Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, it's behind the Bastards the podcast or
Speaker 1: Michael Swain and I talk about how Christopher Columbus was
Speaker 1: actually kind of a cool guy. Michael, how do you
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people get angry at him
Speaker 1: because of the slavery in the genocide. But I hadn't
Speaker 1: heard that. But have you have you considered is it
Speaker 1: Ohio that has a Columbus or is it Missouri has
Speaker 1: a Columbus? Both of them have a Columbus, don't they?
Speaker 1: Maybe both at least Ohio, at least one American state
Speaker 1: has a town called Columbus. And I'm gonna say they
Speaker 1: have good pizza. I don't know. Nobody knows. Michael. You
Speaker 1: play video games, right, your big video games guy pizza?
Speaker 1: I play video games. You are regular guy. Robert you are.
Speaker 1: I should introduce you first, not that you need in because,
Speaker 1: as you said, the format is and always has been
Speaker 1: Robert Evans and Michael Swain talking about Christopher Columbus's that's
Speaker 1: every episode of this show. Um, Michael, you are the
Speaker 1: only member of the Cracked das for a who has
Speaker 1: visited me in my new home. Um, I I guess
Speaker 1: I could say that it's probably because of the plague,
Speaker 1: but I think it's it's it's a direct personal insult.
Speaker 1: But in any case, when you were here, you brought
Speaker 1: out a machine which allowed you to play video games
Speaker 1: on my television. UM, a gaming console, right, And that
Speaker 1: made me think it's that this was like a year
Speaker 1: ago now, but it maybe I've been thinking ever since. Boy,
Speaker 1: it seems like it'd be nice to sit down on
Speaker 1: the couch and play a play a video game old
Speaker 1: fashioned style. So I don't know, I don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of hobbies anymore, Michael um, and I kept thinking
Speaker 1: about it, and yesterday I don't know why, I was
Speaker 1: feeling kind of depressed, and I was like, I am
Speaker 1: going to play a video game on the couch, but
Speaker 1: I didn't have it. I don't have a console. I
Speaker 1: don't have any way to do that. So I go
Speaker 1: down to the video game store and I'm like, I
Speaker 1: would like one PlayStation or Xbox, it doesn't matter. And
Speaker 1: they told me you can't do that. You have to
Speaker 1: get an invitation to buy a one. That's the way
Speaker 1: that all gaming consoles work now. And so I just
Speaker 1: need to ask, was a video game guy, what the
Speaker 1: funk is going on? With video games. Why you just
Speaker 1: go buy a video game machine? Well, if you collect
Speaker 1: six Steam decks, then your punch card is full and
Speaker 1: you can get a PS five. No, it's uh, my
Speaker 1: understanding is that the well full disclosure. I used to
Speaker 1: work at I g N and I would know this ship. Um,
Speaker 1: I've laughed. That was like four or five six months ago.
Speaker 1: So I believe though that that should be turning a
Speaker 1: corner soon. Actually, chip shortage and the video card shortage
Speaker 1: kind of has already broken. That's those I have no
Speaker 1: idea what I have. I I've got. I've got a
Speaker 1: gaming laptop that I bought a year or so ago
Speaker 1: in another fit of depression. And so I just I realized, eventually,
Speaker 1: why am I trying to buy a PlayStation? All I
Speaker 1: want to do is play Grand Theft Out oh five.
Speaker 1: I can just download that on Steam and buy a
Speaker 1: controller and plug it all into my TV. So it's
Speaker 1: fine now I figured it out. Um, but I was
Speaker 1: did you go back and punched that clerk in the mouth? No,
Speaker 1: he would he would like, yeah, I mean he wasn't
Speaker 1: being rude. It's just like I didn't realize we'd gotten
Speaker 1: to there with video game consis where you have to
Speaker 1: get an invitation like dinner with a shake. What is
Speaker 1: happening here? I remember at work when the PS fives
Speaker 1: were coming out, they told us all to sign up
Speaker 1: for X number of lottery tickets because if we didn't
Speaker 1: get enough consoles to go around for the staff, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to cover stuff, which is the entire
Speaker 1: livelihood of the god what periods? Wild? What a weird situation? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's something else, Michael, Michael, hmm, we're talking about
Speaker 1: Christopher Columbus. Michael Swain, small Bean's network. Uh, formerly of
Speaker 1: Cracked Dot. That's right, Please don't put my name director
Speaker 1: of the film kill me now, Michael, Yes, you're ready
Speaker 1: to get back to Columbus, absolutely or otherwise? Yeah, so, Michael,
Speaker 1: as our story comes back, it is two now. Columbus
Speaker 1: has unsailed his ass right across an ocean blue, and
Speaker 1: he stumbled into a Caribbean island full of people who
Speaker 1: immediately thinks are number one hot. He repeatedly comments on
Speaker 1: how good looking they are and number two good potential
Speaker 1: servants slash slaves. Now. According to his journals, the first
Speaker 1: thing he focused on trying to do was convert them
Speaker 1: to Christianity, and most importantly, to make sure that they
Speaker 1: fought thought that all white people were chill dudes. Now,
Speaker 1: he did this in a couple of ways, mainly by
Speaker 1: handing out various trinkets. Here's how he wrote about it
Speaker 1: in his diary. I in order that they would be
Speaker 1: friendly to us, because I recognized they were a people
Speaker 1: who would be better freed from error and converted to
Speaker 1: our holy faith by love than by force. To some
Speaker 1: of them, I gave red caps and glass beads which
Speaker 1: they put on their chests, and many other things of
Speaker 1: small value, which they took so much pleasure in and
Speaker 1: became so much our friends that it was a marvel.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that's like really funny here
Speaker 1: is that he thinks, like you have you get all
Speaker 1: these writing from the Spaniards at the time about how
Speaker 1: silly these people are because the like trade gold gems
Speaker 1: for like useless bobble, But none of them ever considered
Speaker 1: the fact that like maybe to these people they're both useless,
Speaker 1: that like a glass bead and gold about is valuable
Speaker 1: to each other. Right, Like neither of them do anything.
Speaker 1: They just look nice. If you've never gotten high and
Speaker 1: then have the thought gold is just a rock though, man,
Speaker 1: like it's just a rock someone, just just a rock
Speaker 1: that sat out in the sun the most according to Plato.
