Classroom
Issues and Strategies
Columbus serves as a lightening rod
for cultural criticism. Even the most cursory search of the web
will uncover a fascinating range of politically charged interpretations
of Columbus and his impact on the Americas. In an editorial entitled
"On
Columbus Day, Celebrate Western Civilization, Not Multiculturalism,"
Michael Berliner of the Ayn Rand Institute laments that “Western
Civilization is under attack by the politically correct who are
questioning and attacking the achievements of Christopher Columbus—while
glorifying the tribal cultures of American Indians…”
: . On the other end of the political spectrum,
a site devoted to the history of indigenous people’s offers
an alternative assessment of Ferdinand and Isabella's “Admiral
of the Ocean Sea”: "Christopher Columbus is a symbol,
not of a man, but of imperialism... Imperialism and colonialism
are not something that happened decades ago or generations ago,
but they are still happening now with the exploitation of people.
...” (John
Mohawk, Seneca 1992).
The controversy any discussion of Columbus
generates can open up class discussions in provocative ways. If
not constructively channeled, these political passions can sidetrack
the class from the questions about the nature of representation
central to reading not only Columbus but also the other European
explorers and colonizers collected in the anthology. Students
reading these narratives often operate from the assumption that
a coherent and stable reality of what America was lurks just beyond
the confusions of contact narratives. This assumption can reduce
reading and discussion of Columbus and other contact writers to
a search for the truth-value of their descriptions. This quest,
in turn, distracts students from the valuable learning experience
afforded when we investigate how Columbus’ cultural preconceptions
and motivations informed his descriptions of the peoples and lands
he encountered.
In this sense, a quote from Montaigne
may provide a useful starting point for discussion: “We
need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things.”
This literary call to arms has especially valuable applications
to the exploration and colonization narratives collected in the
Heath Anthology. The “truth” is not out there
for the student of early American literature, but a willingness
to explore the implications of interpretation in these early texts
can enrich our readings of history and literature by challenging
us to contextualize representations. Reading contact literature
as culturally informed interpretations does not separate us from
politics. It does, however, offer us a literary approach to engaging
these political questions. In the case of Columbus, for example,
the question of representation inextricably links the claims of
an empire to the violent exploitation of indigenous peoples. The
representation of the native peoples as debased “others”
and their lands as marketable commodities rationalizes and licenses
European expropriation.
The Columbus readings in the anthology
also raise interesting questions of canonicity: which authors
and readings should American literature courses study? Exploring
the relationship between the writings of Columbus and those of
the later British colonists invites a productive discussion about
how we define the identity categories such as “American”
around which we structure studies of American literature and history.
At a minimum, by reading Columbus, other Spanish writers, the
French colonial writers, and Native American oral traditions,
students will come to appreciate that cultural diversity is not
merely a twenty-first century buzzword but an accurate descriptor
of the Americas since the earliest interactions between European
and native peoples. In this sense, the long road to understanding
the race issues of the twenty-first century begins with reading
and discussing Columbus.
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Major
Themes, Historical Perspectives, and Personal Issues
Journal of the First
Voyage, 1492-93
As Myra Jehlen notes in her essay
“Papers of Empire” (The Cambridge History of
American Literature Volume I, 1994) the Diario
of Columbus (referred to in the anthology as the Journal
of the First Voyage) self-consciously links writing with
empire. Accordingly, Columbus has political and economic motives
for representing the lands he “discovers” as financially
lucrative and the native peoples he encounters as friendly and
easily controlled. The text simmers with tension between a desire
to claim the putatively undiscovered and a need to describe
these commodities in terms of what the audience of consumers
back in Spain already know. Columbus describes the landscape
as exceedingly beautiful, “fertile,” and “enchanting”
but quickly contextualizes his wonder with the familiar, for
the land looks as “green as April in Andalusia”
and the trees are as laden with fruit “as the fields of
Spain.” Because of these interpretive tensions and the
complexities of cross-cultural representations, the Journal
of the First Voyage richly rewards exercises in close reading.
Many of the first entries included
in the anthology focus on a desire to possess. Columbus frequently
refers to his quest to “acquire” the gold he believes
the indigenous king possesses. And each time he lands, the natives
direct him further on in his quest for “places where there
is great commerce.” But Columbus also desires a more thorough
knowledge of the natural riches he observes in order to better
authenticate his claims and inspire the interest of his readers.
