, he could cause the entirepopulation be taken to Castile, or held captive. On his next voyage, Columbus didjust that capturing 1,500 Tanos on Hispaniola, and forcing 550 of the best malesand females into the holds of ships, bound for slave markets at Seville.

It gets worse. By 1500, he supervised the selling of native girls into sexualslavery. In his diary, he wrote that year, A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtainedfor a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers whogo about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.

Within 30 years of Columbuss arrival in the New World, the entire nativepopulation of Hispaniola had been exterminated, due to disease, warfare, forced labor,

and slavery. In one scheme, Columbus required natives to purchase a tokenperiodically, by mining their quota of gold. Those who failed to meet quota, and werediscovered without their token, had their hands cut off, to be displayed as a necklacearound their necks, thus inspiring others to work harder. Slaves attempting escapewould be burned alive, or hunted by attack dogs that would tear off the arms and legsof still-living escapees.

One of the European adventurers to arrive not long after Columbus, however,Bartolom de las Casas, became appalled at the barbaric, uncivilized, spectacle of howbadly Columbus and other Spaniards treated the native population. An historian andDominican friar, de las Casas first became an advocate against slavery and brutalitytargeting native populations, and later a passionate opponent of all slavery. He becamea human rights activist, before much of the vocabulary of human rights even had beendeveloped.

The visit of the Nia and Pinta replicas, in Muskegon, ought to be viewed lessas a reason to celebrate the European conquest of the Americas, or the horrors visitedupon the native population by Columbus and his comrades-in-arms, than an occasionto remember the personal transformation of Bartolom de las Casas, and the longhistoric struggle against slavery. That struggle achieved important milestones withLord Mansfields decision in Somersetts Case, in England, in 1772, four years beforethe American Declaration of Independence, with passage of the Slavery Abolition Actby Parliament in 1833, with President Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation in 1863,or ratification of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, in 1865 and 1868,respectively. But it is equally important to remember that slavery and humantrafficking both continue to exist today, not only in foreign countries, but also in ourown. Let this visit, by these ships, serve as an occasion to remember the example ofde las Casas, as an opportunity to raise awareness of the continuing problem, and asan inspiration to recruit more people to do something about it rather than looking theother way.