Speaker 1: And by the way, handing out red caps, I believe
Speaker 1: this is the official origin of the maga caps. You
Speaker 1: can play that he started it. Um you might actually
Speaker 1: you might draw. I don't know. I don't know enough
Speaker 1: about fucking Italian history in this period to know how
Speaker 1: meaningful it is. But like you gotta remember, he comes
Speaker 1: from a place where colored clothing is illegal. Um, so
Speaker 1: I don't know that's that's that's got the latest hot ship.
Speaker 1: Look his kids sucking red the color of passion. You
Speaker 1: don't tell the pope, and I won't tell the pope.
Speaker 1: My rods and cones are overwhelmed. And it's also it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that, like, while this is often referred to
Speaker 1: his gift giving, like him handing out trinkets, it seems
Speaker 1: based on the descriptions you get that like the Natives
Speaker 1: considered that that they are consciously like entering an exchange
Speaker 1: with him, Like he's giving them stuff that they assume
Speaker 1: he values, because they're giving him things that they value, right,
Speaker 1: they're assuming he's not being Yeah, they are assuming he's
Speaker 1: not being an asshole, or like, oh, we gotta give
Speaker 1: him some nice stuff. He's given us all this nice
Speaker 1: stuff that we've never seen before, Like they're giving him
Speaker 1: nice cotton thread and like live parrots, which Columbus thinks
Speaker 1: they're delicious. Um, he is. You gotta give him credit
Speaker 1: with one thing. I don't know this is I found
Speaker 1: this compelling. At least a lot of the Spaniards, especially
Speaker 1: once they start settling in these islands, refused to eat
Speaker 1: the local food. It's actually a massive problem. They have
Speaker 1: to like keep shipping livestock over from Spain because people
Speaker 1: decide that like their cuisine is gross. Columbus is not
Speaker 1: one of those guys. He actually gets sick a bunch
Speaker 1: because he will eat anything these people hand him, which
Speaker 1: credit where it's due. That's how you're supposed to travel. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so one item he would give them in return are
Speaker 1: these tiny hawks bells. And these are like if you're
Speaker 1: doing falconry. These are like little bells that you tie
Speaker 1: the tight of birds and used to track them. Um
Speaker 1: when they're like flying away. I guess it's just a
Speaker 1: thing that it was easy to get a lot of
Speaker 1: so that they could have a shipload of these to
Speaker 1: hand out. But he gives out a lot of hawkspells,
Speaker 1: and that's going to be noteworthy later, so just keep yeah,
Speaker 1: there the live strong bracelets of the era. If the
Speaker 1: lives strong bracelets lead directly to a suicide genocide, yes,
Speaker 1: here the people who lived on the island that Colmas
Speaker 1: had discovered and then taken possession of for the Crown
Speaker 1: were Taino's members of the arrow Wok group. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: over the coming days, he met with many different like
Speaker 1: people on this island, many different kinds of arrow walks.
Speaker 1: Because there's all these different right, like, it's pretty broad population,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, and I think these are kind of
Speaker 1: like grouping by by languages. Um. And these guys gave
Speaker 1: him a bunch of gifts of unknown types, you know,
Speaker 1: we get he writes down some of them, um, but
Speaker 1: usually he just writes his hewn as like they gave
Speaker 1: us trinkets. We don't actually know what that means. They
Speaker 1: may have been like handing him works of art, decorations,
Speaker 1: clothing stuff that like could be because these people believe
Speaker 1: a lot of them, at least believe that he's like
Speaker 1: a like some sort of celestial visitor. Right, so it's
Speaker 1: possible they're giving him like cultural artifacts of significant value
Speaker 1: to them. Um, and he's just like, yeah, they just
Speaker 1: gave me some crap because it's not gold, right, Like
Speaker 1: that's the only thing that he actually ever seems to notice.
Speaker 1: He calls their gifts tedious fishing around his ridiculous panelers,
Speaker 1: what do I got? What do I got it? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the only things that he like shows any appreciation for
Speaker 1: are the small pieces of gold jewelry that he sees
Speaker 1: on some of their bodies. Um. Now it's worth noting
Speaker 1: that our friend Carol Delaney absolutely fawns over the descriptions
Speaker 1: Columbus rites of people in geography. Um. She glosses over
Speaker 1: the fact that he like she She talks about like
Speaker 1: what a good like anthropy, pological attention to detail that
Speaker 1: he does that he has, which is interesting because he's
Speaker 1: also like dismissing all of these different gifts they're giving
Speaker 1: him his trifles, which I would say is bad anthropology,
Speaker 1: but I'm not an anthropologist here. Um. So, in short order,
Speaker 1: Columbus takes his little fleet away from this first island,
Speaker 1: which is probably San Salvador Um. And heads towards Cuba,
Speaker 1: which he thinks is Japan, right, um, and he will
Speaker 1: think that until the day he dies. They were his
Speaker 1: last words. And yeah, I mean, look, it's you're runningto Cevicha.
Speaker 1: You think it's sushi. It's happened all of us, you know,
Speaker 1: the same food basically. Um. Yeah. So yeah, he he
Speaker 1: decides that, and and part of the reason why he's
Speaker 1: so like fired up to get to Japan number one,
Speaker 1: he's still looking for that great con right, He's still
Speaker 1: looking for like some evidence of these massive Asian civilizations
Speaker 1: that he knows you're supposed to be here and supposed
Speaker 1: to be ready for Christianity. Um. And the other thing
Speaker 1: is that based on his kind of like these conversations
Speaker 1: he's having with the locals, and they're not really conversations
Speaker 1: as well as much as like kind of gesture based discussions,
Speaker 1: but he kind of puts together that the gold he's found,
Speaker 1: the little pieces of gold, came from that island. So
Speaker 1: he's like, all right, that's where the gold comes from.
Speaker 1: And obviously that's the number one thing. So as he
Speaker 1: leaves this first island and heads for Cuba, he captures
Speaker 1: a bunch of people and takes them with him. These
Speaker 1: are random locals that he imprisons on his ship to
Speaker 1: ask his guides. Now, in her book because She's Terrible,
Speaker 1: Carol Delaney describes these people as willing and eager guests,
Speaker 1: friendly natives excited to show the white people around. This
Speaker 1: is not true. These captives told Columbus that there was
Speaker 1: an I like. Part of the evidence for the fact
Speaker 1: that these people were not willing guests is that they
Speaker 1: teld Columbus like, as they're sailing to Japan Cuba, they
Speaker 1: tell Columbus there's an island on the way, and they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've seen people there and they have like these huge
Speaker 1: gold bracelets that they were on their arms and legs.
