Speaker 1: Oh, Michael Swam Robert Evans behind the bastards sweaty gay
Speaker 1: dance parties, Which is what I said right before the
Speaker 1: recording started, because Michael and I were talking about the
Speaker 1: movie To Tan. That's most of the pertinent information that is, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: watch to Tan. It's it's a fun movie about some
Speaker 1: guys who like to dance and nothing else. There's certainly
Speaker 1: nothing off putting in it. Automobile aficionados, let's say, do
Speaker 1: you like cars, really like cars? Check out to Tan.
Speaker 1: To Tan might be for you. Michael, how are you
Speaker 1: doing as we as we sail like the Santa Maria
Speaker 1: into part three of our episode of Columbus. I'm great, Robert,
Speaker 1: happy to be back and super excited for the third act,
Speaker 1: where which we all know as the Redemption Act. This
Speaker 1: is where this is it out right, He'll just finally
Speaker 1: get on an even keel about joke. Uh, stop being
Speaker 1: such a prick. Learned to walk a mile on another's pantolons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is where he becomes the hero that we all know,
Speaker 1: Christopher Columbus grows up. I'm waiting. I'm waiting for this
Speaker 1: to morph into Friends with the Pilgrims for Thanksgiving. This exactly,
Speaker 1: exactly this, This is the episode we're going to open
Speaker 1: in media rez as he is managing a cinnabon in
Speaker 1: the Midwest, and then we'll go back to explain. Um now, um, Although, man,
Speaker 1: you could make a pretty good Columbus movie with Bob
Speaker 1: oden Kirk playing Christopher Columbus. I'd watch it. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna say it right now. I would watch it. Um.
Speaker 1: Michael On February three, Michael Small means Network. By the way,
Speaker 1: probably we should lead up front with the plugs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we always time for that. Okay, but we do it.
Speaker 1: We do it both, we do it both. Robert Evans here,
Speaker 1: I wanted to make a quick correction. You know, when
Speaker 1: I was talking about the Tano, the other air walk
Speaker 1: people's the Caribs, Um, I I used terms like genocide,
Speaker 1: which is absolutely accurate. But I also used terms phrases
Speaker 1: like wiped out or extinct. This is not entirely accurate.
Speaker 1: I wanted to emphasize the level of destruction because it's
Speaker 1: so much an excess of what we see even when
Speaker 1: normally talking about genocides. Sixteen years on most of these islands,
Speaker 1: you're lucky if ten percent of the original population is
Speaker 1: around UM and it's true that if you look up
Speaker 1: the Tano you will find a lot of references to
Speaker 1: them being wiped at. Wikipedia says they were historic indigenous
Speaker 1: people of the Caribbean UM, but of course they had descendants.
Speaker 1: There are people who did survive, notably on what is
Speaker 1: now Haiti. A lot of folks escaped into the mountains
Speaker 1: UM and later met up with escaped slaves and were
Speaker 1: part of resistance UM and exist to this day in
Speaker 1: that area. UM. Some forty three thousand of the I
Speaker 1: think two points seven million people UM in Puerto Rico
Speaker 1: have some degree of Taino ancestry. Three point seven million people,
Speaker 1: so forty three point seven million people in Puerto Rico
Speaker 1: have some Taino ancestry. Obviously, the level of destruction was intense,
Speaker 1: which is why I felt like emphasizing it. But it's
Speaker 1: been pointed out to me that this is also a
Speaker 1: tactic that's used to kind of act as if these
Speaker 1: people's are completely gone, as sort of a well, there's
Speaker 1: nothing we can do, right, there's no way to make
Speaker 1: amends to them because Columbus wiped them out. UM. There's
Speaker 1: a lot that's problematic with this I'm not having the
Speaker 1: time to get into it properly, and this is not
Speaker 1: that show. But I wanted to number one, kind of
Speaker 1: acknowledge that I should not have said things the way
Speaker 1: I did. We tried to cut some of that out
Speaker 1: of the episodes once I became aware of it. UM.
Speaker 1: But I also wanted to recommend a couple of different
Speaker 1: resources that people do want to read more about this,
Speaker 1: because in addition to the fact there there are a
Speaker 1: number of Tano communities that have continued to exist since
Speaker 1: first contact, there are also Taino descended people who are
Speaker 1: attempting to revive some of the traditions and culture UM
Speaker 1: and reclaim that for themselves. So if you want to
Speaker 1: look at SMITHSNY magazine has an article called What Became
Speaker 1: of the Tano by Robert Poole that was published in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven. UM. In Puerto Rico, U there are
Speaker 1: attempts ongoing UM to add Taino studies to classrooms and
Speaker 1: to schools and stuff in the area, UM and elsewhere
Speaker 1: in the United States. There's a good NBC News article
Speaker 1: on that called Puerto Rico seeks to preserve Tino history,
Speaker 1: revived culture, and then probably the resource that is most
Speaker 1: worth reading is an article in American Indian Magazine titled
Speaker 1: Abuela's Ancestors and a tabby the Spirit of Tano Resurgence.
Speaker 1: It's by Christina Gonzalez and it was published in the
Speaker 1: fall of two thousand eighteen. UM, so I would really
Speaker 1: recommend checking out that article, um for American Indian Magazine.
Speaker 1: UM yeah, sorry for the error, and please keep doing
Speaker 1: good stuff. Oh great dogs, yah yeah, lovely. Well. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'll you focus people well for a split second. While
Speaker 1: I have that focus, please devote yours engine to the
Speaker 1: Small Beans podcasting network, which you can find more out
Speaker 1: about simply by googling that phrase, or you could head
Speaker 1: over to patreon dot com slash small Beans if you
Speaker 1: really want to get your handle around everything we do.
Speaker 1: And or completely unrelatedly, if you're a fan of podcasts
Speaker 1: on the I Heart network, and I know you are
Speaker 1: because you're listening to this and you like video games,
Speaker 1: check out another podcast I run with my co host
Speaker 1: Adam Ganzer. That's called One Upsmanship One ups man Ship. Wow.
Speaker 1: That's also the title of my podcast, which is about
Speaker 1: how ups transports products and services around the world. Is
Speaker 1: it break time? It's just it's just pronounced one upsmanship um,
Speaker 1: which is about there anyway. Whatever, the people who are
Speaker 1: right are super into the relationship between the package deliver
Speaker 1: and the package. That's that's what really draws me in
Speaker 1: about global capitalism. So on February, Columbus sailed into the
Speaker 1: Azors off of the coast of Africa with several dozen
Speaker 1: crewmen on the Pinta, the only remaining ship of his
Speaker 1: fleet that was still under his direct control, which most
Speaker 1: people don't know. He loses control. He either sinks or
Speaker 1: loses control of two thirds of the fleet that he
Speaker 1: brings with him. And if I recall, he took this
Speaker 1: as a sign from God that things were going really well.
Speaker 1: The things are going great. Yes, despite the fact that yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's lost most of his fleet. The voyage was,
Speaker 1: one has to say, a stunning success by most reasonable standards,
Speaker 1: because they are going out into the complete unknown for
Speaker 1: them via an untried route that people had not attempted
Speaker 1: previously in boats like this, who people who were members
Speaker 1: of his civilization had not attempted previously. They had established
Speaker 1: a settlement there and then they had returned crew and home,
Speaker 1: and most of his crew didn't die so far a
Speaker 1: lot of them actually did die not at this point. Um.
Speaker 1: Upon landing in the Azars and disembarking about half of
Speaker 1: his crew, they were immediately arrested by the Portuguese over
Speaker 1: a misunderstanding. This was dealt with, though, and they were
Speaker 1: soon off reprovisioned for the Spanish coast, and early March,
Speaker 1: a horrible storm hit the sea, and Columbus was worried
Speaker 1: enough about sinking that he attached a letter to the
Speaker 1: King and Queen to the front mast of his ship
Speaker 1: so that it would have a better chance of like
Speaker 1: getting washed to shore if the boat got sunk. Um.
Speaker 1: So the letters contained like a guide to how to
Speaker 1: get to you know, where he'd sailed to and left
Speaker 1: a colony, and also a grand promise quote within seven years,
Speaker 1: I shall give your highnesses enough money to pay for
Speaker 1: five thousand nights and fifty thou foot soldiers for the
Speaker 1: conquest of Jerusalem, the ultimate goal behind your decision to
Speaker 1: undertake the enterprise. Um. So that's good. I want to
Speaker 1: know what misunderstanding Columbus was arrested for. Oh, it was
Speaker 1: just because, like you know, Spain and Portugal are both
Speaker 1: the big Catholic countries. So they're supposed to be friends,
Speaker 1: but they actually are constantly in conflict, and so it
Speaker 1: was like it was that sort of thing. So Columbus
Speaker 1: does make it back to Spain alive. The indigenous people
Speaker 1: he had captured and the objects that he had brought
Speaker 1: back from the Caribbean with him were deeply impressive to
Speaker 1: his sovereigns, as were his lurid descriptions of the so
Speaker 1: called indies. But Columbus had not yet found what he
Speaker 1: had promised them, which is a reliable source of gold.
Speaker 1: As a result, he quickly found himself embellishing and outright
Speaker 1: fibbing to make his achievements sound more impressive in the
Speaker 1: terms that his sovereign's valued. Lawrence bear Green writes, quote,
Speaker 1: he offered his journal as evidence, bolstered by the testimony
Speaker 1: of the others who had accompanied him, in the hope
Speaker 1: of claiming the riches and titles and glory to which
Speaker 1: he believed he was entitled, even divinely ordained to have
Speaker 1: carefully embellished and edited to meet Ferdinand and Isabella's expectations
Speaker 1: and his contractual obligations to them. The journal purported to
Speaker 1: demonstrate that he had accomplished and even exceeded his mission
Speaker 1: to the point of establishing a Spanish outpost and the
Speaker 1: islands he had discovered on his way to India. Now,
Speaker 1: inside of this diary, this diary that he is very
Speaker 1: carefully this is not an objective document. This is not
Speaker 1: actually meant to be an accurate document. This is a
Speaker 1: piece of propaganda he has crafted in order to guy
Speaker 1: his sovereigns to a specific set of actions. Um And
Speaker 1: the whole goal of this was to convince them that
Speaker 1: if they were to give him a much larger fleet
Speaker 1: and let him return with it, he would expand the
Speaker 1: settlement he had left behind and establish a network of
Speaker 1: three or four towns united by a series of churches,
Speaker 1: abbeys and fortresses which would act as collection points for gold. Right,
Speaker 1: So you set up these different sort of points of
Speaker 1: what they would call civilization around the Caribbean, which the natives,
Speaker 1: who are now all servants of the crown, will have
Speaker 1: to bring gold to as a form of taxation. And
Speaker 1: that's how you're going to make all this money that
Speaker 1: you need to conquer Jerusalem. Now, Columbus, who was ever
Speaker 1: the self promoter, didn't just write this thing out and
Speaker 1: hand it to his sovereigns. He also published a letter
Speaker 1: that was quickly translated into like five or six different
Speaker 1: European languages, which basically announced to europe that, a, you know,
Speaker 1: the new world has been found. Right, that's the way
Speaker 1: in which this is interpret Incredible how much this parallels
Speaker 1: a text startup, Like if you're familiar with Silicon Valley lingo.
Speaker 1: He just dropped his white paper and did a bunch
Speaker 1: of social media posts like promoting the event. That's what
Speaker 1: his diary is. And it's wild to me that even
Speaker 1: in the very beginnings of the concept of America is
Speaker 1: woven the idea of like Columbus asserting it's the greatest
Speaker 1: country on Earth, your majesty. Yeah, why, well, because it
Speaker 1: benefits me to believe that it is. Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: have I have the right to a certain amount of
Speaker 1: all of the trade that comes through this area. Exactly
Speaker 1: convince you to like, here, it's going to work out.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, so um. One of the things he brags
Speaker 1: about here um obviously he talks about the potential for
Speaker 1: gold and that he's found evidence of it, but he
Speaker 1: hadn't actually found any minds, so he has to really
Speaker 1: hype up the other major resource that he did find
Speaker 1: in the islands, which is the human beings who lived there.
Speaker 1: So number one, he talks a lot about how he
Speaker 1: uses the word comely a lot, or like the equivalent
Speaker 1: of that. It's talking about how pretty they are, right, Um,
Speaker 1: by the way, people are pretty much Europeans are pretty
Speaker 1: much immediately taking young women as sex slaves. That happens
Speaker 1: from the jump here. Um, yes, uh. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of writing Columbus does about like finding himself in
Speaker 1: the presence of these women and like how attractive they
Speaker 1: are and how valuable they are as slaves for that reason. Um. Now.
