Saturday, March 20, 2010

From Columbus' letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage

The last time I posted, I was aggravated at Columbus. What a difference ten years of his life has made. The previous letter I posted about was written in 1493, this letter written in 1503. His entire demeanor has changed. In the first letter written, he came across as pompous and arrogant. In this letter to the King and Queen he's very despondent and defeated. With good reason, though, seeing the things he has gone through (and in hindsight he passed away three years after this letter was written).
He speaks of "weeping" (p. 13) when he thinks about the lands that he has found, due to the fact that they are pretty much barren. People are dying on them daily because of the audacity that people have there, imprisoning people, taking their lands, etc, and these people that are dying are native to the land. The people of the Indies have come to inhabit them and have completely taken over (which, in my earlier post, I commented on and stated how this wasn't an ideal situation due to the fact that there are people living on the lands already). Columbus is speaking specifically of Panama where he was shipwrecked earlier in the voyage.
Columbus is worried about his name, with what I feel is good reason. Columbus had been the first to want to set sail to find a new way around the world for trading purposes, managed to discover the New World, and now everyone in his native land has jumped on the bandwagon and wants to go out and find a new life. He says that even "down to the very tailors seek permission to make discoveries." What a thing to see happening. He had lived his whole life to go out on ships and make new discoveries (he states that he has "not a hair on his body that isn't gray") and now people that wouldn't know a spyglass from the wheel of the ship are asking to go and discover new lands. Columbus very rightly says that they're plundering everything in their path, and also states that its doing "damage to the enterprise." What authority is going to allow people to go and make great discoveries that need to be made, places that need to be explored, areas that need to be looked at, if people that have gone before them have ruined what they have been given? It makes more sense for authorities to save their money (and sanity) and say no to further discovery missions since all it causes them is headaches.
Columbus asks the King and Queen to punish Alonso de Ojeda, who is the man that took almost everything he had, and give him the same punishment that Columbus endured. When Columbus wrote the first letter, its very obvious that he is a religious man. It is clear that as he has endured everything that has happened that his faith may not have wavered, but his need for justice has become greater. He does speak of the church only once in this letter, where he noted it several times in his previous letter. The only time he does speak of the church is to say that where he is at, the people are "separated from the holy Sacraments of Holy Church" and his "soul will be forgotten."
When left in such a situation, being able to hold on to something such as faith, that is unable to be seen, has to be one of the most difficult things to do. There is nobody there that he is able to relate to regarding his religion, he's not able to practice what he wishes to, and while he must have been praying to God for a resolution, none ever came, and things continued to get worse as the days went by. He must have felt as though his entire lifes work was going down in flames because others were selfish. I wonder if he equated this back to when his crew wanted to turn back the first time and he didn't allow it, and whether he wished he could go back in time and NOT travel to the New World now that he sees the damage it caused both himself and his homeland.

4 comments:

  1. Interesting work.Clstlnite !. I hate this man Christopher Columbus, he is a genocidal mass murderer !. He enslaved, killed and butchered millions of Indians !. I much prefer John Cabot because he was the first Genoese ( Italian city which Columbus comes from) to set foot in North America in 1497 which he claimed for the English and Columbus only discovered tiny islands in the Caribbean !. Columbus was even vilified as Admiral of The Mosquitoes by the Spanish and lost favour at the Spanish court. Cabot was a humble man, while Columbus was proud and arrogant !. I also dislike Ferdinand and Isabella because they made Spain the first nation to set foot in the New World, which Northern Europeans wanted to do first.

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  2. that's not good I need the main letter "the original one"

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  3. I absolutely love this, thank you so much for your insight.

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