Speaker 1: It's the most gold anyone has it. While, well, we'll
Speaker 1: take you there. Well will introduce you to them, right,
Speaker 1: And as soon as they get to the island, all
Speaker 1: of the Tano prisoners he's taken run the funk away. Um.
Speaker 1: They absolutely they fucking escape. Um. So he's annoyed by this,
Speaker 1: and he sends an armed party to the shore to
Speaker 1: recapture them or to capture somebody else. Um. He also
Speaker 1: he can't he feels like since he's gotten close to
Speaker 1: the island, he can't go past it without taking possession
Speaker 1: of it. Right um, The exact way he writes this
Speaker 1: is that it was my wish to bypass no island
Speaker 1: without taking possession. This is another thing Carol fails to mention.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to quote from Lawrence bear Green's book
Speaker 1: next quote. He dispatched several seamen in hot pursuit of
Speaker 1: the fugitives, chasing them ashore, but as he ruefully noted,
Speaker 1: they all fled like chickens. When another dugout canoe innocently
Speaker 1: approached with a man who came to trade a skein
Speaker 1: of cotton, some of the sailors jumped into the sea
Speaker 1: because he wouldn't come aboard, and sees the poor fellow
Speaker 1: as a replacement detainee. Observing from his vantage point on
Speaker 1: the poop deck. Columbus sent for him and gave him
Speaker 1: a red cap and some beads of green glass, which
Speaker 1: I placed on his arm, and two hawkspells which I
Speaker 1: placed on his ears. That is the standard issue trinkets
Speaker 1: of little value. And I ordered him back to his dugout.
Speaker 1: So his plan here was to bait the hook. He
Speaker 1: wanted the locals to approach him with trust so that
Speaker 1: he could capture more of them. So he like takes
Speaker 1: this guy, puts him back on his boat with a
Speaker 1: bunch of trinkets and sends him off, um hopefully so
Speaker 1: that he can like question the others about gold and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And this tactic is pretty successful. Um.
Speaker 1: People are generally very friendly for him. Um. And there's
Speaker 1: a few reasons for this. Some of it is that
Speaker 1: he is giving people gifts from time to time, and
Speaker 1: so they'll go back and be like, there's some dude
Speaker 1: and he's handing out ship, let's go meet him. Um.
Speaker 1: And the other reason is that as club is kind
Speaker 1: of surmised, they saw him as and his men as
Speaker 1: quote men who came from the heavens. Now, it is
Speaker 1: hard for us to know precisely what their beliefs were here, right,
Speaker 1: We don't have the kind of context that we would
Speaker 1: like because they are genocided. Um. It he took all
Speaker 1: their art and ship and overboard. Yeah. Um. It is
Speaker 1: generally accepted that the people indigenous to a lot of
Speaker 1: these islands had popular beliefs. And again you're talking about
Speaker 1: multiple groups of people right there, all into these kind
Speaker 1: of broad language groups. But that doesn't mean they're like
Speaker 1: they're often at war. They have different opinions of each other,
Speaker 1: like right there there anyway, Um, it is uh very
Speaker 1: likely that some of these people had popular beliefs that
Speaker 1: divine or divinely inspired beings were going to visit them
Speaker 1: one day, and it was kind of like a prophecy.
Speaker 1: Some times. It may have been kind of like an
Speaker 1: apocalyptic prophecy maybe sort of. You might even view it
Speaker 1: as a little bit like kind of Christian rapture like readiness,
Speaker 1: you know, which is not. There are beliefs like that
Speaker 1: all over the world. It's courts almost every religion. Yeah. Ultimately, um,
Speaker 1: just that at some point in the distant future, we
Speaker 1: will meet this magical thing that's we always it's human
Speaker 1: nature to want to eventually meet or connect with or
Speaker 1: be one with the thing you made up. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things. So they're they're probably
Speaker 1: were some prophecies that sort of led some subset of
Speaker 1: the people he's meeting to believe that he and his
Speaker 1: Spaniards are divine visitors or celestial visitors or some something
Speaker 1: ethereal and other worldly. It's also worth noting though, that
Speaker 1: whenever we talk about prophecies like this, there's like a
Speaker 1: nasty tendency to act as if these beliefs are universal.
Speaker 1: It gets flattened. So we say, the people of these
Speaker 1: islands believed this or that, and we're talking about large,
Speaker 1: decentralized groups on many islands. Human beings just don't work
Speaker 1: that way, right, They don't all believe the same thing
Speaker 1: just because they all live in the Caribbean. Um. And
Speaker 1: oddly enough, there's a passage from Carol Delaney's book that
Speaker 1: does a decent job of making this clear. It's one
Speaker 1: of the little pieces of kind of insight we get
Speaker 1: into how varied beliefs might actually have been on the ground. Please.
Speaker 1: This is the beginning of Robert's turn to pro Carol
Speaker 1: Delaney's super pro Well, you know, I just I haven't
Speaker 1: found this anecdote and the other stuff read about Clumbus,
Speaker 1: and I found it fascinating because it answered this question
Speaker 1: I always had as a kid, when you'd hear like, oh,
Speaker 1: they believed this or that, and it's like, well they didn't,
Speaker 1: all right, because we don't, you know, like there must
Speaker 1: have been sex and schisms and anyway, I find this interesting.
Speaker 1: At one stop, an old man who had heard of
Speaker 1: Columbus approached him with a desire to engage in a
Speaker 1: theological discussion. Perhaps he had heard that Columbus was interested
Speaker 1: in religious beliefs, or he may have cleverly used this
Speaker 1: dialogue as a way to protect his people. Columbus, for
Speaker 1: his part, must have jumped at the chance to have
Speaker 1: a discussion with a learned native about their beliefs. They
Speaker 1: talked about the soul and what happens to it after death.
Speaker 1: The old man explained that his people believed that any
Speaker 1: injury to the body also affected the soul, and begged
Speaker 1: Columbus not to injure any of the people. Columbus assured
Speaker 1: him that he only hurt bad people because that was
Speaker 1: what his sovereigns had commanded. Unlike others who believed Columbus
Speaker 1: was some kind of god, this man told Columbus that
Speaker 1: to his face, that he was quote mortal like everyone else.