After describing the trees he has seen, Columbus laments: “It
was a great affliction to me to be ignorant of their natures,
for I am very certain they are all valuable.” Later, he
admits that his lack of knowledge “in these articles occasions
me the most excessive regrets…” Similarly, his inability
to understand the language of the native peoples interferes
with his efforts to find gold and commerce. Future exploration
and exploitation, it appears, will depend as much upon knowledge
of these lands and peoples as it will on navigational skills
and royal investment.
For the October 28th entry, Bartolome
de Las Casas (1484-1560), the redactor of the Diario,
shifts from direct quotation to third person summary. While
the change is both dramatic and interesting, the carry over
from the first person narrative is equally striking. Does this
reflect the faithfulness of Las Casas to an original text or
do the similarities highlight Las Casas’ influence on
the earlier entries? The absence of the original text makes
this an interesting but ultimately unanswerable question. While
the roll call of commodities and natural wonders continues in
these entries, the natives themselves increasingly emerge as
the focal point of this section of the narrative. The indigenous
peoples and the colonizers communicate (or miscommunicate) through
signs (“making signs of wonder,” “the Indians
informed them by signs”). The narrative emphasizes the
presence of favorable terms of trade, “inoffensive, unwarlike”
natives, and an absence of clothing and religious practice among
these apparently naïve people.
A report by the otherwise fearful
and cooperative natives of nearby cyclopean cannibals underscores
Columbus’ sense that he has arrived in a strange land
on the margins of the known world. At the same time, this report
distinguishes the Arawak people from the mythical “monstrous
men” depicted in medieval mappemundi and earlier travel
narratives. In the final paragraphs of this excerpt—in
a passage that usually attracts much student interest—the
condescending tone of the narrative’s description of the
native peoples comes to its logical fruition. Columbus’
decision to kidnap some of the natives for the return trip to
Spain documents what might be considered a turning point in
the relationship between Europeans and indigenous peoples had
not the narrative already made clear Columbus’ awareness
of the power disparity between the indigenous people and their
colonizers.
Narrative of the Third
Voyage, 1498-1500
A case could be made for reading
this excerpt from the narrative of the third voyage before reading
the selections from the Journal of the First Voyage.
Because it provides a glimpse into Columbus’ geography
and cosmography, this passage explores the cultural context
informing the representations of the natives and their lands
in the earlier journal.
The web offers some outstanding resources
for making the most of Columbus’ reflections on South
America and the "Terrestial Paradise". Keith Pickering’s
Columbus
Navigation page offers fascinating detail about
the navigational details of the journeys. Students enjoy this
site and it introduces lively explorations of the relationship
between cosmography and geography in Columbus’ lifetime.
If I only had time to work one web
site into a class on Columbus and early American travel narratives,
however, I would invest that time and my audiovisual resources
in a class period spent exploring late medieval cartography.
A site sponsored by Henry Davis Consulting offers an impressive
collection of jpeg images from the history of cartography. The
section covering the late
medieval period can galvanize a discussion of Columbus
in particular and contact literature more generally. Working
with a projection unit and a laptop computer, an instructor
can project the images from this web site onto a large screen
(blowing the images up in this way allows the group to explore
some of the intricate detail of these representations) and help
students recognize how the cartographer projects culturally
determined ideas and ideologies onto the visual representation
of the unknown: a process that both informs and mirrors what
Columbus does when he describes the people and lands of the
Caribbean.
Four images deserve special attention
(explanatory essays accompany each on the web site)
.