Speaker 1: He also interesting that in all the fivving he did
Speaker 1: not like Gaussian blur over that bit. That's actually an asset.
Speaker 1: It just does goes to show how much cultural maries
Speaker 1: change over time. That's wild. Yeah, I didn't find gold,
Speaker 1: but I found hot people and weaken in them. And
Speaker 1: that's good. And we all agree, we're all the head
Speaker 1: of government is fine, this is fine. Yeah. Um, well,
Speaker 1: actually the head of government is not super okay with it.
Speaker 1: Although I think we will discuss a little later how
Speaker 1: much of that was also a kind of propaganda. But um.
Speaker 1: He notes that the indigenous people have no real religion
Speaker 1: and would be easy converts to Christianity. Uh. He talked
Speaker 1: a lot about how friendly they were, saying that the
Speaker 1: men he had left behind on Navidad were quote without
Speaker 1: danger for their persons if they know how to behave themselves. Now, Michael,
Speaker 1: keep that line in mind, because that's going to be
Speaker 1: pretty funny in a very short while. Yeah. I'm almost
Speaker 1: never in danger as long as I never miss step
Speaker 1: and do everything correctly. I mean that I skate through easily. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: once Columbus is back and he's doing his big victory tour,
Speaker 1: word spreads quickly that he has discovered a new route
Speaker 1: to the islands off the coast of the Great CON's domain.
Speaker 1: These unspoiled territories were not Christian, which, in the eyes
Speaker 1: of the Pope and all of the Catholics, means that
Speaker 1: the most important order of business is to split them
Speaker 1: up among Christian powers. Right, because they are not Christian
Speaker 1: yet or one of the religions that we know as
Speaker 1: our enemy, it just means they're automatically ours. Right. Pope
Speaker 1: Alexander the sixth issued a series of papal bulls ruling
Speaker 1: on how to split the control between Spain and Portugal,
Speaker 1: which are because they're the Catholic nations that are actually
Speaker 1: powerful in this period, they're the only countries that actually matter. Right,
Speaker 1: Italy gets like on that list, but not really Um
Speaker 1: because it's not a country, right, like some of the
Speaker 1: city states are powerful. Is this still the era when
Speaker 1: the pope is like Tony Soprano, like more of a
Speaker 1: business interests than anything else. And that is what the
Speaker 1: pope is doing, is he is demarcating basically like between
Speaker 1: these two Spain and Portugal, and his eyes are kind
Speaker 1: of like franchises of the Catholic Church, and he's he's
Speaker 1: demarcating between them what chunks of this new discovered land
Speaker 1: mass they're going to get to to take control over
Speaker 1: Um because there's this big right because the Portuguese have
Speaker 1: the rights to the coast of Africa, you know, which
Speaker 1: was pretty new to them when they figured out how
Speaker 1: to sale to it. So the end result of this,
Speaker 1: he sets up this line of demarcation that extends from
Speaker 1: the north to the south pole one hundred leagues towards
Speaker 1: the west and south of the islands and the Azors.
Speaker 1: Everything west of that line belongs to Spain, Um and
Speaker 1: given the terms that Clubus had set up with his sovereigns.
Speaker 1: This is all partially Christopher Columbus's property to write. So technically,
Speaker 1: based on the agreement he's signed with the King and Queen,
Speaker 1: what the Pope is ruled, he gets he's like entitled
Speaker 1: like a quarter of all of the traffic that comes
Speaker 1: from Spanish settlement in Latin America. Wow, that's a lot, right, potentially,
Speaker 1: that's worth quite a bit of money. He has a
Speaker 1: startup turned into PayPal just now. Yes, he gets the
Speaker 1: percentage of every single transaction exactly. He's tealing hard. So
Speaker 1: on May, Ferdinand and Isabella appointed Columbus the Captain general
Speaker 1: for a second, much larger voyage of Discovery and conquest.
Speaker 1: They issued a document conferring rights and privileges on him
Speaker 1: and officially awarded him the title Viceroy and Admiral of
Speaker 1: the Ocean, Sea and the Indies. He was ordered to
Speaker 1: very rapidly put together this new voyage and get it
Speaker 1: out to see. Chris was now Dawn. Christopher Columbus Dawn
Speaker 1: is a noble title, right like that? That means it's
Speaker 1: kind of like having Vaughan in your name in Germany.
Speaker 1: Rights that you're a member of the nobility, and his
Speaker 1: children are now also, He's now permanently in the nobility.
Speaker 1: And not only does he have these rights, his children
Speaker 1: inherit them from him. So his all of his progeny
Speaker 1: are set to it have part ownership in all new
Speaker 1: lands he might quote discover and acquire um. The King
Speaker 1: and Queen also give him the authority to punish and
Speaker 1: chastise delinquents and levy fees or taxes on the natives
Speaker 1: of this Newfoundland. I wonder when that thread finally ran
Speaker 1: out legally speaking, you know, like, how long did it
Speaker 1: persist that they cut They cut while he's alive. They're
Speaker 1: cutting back, They're cutting his kids out in parts. I mean,
Speaker 1: his kids do all right, don't worry. Don't worry about
Speaker 1: the Columbus kids. Not that you would, because they do.
Speaker 1: The King and Queen did place one set of limitations
Speaker 1: on him. I'm gonna quote from a write up in
Speaker 1: American Heritage here and written instructions to Columbus issued from
Speaker 1: Barcelona on May. The King and Queen were explicit in
Speaker 1: their mandate respecting treatment of the Indians. Now, not only
Speaker 1: was us to make their conversion to the Christian faith
Speaker 1: is first order of business. But the monarchs also firmly
Speaker 1: decreed that they were not to be molested or coerced
Speaker 1: in any way. They instructed Columbus as he prepared for
Speaker 1: his second voyage. And because this can best be done
Speaker 1: after the arrival of the meet in good time, the
Speaker 1: said Admiral shall take measures that those who go therein
Speaker 1: and those who have gone before here, shall treat the
Speaker 1: Indians very well and affectionately, without causing them any annoyance whatever.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, the Admiral shall make some
Speaker 1: gifts to them in a gracious manner, and hold them
Speaker 1: in great honor. And if it happens that some persons
Speaker 1: to treat the Indians badly in any way whatsoever, the
Speaker 1: said Admiral, as Viceroy and governor for their highnesses, shall
Speaker 1: meet out severe punishment. So on paper, the King and
Speaker 1: Queen are like, hey, you have to respect these people.
Speaker 1: They're so now they're saying you have to respect them
Speaker 1: because there are there there are servants of our crown
Speaker 1: now right because they're their property. But they are saying
Speaker 1: you have to respect them, you have to treat them well,
Speaker 1: which would seem to say I don't know about you, Michael.
Speaker 1: When I think about what qualifies as treating someone well,
Speaker 1: I think not enslaving them is high up on the list.
Speaker 1: Part of freedom, that's right on the top. I don't
Speaker 1: but America. Freedom has never been a vaunted trope in America.
Speaker 1: I just don't think it's you know, doesn't have that
Speaker 1: ring to it. Uh, it's just it's the second part
Speaker 1: of the rhyme. Like we all know the forty two
Speaker 1: Columbus three, the court defined atrocity. Michael, how long how
Speaker 1: long were you waiting to drop that line? I barely
Speaker 1: gathered most of what you just said about what's his name? Colombo? Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: this is this is about Colombo thing the primary hero
Speaker 1: of Yugoslavian anyway. That's that Actually is a fun story. Um.
Speaker 1: So this is an area in which Carol Delaney's account
Speaker 1: of Columbus's motivations diverges significantly from more mainstream interpretations of
Speaker 1: the historical act. Yes, some might say accurate delay interpretations
Speaker 1: delay me mark right? Anyway? Um, the whitewashing a genocide,
Speaker 1: guy E, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: In her account of events, Columbus remains the feverishly devoted
Speaker 1: zealot Leezer focused on finding the Great Con and bringing
Speaker 1: back wealth for Jerusalem. But bear Grin makes the case
Speaker 1: that this doesn't really line up with history. Quote, a
Speaker 1: new realism informed these instructions. There was no more talk
Speaker 1: of trading with the Great Con, although the possibility that
Speaker 1: he existed hovered over the voyage. In other words, while
Speaker 1: he's like still writing about Jerusalem right up to this
Speaker 1: point when they lay out shipped for their next voyage,
Speaker 1: they're not talking about that so much anymore. This is
Speaker 1: all talked about as a business enterprise. They were talking
Speaker 1: about how to get in there and start making some
Speaker 1: fucking cash. It's all the same reasons you ever make
Speaker 1: a sequel to a franchise. It's fascinating that it works
Speaker 1: in terms of film or any unit of entertainment, but
Speaker 1: also like, oh, this exploitation went well, Let's do exploitation
Speaker 1: to exploit harder. All of these contracts, all of the
Speaker 1: legiti stickle planning is focused on establishing storehouses and deposed
Speaker 1: to enable trade. And it was all based on the
Speaker 1: example of the Portuguese in Africa, right, which you might
Speaker 1: notice had not retaken the Holy Land. They just made
Speaker 1: a bunch of money, like that was the goal at
Speaker 1: this point whatever. And I do think one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I do use Delaney, I think she's right in
Speaker 1: that it is an undertold aspect of his story that
Speaker 1: he was a religious fanatic who wanted to bring about
Speaker 1: the apocalypse. Right. I do think that is a worthwhile
Speaker 1: part of the man's journey. But aren't so many of
Speaker 1: them like you can You can think about it, like
Speaker 1: You've got all these guys, these like Christian mega preachers
Speaker 1: and stuff who become multimillionaires who preach about the apocalypse
Speaker 1: and the rapture and stuff. And I think some some
Speaker 1: of them clearly are just grifters, but I think a
Speaker 1: lot of them believe aspects of it. It's just really
Speaker 1: easy to temper your belief once you get super fucking rich, right.
Speaker 1: I think it's also such unique experience that it's almost
Speaker 1: impossible to project yourself truly into the mindset of someone
Speaker 1: who in their life knew that they were his of
Speaker 1: historical import like good for good or bad. Like I
Speaker 1: can't imagine what it's like to be Hitler or FDR,
Speaker 1: And I don't think I truly ever will because you'll
Speaker 1: think about what would I have done during this crisis,
Speaker 1: and you're like, well, you have to remember that you're
Speaker 1: a completely different dude who is wildly inaccessible to you.
Speaker 1: Like they think in a different way. This guy believes
Speaker 1: the world's gonna end any second. Now, that's got to
Speaker 1: affect your behaviors. Yes, I mean there's yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot to say about that. Um So the King and
Speaker 1: quin I do think one of the interesting historical questions
Speaker 1: here there's a version, a theoretical version in history of
Speaker 1: a guy who does this and isn't a monster, just
Speaker 1: like once to figures there's land to the west and
Speaker 1: wants to sail to it. Um. It is a shame
Speaker 1: that that guy wound up being such a piece of ship,
Speaker 1: and also all of the people he brought with him
Speaker 1: were pieces of ship and it ended in genocide. Um
Speaker 1: but yeah, there there's there's a I don't know sad
Speaker 1: uh So the King and Queen, the wealthy nobles who
Speaker 1: backed them certainly seem to have seen this second venture
Speaker 1: is worthy of intense investment. The equivalent of many millions
Speaker 1: of modern dollars were poured into equipping a vast fleet.
Speaker 1: Right he goes there with like a couple hundred people,
Speaker 1: Like I think it's just like a hundred people on
Speaker 1: three boats. It's a very The first journey over is
Speaker 1: quite small. This new journey will be seventeen ships and
Speaker 1: something like twelve hundred people. Like this is a so
Speaker 1: they are you know, they've done the this is the
Speaker 1: This is when like they get that that second round
Speaker 1: of VC funding and suddenly they're like fucking with a
Speaker 1: couple of billion dollars, right whereas before the countryside, Yeah,
Speaker 1: is this and is there any pretense that they think
Speaker 1: they might find gold there or is it? Yes? Yes,
Speaker 1: that is the whole goal at this point is still gold. Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: there's other spices. Obviously, they're they're pretty sure they're gonna
Speaker 1: find some spices because they know that spices come from
Speaker 1: the East East India area and that's where they think
Speaker 1: they're sailing to. Right, So the people are in this
Speaker 1: period of time going the other way around and getting spices,
Speaker 1: so they assume they're going to get spices. So it's
Speaker 1: not just gold, but gold is the primary thing on
Speaker 1: their mind. Um, especially because you said Columbus didn't really
Speaker 1: bring back definitive proof of like vast amounts of gold.
