Gutenberg's Columbus Day Books
Michael S. Hart
Mon Year Title and Author [filename.ext] ###
Oct 1995 Myths and Legends of the Sioux, by McLaughlin [siouxxxx.xxx] 341
Oct 1995 The Soul of the Indian, by Charles A. Eastman [#4][indsoxxx.xxx] 340
Oct 1995 Old Indian Days by Charles Eastman [Eastman #3] [indayxxx.xxx] 339
Oct 1995 Old Indian Legends, by Zitkala-Sa [indlexxx.xxx] 338
Oct 1995 Indian Boyhood, by [Ohiyesa] Charles Eastman [#2] [indboxxx.xxx] 337
Oct 1995 Indian Heroes & Great Chieftains, Charles Eastman [indhexxx.xxx] 336
In keeping with both sides of the Columbus Day issue, here are a half dozen
Etexts about the ways of life eternally altered by the discovery of America
by Christopher Columbus [Cristobal Colon] on this date, 503 years ago and a
few comments about the efforts to destroy Columbus as the positive cultural
icon he was during the 401th Anniversary of his first voyage to America.
First the facts:
1. Yes, he got here. . ."here" being hundreds of miles north, west or east
of Panama. . .including as far north as Florida, though he never set an
actual foot on Florida, nor probably ever laid eyes on it either. This
is pretty picky stuff, seeing as this is a political boundary that came
about only because Columbus got here in the first place. Americans can
be reassured that the United States is not all of America. . .and those
who want to pretend Columbus never got here can also pretend the Puerto
Rico area is not part of the United States. Of course, if we thought a
bit more like that 50 years ago, we wouldn't have considered the attack
on Pearl Harbor as an attack on the United States either, and it is way
further out there from the "Continental United States" than Puerto Rico
or anything else Colubus visited in the "New World." We must remember,
he also sailed hundreds of miles west from there, including up and down
the mainland. Whether we call that part North America, Central America
or South America, or "the Carribean" or "Gulf of Mexico" is moot from a
perspective that occurred long before the maps were drawn.
2. Was he really "Christopher Columbus," "Cristobal Colon" or "Christoforo
Colombo?"
Moot point for me.
Whoever discovered the New World did it. . .whether we call Shakespeare
"Shakespeare" or Columbus "Columbus". . .the work was just as great.
3. Did he find what he was looking for? The only direct quotation I could
find in most sources was that he was seeking "Islands of the Antipodes"
or "islands on the other side of the globe."
Given how much of the globe was known at the time, I would say he could
easily be said to have accomplished that goal. He managed to get to an
identical spot of ground over and over again, made four separate trips,
and founded the first permanent settlements on these trips.
4. As far as his political or religious beliefs, I leave that alone. This
is not about anything but discovery. . .whether he brought the cultural
biases of Europe with him is also a moot point. . .of course he did; he
also brought a lot more. . .good and bad. . .but it was just a culture,
not a culture that he invented or was responsible for.
5. Was he a "brave explorer?"
You try it. Then let me know.
***
Here is a short 10 page summary about all this.
***
The Death of an Immortal
Last year, 1992, marked the death of one of the immortal people
of previous histories, all too close to the way George Orwell's
1984 predicted how and when it would happen.
I am speaking of the death of the character, reputation, status
and the fame, name, position and prestige of the person we call
Christopher Columbus whom we used to call the discoverer of the
New World, after whom Chicago's named its 400 acre World's Fair
as "The Columbian Exposition" which was a main attraction for a
400th anniversary year of the discovery of America.
Normally the 500th anniversary of an event is considered a more
important milestone than the 400th, but somehow the Politically
Correct thing came to be to demolish the art or science of this
kind of discovery, and to point out that Columbus was no more a
person of our time than was any other person of his era, in the
same manner the founding fathers of the United States were most
likely slave owners and whose slaves bore their children.
This might not have been such a remarkable event, if it not had
premonitory planning which evidenced that there would be no big
500th anniversary celebrations of the nature of the 400th. The
museums were planning to ignore the event quite in advance of a
possible wave of Political Correctitude, as I happened to be an
unwitting witness to, as I travelled around the country, during
previous several years.