Speaker 1: Columbus was not offended and wrote that the old man
Speaker 1: expressed his thinking with excellent judgment and courage. So that's
Speaker 1: interesting to me. Yeah, you get these little like hints
Speaker 1: of the variety of beliefs and thoughts that might have
Speaker 1: existed in this population, just the recurring motif of don't worry,
Speaker 1: I only hurt bad. The core of all Western he is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is. You might we talk a lot on this
Speaker 1: show about like whiteness and the fact that whiteness is
Speaker 1: like an idea with shifting boundaries that changed over time.
Speaker 1: But you might say Columbus was the first white guy.
Speaker 1: Like he sounds like one for sure. Yeah, he's got
Speaker 1: like the talk. He's got it all right. You could
Speaker 1: you could put this guy in like the George Bush
Speaker 1: White House and he could be delivering fucking press conferences
Speaker 1: on carpet bombings. It's great. Um. So, as much as
Speaker 1: she tries to paint him as an unbiased, open minded
Speaker 1: cultural anthropologist, Columbus's own writing makes it clear that his
Speaker 1: only interest in these people was using to find and
Speaker 1: mind gold for his Jerusalem goals. He wrote very little
Speaker 1: about their actual culture. He brushed over their Again. You
Speaker 1: have to remember that what he said about their religion
Speaker 1: is they don't have one, right because he didn't he
Speaker 1: didn't understand it. So he assumed that they were just
Speaker 1: like a blank slate ready for Christianity. Um. He ignored
Speaker 1: their social order almost entirely. He didn't really understand the
Speaker 1: way they were ordered and who was in charge. He
Speaker 1: showed very little to no interest in their agriculture except
Speaker 1: to rape about the quality of their their food, and
Speaker 1: even that may have been kind of out of desperation
Speaker 1: as much as anything, because as the days will on,
Speaker 1: they keep not finding gold. Right, they get these little trinkets,
Speaker 1: but there's no sign of these gold mines that he
Speaker 1: had told the King and Queen were going to be
Speaker 1: here and like huge quantities. So he may have been
Speaker 1: playing up the only stuff that he thought was a value, right,
Speaker 1: because but yeah, he doesn't care about the people or
Speaker 1: their culture. So it's like, well, the food is pretty good.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can take just imagining flying saucers coming and
Speaker 1: we're all excited about first contact. And aliens arrive and
Speaker 1: they're like his rp's open to order a bunch of
Speaker 1: ship and we're like, do you want to have like
Speaker 1: cultural interchange? And they're like, don't bother us. I don't
Speaker 1: care about that, dude. Yeah, and then one of them
Speaker 1: writes home it gets like asked by his boss, so
Speaker 1: do the do humans? Is like religion a big deal
Speaker 1: for them? No, I don't think so, man, I don't
Speaker 1: really think it's a big deal armies though they got
Speaker 1: the mates two of these things for six collegues. It's
Speaker 1: it's like walking around Jerusalem looking for a fucking sandwich,
Speaker 1: being like, Wow, these people don't have a religion at all. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you have an abduction quota and it doesn't matter who
Speaker 1: doesn't have numbers. Well, we are getting to the abduction quotas.
Speaker 1: So the main thing that he does in his writing
Speaker 1: here rather than again, Carol Laney is like just fucking
Speaker 1: hard as hell about trying to portray him as like this,
Speaker 1: this like anthropological savant um. I think Lawrence bear Green
Speaker 1: gets it more correctly when he describes Columbus as writing
Speaker 1: about the new world that he's found as a quote
Speaker 1: tabula rasa in which his sovereigns would leave a lasting
Speaker 1: imprint of empire. Columbus wrote that quote your highnesses will
Speaker 1: command a city and fortress to be built in these parts,
Speaker 1: and these countries converted. And I certify to your Highness
Speaker 1: is that it seems to me that there could never
Speaker 1: be under the son lands superior to them, and fertility
Speaker 1: and mindfulness of cold and heat, and abundance of good
Speaker 1: and pure water, and the rivers are not like those
Speaker 1: of Guinea, which are all pestilential, which is obviously Portuguese
Speaker 1: have guinny. Right, So he's trying to he's he's he's
Speaker 1: not to the fact, to the extent that he describes
Speaker 1: all of this lovingly, He's not doing it out of
Speaker 1: legitimate interest. He's doing it to try to make it
Speaker 1: attractive to the King and queens. Sales pitch, sales pitch.
Speaker 1: He's shown no interest in learning these things. No, he's
Speaker 1: it's gold. It's just it's a sales in part because,
Speaker 1: as per the deally as with him, if this turns
Speaker 1: into a colony and there's trade, he gets like a
Speaker 1: quarter of the profits forever, right Like that's part of
Speaker 1: why he's trying to sell them on this place. Everything
Speaker 1: he's writing is like he's like a fucking um, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you yeah, he's he's, he's, he's a salesman,
Speaker 1: right Like. That's what he's trying to sell is this
Speaker 1: land other people live on. And part of the way
Speaker 1: he's selling that is like and they're barely even real,
Speaker 1: like they don't here, they don't care, like they do
Speaker 1: whatever you want them to do. He's playing life like
Speaker 1: it's civ three before they had all the like theism
Speaker 1: and adds it's just I clicked on your ship. Dude,
Speaker 1: it's my color. No, it's my stuff now yeah, So
Speaker 1: right up from American Heritage summarizes columbus feelings after first
Speaker 1: contact with the Arawak on San Salvador. Quote two days
Speaker 1: after the first landing of the expedition on the tiny
Speaker 1: island of Guana Honey in the Outer Bahamas, which Columbus
Speaker 1: christened San Salvador, when your Highness is so command they
Speaker 1: could all be carried off to castile or be held
Speaker 1: captive in the island itself, he wrote, because with fifty men,
Speaker 1: they could all be subjugated and compelled to do anything
Speaker 1: one wishes. He said the line, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: the Tino did try to introduce Columbus and his men
Speaker 1: to their food into various inventions of their culture. Um,
Speaker 1: and some of these did take. The most exciting invention
Speaker 1: that they found that the Europeans found was the hammock.
Speaker 1: They had not invented hammock technology yet. Um. We get
Speaker 1: our word hammock from from the the Arawak language. Um,
Speaker 1: and this is a big deal because, like among other things, right,
Speaker 1: you think about a boat and the way boats are constructed.