Speaker 1: There's proof, there's some though, and again they know that
Speaker 1: Asia is rich and they think they're in Asia, right,
Speaker 1: like you do. You have to keep that in mind
Speaker 1: when it's like, why are they invest doing so much
Speaker 1: of this? Nobody's got good data on where they are. Um,
Speaker 1: they just know how to get there. So he's also
Speaker 1: sent with a representative of the Spanish Crown, an official
Speaker 1: representative of the of the government, and a noble who
Speaker 1: could speak for the archdeacon of the Bishop of the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church. So both of these, both of and in
Speaker 1: this period, arguably the Spanish crown and the Pope are
Speaker 1: like the two big powers, right, or at least two
Speaker 1: of them. There's not a whole lot that that can compete,
Speaker 1: right in terms of their like they're raw sort of
Speaker 1: like political power in Europe in this period. Um so
Speaker 1: on Septem Columbus sailed the ocean. I wrote blee in
Speaker 1: here at Michael, I couldn't stop myself. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what else to do. It was not nearly as good
Speaker 1: as what you did. Um. Anyway of note is the
Speaker 1: fact that he pauses on the island of San Sebastian Gomera,
Speaker 1: where the local ruler is a woman named Beatrice did Parraza.
Speaker 1: Her husband had been killed by the indigenous people of
Speaker 1: the island for being a prick, and she's kind of
Speaker 1: like a character from an old Greek play. She's alleged
Speaker 1: of at least like luring a bunch of famous and
Speaker 1: prominent knights to her home and then executing them for
Speaker 1: petty crimes after like fucking them. Um. Anyway, Columbus fucked her.
Speaker 1: Probably they had a pre existing relationship. It's like a thing.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get into it too much, but
Speaker 1: I think it's funny. The voyage itself was uneventful enough
Speaker 1: for our purposes. In short order, Columbus found himself back
Speaker 1: in the Caribbean, and due to bad whether, he's forced
Speaker 1: to make the first landfall of his this voyage on
Speaker 1: an island dominated by a people called the Caribs. Now,
Speaker 1: the Caribs are either at war or locked into an
Speaker 1: outright predatory relationship with the tino Um. On his first voyage,
Speaker 1: Columbus had seen tino with old war wounds and been
Speaker 1: told that they were the result of carib slaving raids.
Speaker 1: There are historians now who will make the argument that
Speaker 1: actually the Tino and the Caribs were in the process
Speaker 1: of making peace after a long series of conflicts when
Speaker 1: Columbus came in and disrupted that and like that that
Speaker 1: fucked up things because the Tina we're like, oh, maybe
Speaker 1: we can use the anyway. Whatever this is, it's just
Speaker 1: too much shocked the system and the peace talks fell
Speaker 1: apart or what have you. Yeah, there's I mean, I
Speaker 1: I don't think we have great context on that because
Speaker 1: all of these people died or all murdered. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: On his first voyage to this area, Columbus had seen
Speaker 1: Tino with old wounds and had been told they were
Speaker 1: the result of carib slaving raids. Now the carib rated
Speaker 1: other Arawak people's in the area. Um. And Columbus seems
Speaker 1: to have believed, because he's interacting with the people who
Speaker 1: are the enemies of the Caribs, that they are cannibals. Um.
Speaker 1: And in fact, in that letter he sent out and
Speaker 1: he writes down friendly yeah, um, well no, no, no,
Speaker 1: actually this is important. He's once he hears from the
Speaker 1: people he's friendly with that there are like dangerous cannibals here,
Speaker 1: he writes back and warns about his sovereigns about the
Speaker 1: cannibal nature of the Caribs and uses it as a
Speaker 1: selling point because since there is a group of people
Speaker 1: in the islands who are clearly dangerous and deranged, it
Speaker 1: has it's okay to enslave them, right, But how do
Speaker 1: you win with someone who wants to enslave you, Because
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, these people are so peaceable, we could
Speaker 1: enslave them easily. Oh these people are fighting back. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: We better enslave them if the solution is enslavement. Surprise surprise,
Speaker 1: in part because the sovereigns don't react super well to
Speaker 1: his suggestion that we turn the tyno or whatever into
Speaker 1: serve because like, well, you say, these people are nice
Speaker 1: and easy to christianize, Like, so we have to do that.
Speaker 1: We're not going to enslave them. But Columbus wants to
Speaker 1: make money from selling slaves because he needs quick cash
Speaker 1: and that's the fastest, and so once he finds the Caribs,
Speaker 1: he's like, well, fuck the this is how I can
Speaker 1: start enslaving some people. I don't have to enslave Caribs specifically,
Speaker 1: but if I tell them there's dangerous folks here who
Speaker 1: can't be christianized. I can enslave whoever I want and
Speaker 1: send them back and make quick cash. It's more of
Speaker 1: a war on crime. If you will, yes, yes, yes
Speaker 1: again via very very modern American logic. Here Um carol
Speaker 1: to Laney writes, and this is amazing as evidence that
Speaker 1: he had been to the Indies. He wrote that he
Speaker 1: had brought a few indios the first time in print,
Speaker 1: that the name is given to the native people's and
Speaker 1: promise the riches that he will be able to provide
Speaker 1: in the future gold spices, cotton, mastic, allowood, rhubarb, cinnamon,
Speaker 1: and slaves as many as they should order. Who will
Speaker 1: be from the idolatrs, that is, from the man eating Caribs.
Speaker 1: So he's marking down these people. That's part of like
Speaker 1: the been a fit of hearing that they're cannibals. Is
Speaker 1: now he can add them, with religious justification to his
Speaker 1: list of resources in the area. Because the Tino I
Speaker 1: can slave these dangerous man eaters, you know, that's what
Speaker 1: you want as a slave working alongside you, I think
Speaker 1: is someone trained for war who could eat you? And
Speaker 1: would he here living in my home with me? Um?
Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk a lot more about this. Despite
Speaker 1: hearing a great deal about the Caribs on their first voyage,
Speaker 1: Columbus didn't really have contact with them in that first trip.
Speaker 1: Now that changes almost as soon as they arrived back
Speaker 1: in the Caribbean. And I'm gonna quote again from American
Speaker 1: heritage here, Columbus and his company had a brief skirmish
Speaker 1: with these Cannibals on the island of Santa Cruz St.
Speaker 1: Croix and one of the Virgin Islands. A Spaniard was
Speaker 1: killed by an arrow and a few of the natives
Speaker 1: were taken a prisoner. The exact number is difficult to
Speaker 1: establish from the three rather confusing eyewitness accounts we have
Speaker 1: of this encounter, but it couldn't have been more than
Speaker 1: a dozen or show, including three or four male adults
Speaker 1: and some women and children. Now, again, the way that
Speaker 1: Columbus frames this is that they tried to meet peacefully,
Speaker 1: and the way Delaney interprets it is they tried to
Speaker 1: have a peaceful meeting and these violent Caribs attack them.
Speaker 1: Now we know that Columbus is just abducting people, like
Speaker 1: straight up abducting people all over the Caribbean. I think
Speaker 1: it's entirely possible. He tried to steal some folks, and
Speaker 1: they shot again, and they shot a guy justifiably. Um again.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for a group of people to travel
Speaker 1: back in time while wearing a mask so you don't
Speaker 1: get them sick and give a k forty sevens to
Speaker 1: the Caribs in this period should be high up on
Speaker 1: your list. Right, they're already dealing with krakens and ship
Speaker 1: They don't need to speak their language to teach them
Speaker 1: how to kill Europeans with a collash. It's very easy.
Speaker 1: So after this skirmish, Columbus had his soldiers proceed in
Speaker 1: force to a Carib village. Europeans who were with him
Speaker 1: at the time wrote that these people practiced the quote
Speaker 1: a cursed vice of sodomy, which goes right up there
Speaker 1: with cannibalism. On reasons why they can't be Christianized, they
Speaker 1: decided that the Caribs had introduced sodomy to the other people. Basically,
Speaker 1: they noticed people doing a lot of fucking that repressed
Speaker 1: Catholics don't do, and they're like, this must be the
Speaker 1: evil Caribs teaching them how to fun. And they're always like, uh,
Speaker 1: this must be the first time anyone ever thought of that,
Speaker 1: because I can't even conceive of something so discussing. We
Speaker 1: must be the save and destroy these dangerous Caribs to
Speaker 1: stop this, like we approached the very heart of but stuff,
Speaker 1: the origin itself. Yeah, yes, the Cribs are patient zero
Speaker 1: for butt stuff. I would wear that crowd. Yeah, all
Speaker 1: all respect to the Caribs. Um. They also reported that
Speaker 1: the Caribs engaged in what was either castration or is
Speaker 1: perhaps more likely, some form of circumcision. They seem to
Speaker 1: have been doing something surgical to the genitals of some
Speaker 1: of their young people. Now, Carol Delaney insists that it
Speaker 1: was castration because that is the word that the Spanish
Speaker 1: doctor with the fleet used, and clearly he must know
Speaker 1: what he's talking about, even though this is the fourteen
Speaker 1: nineties and I think it's fair to say doctors are
Speaker 1: not doctors in this period. Yeah, more than so. Maybe
Speaker 1: he maybe they were castrating boys. For certain, the cultures
Speaker 1: have done that right to some to some young people
Speaker 1: at points in time. This may be an example of
Speaker 1: again because of the genocide, we don't of great and
Speaker 1: maybe an example of perhaps this is a thing where
Speaker 1: they had different attitudes towards gender and like some people
Speaker 1: who identified some way had a procedure that we don't
Speaker 1: really know what's going on with this, but yeah, other
Speaker 1: scholars are ready to note that back then. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: again Carol Delaney takes it is written that like they
Speaker 1: are abusing children and that that's part because she's making
Speaker 1: the case that these this is like these are dangerous
Speaker 1: indigenous people who have vile and evil traditions that has
Speaker 1: and then so then enslavem Okay, well that's literally the
Speaker 1: argument she's about to make. Um, but I think it
Speaker 1: is important to other scholars are like, we don't the
Speaker 1: doctor was not a great doctor, We don't have great content.
Speaker 1: We have no idea what was going on. And a
Speaker 1: lot of cultures, including Jewish people, right, do have have
Speaker 1: like surgeries that they do on you know, uh, circumcision
Speaker 1: and stuff. We don't know what was going We don't
Speaker 1: know what these people were doing, but we do not
Speaker 1: have enough data to say that they were abusing anybody, right, Um,
Speaker 1: that's just racism. Uh So anyway, um, yeah, the Caribs
Speaker 1: that they encountered. Yeah, anyway, there's a number of things
Speaker 1: that could have been happening either way, Columbus captured a
Speaker 1: bunch of these people, uh and enslaves them and sends
Speaker 1: them to Spain. He burns all of their canoes to
Speaker 1: stop them from traveling to other islands and telling them
Speaker 1: about sodomy. And here's here's how Carol Delaney justifies this.
Speaker 1: From among the girls, mutilated, boys, and adults that the
Speaker 1: Caribs had enslaved, Columbus rescued as many as he could,
Speaker 1: took them aboard the already crowded and returned them to
Speaker 1: their homes. In addition, Columbus wrote that the men found
Speaker 1: an orphaned year old baby whom he entrusted to a
Speaker 1: woman who came from Castile, and said that once the
Speaker 1: child learns the language, he would send him to Spain.
Speaker 1: Columbus did not specify whether the woman was Spanish or Indian,
Speaker 1: though it is possible that she was Columbus's domestic servant.
Speaker 1: Um Columbus said, I am vengeance, swear to me, and
Speaker 1: the scum fled into the night, never to return. Oh, Michael,
Speaker 1: very very pro Columbus bent here. I can see. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's good. So we'll continue talking about the Caribs
Speaker 1: in a bit. But After this encounter, Columbus fleet sails
Speaker 1: on and he makes it to Navadad, where they found
Speaker 1: the settlement that had he had left there like a
Speaker 1: few months before, raised to the ground. Everyone there was dead.
Speaker 1: They're like anymore. They all get their asses killed. So
Speaker 1: when they find the corpses of their former shipmates, all
Speaker 1: of the eyes have been removed, which is pretty rad um.
Speaker 1: So eventually he gets into contact with the indigenous folks,
Speaker 1: was particularly the Casique that he had befriended before, and
Speaker 1: he learns the whole story. And here's how Delaney describes it.