1. Pierre d’Ailly’s Ymago Mundi: the
world map accompanying a set of essays on astronomy and geography
published in 1410. Columbus owned and annotated a copy of
the text:
http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/LMwebpages/238B.html
2. "A Comparison of Medieval
Mappemundi": a comparison of a series of these medieval
maps with accompanying explanatory texts:
http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/LMwebpages/249.1.html
3. The Christopher Columbus
Chart: an anonymous Genovese portolan sea chart (approximately
1490) that some historians believe Columbus himself may have
composed:
http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/LMwebpages/257.html
4. Martin Behaim’s Globe:
a 1492 globe believed to be the earliest extant example, although
some scholars believe that Columbus had a globe constructed
by his brother on board with him during his first voyage:
http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/LMwebpages/258.html
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Significant
Form, Style, or Artistic Conventions
Bartolome de Las Casas’ role
as redactor of the Diario poses the first and most vexing
problem when considering the form and style of the Journal
of the First Voyage. A friend of the Columbus family who
was also highly critical of the Admiral’s treatment of the
indigenous population (for whom Las Casas was a tireless advocate),
Las Casas “transcribed” the only extant source we
now have for the Journal of the First Voyage. Scholars
have debated how much of Las Casas’ redacted version of
Columbus’ narrative reflects the writing of Columbus and
how much it reflects the influence of Las Casas. Many have chosen
to accept the Las Casas summary as basically faithful to the Columbus
original. In opposition to this view, Margarita Zamora argues
in Reading Columbus (1993) that “the mediating
presence of the editor’s voice in the text intervenes in
the process of reading and interpretation as well as the Diario’s
representation of the Discovery” (42). The absence of the
original text ultimately makes this critical question unanswerable.
At a minimum, however, we can conclude that any reading of the
Journal of the First Voyage is to some degree an interpretation
of Las Casas’ interpretation of Columbus’ interpretation
of his journey.
As Mary B. Campbell has noted in The
Witness and the Other World (1988), the writings of Columbus
participate in a long established tradition of European travel
writing. Within this tradition, Marco Polo’s Travels
(Il Milione, 1298 or 1299) and the anonymous Mandeville’s
Travels (mid fourteenth-century) influenced the form and
style of Columbus’ narrations. In their romantic depiction
of the fecundity of the Caribbean Islands, emphasis on Columbus
as hero of the “discovery,” and geographical interest
in the "Territorial Paradise" and Jerusalem as the center
of the world, Columbus’ narratives reflect these influences.
They depict “a Caribbean that belongs as much to the Other
World of medieval geographic fantasy as it does to the map Columbus
hoped to realize” (Campbell 10). A brief selection from
Marco Polo or Mandeville read and discussed in class can provide
a useful point of context and contrast to the Columbus. Such a
project can also make a productive research activity for an individual
or small group of students. These inquiries and discussions would
also help set the stage for the early American travel narratives
that follow Columbus in the anthology.
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Original
Audience
As he wrote about his voyages, Columbus
clearly desired to motivate King Fernando and Queen Isabella to
continue their investment in his explorations, but he also wished
to document his claims to and authority over the territories and
people he “discovered.” In later permutations, the
writings of Columbus would serve propaganda purposes for the Spanish
monarchy, document Spanish claims to territory against those of
international rivals, validate the claims of the children of Columbus
to his financial and cultural legacy, and provide documentation
for Las Casas’ crusade against Spanish treatment of indigenous
peoples.
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Comparisons,
Contrasts, Connections
The European cosmography and mythology
that so influenced Columbus invites comparison to and contrast
with the Native American myths presented in the anthology. Columbus
and Cabeza de Vaca also offer a wide range of contrasts in terms
of both their vantage points and their conclusions about indigenous
culture. With John Smith writing about his experiences in Jamestown,
students can explore an impulse to commodify similar to that of
Columbus framed by an otherwise very different set of political
values. William Bradford offers a different perspective on the
relationship between the colonizer and his God and a view of indigenous
people’s as an obstacle of the environment to be erased
or removed rather than as a resource to be marketed and exploited.
While none of these later European writers fundamentally modify
the ideology of empire in America first articulated by Columbus,
all further complicate the picture as they expand European control
over the Americas.
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Questions
for Reading and Discussion/
Approaches to Writing
Depending on the amount of time available
for discussion and the level of detail you wish to explore, the
following questions and question sets (which move from the most
broad and open ended to the more specific and analytical) may
prove useful for discussion or writing assignments.
- Are these journal excerpts worth reading? Why?
Why not? (This question seems obvious but it can generate some
interesting discussions about canon and the relationship between
literature and history—questions that often merit attention
early in a survey course.) What questions do these journal excerpts
raise about the relationship between literature and history?
- What did you know about Columbus before you
read this text? (This question could also be asked during a
class period before the text is read and fully discussed. The
instructor could jot down this list during this pre-reading
discussion and then resurrect it for the post-reading discussion).
How, if at all, have these passages changed your perspective
on Columbus?