Speaker 1: People don't have rooms on boats in this day. So
Speaker 1: you're just all sleeping in a pile around whatever ship's
Speaker 1: boy is like too slow to evade capture by the mob. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The image is just sailors like on the floor on
Speaker 1: a shelf sleeping. Yeah. The hammock is going to revolutionize
Speaker 1: sleeping on boats. Um. You know. Anyway, so you know
Speaker 1: there was a genocide, but at least the world got
Speaker 1: the hammock. We got the hammock. It's a great it is.
Speaker 1: I just I want to see that packaged as a
Speaker 1: Pis a hammocks worth it, we think, so, the United
Speaker 1: hammock ad pitch. It's just like a devastated land masquerade,
Speaker 1: the hammock worth it a Native American in a hammock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a single tier. We know that. We know the drill.
Speaker 1: So slowly, as the days turned into weeks, Columbus and
Speaker 1: his crew began to learn bits and pieces of the
Speaker 1: local language. Now, the most important phrase that they learned
Speaker 1: was don't be afraid and pro tip, somebody chilling, that's chilling.
Speaker 1: It's really fucked up. Right. If anyone starts a conversation,
Speaker 1: that's the number one way to know someone means to
Speaker 1: hurt you. If they start by saying, don't be afraid,
Speaker 1: then you need to be very frightened. That's a shooting word, Michael.
Speaker 1: That is that is a shooting phrase. Um. If an
Speaker 1: alien comes to my door saying that I Am not
Speaker 1: going to assume that what my trinkets? Yeah, what is
Speaker 1: your word for it? Come with me to a second location?
Speaker 1: Is that? How do your people say, leave your cell
Speaker 1: phone behind? Um? So, Carol Delaney gives Christopher big ups
Speaker 1: for realizing that quote. The natives were not speaking Gibberish,
Speaker 1: as later so many Europeans attributed to primitive people's and
Speaker 1: that it was important to learn their language. Yes, figured
Speaker 1: out that humans speak language. Christopher, yes, one of his
Speaker 1: many achievements, but still he and his He and his
Speaker 1: men were not very good at the task of learning
Speaker 1: the local language. Six weeks into their journey, he wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: I do not know the language, and the people of
Speaker 1: these lands do not understand me, nor do I nor
Speaker 1: anyone else that I have with me them. And many
Speaker 1: times I understand one thing, said by these Indians that
Speaker 1: I bring for another it's contrary, nor do I trust
Speaker 1: them much because many times they have tried to flee.
Speaker 1: But now, pleasing our Lord, I will see that the
Speaker 1: most that I can, and little by little I will
Speaker 1: progress an understanding and acquaintance, and I will have this
Speaker 1: tongue talk to persons of my household, because I see
Speaker 1: that up to this point it is a single language. Now,
Speaker 1: first off, it is like a group of languages, but
Speaker 1: it's probably broadly like you know, you go to like
Speaker 1: the Balkans and there's like the different kind of Serbo
Speaker 1: Croatian sort of dialects and they're all different languages. But
Speaker 1: like like Ukraine, if you if you speak Ukrainian, you
Speaker 1: can communicate to someone in Russian with vice. Right, It's
Speaker 1: probably is kind of like that, but these are different islands,
Speaker 1: so you have to assume they are not, in fact,
Speaker 1: just one single language. Um. But yeah, anyway, it's interesting
Speaker 1: to me that he's like, there's a that's interesting here
Speaker 1: to me, including the fact that he's like, I can't
Speaker 1: trust them very much because they keep running away when
Speaker 1: I capture them. Weird things I've learned about these people
Speaker 1: don't like kidnapping, real anti kidnapping vibes on the natives
Speaker 1: on the islands. It's just weird to imagine the because
Speaker 1: I know, because I know the way history and human
Speaker 1: beings work, that there must be areas where I live
Speaker 1: with a similar level of delusion, and I just swallow it.
Speaker 1: But the idea that he can think that and just
Speaker 1: be like, that's weird, Like how does that not hammer
Speaker 1: home the core value of Oh, I see they're like me.
Speaker 1: They're having the same experience I'm having. But if they
Speaker 1: were kidnapped, it's just bizarre. The people their brains that much.
Speaker 1: I don't know that. I don't know that. I think
Speaker 1: you do live with that level of delusion. I think
Speaker 1: we all live with areas in which our our level
Speaker 1: of knowledge is that incomplete. But what he's saying is
Speaker 1: a delusion. And it's a delusion because, as both a
Speaker 1: religious fanatic and an obsessive narciss he is incapable of
Speaker 1: looking at anything that happens to him through any lens
Speaker 1: other than how it affects his ambitions right, and so
Speaker 1: his interpretation of reality has to be tortured and twisted
Speaker 1: in order to make further those ends right. No matter what,
Speaker 1: no matter what is happening, he has to find a
Speaker 1: way to translate it in that way. And I don't
Speaker 1: think you have that my having known you for a while. Well,
Speaker 1: if I'm losing in a video game, I do blame
Speaker 1: the controller. That we all do a degree of this. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: In his case, the controller is several hundred thousand people
Speaker 1: with their own culture and religion. It's weird and bad
Speaker 1: that they want to not be abducted. It's like, because
Speaker 1: I want to abduct them, what is the problem here?
Speaker 1: I call it their fatal flaw. Lovely people. Otherwise, the
Speaker 1: fact that he needs to learn this language so that
Speaker 1: he can better convert and capture them is what convinces
Speaker 1: According to Delaney, this is what convinces Columbus that he
Speaker 1: needs to quote take six Indians back with him when
Speaker 1: he left for Spain so that they could learn Spanish. Now,
Speaker 1: she assures us that the experience was meant to be reciprocal,
Speaker 1: so that his family could learn that. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like a gap here cultural exchange for these people.
Speaker 1: That's how Carol describes it. It's also the very first
Speaker 1: iteration of this is America Speak American. Damn, I gotta
Speaker 1: learn Spanish. Sure, it's just gonna learn Spanish. That's just
Speaker 1: gonna be easier here. I'm gonna be honest. It is amazing,
Speaker 1: Like there is there is a type of person, and
Speaker 1: maybe Columbus is the first that like when you stumble upon,
Speaker 1: like find yourself in a place surrounded by people who
Speaker 1: speak and believe differently than you, like, your first thought
Speaker 1: is like, well, I gotta make everybody a little bit
Speaker 1: more like me. This is what gonna do. Someone's got
Speaker 1: to help these people in what do you call this place, Lisbon, No,
Speaker 1: that ain't gonna work, No, nope, nope. So she she
Speaker 1: describes this as like, yeah, these people are excited to
Speaker 1: learn from him, and he's going to learn from them,
Speaker 1: and it's just this lovely cultural exchange that's going down.