Speaker 1: The men had begun to fight among themselves, had formed
Speaker 1: into groups and gone on rating parties to the neighboring
Speaker 1: area belonging to the Casque Canabo. They stole goods, raped
Speaker 1: the women, kidnapped them, and took them back to Novadad
Speaker 1: as concubines. Not surprisingly, Cannabo retaliated by attacking the garrison,
Speaker 1: killing all the men and burning their village. Columbus decided
Speaker 1: to pay a visit to Guacan to guacan Ar Guacanagari
Speaker 1: and learn his side of the story. Dressed in full regalia,
Speaker 1: he and one hundred men, accompanied by pipes and drums
Speaker 1: marched to Guacanagari's village, about ten miles inland. Guacanagari confirmed
Speaker 1: Diego's report. He felt responsible to Columbus and was chagrined
Speaker 1: that he had not been able to keep his promise
Speaker 1: to protect the European men. He said that when he
Speaker 1: tried to help them, he was struck by a large
Speaker 1: stone and injured. Dr Chanka could see no evidence of
Speaker 1: a wound, but Columbus decided not to press the issue
Speaker 1: and invited Guacanagari on board a dinner. There for the
Speaker 1: very first time the Indian chief saw a horse. Over dinner,
Speaker 1: Columbus learned that the men had been hoarding gold that
Speaker 1: they had either founder stolen and had not reported it
Speaker 1: for the crown. They had also been taking women and
Speaker 1: even girls as concubines. So first off, what's happened here
Speaker 1: is that the many leaves behind start taking sex slaves,
Speaker 1: many of which your children, and abusing them and they
Speaker 1: get murdered for it. And the guy who's Columbus's friend
Speaker 1: tries to intervene, and they like club him on the
Speaker 1: head with a rock, and I do love that. Like, Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: there's a lot that's funny about that bit so much
Speaker 1: so I'm paying not the least of which is they're
Speaker 1: taking underage sex slaves and then saying it's okay for
Speaker 1: us to enslave you because you do funked up ship
Speaker 1: like you take under age sex slaves. Yeah, exactly, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're abusing abide that, um, which we would have yelled
Speaker 1: at these guys if we'd caught them doing it, I
Speaker 1: promise you, right. You know who else yells at people
Speaker 1: who take underage sex slaves? Michael, I do, But I
Speaker 1: think we should share that information with the audience that
Speaker 1: they can bonsors of this podcast. Oh yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 1: sponsors of this podcast. Um, they hate sex slavery and
Speaker 1: we're back, ah Michael, Yeah, Mikhail, as you're known in Russia,
Speaker 1: where you have a huge fan base, I assume I'll
Speaker 1: make the same assumption from now on. Thanks. Uh yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So this gets to one of my favorite things about
Speaker 1: Delaney's book that described because that is a for a
Speaker 1: woman who's whitewashing Columbus, pretty horrible description of these guys
Speaker 1: at Novedad right, She very to her credit, describes them
Speaker 1: as a bunch of guys who needed to get killed,
Speaker 1: you know, Um, that's my favorite thing about her book.
Speaker 1: She does not whitewash the brutality of the Spanish occupiers.
Speaker 1: She portrays them as All of the men Columbus takes
Speaker 1: with him are constantly depicted as rapists in slavers and
Speaker 1: vicious gold christ psychopaths, which they were, But Columbus is
Speaker 1: shown as this this decent, hard working band. He was
Speaker 1: like constantly putting out fire. It's like, yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: if John Luke Piccard, if everyone else on the enterprise,
Speaker 1: we're just asshole. Yeah. And he's just trying to stop
Speaker 1: it in hand. Yeah, he's he's constantly trying to maintain
Speaker 1: noble and decent relationships with the locals despite all of
Speaker 1: the viciouses of the men he puts. And that's who
Speaker 1: makes everything go wrong, is these bad guys who he
Speaker 1: puts in charge and brought with him to the New World.
Speaker 1: But it's not his fault that they're all bad people. Um.
Speaker 1: It is a very funny balance to try to strike,
Speaker 1: and she does it badly. Here's one example of her
Speaker 1: exculpaid in Columbus in this passage about the fact that
Speaker 1: every town and forth he set up rebels from his
Speaker 1: control and turns into bands of arms spaniards, murdering and
Speaker 1: raping children, um and taking gold for themselves. Quote. Columbus
Speaker 1: was a sailor and a navigator. He was not cut
Speaker 1: out for the job of administrator even less his tractor
Speaker 1: and he had no training for this role. But now
Speaker 1: he was confronted with the task of organizing his motley
Speaker 1: group of settlers in Decadres for work by himself, because
Speaker 1: he begged for that position, because for that job it's
Speaker 1: very fun, you know. I think we can all talk
Speaker 1: about this now, Michael, having all worked at Cracked together,
Speaker 1: we were in this position of a bunch of people
Speaker 1: who wanted to be creative folks making videos and writing articles,
Speaker 1: being put into management positions and like dealing with budgets
Speaker 1: and dealing with like corporate stuff that we were not
Speaker 1: super well suited for. And there were some complications as
Speaker 1: a result of that. But one of the complications was
Speaker 1: not that all of our subordinates formed murder gangs and
Speaker 1: stole gold from people to genocide. I didn't have eyes
Speaker 1: on Brockway and Sean Baby at all times because they were,
Speaker 1: you know, living out there, So I can't completely vouch
Speaker 1: for that. Yeah, but by and large we got by
Speaker 1: company did demand that we committed genocide, and I did.
Speaker 1: We should probably say that, Yeah, we stepped away. You know,
Speaker 1: we're heroes France. Why we left. That's what we all
Speaker 1: left of our own volition. They said, next obvious step
Speaker 1: is genesis, genesis slavery, and we were like, I can't
Speaker 1: do it. Not funny, frankly, not not a moral thing,
Speaker 1: just not funny. Very few genocides were funny. Um. Um.
Speaker 1: It is true. She's not wrong that Chris was bad
Speaker 1: as an administrator. He is just objectively bad at that job. Um.
Speaker 1: And he also like, it's just very funny to like
Speaker 1: to completely divorce him from a morality of what's happening. Um,
Speaker 1: mainly because he writes letters back talking about how he
Speaker 1: didn't want things to be so bad as they were,
Speaker 1: which is like, yeah, you're you're you're working. That's pretty sweaty, Carol,
Speaker 1: pretty sweat Have you ever played Grand Theft Auto four? Yes,
Speaker 1: of course, where you're the guy who constantly that's right,
Speaker 1: the Nico will constantly scream things like because he was
Speaker 1: the he was the g T a protagonist who was
Speaker 1: sad about murder, so he would scream things like why
Speaker 1: why must I do this? And oh this city? What
Speaker 1: has it made me do? And You're like, I just
Speaker 1: gunned down forty people like you know. That's why when
Speaker 1: we finally got Trevor, I was like, Oh, this is
Speaker 1: a breath of fresh air action. Smash your work. You're
Speaker 1: supposed to be in this game. The Columbus is still
Speaker 1: in a nace. Columbus, well, Columbus is a Trevor, but
Speaker 1: he's acting like a Nico. That's right, Yeah, he's he's
Speaker 1: That's that's definitely the case. Um. So he has a
Speaker 1: damnable time actually finding and setting up gold mines, and
Speaker 1: that's all like part of why all of the administrative
Speaker 1: stuff fails is he's constantly leaving the task of setting
Speaker 1: up working towns and trading posts to his incompetent subordinates
Speaker 1: because all he cares about is finding gold mines, because
Speaker 1: that's what's going to make his like personal wealth. Bigger
Speaker 1: gold mines are still in short supply, he's having trouble
Speaker 1: finding them. So early on in this voyage, when there's
Speaker 1: still not a clear idea of where to start mining gold,
Speaker 1: he gets back into he gets really into the business
Speaker 1: of enslaving people in large numbers, right, We're talking hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds and hundreds of people at a time that
Speaker 1: he starts sending back in ships. Here's how Delaney tries
Speaker 1: to defend his enslaving of people, because again they start
Speaker 1: like grabbing ship to send back to Spain. With the ships,
Speaker 1: Columbus sent back cinnamon, pepper, cotton, parrots, and sandalwood, and
Speaker 1: some of the gold samples they had collected in order
Speaker 1: to show that the enterprise would be profitable. In addition
Speaker 1: to the profitable materials gathered from nature, Columbus also sent
Speaker 1: human cargo twenty six Indians from the man eating Caribs.
Speaker 1: In doing this, he was following papal policy at the time,
Speaker 1: which pervented enslavement of those that captured in a just war,
Speaker 1: those who resisted Christianization, and those who win against the
Speaker 1: law of nature. The Caribs appeared to fit all three definitions.
Speaker 1: Not only have they resisted and fought against the Christians,
Speaker 1: they contravene the law of nature by acts of sodomy
Speaker 1: and can ballism. And this is how Delaney tries to
Speaker 1: minimalize his enslaving people every time, and it is horseship,
Speaker 1: as our other sources will make clear completely. Well, I
Speaker 1: was just saying that that was that was not an
Speaker 1: old timey quote either, if I'm gathering for the contents, right,
Speaker 1: So Delaney is saying, and you know they do, but
Speaker 1: stuff which is objectively as contravenes the natural order. Well,
Speaker 1: she's just saying what he's doing. Because we had this
Speaker 1: discussion at the start of like judging people by the
Speaker 1: standards of their times and then trying to judge people
Speaker 1: from objective standards as to like how they measure up.
Speaker 1: And the argument that I'm making, and that most reasonable
Speaker 1: people make, is that Columbus was a really bad guy,
Speaker 1: even considering the morals of the times. She is trying
Speaker 1: to say, No, he was perfectly normal. The enslaving of
Speaker 1: the Cribs because they were an enemy in a war
Speaker 1: was perfectly standard, and he was he was in line
Speaker 1: with the horrible nous of the era, and that that
Speaker 1: is a lie. Not that that would make it okay,
Speaker 1: but that's also wrong. On February two four, two and
Speaker 1: a half months after the deadly fight with the Caribs
Speaker 1: and his rate on their village, Columbus sends back several
Speaker 1: boats with a massive cargo of slaves in twelve ships
Speaker 1: from Isabella, which is this new heat because Novadad's burnt down,
Speaker 1: he forms a new colony called Valentine's Days coming up.
Speaker 1: He's got to get something, You got to get something down.
Speaker 1: So these there are hundreds of people in this this
Speaker 1: cargo of ships that he sends back, all of whom
Speaker 1: have been captured against their will, and all of whom
Speaker 1: are to be sold in the slave market at Seville.
Speaker 1: Now Columbus sends the captain on that voyage with a
Speaker 1: letter to the King and Queen, who had specifically ordered
Speaker 1: him not to enslave the natives. He explained that because
Speaker 1: there is no language by means of which this people
Speaker 1: can understand our holy faith, thus are being sent with
Speaker 1: these ships the cannibals, men and women, and boys and girls,
Speaker 1: which their highnesses may order placed in the possession of
Speaker 1: persons from whom they can best learn the language. He
Speaker 1: suggested that the profit from the souls of the said
Speaker 1: cannibals would suggest the consideration that many more from here
Speaker 1: would be better, and their highnesses would lie served in
Speaker 1: this manner, that in view of the need for cattle
Speaker 1: and beasts, and burden for sustaining the people who are here. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, what he's saying is that we need
Speaker 1: more European food because the Europeans don't like eating indigenous food.
Speaker 1: So I want you to sell these slaves who were
Speaker 1: totally cannibals and use the profits in order to buy
Speaker 1: cattle and send them over here so that we can
Speaker 1: get a European settlement going here. Now obviously, and they're like,
Speaker 1: we wanted gold. This is so far from what we discussed,
Speaker 1: is not at all and we had talked about. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote again from American heritage here. There is
Speaker 1: no record of the number of slaves sent with Torres,
Speaker 1: but from all indications, they were considerably more than the
Speaker 1: handful of Caribs taken in the skirmage on Santa Croix,
Speaker 1: which is again what Delaney says, that he just sends
Speaker 1: over a couple of dozen Caribs. Columbus is only known
Speaker 1: encounter with these fierce natives on his second voyage. Most
Speaker 1: of Torres's wrecked cargo must have been made up of
Speaker 1: the inoffensive inhabitants of Espaniola, whose meekness so highly praised
Speaker 1: it first by Columbus was being strained to the breaking
Speaker 1: point by the strong armed tactics of the European vaders,
Speaker 1: including Columbus's own periodic kidnappings of groups of natives to
Speaker 1: learn the secrets of the land. As he wrote. It
Speaker 1: is also worth noting that in his letters to the
Speaker 1: King and Queen, Columbus explicitly compared the indigenous people of
Speaker 1: the Indies to the black slaves Portuguese traders were taking,
Speaker 1: may or highnesses judge whether they ought to be captured.