- Some critics have argued that these Columbus
writings present thematic issues characteristic of the literature
of “discovery” and exploration as well as early
American and frontier literature more generally. What would
you identify as some of the questions and problems raised by
these passages that will resonate in later American culture,
literature, and history?
- What do the journals of Columbus tell us about
cultural representations? What is at stake when a European colonizer
describes an indigenous population he perceives as “other”
or different? What do these depictions tell us about those represented
and those doing the representing? How does the role of Las Casas
as redactor of the writings of Columbus complicate our interpretation
of what these journals tell us about the natives Columbus encountered
and described?
- Describing the land (and by so doing, claiming
the land) is an important element of “discovery”
and exploration narratives. What do these excerpts from the
journals of Columbus tell us about the land Columbus claimed
for Spain? What cultural factors and drives influence his depictions
of the landscape? How are those influences reflected in the
language and structure of his descriptions?
- Columbus believed he was discovering islands
near China and Japan. How does this assumption influence his
writings about and representations of his journeys and the land
itself? In what other ways do his world view and cosmology influence
the text’s representations of the lands, peoples, and
events it describes? In what ways does this cosmology differ
from the native traditions presented earlier in this anthology?
- We could describe our access to the journals
of Columbus as at least twice removed from the original texts.
First, Las Casas rephrases, edits, and redacts, and then we
read his Spanish language redaction in English. How do these
filters complicate our readings and interpretations of these
narratives?
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Bibliography
This bibliography includes the texts
mentioned in this instructor's guide and other resources I have
used since the publication of the Heath.
- Bedini, Sylvio editor. Christopher Columbus
and the Age of Exploration: An Encyclopedia. New York:
Da Capo Press, 1998.
- Campbell, Mary B. The Witness and the Other
World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
- Davidson, Miles. Columbus, Then and Now: A Life
Re-examined. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
- Jehlen, Myra. "The Papers of Empire."
The Cambridge History of American Literature, Volume I:
1590-1820. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
- Las Casas, Bartolome de las. History of the
Indies. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.
- Shields, E. Thomson and Dana D. Nelson. “Colonial
Spanish Writings.” Teaching the Literatures of Early
America, edited by Carla Mulford, 97-111. New York: MLA,
1999.
- Zamora, Margarita. Reading Columbus.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
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Web Resources
The web has too many Columbus related
web sites to count (although Google will count for you if you
wish). I list the ones I have used in class or referred students
to below:
General Sites:
The University of Calgary's
wonderful site, The
European Voyages of Exploration, will help students
put Columbus in the broader historical and cultural perspective
of fifteenth and sixteenth century European voyages to Africa,
Asia, the Caribbean, and the Americas.
Columbus
and the Age of Discovery offers
links to over 1100 Columbus and contact literature articles.
Columbus and His Reputation
Examinging
the Reputation of Christopher Columbus: Jack Weatherford's
site offers a starting point.
For a American Indian or indigenous
people's perspective on Columbus, visit indians.org
For a conservative rebuttal to these
views, see Dinesh D'Souza's "The
Crimes of Christopher Columbus"
Columbus Texts
The Medieval
Sourcebook provides an on-line version of a selection
from the journals.
The University of Southern Maine's
"Columbus
Letter" web site offers a carefully edited
version of Columbus' famous 1494 letter to his royal patrons.
The site includes facsimiles and transcriptions of the text
as well as detailed contextual information. I highly recommend
this site.
Library Web Sites
The New
York Public Library offers a useful and easily
accessed bibliography of primary and secondary literature. Although
this resource focuses on the holdings of the New York public
library. Those impressive holdings provide a good starting point
for further research.
1492
An On-going Voyage: This library of congress exhibit
site has a relatively simplistic narrative but some interesting
images.
Mapping and Navigation
Related Sites
The Columbus
Navigation pages has interesting details about
the logistics of exploration that many students find an interesting
supplemental text to their reading of the selections from the
Diario in the Heath.
The Mariner's Museum web
site provides detailed information about each of Columbus four
voyages: The
Explorations of Christopher Columbus
Reminding us that Columbus lost nine
ships in four voyages, the Ships
of Discovery web site has an interactive map detailing
what we know about each wreck.
The Henry-Davis
web site provides useful and interesting images of medieval
and early modern maps.
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