I probably would not have noticed this so well in advance if it
had not been for my constant perusal of garage sales in which I
happened upon a collection of about 65 photographs and posters,
published by subscription immediately after the 1893 Exposition
and which give quite a view of the truly spectacular events and
structures on the shores of Lake Michigan a hundred years ago.
I took it upon myself to mention this to several curators of an
assortment of museums I happened to be visiting, in conjunction
with my travels on behalf of Project Gutenberg. In nearly each
case I received the same polite and Politically Correct answers
which eventually led up to the formal denunciation of Columbus,
a year or two later in most cases.
Most of you probably are not specifically aware of how long the
average museum exhibit takes to prepare, nor how many stages of
planning are usually involved. Suffice it to say that any of a
number of exhibits would have been well planned and funded from
a perspective of years or even decades, if there were to be any
such exhibits to rival those of the 400th anniversary.
"The planning of a world's fair now requires several years" and
"since 1928 world's fairs have been regulated by the Bureau of
International Expositions (BIE) in Paris. It authorizes dates
of fairs and enforces certain standards." *1
Even the Great Depression failed to stop world's fairs from the
growth they enjoyed from the first 1851 "Exhibition of London,"
which was followed by several Paris Expositions in 1878, proof,
it was said that France had fully recovered from recent defeat
in the Franco-Prussian War and the 1889 edition from which the
Eiffel Tower was given to the world as proof that steel was an
entirely viable building material with which to scrape the sky
as it was said. 1904 saw the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition in
which 1200 acres were used housing over 1500 structures. 1915
saw San Francisco held the Panama-Pacific Exhibition, to honor
the opening of the Panama Canal which would yield the enormous
benefits of increased ship traffic and would keep the Bay Area
booming. The Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago in the
depths of the Great Depression turned out to be one of the big
profit makers of all world's fairs.
Even World War II couldn't stop the world's fairs, even when a
huge rivalry broke out at the Paris Exposition of 1937. These
war times also failed to stop the new New York World's Fair as
"The World of Tomorrow" was not to be held back.
However, the Cold War, which followed World War II, was a more
difficult thing to overcome, a political event, which we are a
bit more able to see now has more effect on these events, than
does a hot war.
There were no more world's fairs until the Brussels Exposition
in 1958, held at the same site as the 1935 edition. A Seattle
"Century 21 Exposition" in 1962 was also successful and it was
followed by Expo 67 in Montreal, celebrating the 100th year of
modern Canada. Osaka held Expo 70, which still holds records:
most nations - 77, greatest one day admission - a million if a
count includes employees and unpaid admissions, and the record
for total attendance - 64 million.
1974 to 1984 saw three more in the United States [Spokane '74,
Knoxville '82, and New Orleans '84].
Normally this would have been the beginning of the planning in
depth for the 1992-3 Columbian Exposition to mark Columbus 500
year anniversary, but it never happened. Why?
None of the reasons I have heard ever stopped world's fairs in
the past, and I am sure they won't be stopped in the future.
***
Columbus Died in 1992, Assassinated by the Powers-That-Be
In we 1892 saw the Columbian Exhibition along the shores of
Lake Michigan: hundreds of white marble buildings honoring
both the New World and the Old. . .a World's Fair unmatched
in history for sheer beauty, fame, size, and glory.
I have managed to collect a sizeable number of prints of an
assortment of the buildings and events of 1892 and 1893 and
around 1989 I began to inquire at various museums to see if
they would like to display them, as they were silver-iodide
prints of great expense and had survived the 100 years in a
fairly presentable condition.
As I travelled around the country asking museum curators, I
noted that there didn't seem to be much preparation for the
500th Anniversary Celebration of the Discover of America.
After a year or two of these rebuffs I realized that little
or nothing was being done and I began to spread the word as
much as I could that some scheme of connivance was afoot to
insure that there would be no such 500th Anniversary event.
I spent a little more time surveying the possibility of the
television media doing something that would electronically,
if not physically, recreate something on the order of 1892,
but again found nothing; a quick look at radio, same thing.
Arguments for the heroic nature of Columbus have abounded a
great deal, and for centuries, so I will not try to repeat,
or collect them here.
Arguments that Columbus had "feet of clay" are relatively a
new phenomenon, obviously they had no power a century ago--
and I will try to refute some of them, and add a few facts,
facts that might have escaped notice in the frenzy to put a
discoverer such as Columbus in the ranks for decanonization
along with St. Patrick and St. Valentine.
