Columbus

On this five hundredth anniversary of what we have always called the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, unprecedented attention is being focussed by historians, journalists, and public opinion samplers upon Columbus and what he did. Many are telling us that what Columbus did is not an event that should be honored _ that it was not even a real discovery at all, because there were people already in the Americas when he found them. They tell us that this five hundredth anniversary should be an occasion to condemn Columbus, not to praise him.

Let us begin, therefore, by defining the word "discovery" in the context of history. A discovery is made when an individual or a nation finds something or someone or some people or some places of special importance, not previously known to them. When any previously unknown people is first found by another people, that people may be said to have been discovered. People as well as places can be discovered. The fact that people live in places unknown to another people does not mean that they, and the places where they live, cannot be discovered.

No people from any other part of the world ever discovered Europe; but Europeans discovered all other parts of the world.

In all of history, only the Europeans and the Polynesians of the south Pacific have been true discoverers, sailing for the explicit purpose of finding new lands, trading with their people, and colonizing them. And of all discoverers Christopher Columbus was the greatest, because he accomplished the most against the highest odds.

Before Columbus' time all European voyages had followed coastlines, or crossed open seas to lands previously known or at least sighted by storm-driven ships. Only Columbus set off directly across a broad, unknown sea with no specific knowledge of how far it extended or what lay on the other side. To be sure, Columbus was convinced that he could reach Asia from Europe within the time during which the provisions he carried in his three ships would sustain his men. But he was wrong about that. If America had not existed--had not been in the way--Columbus would have had to turn back long before reaching his goal, or he and every man on his ships would have died.1

But Columbus undertook his voyage with more evidence that he could complete it than his unfounded assumptions about the size of the world and the distance to Asia. For most of his professional life as a seaman he had ranged the eastern Atlantic, from West Africa to Iceland, in particular spending much time on Portugal's Atlantic islands. He had picked up reliable reports of strange vegetation and carved, hand-worked objects drifting in from the west, even of two bodies of men who were neither whites nor blacks. He had studied the wind patterns of the Atlantic, noting that from the Canary Islands off the Atlantic coast of North Africa the winds (now called trades) mostly blow from east to west, while further north, on the coast of Portugal and northern Spain and France, the winds (now called prevailing westerlies) blow just as steadily from west to east. Therefore he could sail west with the trades and home with the westerlies, with the winds fair both ways. No other man of his time had thought of that.2

The vegetation and the carved objects and the bodies could not have floated all the way from Asia to Europe if they were as far apart as the experts claimed who believed the world to be larger than Columbus had calculated. He was sure--and he was right--that there was land to the west within reach of the sailing ships fifteenth-century Europe had. He was convinced that God had chosen him to reach that land, hidden from the Western world for ages, which the Roman philosopher Seneca had once prophesied would be revealed. His discovery would bring the Catholic Faith, to which he was devoted, to the people who lived in that land.3

It is for the boldness of his conception and his magnificent courage in laying his life on the line to carry it out that Christopher Columbus is most rightly honored. It was these qualities that Queen Isabel of Spain recognized in him, that caused her to override the cautious advice of counsellors doubtful that such an unprecedented enterprise could succeed. Isabel knew nothing of navigation and little of world geography, but she was a superb judge of men and women. It was to Columbus the man and to Columbus the devoted Catholic that she gave her support. She believed in him--believed that he could achieve the goal to which he was so passionately committed.4

She was right. He did achieve it. In his epochal voyage from August to October 1492, he did strike directly across the unknown Atlantic to reach the previously unknown shore beyond.

The day Columbus selected for departure reflected his profound Catholic faith and that of his crew. August 2, 1492 was the fiesta of Our Lady of Angels, patroness of the Franciscan monastery of La Rбbida whose friars had supported Columbus and called for the realization of his dream from the beginning; and protector of the people of Palos, from which his ships would depart, when they were in danger at sea (as Pope Eugenius IV had proclaimed 55 years before). It was a day of thanksgiving for Our Lady's favors, and like all Spanish fiestas, a day of special celebration. Columbus scheduled his departure on the morrow of the fiesta, so that his men could join in thanksgiving and prayer with their families and relatives on the feast-day especially dear to them and to their people.5

When, after leaving the Canary Islands September 6, they had been out of sight of land for a full month--a longer voyage out of sight of land than any other in the history of the world up to that time--Columbus' men became frightened and angry. During most of the voyage the wind, often strong, had blown from astern or nearly so. How were they ever going to get back, beating against it? Columbus knew that further north the prevailing winds blew from the west, and planned to go north to catch the westerlies before he returned. But his men knew nothing of world geography; all they knew was what they had seen, that in these strange and empty seas the winds almost always blew from the east or the northeast. On October 10 the men of the Santa Maria came to the verge of open mutiny.6 Columbus tells us in his Log how he answered them:

They [the crew] could stand it no longer. They grumbled and complained of the long voyage, and I reproached them for their lack of spirit, telling them that, for better or worse, they had to complete the enterprise on which the Catholic Sovereigns [Isabel and Fernando] had sent them. I cheered them on as best I could, telling them of all the honors and rewards they were about to receive.