Speaker 1: Bear Green describes this is a much uglier process where
Speaker 1: there do seem to be some Tino who were excited
Speaker 1: I did to see Spain as you'd expect, because again,
Speaker 1: they're not all one people and any time you get
Speaker 1: like effectively aliens coming, some people are going to be like,
Speaker 1: well ship, yeah, I want to see what I got.
Speaker 1: I see what's going on there right um. The whole
Speaker 1: process was in fact closer to abduction than anything. Quote.
Speaker 1: On Sunday, November ten, a dugout canoe arrived with six
Speaker 1: men and five women to pay their respects. Columbus returned
Speaker 1: their hospitality by detaining them. That's Columbus's words. In expectation
Speaker 1: of returning to Spain with them, he bolstered their number
Speaker 1: with seven additional women and three boys. He explained his
Speaker 1: thinking this way. I did this because the men would
Speaker 1: behave better in Spain with women of their country than
Speaker 1: without them. His decision, he said, was based on his
Speaker 1: experiences detaining the inhabitants of Africa's west coast to Portugal.
Speaker 1: Many times I happened to take men of Guinea that
Speaker 1: they might learn the language in Portugal, and after they returned,
Speaker 1: it was expected to make some use of them in
Speaker 1: their own country, owing to the good company that they
Speaker 1: had enjoyed and the gifts they had received. But matters
Speaker 1: never turned out as hoped. The problem, he decided, was
Speaker 1: that without are women, the men would not cooperate. This
Speaker 1: time the result would be different. His latest captives, having
Speaker 1: their women, will find it good business to do what
Speaker 1: they are told and these women would teach our people
Speaker 1: their language, which he assumed is the same in all
Speaker 1: these islands of India at is indistinguishable from an m
Speaker 1: z U super villain. It is it is if if
Speaker 1: we threaten their wives, they'll do what we want. Now, Michael,
Speaker 1: you didn't mean to do this, but you actually made
Speaker 1: it a little bit less fucked up in your head there.
Speaker 1: So this is an interesting point in bear Green's write up.
Speaker 1: It just sounds like he has detained these guys with
Speaker 1: their wives, right, Like he's detained men with the women
Speaker 1: that they were like in relationships with. That's right, buddy,
Speaker 1: he doesn't. They're interchangeable to him. I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote from another write up from American Heritage that makes
Speaker 1: a point I did not see noted elsewhere. And this
Speaker 1: is them quoting from Columbus's journal. Afterwards, I sent to
Speaker 1: a house which is in the area of the river
Speaker 1: to the west, Columbus says in his journal. And they
Speaker 1: brought back seven head of women, small and large, and
Speaker 1: three children. I did this because the men would come
Speaker 1: with themselves better in Spain having women from their land,
Speaker 1: when without them. So again he is kidnapping seven head
Speaker 1: of women to keep the male captives docile. Um. He
Speaker 1: uses the phrase the the exact way he writes, this
Speaker 1: is cabezz um, which is the way you it's the
Speaker 1: way you'd say. He's saying seven ahead of women exactly
Speaker 1: the exact same way. Um. So number one, that's pretty bad, um.
Speaker 1: And number two he is he is like he doesn't
Speaker 1: understand that people have individual rooms. He's just taking He's like, well,
Speaker 1: I've got guys, I gotta get girls, gotta collect the set.
Speaker 1: He's just grabbing random women to go with these men,
Speaker 1: seven girls. And because like they are all traveling, all
Speaker 1: of the natives in here travel on canoes from island
Speaker 1: to island. He doesn't I don't think he actually even
Speaker 1: knows that, like the men and the women come from
Speaker 1: the same island. Like he may have grabbed people from
Speaker 1: different villages. And just like, now you got your women
Speaker 1: with you, why aren't you happy? Um? And it's interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: Spanish a story in jose A Cinceo writes, quote and
Speaker 1: this is a guy kind of writing. Around the time,
Speaker 1: this was a great abuse and bad judgment on the
Speaker 1: part of the admiral, which was to set a most
Speaker 1: lamentable precedent and act so apparently trifling, which was to
Speaker 1: have fatal consequences. And that's interesting because number one, it
Speaker 1: does show that like people at the time are are
Speaker 1: recognizing this is an abuse and bad This is like
Speaker 1: a bad thing to do to people. But also it
Speaker 1: does say a lot that a Censeo calls kidnapping a
Speaker 1: bunch of people apparently trifling, trifling to think that this
Speaker 1: minor kidnapping of like a dozen people would leading perfect. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: so anyway, that's pretty bad. Um. Father Less Casas is
Speaker 1: even more kind of clear when he writes in his
Speaker 1: historia quote one might ask whether it was not a
Speaker 1: most grievous sin to pillage with violence women who had
Speaker 1: their own husbands. Who was to give an accounting to
Speaker 1: God for the sins of adultery committed by the Indians
Speaker 1: whom he took with him and to whom he gave
Speaker 1: those wives the sexual partners. And again that's also you
Speaker 1: can see where lost Causas is where he's like, well,
Speaker 1: my God, they've broken the sacred bonds of marriage. Who's
Speaker 1: going to explain this to God? Um, it's very funny,
Speaker 1: it's not. So Now again, there are again some people
Speaker 1: here and there who do show interest in hanging out
Speaker 1: with Columbus Um, but Columbus was not always interested in
Speaker 1: the people who wanted to go with him willingly. There's
Speaker 1: one point in his diary where a canoe with a man,
Speaker 1: two women, and three kids rose up to his ship
Speaker 1: and the man begs to join Columbus and like go
Speaker 1: back to Spain with him, and Columbus is frustrated because
Speaker 1: the guy is old and can't do hard work, so
Speaker 1: he's like, well, he's not gonna make a very good slave.
Speaker 1: I don't want this guy. Come on the reason I'm
Speaker 1: kidnapping the young strapping ones? Um just lying in a
Speaker 1: hammock judging people's lives. Yeah, now, Michael, you know who
Speaker 1: won't kidnap random groups of men and women from a
Speaker 1: culture and jam them into the hold of a sailing
Speaker 1: vessel together to take act to Seville our sponsor, Big hammock,
Speaker 1: Come on down to gigmmock, hammocks. We didn't start this situation. Look,
Speaker 1: all we do is make hammocks. Now, it's fine, it's
Speaker 1: just woven thread. Yeah, hammocks. The genocide was created prior
Speaker 1: to the start of the corporate charter couldn't be hammocks
Speaker 1: that ultimately ended the genocide causality connection. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm just a hammock. I'm just yeah, this is just
Speaker 1: selling hammocks. Um okay, here's ads. Oh we're back, Michael.