Speaker 1: For I believe we could take many of the males
Speaker 1: every year, and an infinite number of women. May you
Speaker 1: also believe that one of them would be worth more
Speaker 1: than three black slaves from Guinea, and strength and ingenuity
Speaker 1: as you will gather from those I am shipping out now.
Speaker 1: So Delanney is like he just the only ones he
Speaker 1: sends over for slaves are a couple of dozen people,
Speaker 1: and they're all Caribs. He had fought with him that
Speaker 1: was justified at the time. No, he is lying. He
Speaker 1: has enslaved a lot more than that of the people
Speaker 1: he was specifically told not to enslave by the King
Speaker 1: and Queen, and he is sending them back and lying
Speaker 1: about who they are in order to make a profit,
Speaker 1: and he's eyeing future slaves. Oh really, how many? Infinity
Speaker 1: and infinite number? And also the fact that he notes
Speaker 1: that you can enslave women an infinite number. It's because
Speaker 1: he and other Europeans want to rape them, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's why that's big I was gonna say. His complicated
Speaker 1: startup sales pitch has devolved into an Internet pop up
Speaker 1: ad that just says like, meet infinite women, girl, barely
Speaker 1: legal whatever, any are you a lonely noble in search
Speaker 1: of infinite women? Jesus. Eleven weeks after sending off Torres
Speaker 1: and that first load of slaves to Seville, Columbus leaves
Speaker 1: his new colony in the hands of his younger brother Diego.
Speaker 1: He made a noble named Pedro Marguerite, commander of the
Speaker 1: Spanish military forces on the island while he was gone.
Speaker 1: Both of these guys are shipped at the job, and
Speaker 1: when he gets back he does find a couple of
Speaker 1: gold mines. Finally, and when he gets back, though, he's
Speaker 1: found that the whole situation on this island he's trying
Speaker 1: to colonize has degenerated. So, first off, marguerite commander of
Speaker 1: the army, leaves his post and goes back to Spain.
Speaker 1: He's like, funk it. I don't like it here. This
Speaker 1: is the this isn't a good job. So he leaves
Speaker 1: all of his soldiers leaderless, and they just again start
Speaker 1: raiding villages, shooting people to take what they want, and
Speaker 1: raping women at random. Ferdinand Columbus, who's Christopher's legitimate son,
Speaker 1: describes them as quote committing a thousand excesses, for which
Speaker 1: they were mortally hated by the Indians. Las Casas describes
Speaker 1: that quote each one went where he willed among the Indians,
Speaker 1: stealing their property and wives, inflicting so many injuries upon
Speaker 1: them that the Indians resolved to avenge themselves on any
Speaker 1: they found alone or in small groups. So that's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: And again Columbus is not ordering them to go on
Speaker 1: these raping and murdering sprees. He's just setting up a
Speaker 1: bunch of armed, unhinged men on the island and then
Speaker 1: abandoning them to look for gold and then being like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, a bad thing happened. How could I
Speaker 1: have known? Also, the weird implication is, of course that
Speaker 1: if he's stuck around it would it would have stayed good.
Speaker 1: But you never get proof of that because he never
Speaker 1: sticks around. I will argue you get proof of the
Speaker 1: opposite to see what happens when he does stick and
Speaker 1: guess what, it's actually worse than gags. A local casique Guattanagana,
Speaker 1: finally organizes a cohesive event defense, and this is while
Speaker 1: Columbus is still away. He organizes again. These soldiers are
Speaker 1: just running rough shot over the island, murdering and raping people,
Speaker 1: so gut Iguana organizes a cohesive defense to the raiding
Speaker 1: and the raping. He and his men ambushed ten Spanish
Speaker 1: soldiers and killed them. They killed the ship out of them,
Speaker 1: and then once those guys are dead, they find a
Speaker 1: shelter that the Spanish we're living in where forties six
Speaker 1: soldiers are like recuperating, right because they're all sick, they
Speaker 1: can't defend themselves, so he burns the fucking shack down
Speaker 1: while they're inside it, which cool and good in my opinion.
Speaker 1: Um funk those guys. So Columbus gets back to the land, though,
Speaker 1: and he's found out that like a funkload of soldiers
Speaker 1: have been murdered by the locals. I would argue justifiably,
Speaker 1: but Columbus is like, no, this is horrible. And into
Speaker 1: this situation steps another casique, guacana Ari, who we've talked
Speaker 1: about before. This is the guy who Christopher is in
Speaker 1: love with on his first voyage. And I want to
Speaker 1: quote now from a book called The Other Slavery by
Speaker 1: Andres Ricindez. Hearing that Columbus had returned after a long absence,
Speaker 1: Guacanagari immediately visited to declare his innocence in the massacre.
Speaker 1: He had done nothing to aid or encourage the Indians
Speaker 1: who would slaughter the Spanish, and to demonstrate his long
Speaker 1: standing goodwill, recalled the goodwill and hospitality he had always
Speaker 1: shown the Christians. He believed that his generosity towards these
Speaker 1: visitors from Afar had provoked the hatred of the other casiques,
Speaker 1: especially the notorious Bahecio, who had killed one of Guacanagari's wives,
Speaker 1: and the thieving Kennabo who had stolen another. Now he
Speaker 1: appealed to the Admiral to restore his wives and obtain revenge.
Speaker 1: As Guacanagari narrated this tragic tale, he wept each time
Speaker 1: he recalled the men who had been killed at Le
Speaker 1: Navedad as if they were his own sons. Guacanagari's tears
Speaker 1: won over Columbus, restoring the bond between the Admiral and
Speaker 1: the Cacique. As he considered the situation, Columbus realized that
Speaker 1: the emotional Caseique had provided valuable intelligence about conflicts among
Speaker 1: the Indians, conflicts that Columbus could exploit to punish enemies
Speaker 1: of them, both as an alliance with Guacanagari would enable
Speaker 1: him to settle all scores. Recovering from his breakdown, Columbus
Speaker 1: marched forth from Isabella and warlike array, together with his
Speaker 1: comrade Guacanagari, who was most eager to rout his enemies.
Speaker 1: Ferdinand wrote, now we know distressingly little about the pre
Speaker 1: contact cultures of the Tyno, of of the different Arawak
Speaker 1: people of the carib But one thing we know for
Speaker 1: certain is that they did not have military technology that
Speaker 1: it could seriously threaten Spanish dominance in the field. They're
Speaker 1: able to carry out some ambushes that are successful when
Speaker 1: they are not organized, but once Columbus puts together an
Speaker 1: actual like battle line and sends it out to fight
Speaker 1: these people in an organized way, it is not there's
Speaker 1: no The end result is not in doubt. These people
Speaker 1: have guns and cannons. They're dealing with folks who have
Speaker 1: not even not particularly good bows and arrows, right, Ferdinand,
Speaker 1: who is and even worse than this, honestly, like potentially
Speaker 1: the most nificant weapons system they have are dogs and
Speaker 1: or betrayal, like the element of see they needed to
Speaker 1: read wedding. These motherfucker's is like you get Columbus in
Speaker 1: a room for the peace trade negotiations, stab him in
Speaker 1: his belly twenty times as you always have. You've got
Speaker 1: this one local leader who's like, well, these guys will
Speaker 1: help me deal with my local opponents, right, and I'll
Speaker 1: worry about the fallout later. Exactly. That's the beauty rolls around.
Speaker 1: The girl is simply dieure um so yeah um. Ferdinand,
Speaker 1: who's there with his father, reports that in one battle quote,
Speaker 1: two squadrons of infantry assaulted the multitude of Indians, putting
Speaker 1: them to route with crossbow shots and guns, and before
Speaker 1: they could rally, they attacked with horses and dogs. By
Speaker 1: these means, those cowards fled in every direction, and the
Speaker 1: destruction was so great, and that in brief time the
Speaker 1: victory was complete Not only did his Majesty's hand guide
Speaker 1: him Columbus and achieving the victory, but he also imposed
Speaker 1: such a severe shortage of food and such varied and
Speaker 1: grave infirmities that the Indians were reduced to a third
Speaker 1: of the number they had been before. So it is
Speaker 1: clear that from his divine guidance such a marvelous victory ensued.
Speaker 1: When Frindan is writing about is that in this first
Speaker 1: like year or so that he's back in the islands,
Speaker 1: two thirds of these people are the first couple of years,
Speaker 1: two thirds of these people die out right, They start starving,
Speaker 1: they start getting sick, and then they start getting massacred
Speaker 1: and and enslaved and sent away in battles. Now, there's
Speaker 1: a number of things that caused this decline in population.
Speaker 1: We'll be talking about this quite a bit um, but
Speaker 1: one of the things is that again he's also he's
Speaker 1: they're shipping going on back and forth, and some of
Speaker 1: it's taking livestock to the islands that the Europeans can
Speaker 1: eat in the matter they're accustomed to, which is what
Speaker 1: brings a lot of the diseases that that become increasingly
Speaker 1: a problem here. Now, Delaney again frames all of this
Speaker 1: is just tragedy stemming from the fact that Columbus, who
Speaker 1: is a brilliant explorer and a man of deep faith,
Speaker 1: just isn't a very good leader. And again he is
Speaker 1: not a good leader. But if he was an evil genius,
Speaker 1: he could hardly have planned the situation better. And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote from that American heritage right up again. This
Speaker 1: was all that Columbus needed to establish a steady supply
Speaker 1: of slaves. He no longer would have to maintain the
Speaker 1: fiction that they were cannibals, despite the fact, even acknowledged
Speaker 1: by Ferdinand, that the slain Spaniards had justly earned their
Speaker 1: mortal hatred. Columbus led an expedition against the defenseless Indians
Speaker 1: that was incredibly savage and its slaughter of the naked
Speaker 1: islanders and destruction of their villages. The heavily armed Europeans
Speaker 1: were accompanied by ferocious greyhounds, each of which Las Casas wrote,
Speaker 1: in an hour could tear one hundred Indians to pieces.
Speaker 1: Because all the people of the island had the custom
Speaker 1: of going nude from head to foot, many people were
Speaker 1: taken alive, and five hundred were sent to slaves to
Speaker 1: be sold in Castile. Now, this is the first massive
Speaker 1: load of slaves that Columbus sends across the Atlantic, and
Speaker 1: in some ways this is the inauguration of the Atlantic
Speaker 1: slave trade. It starts off going from the Indies across
Speaker 1: the Europe, as opposed to going from Africa um to
Speaker 1: to the America's um. Now. Ms. Shel de Cuneo, who's
Speaker 1: an Italian adventurer who goes on Columbus to the second
Speaker 1: edition expedition. He returns with Torres on that boat um
Speaker 1: and in his own account he notes that some six
Speaker 1: hundred captives had actually been gathered at Isabella. The five
Speaker 1: d were the most salable, and the rest were given
Speaker 1: out as gifts to colonists. By the time tours as
Speaker 1: slave ships reached Spain, two hundred of the five hundred
Speaker 1: captives on board had died um and their corpses were
Speaker 1: thrown into the ocean. All of the others died pretty
Speaker 1: soon after the arrival. Now, the fact that the pretense
Speaker 1: of friendly coexistence had been well and truly shattered, right,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, oh and these guys, I'll eat people. Right.
Speaker 1: It's hard to feel that as mattering as you're shoveling
Speaker 1: hundreds of corpses into the sea. It's like, I don't
Speaker 1: even care if they did this. Is this is now
Speaker 1: officially a system of business. Yeah, and again the just
Speaker 1: to clarify some of the time that you have that
Speaker 1: first ship he sends back, which Delaney says is just
Speaker 1: twenty six guys. We actually have no idea how many
Speaker 1: people were on it, and probably includes Taino people that
Speaker 1: he had just enslaved because he wanted to enslave them.
Speaker 1: And then there's that massacre of Spanish soldiers. Columbus does
Speaker 1: a war, kills a bunch of people and enslaves a
Speaker 1: group of five hundred. He sends them back. Half of
Speaker 1: them die and all of them are dead pretty soon
Speaker 1: after they arrive in Spain. Like none of them last
Speaker 1: very long. Imagine that someone swooped down again. I hate
Speaker 1: to keep us in this metaphor, but in the UFO
Speaker 1: and abducted you, raped you, brought you to the alien planet,
Speaker 1: taught you the alien language, and they're and you're like,
Speaker 1: why did you do this? And they're like, so we
Speaker 1: could give you our religion and our our religion says
Speaker 1: you're blessed because you're meat. You're going to inherit the
Speaker 1: earth thing like, so you you bring me here to
Speaker 1: tell me how lucky I am and how great this
Speaker 1: is going for me. Is the wildest aspect of this all.
