The Idea of Columbus

Do you like Columbus or the idea of Columbus? It's an important question and one that a lot of people don't understand. For the first 200 years of European settlement in the New World the name Columbus was largely ignored, particularly in North America. After all, he was an Italian who sailed for Spain, had landed in the islands of the mid-Atlantic, and only briefly stepped foot on Central America. He was more of a historical curiosity than a towering figure of history.

However, in 1783 there was suddenly a radical "new nation conceived in liberty" that was grasping for a new identity. Every other nation on the earth identified itself culturally based on a long history, but the newly formed United States had through revolutionary rebellion severed itself from their history. Now Americans were asking "Who are we?"

It was in this period that someone was looking through a history book and found Christopher Columbus, a name virtually unknown in the late 18th century. For nearly 200 years no school children learned about him. No holidays celebrated him. No statues or monuments existed for him. However, this researcher saw in Columbus a new type of man - an Italian with a dream who, after multiple failures to convince others, convinced the Queen of Spain to pay for an economic trip of discovery and had achieved his goal. This researcher believed that Columbus was the first of a new breed of man who was an INDIVIDUAL working outside the traditional confines of national identity. So, he wrote a newspaper article speaking of "the Spirit of Columbus".

This was hugely important in the 18th century. Suddenly the new nation of United States could look backward and see an icon of who they believed themselves to be - self-made, independent, brave, and free from the bonds of royal courts. Americans loved the idea and before long the spirit of Columbus was personified into Columbia, a goddess-like figure who was the heart of America. The District of Columbia was named after her as the seat of government for the nation. Columbus and Columbia became the progenitors of this new nation and the ideals to which Americans should strive to be.

It was an insanely successful marketing stunt and it is one that the nation desperately needed to bind together people from many different nations, credes, economic status, and languages into a single homogenous whole. Not everyone was the same in their cultural history, but if they came to America then they too believed in what Columbia stood for, they too wanted to be self-made, to have liberty, and achieve something great in the new land. They were coming to be Americans.

Of course a nation also needs to educate its children in its history. Schools began teaching that the United States was not just a new nation, but that it was an old idea going back to an intrepid explorer who bravely sailed across the open ocean to find a westward passage to India "and discovered America". Children ate up the story and internalized the idea that America was a continuation of that ideal. Columbus had sailed across the ocean because he was an INDIVIDUAL with a dream. The colonies were founded by brave INDIVIDUALS with hopes and dreams for a new life on their own terms. The revolution occurred because Americans (as INDIVIDUALS) wanted freedom from foreign rule. And now, those same children as INDIVIDUALS, were heirs to that idea and destined for great things if they had the will to make it happen.

The idea that had begun as a mustard seed took root and rapidly grew into a mighty tree. By the 19th century Columbia was seen everywhere in print. The painting attached to this post shows her bravely striding across the plains with emigrants, the pony express, farmers, miners, and a stagecoach pushing back the "savage" Indians while behind her she trails telegraph wire and railroads. Behind her in the glow of the rising sun is a bright land of cities and great ships. Before her she pushes back the dark and wild lands full of beasts and the "dying race" of Indians. It was the "manifest destiny" of America to spread from coast to coast and change the world.

Columbus Day itself was first celebrated as an Italian-American heritage event in San Francisco in 1869. It did not become a national holiday until 1937 during the Great Depression when the nation desperately needed to regain a sense of self-identity and ability to achieve great things.

To many Americans today, the spirit of Columbia (and Columbus Day) still defines what it means to them to be American. They have deeply internalized the ideals that were promoted so long ago when the name of Columbus was pulled from the musty old history books. When they hear that people are against Columbus Day they hear it as not so much an attack on the man Columbus, but on America and what is at the heart of this nation. It's an attack on Columbia.

Of course, history is a cruel mistress. Make a man into a god (or his spirit into a goddess) and eventually you might find out he wasn't the noble individual that was taught to grade school children. Columbus was an opportunist who saw an opportunity to make a lot of money and ruthlessly pushed forward to make that idea into a success. When he arrived in the Islands of the Atlantic he did not see a new land that would grow from his ideals. He saw money. More importantly, he brought with him the prejudices of the world in which he had been born. The horrors Columbus inflicted upon the natives of the islands are frightening to read. Mass murder, rape, slavery, and exploitation of every kind made up his reports back to Spain. It was 15th century business and it was a bloody affair.

For the peoples who already lived on the islands and those who lived on the mainland the arrival of the Europeans was a cataclysmic shift in history. Where before they had power and their own sense of destiny, the arrival of the European mounted militaries, masses of immigrants, and their advanced technology turned their world upside down. To them, the arrival of Columbus turns the image of Columbia striding across the plains into something far more sinister - she's a demonic figure who brought disease, death, destruction, exploitation, and enslavement. In fact, in the mid-19th century, many of the western tribes in North America went from a hunter-gatherer society to an industrial society overnight. Some who were children when the transcontinental railroad was completed even went from a horse-based society to hearing of the Wright brothers making their first flight! The changes were quite simply overwhelming. To them, Columbus was the first invader and to celebrate him would be like European-Americans celebrating King George Day.

The ideological rifts in our nation that have found so much discussion around Columbus Day are not so much about the facts of history, but about which view of Columbus people identify with the most. If they see America as a nation of exploitation and arrogant Manifest Destiny then they despise Columbus. If they see America as an ideal that is personified in the mythic concepts of Columbia then they wish to keep that mythic history alive.

Perhaps there's a bit of room for both.