The two major arguments to decanonize Columbus were that he
didn't know where he was and that he didn't actually set an
actual foot on what we call the United States or call North
America. A third major argument is that he didn't discover
what he had set out to discover.
I suggest all three of these arguments are suspect.
I would suggest that since he managed to get back in only 3
weeks on later voyages, whereas the first took over 4 weeks
duration, that he most certainly must have known where, and
well enough to find the exact places he had visited before.
I would therefore suggest that he knew where he was, but he
didn't know where China, Japan, and India were, especially,
when measuring from where he was.
Did Columbus set foot on North America?
We know he sailed for quite a distance both north and south
from this Isthmus of Panama. If you divide the continents,
as many do, into only North America and South America, with
the separation at Panama, then of course he travelled a far
distance into North America, both on the mainland and on an
assortment of islands from the Bahamas to Trinidad to Cuba,
Puerto Rico, etc., and left the first permanent settlements
by Europeans in the Americas.
No one but the most trivially political map maker would not
agree that the Bahamas are not part of North America and on
even political maps Puerto Rico is in the United States.
It is hard to expect that the peoples of the places he went
had never travelled the few miles to Florida, though it may
well be true that Columbus himself had no desire to.
Did Columbus find what he set out to find?
The only direct reference I can find to his stated goals is
that he was looking for "The Islands of the Antipodes."
This translates to "The islands which are on the other side
of the globe. . .the opposite side from where we started."
Given the, from my present perspective, ridiculous estimate
of the size of this globe, we have to say he came extremely
close to this target, and not only found his way back on an
assortment of future voyages and routes, but accomplished a
goal of leaving a permanent settlement, improving trade [in
actuality this was the real goal] and opening the doors for
other explorers to sail all the way around the globe.
Other arguments were the Columbus wasn't the first European
to come to North America, which is most certainly true when
you count the short hop from Iceland to Greenland, or count
some possibility of someone actually going far enough north
to actually walk all the way around the world, at the North
Pole, or near it.
After all, Charles Lindbergh took an extremely shorter path
to Europe that did Columbus, simply because he moved to the
location the farthest north that was possible, thus shorter
distances get you "around" the world. This is also true of
the people sailing "around" the world in record times in an
Antarctic region for the same purposes.
Columbus sailed near the equator making his voyage truly to
"the islands on the other side of the globe."
And he left a permanent settlement.
The naysayers are merely those who seek to drag everyone to
their own level. . .because they can't stand the concept of
the heroic. They are the people who would like to tell you
that Homer's Epics of the Odyssey and the Iliad are not the
great works they are, simply because there are doubts about
when and where Homer lived, what his real name was, or even
that he was blind.
Pooh! I say. . .the works are great works: whether written
by gods or men or a single man, with or without sight.
The same for Shakespeare.
People have tried for centuries to cast doubts on who wrote
Shakespeare. . .the truth is that whoever wrote Shakespeare
WAS Shakespeare, and the works are great, no matter what.
Columbus found the Antipodes [which, with the new mappings,
globes, etc., are now, of course, named to be much further
southwest. . .and the detractors say he went too southwest,
not that he didn't go far enough].
Do we need more people such as Columbus, Homer, Shakespeare
and Socrates. . .of course we do.
Will society continue to fear greatness?
Of course it will.
But it still needs greatness.
Do we live with a bang! Or with a whimper.
The choice is yours.
***
The opinions expressed above were mine, a few
years ago, and have probably changed a little
over the years.
At least some people share some of them as an
"Anti-Columbus Day" protest was held here, on
Monday, the "official" Columbus Day here, but
several times as many people turned out for a
protest of the protestors.
Amazing.
My apologies if I have alienated anyone other
than the usual suspects. "Both sides. . . ."
Thanks!
=============================================
Michael S. Hart, Professor of Electronic Text
Executive Director of Project Gutenberg Etext
Illinois Benedictine College, Lisle, IL 60532
No official connection to U of Illinois--UIUC
ha...@uiucvmd.bitnet and ha...@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu
Permanent Internet Address!!! ha...@pobox.com
Internet User Number 100 [approximately] [TM]
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