Speaker 1: It's the cognitive dissonances off the charts. Yes. Now, by
Speaker 1: this point in his explorations, Columbus had discovered several gold
Speaker 1: mines and areas in which gold could be pannedful in quantity.
Speaker 1: His sovereigns, repeat lee told him like, as he's sending
Speaker 1: people over there, sending letters back and being like stop
Speaker 1: stop enslaving people, like we told you not to do this.
Speaker 1: It looks like you're just enslaving random locals, like, don't
Speaker 1: do that. Tax them instead. Um. So that's what he
Speaker 1: starts to do. Um. He because his sovereigns are like
Speaker 1: yelling at him, um, and because he wants money, he
Speaker 1: decides to institute at tax on all of the people
Speaker 1: who live in the islands, right because their servants of
Speaker 1: the crowd now and so they should have to pay
Speaker 1: their taxes. And the way he sets up the taxes,
Speaker 1: you know those hawks bells he was getting out, it
Speaker 1: gifts early on. Instead, he sets so that every three
Speaker 1: months um an individual has to pay enough tribute in
Speaker 1: gold to fill a hollow. Hawks bell right, that's you each,
Speaker 1: oh me gold. And this is the because I've been
Speaker 1: giving these out is you thought these were gifts. This
Speaker 1: is an example of how much you owe us and
Speaker 1: fucking taxes. Um So, the hawkson a gift into awesome.
Speaker 1: It's pretty fucked up. It's like sending someone a roomba
Speaker 1: for their birth day and they open it up and
Speaker 1: they're like, this room but exclusively sucks money out of
Speaker 1: your wallet, yeah, and delivers it to me. Um So.
Speaker 1: To ensure that everyone pays their taxes, he Columbus orders
Speaker 1: all of the people on the islands to wear a
Speaker 1: metal disc around their neck that shows whether or not
Speaker 1: they'd paid their taxes recently. Failure to pay could be
Speaker 1: punished brutally. Those who rebelled, as many did, or tried
Speaker 1: to hide and avoid the tax, were hunted down and
Speaker 1: sold into slavery, which is again basically a death sentence.
Speaker 1: Every indigenous person older than fourteen was subject to the tax,
Speaker 1: which effectively turned what had been an island of free
Speaker 1: people into an island of slaves. Among the Spaniards, it
Speaker 1: was not universally agreed that this was just One account
Speaker 1: of horror came from a man named Washington Irving, who wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: in this way was the yoke of servitude fixed upon
Speaker 1: the island, and it's thralled them effectively ensured. Deep despair
Speaker 1: now fell on the natives when they found a perpetual
Speaker 1: task inflicted upon them. Weaken, indolent by nature, unused to
Speaker 1: labor of any kind, and brought up in the untapped
Speaker 1: idleness of their soft climate in their fruitful groves, death
Speaker 1: itself seemed preferable to a life of toil and anxiety.
Speaker 1: They saw no end to this harassing evil which had
Speaker 1: so suddenly fallen upon them, no prospect of a return
Speaker 1: to that roving independence and ample leisures. So dear to
Speaker 1: the wild inhabitants of the forest. The pleasant life of
Speaker 1: the island was in an end. They were now obliged
Speaker 1: to grope day by day, with bending body and anxious eye,
Speaker 1: along the borders of their rivers, sifting the sands for
Speaker 1: the grains of gold, which every day grew more scanty,
Speaker 1: or to labor in the fields beneath the fervor of
Speaker 1: a tropical sun to raise food for their taskmasters, or
Speaker 1: to produce the vegetable tribute imposed upon them. They sunk
Speaker 1: to sleep, weary and exhausted at night, with the certainty
Speaker 1: that the next day was to be a repetition of
Speaker 1: the same toil and suffering. So that's a nice description
Speaker 1: of what it means to bring capitalism to an island
Speaker 1: of people who don't know it, right, Like, that's basically
Speaker 1: what's happening here. These people, you know, they had rulers,
Speaker 1: Slavery existed, like, there was nasty things, they had more,
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, most people were
Speaker 1: able to go about their lives living on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: Did no one it's been done like capitalism, it hits different. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they are in a much worse state of affairs. Like
Speaker 1: now we all wear metal collars and live in gray
Speaker 1: boxes and work in a steel mill. We're not allowed
Speaker 1: to fuck anymore. Somehow, it's even more depressing than it was,
Speaker 1: even though before it was still a like relatively brutal
Speaker 1: period of history. It was still a more difficult life
Speaker 1: than a lot of people live today, but it was
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot easier than what it becomes.
Speaker 1: Um now by this point Columbus has found again, He's
Speaker 1: got the primarily the minds that he finds the good
Speaker 1: gold mines are in Sabow, which is part of the
Speaker 1: modern day Dominican Republic. But gold was also like, it's
Speaker 1: not the only precious substance that he's got armed men
Speaker 1: forcing the locals to mind for him. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote from the other slavery again for sheer horror and
Speaker 1: attrition rates. The Pearl coast was worse. Indian divers there
Speaker 1: spend agonizing days making repeated descents of up to fifty
Speaker 1: feet well holding their breath for a minute or more.
Speaker 1: Few natives could endure these brutal conditions for long, so
Speaker 1: ace they find out there's pearls, he makes people like
Speaker 1: free dive to grab them all day, every day, like
Speaker 1: repeatedly making these like two atmosphere descents and then going
Speaker 1: back up, which can kill you if you are doing
Speaker 1: it properly, or even if you are just because it's
Speaker 1: not a day. Yeah. Now, the harshness of the tax
Speaker 1: system levied upon these people who were also beset by
Speaker 1: the disruptions. There's a war which disrupt things and make
Speaker 1: sure there's widespread disease. Now there's crop failures because they're
Speaker 1: being taken and forced to mind because there's these wars
Speaker 1: going on. Um. All of this makes meeting Columbus as
Speaker 1: quotas basically impossible. After three collection periods, the natives had
Speaker 1: provided just two hundred pacos worth of gold out of
Speaker 1: the sixty thou pacos that Columbus decided they owed arbitrarily. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a scope for this project. Since the local caciques
Speaker 1: had failed to meet their numbers, the Spaniards now have
Speaker 1: to take over, right. We tried to let you govern yourselves,
Speaker 1: but you just couldn't make your taxes. So now we're
Speaker 1: sending an armed men to take total control of the process.
Speaker 1: Andres Rescindez writes an average size trench produced more than
Speaker 1: six thousand pounds of dirt mixed with the tiniest fragments
Speaker 1: of gold. The Indians carried this dirt on their bare
Speaker 1: backs and loats, waiting three to four arobas about sixty
Speaker 1: nine pounds. These were very heavy burdens considering the slender
Speaker 1: build of most of the laborers. The work proceeded ceaselessly
Speaker 1: all day. Instead of using valuable beasts of burden, the
Speaker 1: Spanish compelled natives to do all the hauling horses and
Speaker 1: mules were devoted to the tasks of conquest and pacification.
Speaker 1: The Indians were even forced to carry their Christian masters
Speaker 1: and hammocks. As a result, they developed huge soars on
Speaker 1: their shoulders and backs, as happens with animals made to
Speaker 1: carry excessive loads, commented friar Less Cassas, who arrived at
Speaker 1: Espaniola right at the time of the gold rush. And
Speaker 1: this is not to mention the floggings, beatings, thrashings, punches, curses,
Speaker 1: and countless other vexations and cruelties to which they were
Speaker 1: routinely subjected into which no chronicle could ever do justice.
Speaker 1: And again, las Casas is a guy who has a
Speaker 1: lot of admire ration in many ways for Christopher Columbus,
Speaker 1: and he's he's he's a fucking Catholic holy man, right,
Speaker 1: so he's very much into the hole. We have to
Speaker 1: convert everyone we can. But he's also a human being
Speaker 1: and enough of one that he he watches this happening
Speaker 1: and it's like, there is no way in which this
Speaker 1: is okay with God. This is a nightmarish crime. What
Speaker 1: I he And again, this is part of why you
Speaker 1: have to condemn these people. Outside of their times, because
Speaker 1: Las Casas is not looking at what the Portuguese are
Speaker 1: doing in a um and Guinea and being like, this
Speaker 1: is an unconscionable crime, because that is it's bad, but
Speaker 1: it is a bad that is normal for the era.
Speaker 1: He looks at what is being done in these islands
Speaker 1: and he says, this is the worst thing standing. This
Speaker 1: is an exceptional act of evil. Um that is that
Speaker 1: deserves to ring out in history. Um So, Over the
Speaker 1: next years, the late fourteen nineties and the yearly fifteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: a madness for gold overtakes the Spanish and crowds of
Speaker 1: it and jrews flooded the region to take command of
Speaker 1: minds and force indigenous people to labor for their wealth.
Speaker 1: And it's height, the island yielded more than two thousand
Speaker 1: pounds of gold per year. It is said that the
Speaker 1: Spanish owners through parties attended by slaves in which these
Speaker 1: salt shakers were filled with gold dust, which is good
Speaker 1: to eat. Ye kind of like rich people today, we'll
Speaker 1: put gold leaf on ship, even though it doesn't taste
Speaker 1: like anything and has no nutritional value, just because like,
Speaker 1: look at the money we're wasting. We went full squid
Speaker 1: games before and it did not take long at all. Mike.
Speaker 1: I always imagine that was like like a five year process.
Speaker 1: You're snorting coke, putting gold on your burger, watching like
Speaker 1: the pores fight to the deaths happened immediately. It is
Speaker 1: less than a decade between. Look at this unspoiled island
Speaker 1: full of beautiful people who are ready to learn the
Speaker 1: Gospel of Christ to let's see on the food wasted.
Speaker 1: Fuck them, let's see gold while we watched them fight
Speaker 1: in their collars and their shackles. Jesus so quick that
Speaker 1: this so fast. And again we're contrasting this to what
Speaker 1: the Portuguese are doing in Guinea, not because it's okay,
Speaker 1: because that is the start of the slave trade in Africa,
Speaker 1: which is a crime absolutely on the level of the
Speaker 1: genocide of like it is a nightmarish crime. It's just
Speaker 1: at this point in time, that's not yet what they're doing, right,
Speaker 1: it has not really they are not yet taking huge
Speaker 1: masses of people from Africa and putting them on islands
Speaker 1: to work them to death. They do that because they
Speaker 1: kill all of these people, right, That's why the the
Speaker 1: that that like the African slave trade really gets going
Speaker 1: is because they like they genocide enough of the people
Speaker 1: in the Caribbean that they bring in workers to kill
Speaker 1: in plantations and ship and mind um. Anyway, it's all connected,
Speaker 1: is what I'm saying. Uh. It is understood that the
Speaker 1: gold is not going to last forever, and it's obvious
Speaker 1: to everyone that the local labor force is dying very quickly.
Speaker 1: The early miners, and when I say miners, I mean
Speaker 1: the Spanish people who own the minds, had a saying quote,
Speaker 1: take the most advantage because you do not know how
Speaker 1: long it will last, like there there and this is
Speaker 1: you see this with um. This is the reason why
Speaker 1: the British Empire in a couple hundred years from now,
Speaker 1: when they take over chunk of India, carry out a
Speaker 1: starvation genocide right because they're shortsightedly trying to maximize profits
Speaker 1: in such a way that makes it unable for people
Speaker 1: to feed themselves and so thirty million people die. But
Speaker 1: they think the same logic is the same. It's like, I,
Speaker 1: as an individual, have to get as much as I
Speaker 1: can out of here immediately, because all that matters is
Speaker 1: like the quarterly balance sheet. Basically, these people it's once logic.
Speaker 1: That's what this is what's so important because the fucking people,
Speaker 1: the right wingers who raised me, made a big point
Speaker 1: of talking about all of the deaths under state communism,
Speaker 1: which is an important story and we've talked about on
Speaker 1: the show, and you should not ignore the Holodomor and
Speaker 1: the Great Leap Forward and all of the different bad
Speaker 1: things that were done by state communist regimes. The death
Speaker 1: toll of capitalism is at least as high, if not
Speaker 1: much higher. And it's starts here, right, Um, I mean
Speaker 1: it starts a little bit like yeah, like these are
Speaker 1: not yet kind of the joint stock companies that will
Speaker 1: be recognizable, but the motivation is the same. We are here.
