CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

by William H. Benson

October 8, 1998

     On August 2, 1492 the three vessels were ready to sail.  At the Church of St. George every man and boy confessed his sins and received absolution and Communion.  Christopher Columbus, the Captain General from Genoa, Italy, went on board the Santa Maria during the early morning hours of August 3, and at dawn made signal to leave.  The three vessels floated down the Rio Tinto on the morning ebb, bound south and a little west to the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean.

      The same tide on the Rio Tinto that carried the Nina, Pinta, and the Santa Maria also floated ships carrying Jews out of Spain north to the Netherlands or to the east to Turkey.  August 2 was the deadline that Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand had issued months before permanently ejecting the Jews from Spain or face immense persecution.

     On September 6 Columbus lifted the anchor on the Canary Islands and gave out the course, “West, nothing to the north, nothing to the south.”  The seas were remarkably calm and the weather peaceful during those days of September.  The men turned to griping after week upon week of nothing but ocean.  Finally, on October 1, the wind increased and the rain fell in torrents, replenishing the sailors’ depleted water casks.

     On October 6 Columbus realized the three vessels had sailed more than 2400 miles, and had they known, they were due north of Puerto Rico.  The next day flocks of bird passed over the ships relieving the monotony, and on the 11th signs of land, branches of trees with green leaves and even flowers became so frequent that the complaining among the men died out.  At 2:00 a.m. on October 12 Rodrigo de Triana, the lookout on the Pinta, saw something like a white cliff shining in the moonlight.  He sang out “Tierra!  Tierra!”

     At dawn they passed the southern point of the island and sought an opening on the west coast through the barrier reef.  By noon they had found the opening, sailed into a shallow bay, and anchored.  The commander went ashore in the long boat and named the island San Salvador, claiming it for the King and Queen of Spain.  Columbus’ story is one of daring and adventure and so we, Americans, 500+ years later recognize October 12.

      The other half of the story is not so noteworthy for Columbus defined the meaning of the word “exploit”, both its positive and negative meanings.  On his return trip to Spain he took with him some of the native Arawak Indians, several of which died enroute.  Those living to see Spain endured the leering stares of the Spanish.

      Columbus returned in 1493 this time to the larger island of Hispaniola equipped with cannons, attack dogs, and guns ready to subdue the Arawaks.  That he did, forcing them initially into heavy labor searching for gold and finally into outright slavery.  When the Arawaks had had enough and revolted, Columbus crushed them.

      Conservative estimates place about three million Arawak Indians on the Carribbean islands just prior to Columbus’s arrival.  By 1516 thanks to a sinister Indian slave policy including the cutting off of hands, noses, and ears as the common form of punishment, only 12,000 remained.  By 1542 fewer than 200 still lived, and by 1555 they were virtually all gone.

     Perhaps it is unfair to judge what Columbus did by 1998’s world standard of what is right and what is wrong.  The world had not decided in 1492 that slavery was unethical and improper.  One commentator described the situation,

     “When history textbooks leave out the Arawaks, they offend Native Americans. . . . Perhaps worst of all, when textbooks paint simplistic portraits of a pious, heroic Columbus, they provide feel-good history that bores everyone.”

      The simple truth is that in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but the ugly truth is that Queen Isabella hounded the Jews out of Spain, and Columbus’s ruthless policy annihilated the Arawak Indians.

50TH BIRTHDAY

by William H. Benson

September 25, 1953

     Eleven years ago on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday George Will wrote that writing his biweekly column for Newsweek over the previous many years had been the thing in his life that he most especially enjoyed; “a real kick,” he called it.  And it was reading that comment that prompted me to make a phone call and ask about writing my own biweekly column.  Now I can say after eleven years that it has been enjoyable, a real kick.

     And now it is my turn to celebrate my fiftieth birthday today, which means of the allotted three score and ten, I have completed two score and ten with another yet to go.  It is a day to reflect.

     In 1977 when George Will was only thirty-six, he admonished that year’s graduating class at San Diego University that they should live with a crick in their neck, figuratively speaking, a crick in their neck from looking backward at what happened and what was thought in the past.”That may not be a heroic posture,” he said, “but it is prudent.  After all most new knowledge is false.”

     I have tried to follow that sage, if not startling, advice when writing this column, for I have looked backward at what was said and written and done in the not too distant past, coming up every two weeks with a crick-in-the neck column.  Harry Truman said that the only thing new in this world is the history you have not yet learned.  I teach history when I write.

     Eleven years ago I wondered if I would eventually run dry, out of things to write about, but now I find myself discarding more ideas than those that I put down on paper.  The Muses have been kind and not yet drifted away to pay attention to someone else.

     Why continue to write a column?  Harold Bloom, the Yale literary critic, likes to quote Rabbi Tarphon from The Sayings of the Fathers, who said, “It is not necessary for you to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”  That same attitude prods some of us to get up, drive to work, think, and act, and then, when we find the time, write.   

     And then there is the element of surprise, the spice of life.  Like a serendipitious turn, it happens when the words and the ideas fall together, or we meet a new and interesting person with a different story, or we pick up a book with ideas that we have never thought before.  That moment of surprise, or that tingle of anticipation that the surprise will happen, like receiving an unopened birthday present, is one reason why people step out the door and face the day.

     In the Middle English language Geoffrey Chaucer described that sense of surprise in the “Knight’s Tale” in Canterbury Tales:  “It is ful fair a man to bere hym evene, for al day meeteth men at unset steven.”  Translated into modern English, it reads:  “It is a good thing for a man to bear himself with equanimity, for one is constantly keeping appointments one never made.”

     We, the living, are travelers on the road to Canterbury, and we each have a story to tell.  It is a prudent and wise thing to listen to others’ stories, which Chaucer advised, “For truly, joy or comfort is there none to ride along the road dumb as a stone.”  In those dual acts of moving and listening, a person is constantly keeping appointments one never made.  Surprise happens.

     A last reflection.  Some peoples’ stories are very bad, filled with trouble and lies and deceit and treachery–the 673rd episode of a poorly-produced soap opera.  To actually live such a life a person must suffer a series of heart-wrenching experiences, but if that same life is then played out on the stage or on screen or written into a novel, it can make for great entertainment.

     Then, other peoples’ stories are very good and responsible and wholeseome, filled with peace and harmony and love, but they would prove very poor entertainment if seen on a stage or written into a book.  We will defer to the psychologists to answer “how can this be?”

     Today begins another decade of life, my sixth, another segment on that road traveling to Canterbury, listening and finding surprise in other peoples’ stories, and there is a crick in my neck from looking backwards at the past, at the older events and ideas and people.  And I cannot desist from that work, even though I know it will not be completed, for there are many appointments to keep which I have not even made.