What Trump said was absolutely right. Everything said about Columbus by the left is a lie! They’ve misrepresented him the same way creationists have misrepresented Darwin. For example, Zinn quoted Columbus as saying the Arawak and Taino as “fine servants” deliberately leaving out “of god. He omits the next sentence, which says “They would very readily become Christians.” Columbus was not talking about conversion, not enslavement! Zinn also included a quote from two days later which says “With fifty men we could subjugate them and make them do what ever we want.” Columbus was talking about an enemy tribe, not his Arawak Taino allies! Zinn also omits Columbus’s praise for the natives. The Genoese explorer referred to them as “the men from heaven” and “the most beautiful men and the most beautiful women.” He told his men to Christianize the Arawak and Taino “by love rather than by force.” Columbus also instructed the Spaniards “not to take anything from the people without giving anything back.” When the Spanish nobles disobeyed his orders and mistreated the natives, Columbus, with the queens approval, had them jailed or hanged. Columbus also protected the Arawak and Taino from the cannibalistic, war-like, misogynistic Carib Tribe.
Zinn claims in his ludicrously named “People’s History” that Columbus captured 1200 slaves and brought them back to Spain, most of them dying on the trip back. He neglects to mention that these “slaves were POWS” who killed 39 of his men!
Columbus’s ultimate goal was to convince indigenous Americans and the Grand Khan to become Catholics, then to help him retake Jerusalem from Islamic colonialists. If he had mistreated the native folk, this goal would have never been fufilled!
Another Columbus quote-mine involves the Juana de La Torres letter, in which Columbus talks about the selling of girls aged nine for a high price into sexual slavery. Eric Kasum, Dylan Matthews, David Murrell, and Snopes.com deliberately left out the next sentence, in which Columbus describes such a practice as “ violence of a terrible calumny by turbulent persons”, in order to mislead people into thinking he was advocating rather than condemning the practice. Juana de La Torres was a woman and mother, why would he advocate sex slavery to her?!
Leftists like Justin Ward have abused statements by Bartolomo Le Casas, in which he attacks atrocities by Spaniards in Cuba, to condemn Columbus. They fail to mention that he arrived years after Columbus left the New World, committed atrocities himself against Amerindians, and lauded Christopher Columbus as a “good christian.” saying that he “dare not blame the Admiral’s intentions, for I knew him well and I knew that his intentions were genuine.”
Lefties also quote Columbus as saying that “I will bring back as much gold and slaves as possible.” As Michael Knowles of YAF.org explained, Columbus was making a moral concession. The Spanish were sponsoring his trip, and expected him to bring back currency and captives, which he did. If he hadn’t brought those things back, they would have ended their sponsorship of him, and would have been able to pursue his holy crusade of liberating Jerusalem from Muslim control. And as I said earlier, the “slaves“ he brought back were POWS.
Columbophobes like James Nevius, love to use Francisco Bobadilla’s report to demonize the Genosese explorer. They ignore Bobadilla’s fierce political rivalry with Columbus and his stated goal of usurping Columbus’s governorship , and how he arrested Columbus without corresponding. Using a report from an archenemy, who more than likely lied and repeated lies from other enemies and bribed fair weather friends of Columbus, to condemn the man is like using a report from Bush to bash Kerry.
Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand obviously realized how biased and skewed the report was, since they released Columbus from prison after only a week and recalled Bobadilla, who drowned on the return voyage to Spain. Unlike Columbus, Bobadilla did nothing to restrain settlers or prevent their abuses. After only seven weeks, Columbus was completely exonerated. And contrary to James Nevius’s claim, the document was not newly uncovered, it had been released long before 2006, when he wrote his article.