Speaker 1: Our goal is to use these human beings who we
Speaker 1: have a right to take from in terms of taxes um,
Speaker 1: in order to create a profitable enterprise. And all that
Speaker 1: matters from me is getting the short term profits as
Speaker 1: quickly as possible out of here um and whatever happens
Speaker 1: to them as the result, whatever is done to this
Speaker 1: land as a result, doesn't matter. This is not the
Speaker 1: only time in history that this has happened, but it's
Speaker 1: the first time it's happened like this. The Romans did
Speaker 1: little versions of this. The Romans never completely wiped out
Speaker 1: a people, right, even as bad as the ship they
Speaker 1: did in Israel was um, they didn't do this. This
Speaker 1: is new. This is a destruction of a people on
Speaker 1: a scale that has not Maybe some of the ship
Speaker 1: that Genghis Khan was doing compares um, but it's that's
Speaker 1: the stage for some uniquely American thoughts like money over everything,
Speaker 1: or it's just business, you know, like this, it's amazing
Speaker 1: how early on it's set the tone for in this place.
Speaker 1: It is like gold crushes the end, like might makes right.
Speaker 1: We carry that tradition onto this day, like I don't.
Speaker 1: It's it's fascinating to hear about these people that you
Speaker 1: know that he left behind, the go hog wild and
Speaker 1: viking all over everything, and you're like, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: like ever since the beginning, America has been want a
Speaker 1: barrel full of single bad apples, and whenever you cover
Speaker 1: for it, you point to one and go, well, there
Speaker 1: was a bad apple, or like Columbus couldn't lead you,
Speaker 1: like right, what about all the other stuff and the
Speaker 1: other stuff and the other stuff. It's there's bad apples
Speaker 1: all the way down as we taught you and I
Speaker 1: talked about in fact in the episodes about like the
Speaker 1: first corporations the West the British Eastern companies, um, which
Speaker 1: are two separate companies. Um. When we talked about those,
Speaker 1: we were talking about actual recognizable corporate in a modern sense.
Speaker 1: They function basically the same way as a modern corporation does. UM.
Speaker 1: And that's what and that is like an actual capitalism
Speaker 1: and that like it is a group of people using
Speaker 1: their capital in order to own the rights to the
Speaker 1: profit of labor of other people. Right, UM, what's happening here?
Speaker 1: You do not have that advanced an idea like these
Speaker 1: are not corporate they're doing this for the crown but
Speaker 1: also for their own individual benefit. But what you do
Speaker 1: have here is this idea that has led to most
Speaker 1: of the problems we are encountering now with stuff like
Speaker 1: climate change, with Chevron covering up what they knew about
Speaker 1: climate change since the nineteen seventies. Is like the forging
Speaker 1: of the ethos. The sacred thing is short term profits
Speaker 1: and anything that gets in the way of that, that's
Speaker 1: actually like a problem. But you know what else is sacred? Michael?
Speaker 1: What what just products and services and support? This podcast
Speaker 1: Sacred and ad as Lee separate from any of the
Speaker 1: ideas going on with the Spaniards massacring people. Here, We're
Speaker 1: not taking part in a gold rush over a new
Speaker 1: type of media that is easy to exploit profitably now
Speaker 1: and perhaps in ways that are shortsighted. Um. No, it's
Speaker 1: just the fact that you must do anything to achieve
Speaker 1: shareholder growth, no matter what that's occur anywhere anymore. We
Speaker 1: got over it, okay. So, despite regular admonishments from the Royals,
Speaker 1: Columbus continued to send enslaved human beings back to Europe
Speaker 1: during this period, where he's also tax genociding them. Due
Speaker 1: to the high death rate, each boat was crammed as
Speaker 1: full of people as possible, which is again this is
Speaker 1: where we because I really am not. I hope people
Speaker 1: do not read that I'm trying to minimize the Portuguese
Speaker 1: slave trade in Guinea. But the stuff that becomes so
Speaker 1: famous about the African slave trade, how cram They aren't
Speaker 1: these nightmareeships where millions of people literally diet. It is
Speaker 1: a slavery genocide that is eventually carried out there. That
Speaker 1: is not the way the slave trade looks quite yet
Speaker 1: in Africa, right, which is not to say that it's
Speaker 1: not horrible. They are enslaving people. That's ugly. They are
Speaker 1: not this is the start of well, because the death
Speaker 1: threat is going to be so high, we have to
Speaker 1: jam as many people as possible in the boats as
Speaker 1: we can, and like we have this kind of um,
Speaker 1: this rhythmetic of death for profit. Right, that is, this
Speaker 1: is where a lot of you are going to lose
Speaker 1: expects exactly. Um. This leads to problems as well, such
Speaker 1: as when a flotilla of five ships were stuck in
Speaker 1: San Domingo Harbor for two and a half weeks while
Speaker 1: Columbus negotiated with a guy. So he puts this guy
Speaker 1: in charge of his militia when he's away finding gold.
Speaker 1: This guy rebels again and then Columbus has to like
Speaker 1: talking about right, but this is like the third time
Speaker 1: it's occurred. Um. So he's while he's negotiating with this
Speaker 1: guy to like figure out this issue and get trade restarted.
Speaker 1: He has boats in his harbor that are crammed full
Speaker 1: of people that he has captured, and he leaves them
Speaker 1: there for two and a half weeks, crammed into the
Speaker 1: hold while he's negotiating, just leaving your baby in your
Speaker 1: truck with the window the sun is so like they suffocate.
Speaker 1: Las Casas writes that quote, unable to breathe from anguish
Speaker 1: in the closeness of their quarters, they smothered, and an
Speaker 1: infinite number of these Indians perished, and their bodies were
Speaker 1: thrown into the sea downstream. Columbus is like preoccupied dealing
Speaker 1: with this guy that he's got a bit. And then
Speaker 1: he like comes, oh, they all died. I left them
Speaker 1: all in the boats and they all died. Throw their
Speaker 1: corpses in the water. Let's grab some more. That's the again.
Speaker 1: And that is bad for the time. That is an
Speaker 1: exceptional act of human evil, which is what he's guilty.
Speaker 1: I know that. I just Delaney's Columbus's writing. So he
Speaker 1: wasn't the best business man, so he lost. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of shrinkage in the trade. He was engaged.
Speaker 1: And I'm so fucking angry at this woman, her color.
Speaker 1: This never loses his missionary zeal or his desire to
Speaker 1: find the Great Khan and the horrors that occur as
Speaker 1: Spanish domination. Because she doesn't deny that there's a genocide occurring,
Speaker 1: right she does not try to whitewash the genocide. This
Speaker 1: is all, but it's portrayed as tragic results of the
Speaker 1: evils of other men. The reality is that Columbus the
Speaker 1: governor writes back to his sovereigns regularly nearly overcome with
Speaker 1: glee at the financial prospects of this new slave trade.
Speaker 1: From here one can, in the name of the Holy Trinity,
Speaker 1: send all the slaves that can be sold, of which,
Speaker 1: if the information I have is correct, they could sell
Speaker 1: for four thousand and at minimum value, they would be
Speaker 1: worth twenty millions, and four thousand quintalls of Brazil would
Speaker 1: which would be worth at least as much. At an
Speaker 1: expense of six millions. It would appear that forty millions
Speaker 1: could be realized if there is no lack of ships,
Speaker 1: which I believe, with the aid of the Lord, that
Speaker 1: will not be once they are filled on this voyage.
Speaker 1: So again he's very much thinking about this purely from
Speaker 1: a here's what they're worth. Here is the cash value,
Speaker 1: because I'm getting a cut from it. Right, He's getting
Speaker 1: like a quarter of all of the value of the trade.
Speaker 1: Las Casas, who was also doing math, just pulling shit
Speaker 1: out of his ass that He's like, yeah, Like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean there worth this, And according to my previous letter,
Speaker 1: there's infinite women. So if you scale it at infinity,
Speaker 1: that's quite a lot. There's no way he can have
Speaker 1: firm numbers on this ship. I just don't buy it,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't, right. Um, So when it comes to
Speaker 1: properly condemning a man like Columbus, we must note again
Speaker 1: others of his peers at the time, people who are
Speaker 1: watching this are horrified. Las Casas, who is utterly unsparing
Speaker 1: in his description of what Columbus is doing. What greater
Speaker 1: or more supine hardheartedness and blindedness can there be than this?
Speaker 1: In the name of the Holy Trinity, he Columbus could
Speaker 1: send all the slaves which could be sold in all
Speaker 1: the said kingdoms. Many times, I believe blindness and corruption
Speaker 1: infected the Admiral, which is you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: blindness is, but certainly corruption. Yeah no, this this is
Speaker 1: the same speech my dad gives me every Thanksgiving, and
Speaker 1: it's devastating every time. It's quite a takedown. Well, Michael,
Speaker 1: you you do operate a pretty pretty brutal business enslaving people. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I I happen to think that it's justified
Speaker 1: that you're sending them to Blue Apron's island where they
Speaker 1: will be hunted. Um but but a lot of people
Speaker 1: think probably shouldn't be enslaving children for the Blue Apron corporate.
Speaker 1: They will be served tastefully in a like cost impactful
Speaker 1: ready to way, Yeah, wrapped in an unfortunate amount of
Speaker 1: plastic as well, which makes all my users cannibals, which
Speaker 1: then justifies me enslaving them, and the whole system perpetuates it. Michael,
Speaker 1: it's not said enough. Anny a candy businessman, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. Um I learned it from Columbus. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: all did you know the only businessman Chris sie um
Speaker 1: so h. Christopher Columbus. The King and Queen initially accept
Speaker 1: his claims that the people he's sending them are all
Speaker 1: cannibals capture it in war and thus fair targets for enslavement.
Speaker 1: But they start to grow concerned. Is he just keeps
Speaker 1: on sending back ships full of dead people? Right? Um?
Speaker 1: So because they're they're they're worried. They get framed often
Speaker 1: as like being super sympathetic to the natives because some
Speaker 1: of the stuff they write is in terms of its
Speaker 1: writing very sympathetic. The main thing they do is they
Speaker 1: convene a counsel of like scholars and religious experts to
Speaker 1: try and determine if it's okay to enslave these people. Um,
Speaker 1: we don't actually know what this committee decided. Eventually it
Speaker 1: came to some decision. We have no idea what it was.
Speaker 1: That that information has been lost because again record keeping
Speaker 1: wasn't perfectly speriod, but we know that their concerns did
Speaker 1: very little to slow this process. It is probably worth
Speaker 1: noting that Queen Isabella did late in life, makes something
Speaker 1: of a name for herself as an advocate for indigenous rights.
Speaker 1: By four she was horrified by the constant shiploads of
Speaker 1: dead and dying enslaved people and asked, who was this
Speaker 1: Columbus who dares to give out my vassals as slaves.
Speaker 1: She and her husband did free a lot of these people.
Speaker 1: A decent number of these people are freed when they
Speaker 1: arrived because they're like, what the funk he sent us
Speaker 1: another ship of people We didn't want this um, and
Speaker 1: some of them even make it back to the New World.
Speaker 1: Nearly all of them choose to go back when they're
Speaker 1: giving in the times when they're given the option. By
Speaker 1: the end of the fifteen hundreds, Columbus Star had faded
Speaker 1: at court. In late four he sent a letter back
Speaker 1: to his master's proposing a sale of four thousand slaves.
Speaker 1: The letter came with several so these colonists who rebel
Speaker 1: when he's sitting there with a boats full of people,
Speaker 1: he sends a bunch of them back to Spain with him,
Speaker 1: and in order to keep them happy, he gives each
Speaker 1: of them a slave. So he enslaves six hundred Tino
Speaker 1: to give these rebellious colonists as slaves when they return home.
Speaker 1: So they come home with a dude or as is
Speaker 1: often the case, with a young woman Um and this fleet.
Speaker 1: So this when this fleet arrives back in Spain, he's
Speaker 1: number one. All of these people who rebelled have been
Speaker 1: given enslaved people. And number two Columbus is like, I
Speaker 1: want to enslave four thousand more people and send them back.
Speaker 1: Is that with you, guys? Um? And if not, is
Speaker 1: there a way I could throw slaves at the problem? Yes? Yes?
Speaker 1: And this comes back with number one the fact that
Speaker 1: all of the colonists he sending back are people who
Speaker 1: had rebelled and been sent back means like the king
Speaker 1: and Queen are like, he might not be good at
Speaker 1: running this colony um. But also other people are coming
Speaker 1: back from the New World at the time and being like, hey,
Speaker 1: he's kind of sucks at everything. You might not want
Speaker 1: to leave him in charge of this um. And I'm
Speaker 1: after four or five ships full of dead bodies. I'd
Speaker 1: be like, is this are you to say, I don't
Speaker 1: think he's good at this. I'm gonna quote from American
Speaker 1: heritage here. The sixteenth century historian Antonio di Herrera de Tortresila,
Speaker 1: also a great admirer of Columbus, wrote that many of
Speaker 1: the charges brought by the white residents of Espanola against
Speaker 1: the admiral was one that he would not consent to
Speaker 1: the baptism of Indians whom the Friars wished to baptize,
Speaker 1: because he wanted more slaves than Christians, that he made
Speaker 1: war against the Indians unjustly and made many slaves to
Speaker 1: be sent to Castile. And again, one of Delany's big
Speaker 1: defenses is he only enslaves people who are fighting him,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't he doesn't wonder what he wants to
Speaker 1: christianize people, which means he can't have wanted to enslave
Speaker 1: them all. And again we have contemporary historians being like, no,
Speaker 1: a bunch of people at the time we're like, hey,
Speaker 1: it seems like you're starting wars specifically to justify enslaving people,
Speaker 1: and you're refusing to allow friars to baptize people who
Speaker 1: want to be Christians because you want to enslave them.