Speaker 1: So on every island he visits, Columbus sets himself to
Speaker 1: the task of erecting gigantic crosses. Delaney notes that this
Speaker 1: is more evidence that he had no intention to enslave
Speaker 1: the locals, because this is her logic. If he converts
Speaker 1: them to Christianity, they can't be enslaved, right, So the
Speaker 1: fact that he keeps building crosses on their land evidence
Speaker 1: that he doesn't want them all enslaved. Right. He's a
Speaker 1: good guy. Oh yeah, when someone puts a cross up
Speaker 1: in your yard, it's not It is historically always a
Speaker 1: good thing usually. Um So. Bear Green brings up parts
Speaker 1: of Columbus's notes that Delaney seems to ignore. At one
Speaker 1: point in November, he did write that the indigenous people
Speaker 1: were quote very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil,
Speaker 1: neither murder nor theft. And they are without arms and
Speaker 1: are so timid that a hundred of them flee before
Speaker 1: one person of ours. He recommended to the Queen, quote,
Speaker 1: your Highness ought to resolve to make them Christians, For
Speaker 1: I believe that if you began in a short time,
Speaker 1: you would achieve the conversion to our holy faith of
Speaker 1: a multitude of folk, and would acquire great lordships and
Speaker 1: riches and all their inhabitants for Spain. Now, the source
Speaker 1: of these riches is quite clear in his mind. Quote
Speaker 1: because without doubt there is in these countries a tremendous
Speaker 1: quantity of gold. And in case the extent of his
Speaker 1: meaning hasn't sunk in yet, gold needs to be mined.
Speaker 1: The indigenous folks acquired the small amounts of gold that
Speaker 1: they had mainly through like searching riverbeds, right sifting through
Speaker 1: rocks and riverbeds and stuff to find little bits of gold.
Speaker 1: But to actually take the quantities necessary to fund his
Speaker 1: conquest of Jerusalem, proper minds would need to be open
Speaker 1: and converted. Indigenous people couldn't be enslaved, because you know,
Speaker 1: Christians can't be enslaved, but they could be forced to
Speaker 1: labor in gold mines as part of their taxes to
Speaker 1: the new enslavement exactly, And is there like assaying technology
Speaker 1: at this time? Like is he right that there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of gold. Does yes? I mean they do find
Speaker 1: gold right, like he sees like when there are it
Speaker 1: is like a reasonable conclusion that if you see a
Speaker 1: bunch of people with little bits of gold, well somewhere
Speaker 1: there has to be a place where that gold's coming.
Speaker 1: His thinking on that matter is not like delusional or anything.
Speaker 1: He's seeing like pieces of gold and he's like, well,
Speaker 1: there's got to be a place that's coming from. But
Speaker 1: as far as reasonable conclusions go, he's not making a
Speaker 1: lot of them. So I know you're respect that for
Speaker 1: a second. They do find this, that is, unfortunately where
Speaker 1: the story is going. They do find old mines. So
Speaker 1: on November eleventh, the admiral's fleet anchors off the coast
Speaker 1: of Cuba, which he thinks again is Japan. He and
Speaker 1: his men quickly put to shore, expecting to find gold.
Speaker 1: This was where all the people he'd met in islands
Speaker 1: along the way had told him the gold came from.
Speaker 1: But only a few of the folks he meets on
Speaker 1: the shore are wearing gold jewelry, and again it tends
Speaker 1: to be pretty small pieces of gold jewelry. Now Columbus
Speaker 1: is seriously starting to worry. At this point, he's burning
Speaker 1: through days. He can't stay out here forever, and he
Speaker 1: can't just return with some gold drinkets, he feels, because
Speaker 1: that's not going to be enough to entice the King
Speaker 1: and Queen. So increasingly he starts to focus on what
Speaker 1: has he seemed to be like, and what he's come
Speaker 1: to see is the most readily available source of wealth
Speaker 1: in this new world, which is its people. Right. If
Speaker 1: I can't find gold, I can at least take and
Speaker 1: sell the people from a right up. In an American
Speaker 1: Heritage quote, on Monday, December three, the Admiral assured the
Speaker 1: sovereigns that ten men could cause ten thousand of the
Speaker 1: natives to flee, so cowardly and faint hearted are they.
Speaker 1: And they carry no arms except some rods at the
Speaker 1: end of which are pointed sticks which are fire hardened.
Speaker 1: And again Delaney is like portraying him is in love
Speaker 1: with these people and building these deep relationships, and everything
Speaker 1: he's writing is like, we could fuck these guys up,
Speaker 1: no problem, they can't stop us where God's here. It's
Speaker 1: just it's wild that he's like, I don't know, I'll
Speaker 1: you want to make them our religion you want to
Speaker 1: use him as slaves, you want some rocks, like whatever.
Speaker 1: What's important is they're here and we can suck them up.
Speaker 1: I mean he's literally is willing to denude the landscape
Speaker 1: that he's discovering, of whatever, as long as he gets
Speaker 1: what do you know, something valuable. Now, by December sixte
Speaker 1: his ideas in this respect have taken definite form. Quote
Speaker 1: and here's Columbus again. They have no weapons and are
Speaker 1: all naked, without any skill in arms, and are very cowardly,
Speaker 1: so that a thousand would not challenge three. Thus they
Speaker 1: are useful to be commanded and to be made to
Speaker 1: labor and so and do everything else of which there
Speaker 1: is need, and build towns and be taught to wear
Speaker 1: clothes and learn our customs. I call them. Think they
Speaker 1: can be talked to walk and speak as a man.
Speaker 1: It is also like you come across these people and
Speaker 1: you recognize, Wow, everyone here looks very healthy and very healthy, happy,
Speaker 1: and their food is delicious, and it's like a paradise.
Speaker 1: You know it would be great is teaching them how
Speaker 1: to labor and forcing them to build towns and wear pants. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you hate to see it. Um, it's the seaside.
