Columbus

This year especially it seems fashionable to be angry at Columbus. As if we are all experts on the man and his intentions. I note this because of various comics and pictures on Reddit and Facebook. You've probably seen the one that says: Celebrate Columbus Day by walking into your neighbor's house and claiming it as your own.

I lump myself in the above classification in the fact that I am no Columbus scholar, historian or biographer. However I don't like the current fad that incorrectly casts him as an Annexer Extraordinaire. I think it is historically wrong and miscasts Columbus's intentions and actions. The mere fact that he crossed the ocean and the Native Americans did not seems like an historical fluke and a matter of who had the more advanced technology. Chance encounters of the kind that Columbus had with the Native Americans are very difficult to judge as right or wrong.  

Our culture has this image in our head of Columbus as Darth Vader entering the Rebel ship, guns blazing, claiming the New World as his own, all in the name of the Christian God. The portions of Columbus's diaries that I have read through mentioned no such action. He and his crew were welcomed by the natives (who warred with each other by the way) and sought to have a discourse with them as best they could. Apparently Columbus communicated with the natives which is rather impressive and would take a lot of patience, a virtue conquerors don't seem to have when dealing with foreign people groups they are trying to steam roll. 

Treating Columbus as a symbol of some of the terrible mistakes the Europeans made in their colonization is maybe legitimate. But even then it is making him out to be the villain he was not.