Speaker 1: That seems bad Christopher. Um. And the counter argument is no, no, no,
Speaker 1: he was just trying to enslave their mind and soul,
Speaker 1: not what the Catholics here who call him out as
Speaker 1: bad are want. Isn't always all that much better, but
Speaker 1: relatively speak, yeah yeah um and yeah. There's Catholic missionaries
Speaker 1: who return home. They send letters back to the cardinal
Speaker 1: who the and the Archbishop of Toledo accusing Columbus and
Speaker 1: his brothers of actively attempting to like harm efforts of
Speaker 1: the missionaries to convert the natives to Christianity. Um. They
Speaker 1: that one of the things they keep pointing out in
Speaker 1: their complaints to the to the Pope and whatnot is
Speaker 1: that like, hey, like the fact that we're being so
Speaker 1: shitty these people makes them not like Christianity. Um, and
Speaker 1: this is a problem for us as friars figure figure.
Speaker 1: So Columbus's downfall, harsh and humiliating, came within weeks of
Speaker 1: this decree. The sovereigns summarily removed him from his highest
Speaker 1: state of viceroy and governor of the New World Colonies
Speaker 1: and appointed the Commander Francis D. Bobadilla as a successor.
Speaker 1: And what many historians regard as an excess of zeal
Speaker 1: Bobadilla sent Columbus and his two brothers back to Castile
Speaker 1: in chains. The sovereigns ordered the brothers released and authorized
Speaker 1: a fourth voyage by Columbus, but mandated he never set
Speaker 1: foot in Espaniola again. Now this is that that was
Speaker 1: just a quote from American Heritage Carol de Lady makes
Speaker 1: Boba Dela out to be the bad guy of the
Speaker 1: whole thing, um, which he also sucked. Right, he is
Speaker 1: a brutal Catholic soldier who had helped like repress Uprising
Speaker 1: ship and shipped for the But if you're white washing
Speaker 1: some ship head, you need a scapegoat, right, Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: it's true that he sucked, so did Columbus. And by
Speaker 1: the way, Columbus deserved a lot worse than chains Um. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the king and Queen, who also get whitewashed a lot
Speaker 1: because of the purported care for the indigenous people, also sucked.
Speaker 1: They sent him on another fucking voyage after this, So like,
Speaker 1: funk those people right, Like, let's not nobody nobody's good here.
Speaker 1: Columbus is just the worst of them, I think for
Speaker 1: all the yeah they commissioned Spider Man turn off the
Speaker 1: Dark two, they were the motherfuckers who were like, yes,
Speaker 1: another one please. So Christopher Columbus died on May fift
Speaker 1: oh six. Despite his many failures and crimes, he maintained
Speaker 1: many of the benefits promised to him by the Spanish
Speaker 1: crown and passed a considerate amount on to his sons.
Speaker 1: What little justice he experienced was not enough to save
Speaker 1: the r Walk, particularly the Tino, who were completely extinct
Speaker 1: by the early fift hundreds. There's still some arrow up
Speaker 1: peoples around, but the Tino or extinct. I think the
Speaker 1: Caribs are as well. Most of the people who had
Speaker 1: existed when he arrived in the area that he arrives
Speaker 1: in are absolutely wiped out in like twenty y ish
Speaker 1: years and it's worth discussing precisely how this happened, because
Speaker 1: this is a part of the story that seldom gets told. Now,
Speaker 1: we don't know how many people were in these islands
Speaker 1: at the time of first contact. Frireless Cosas estimated Espaniola's
Speaker 1: population around three million people. Archaeologists suggest a more realistic
Speaker 1: number might be three hundred thousand um. If that is
Speaker 1: the case, by fifteen o eight, sixteen years after first contact,
Speaker 1: only sixty thousand remained. So if you assume three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people or so, by sixteen years after first contact,
Speaker 1: sixty thousand or left, that means eighty percent have died
Speaker 1: in the first sixteen years. The plague was like a
Speaker 1: third or a quarter. Yeah, I mean in some places
Speaker 1: it was sev right, like there were some parts of Europe.
Speaker 1: But we're talking plague numbers. We're talking this apocaly this
Speaker 1: this end of the world shit. Many of these people
Speaker 1: were killed by diseaser of violence, but also a lot
Speaker 1: of them committed what some scholars say was essentially a
Speaker 1: form of race suicide. And to close this out, I'm
Speaker 1: going to read for you, Michael, one of the most
Speaker 1: harrowing passages I have ever read in my research for
Speaker 1: this show. Um. This is from the book The Other
Speaker 1: Slavery by Andres Ruscindez. Quote. Okay, I'll think of a joke, Robert,
Speaker 1: go ahead, you you you'll be You'll be cooking on that.
Speaker 1: Thanks for inviting me. This has been wonderful. Demoralized by
Speaker 1: the Spanish tribute system and unnerved by their own prophecies,
Speaker 1: many Indians took steps to escape, and the only way
Speaker 1: left to them. Columbus became aware of the dimensions of
Speaker 1: the tragedy decimating the Indians when quote it was pointed
Speaker 1: out to him that the natives had been vexed by
Speaker 1: a famine so widespread that more than fifty thousand men
Speaker 1: had died, and every day they fell everywhere like sickened flocks.
Speaker 1: In the word of Peter Martyr, the reality was even
Speaker 1: more terrible than famine. It was self inflicted. The Indians
Speaker 1: destroy avoid their stores of bread so that neither they
Speaker 1: nor the invaders would be able to eat it. They
Speaker 1: plunged off cliffs, They poisoned themselves with roots, and they
Speaker 1: starved themselves to death. Oppressed by the impossible requirement to
Speaker 1: deliver tributes of gold, the Indians were no longer able
Speaker 1: to tend their fields or care for their sick children
Speaker 1: and elderly. They had given up and committed mass suicide
Speaker 1: to avoid being killed or captured by Christians, and to
Speaker 1: avoid sharing their land with them, their fields, groves, beaches, forests,
Speaker 1: and women, the future of their people. It was an
Speaker 1: extraordinary act of despair and self destruction, so overwhelming that
Speaker 1: the Spanish could not comprehend it. All of them fifty
Speaker 1: thousand Indians dead by their own hand. The dwindling number
Speaker 1: of survivors found themselves trapped in a survivalistic Indo game.
Speaker 1: Some took refuge in the mountains, where Spanish dogs set
Speaker 1: upon them. Those who avoided the dogs succumbed to starvation
Speaker 1: and illness. Although estimates of the population are in exact,
Speaker 1: the trendis Plaine. Of the approximately three thousand Indians and
Speaker 1: Hispaniola at the time of Columbus's first voyage, in a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand or so died between fourteen ninety four and
Speaker 1: fourteen ninety six, half of them during the mass suicide.
Speaker 1: Las Casas estimated that the Indian population fourteen ninety six
Speaker 1: was only one third of what had been in fourteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, What a splendid harvest, and how quickly they
Speaker 1: reaped it, he wrote acidly. Twelve years later, in fifteen
Speaker 1: o eight, A Cinsus counted sixty thousand Indians, or one
Speaker 1: fifth of the original population, and by fifteen forty eight
Speaker 1: Fernandez de Oviedo found only five hundred Indians, the survivors
Speaker 1: of the hundreds of thousands who had populated the islands
Speaker 1: when Columbus arrived, and who had seen him as the
Speaker 1: fulfillment of a longstanding prophecy. It was only now that
Speaker 1: the meaning of that prophecy became clear. His presence meant
Speaker 1: their extinction. Wow, So that's pretty bad. It's sick that
Speaker 1: they It started with the word decimated, and I think
Speaker 1: that means one tenth are killed. Yeah, Like, imagine being
Speaker 1: decimated over and over and over and over every year left, Yeah,
Speaker 1: out of three hundred thousand and how a huge chunk
Speaker 1: of the death was people making a conscious choice to
Speaker 1: kill themselves so that they wouldn't have to live with
Speaker 1: these which I think speaks to how rapid the changes were.
Speaker 1: Because any student of history will tell you you can
Speaker 1: actually get a population to suffer mightily over a long
Speaker 1: period of time. And not kill themselves if you do
Speaker 1: it slowly. So that means these changes were so rapid
Speaker 1: that the whole generation of people were like, I cannot
Speaker 1: even grapple with let's just that's that, um, which is yeah,
Speaker 1: just very telling. I don't think there's even an inclement
Speaker 1: periods of history where ship is really really upsetting. You
Speaker 1: don't usually get fifty people checking out at once as
Speaker 1: a conscious decision. And you know, we're almost an act
Speaker 1: of rebellion. This is this is an act of them
Speaker 1: taking agency. And you know, we cannot fight these people, right.
Speaker 1: We are are too weak and they are too strong
Speaker 1: for us to combat them militarily. But we recognize their
Speaker 1: religion and their beliefs them as sick and wrong and
Speaker 1: we will not live under it. And so we're going
Speaker 1: to do the only thing that we can do. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know this is not the only time things
Speaker 1: like that will happen. You know, you have cases of
Speaker 1: like slaveships mutinying in ways that like will kill them all,
Speaker 1: and they're like, but this is better than living with
Speaker 1: these people. UM. Yeah, it's That's the story of Chris
Speaker 1: Columbus uh, director of the Home Alone movies. They were
Speaker 1: the United of Islands. Really yeah, they were like, these
Speaker 1: terrorists have taken control. We're just going to crash this ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the only thing we can think of to do.
Speaker 1: Um sapped funny out of unspeakably bleak. One of the
Speaker 1: worst stories I have ever encountered in my life. How
Speaker 1: could that be? It's the story of America? Yeah, yeah, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: it is the story of America. Well, Michael, Robert mchaale
Speaker 1: W wrote, you got autar I don't know what they
Speaker 1: call you in Russia. You got any pluggables to plug?
Speaker 1: You want to art, Robert, push your business here. I
Speaker 1: guess if if I can stammer a little bit and
Speaker 1: blank people's minds and separate the taste in their mouth
Speaker 1: that they have now with the thing that I'm about
Speaker 1: to say. But yeah, if you want to hear me
Speaker 1: podcast about stuff I was gonna say, ranging from less
Speaker 1: to more bleak, but no, all less bleak than this Uh,
Speaker 1: including depression, addiction and drama, but still all less bleak
Speaker 1: than this ship. Uh. Look us up over at small Beans.
Speaker 1: You can find it, you know, wherever you get podcasts
Speaker 1: or a Patreon dot com slash. Small Beans if you're
Speaker 1: into video games. Check out my other podcasts on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Network One Upsmanship. I guess Columbus was kind
Speaker 1: of the original one ups man ship, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's ultimately what I learned. Yeah, that is that
Speaker 1: is the lesson he was shipping men. He was shipping men.
Speaker 1: And to add in old to injury, the fact that
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you mentioned this tiny detail, but it's rankled
Speaker 1: me the whole time. They made them carry them in hammocks.
Speaker 1: They invented hammocks, you dirty pizza. Worse right, gave you
Speaker 1: hammock technology. You motherfucker couldn't figure it out on your own,
Speaker 1: and then stole it, made us carry you you sides.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think the only thing I can say
Speaker 1: at the end of this harrowing series learning about Columbus is,
Speaker 1: folks at home, if you wanna stick it to Christopher
Speaker 1: Columbus and the people like him, go firebomb a pizza restaurant.
Speaker 1: Doesn't matter which one. Stick it to the Italians. That's
Speaker 1: the only way. Take out. Find the local pizza restaurant,
Speaker 1: buck them up. That'll teach him. I legally endorsed this
Speaker 1: statement as well. Good Good. I wanted a little bit
Speaker 1: of extra cover on that one, all right, everybody. That's
Speaker 1: our legally binding advice to you is destroy all pizza
Speaker 1: restaurants in vengeance for Columbus's crimes. Hey, do the right thing.
Speaker 1: Do the right thing. Behind the Bastards is a production
Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.