Things I Did Know, But Not Completely

Ken AshfordHistoryLeave a Comment

Christopher Columbus was a real prick.

I mean, I knew about how he subjugated and mistreated all the local natives that he came across in the New World.

I’d even heard this story:

Between the evening of October 11 and the morning of October 12, a sailor on the Pinta named Juan Rodriguez Bermejo called out, "Land, land!" Isabella had offered a reward to the first person to sight land. However, Columbus said that he had seen a flickering light hours earlier, and he claimed the reward.

But new documents, recently discovered, show how terrible Columbus and his brothers were when they established their first colony in the New World:

We hear of a poor boy who was caught stealing wheat grain. They cut off his ears and nose and put shackles on him and made him a slave.

Columbus ran the colony with an iron fist. One woman happened to say Columbus came from a working-class family and that his father had been a weaver.

Columbus’s brother Bartholme had her tongue cut out. After parading her naked through the streets on a donkey, Christopher congratulated his brother on defending the family honour.

***

The 46-page document shows Columbus and his brothers, Bartholme and Diego, as tyrants who ruled through summary justice without bothering with trials.

They also failed to give out food and water. They also forbade natives to be baptized so that they could be used as slaves, according to witnesses claims.

And those slaves not only included the indiginous natives, but white Spaniards as well.

And we have a holiday for this asshole?