marcuswilson2

Founder BloxDigital; author of Hero Street U.S.A. ; Columbus, Slave Trader. Kidnapped by Columbus.

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By Marc Wilson
President Trump apparently doesn’t know that Christopher Columbus was arrested, locked in chains and shipped to Spain for trial. Or that he died in virtual obscurity.
Mr. Trump wants to “reinstate” Columbus Day as a federal holiday that is not shared by Indigenous Peoples Day. In an April 27 post on Truth Social, he said he is “bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes.” He accused Democrats of attempting to “destroy” Columbus’ reputation by removing statues and promoting “woke” alternatives.
But the truth is that Columbus’ reputation was pretty much destroyed during his own lifetime.
Within just a few years of his “discovery” of the New World, Spaniards were widely referring to Columbus as “Admiral of the Mosquitos.” He found little gold or spices he promised, never reached India or China (or the North American mainland), and didn’t make good on his promises to find the Garden of Eden, Prester John, or fund an army that would conquer Jerusalem.
Many of the colonists who traveled with Columbus to Hispaniola openly revolted in the late 1490s. The native Taínos were on the road to extinction, and the main export the admiral returned to Spain was syphilis.
In October 1500 – almost eight years to the date of Columbus discovery – a royal agent sent to Santo Domingo by Queen Isabela and King Ferdinand arrested Columbus, locked him in chains and shipped him to Spain for trial.
After reaching Spain, Columbus walked through the streets of Cadiz and Seville with the chains on his ankles and wrists, refusing to have the chains unlocked until the king and queen so ordered. He told his sons he wanted to be buried with the chains.
The king and queen ultimately order the chains removed and decided against trying Columbus in court. But he was stripped of his authority as viceroy and governor of Hispaniola and was mostly a persona non grata at court.
He was allowed to make a fourth and final voyage of discovery to the Western Hemisphere on the condition that he not set foot on Hispaniola. On the fourth voyage, Columbus and crew were shipwrecked on Jamaica. Spanish authorities learned of his plight but delayed for months sending help.
Columbus died on May 20, 1506, at the age of 54 in Valladolid, Spain “unnoticed and unsung,” wrote the historian Kirkpatrick Sale. “There was no notice taken of his passing in the daily chronicle of the city of Valladolid, which covered many minutiae, or in the official record of the Spanish court, though it was sitting only miles away…In fact the first public notice of …(his) departure in the Spain he served does not come until ten years later.”
Columbus voyages of discovery had widespread (and mostly negative) impact on the people already living in the Western Hemisphere. Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) issued a series of papal bulls in 1493 that gave Spain the right to claim sovereignty over any lands discovered that were not already the property of Christian princes – meaning the Spanish Empire was born from Columbus’ voyages of discovery and Borgia’s bulls.
As Spain became wealthy from its exploits in the New World – especially from Cortes’ conquest of the Aztecs and Pizarro’s conquest of the Incas – the “discovery” of the New World became recognized. Spanish historian Francisco Lopez de Gomara in 1552 called the discovery “the greatest event since the creation of the world.”
In 1776, Scottish economist Adam Smith wrote in the Wealth of Nations: “The discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind.”
Smith’s publication paired perfectly with the American Revolution whose leaders wanted to downgrade the influence of England. Sale said American rebels needed an inspirational persona, “someone decidedly un-English, who could stand as no other historical figure could for America, and who embodied the necessary virtues of perseverance, courage, vision, sagacity, and heroism besides.”
The revolutionary fervor resulted in King’s College in New York being renamed Columbia College, and the capitals of South Carolina and Ohio being named for Columbus. George Washington and Columbus shared the naming honors for the new national capital. Almost every state has a city and/or county named in honor of Columbus.
In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt – hoping to attract Italian-American voters -- signed into law a bill designating the second Monday in October as Columbus Day. And now – despite widespread support that the holiday be changed to (or shared with) Indigenous People’s Day – President Trump wants the holiday brought “back from the ashes.”
My hunch is that Columbus would be surprised by all that has happened since he was arrested and lock in chains almost 525 years ago.

(Marc Wilson is author of two historical fiction novels about Columbus – Kidnapped by Columbus and Columbus, Slave Trader. He is finalizing a third novel, Columbus in Chains.)

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