Speaker 1: I don't think his interest is improving their lives, but sure,
Speaker 1: yeah it is. It is not um. Now. I want
Speaker 1: to contrast these things which Columbus writes himself during his
Speaker 1: travels with how Carol Delaney describes the exploration of Cuba
Speaker 1: slash Japan by Columbus quote, he sent some men ashore,
Speaker 1: giving instructions as usual that if the natives fled at
Speaker 1: their approach, the men must not touch or take anything
Speaker 1: from their houses. From the very beginning, Columbus notes how
Speaker 1: generously the natives shared whatever they had, and he did
Speaker 1: not want his crew to take advantage of them. He
Speaker 1: demanded that there must be an exchange, for example, beads
Speaker 1: and bells for needed food supplies. It was unequal, to
Speaker 1: be sure, but trade. Nonetheless, he continually recounts having to
Speaker 1: restrain his crew from looting villages when the residents fled
Speaker 1: at their approach. Throughout the diary, he repeats, I did
Speaker 1: not allow anything to be taken, not even the value
Speaker 1: of a pin. Now it's interesting because she's not wrong,
Speaker 1: and that he does repeatedly tell his men not to loot.
Speaker 1: He writes regularly back to his sovereigns that I said
Speaker 1: not to loot. But when you just include that part
Speaker 1: of the story, you get this vision of like a
Speaker 1: guy who's really just trying to meet people and explore,
Speaker 1: and he's constantly dealing with the fact that his men
Speaker 1: are unethical and want to just rob things. Already, question
Speaker 1: why you have a corporate culture where everyone under you
Speaker 1: is like champing at the bit exactly exactly, but when,
Speaker 1: Because what Carol has done here is cut out every
Speaker 1: time he's written, like, boy, literally three of us could
Speaker 1: beat all of these people in a war, and then
Speaker 1: we could own them and make them work for us.
Speaker 1: Like I'm not going to kill you, but like that dude,
Speaker 1: like that it would be easy. Right. Um. Yeah, So again,
Speaker 1: when you're leaving all that out, perhaps you are doing
Speaker 1: a disingenuous job of writing about a guy's backstory. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm not an anthropologist like Carol Delaney, but I see
Speaker 1: that as perhaps missing a key part of the story. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing we're not going to be getting into a
Speaker 1: lot in these episodes is the story of the Pinzon brothers.
Speaker 1: Um Delaney leaves them out, mostly to all she kind
Speaker 1: of notes is that in late November, Martin Alonso Pinzon,
Speaker 1: who's the captain and owner of the Pina. Right, all
Speaker 1: of these ships had other guys who owned them. They
Speaker 1: were just kind of in service to the Spanish ground.
Speaker 1: He abandons the fleet out of greed, right, like, not
Speaker 1: that long after after they arrive, he takes the Pina
Speaker 1: and he just goes separately and does his own thing
Speaker 1: for a while. And she makes Pinzona out to be
Speaker 1: basically the villain of the Columbus story, this dangerous and
Speaker 1: competent buffoon who tries to like ruin. He's trying to
Speaker 1: like steal gold while he's away, and he's not listening
Speaker 1: to Columbus. And it is true that Pinzon takes the
Speaker 1: Penta and kind of leaves the fleet and returns Spain eventually,
Speaker 1: like separately, it is inaccurate to portray him as some
Speaker 1: buffoonish foil. Penzona and his brothers basically hand all of
Speaker 1: the expedition's logistics. Martin Pinzone was the only reason Columbus
Speaker 1: was able to find a crew. He was a very
Speaker 1: respected sailor in Palos, and he basically convinced others to
Speaker 1: join the journey. Interviews we have with crew members and
Speaker 1: their families from a later court case between the two
Speaker 1: suggests that he basically ran all of the day to
Speaker 1: day business of the expedition because Columbus wasn't good at
Speaker 1: it and no one trusted him. Um. Evidence that maybe
Speaker 1: people were right not to trust Columbus as an expedition
Speaker 1: leader comes right around Christmas, when the Santa Maria sinks
Speaker 1: like a motherfucker off the coast of what is today Haiti.
Speaker 1: Now the precise cause of the accident is unclear, and
Speaker 1: it is partly unclear because Columbus wrote and revised his
Speaker 1: own account of the disaster repeatedly in order to like
Speaker 1: blame different people. Um. At first, he blames the ship's boy,
Speaker 1: who he says is at the tiller at the wrong
Speaker 1: time and screws up Um. But as time goes on,
Speaker 1: he starts to claim that the ship hit an invisible
Speaker 1: reef while he slept, and then, finally, as bear Greenwrights
Speaker 1: quote now, he insisted it was caused by the treachery
Speaker 1: of the master and the people He's talking about. Pen
Speaker 1: Zone here, refusing to run out the anchor from stim
Speaker 1: to Kedge that his hall off the ship is the
Speaker 1: admiral ordered there was no more mention of the hapless
Speaker 1: boy at the tiller, or Columbus's fatigue, or the holiday celebrations,
Speaker 1: treachery had taken their place. So basically, he's having issues
Speaker 1: with his crew. A lot of them trust these pen Zones,
Speaker 1: and like one of the pen Zone brothers fucking leaves
Speaker 1: with his guys, and Columbus initially is like, this thing
Speaker 1: sank because we were celebrating for the holiday and like
Speaker 1: I was tired. We didn't like pay enough attention. Then
Speaker 1: he's like, no, it was this boy. And then he's like, no,
Speaker 1: it was treachery from the men of Palos who wanted
Speaker 1: to ruin the expedition and like didn't do what I
Speaker 1: told them do. Um. I don't know. I think Columbus
Speaker 1: maybe literally fell asleep at the wheel, Like it is
Speaker 1: entirely possible that he just kind of like passes out
Speaker 1: and the Santa Maria crashes. Um. But yeah, anyway, it's
Speaker 1: very funny. UM. And what's interesting here is that kind
Speaker 1: of by that last revision of the story, and what
Speaker 1: we're seeing is an increasingly paranoid Christopher Columbus because he's
Speaker 1: he's under a lot of stress. He has to justify
Speaker 1: this expedition, and he also has come to increasingly believe
Speaker 1: that like God is directing him right, God brought him here,
Speaker 1: and he is like achieving a sacred end for the Lord.
Speaker 1: And so finally a good turn in the story because
Speaker 1: God's good. God's going to know what to do. This
Speaker 1: is gonna be great. Well, God is telling him that
Speaker 1: all of the crewman he has are conspiring against him
Speaker 1: to stop him from achieving his goals. So the good
Speaker 1: news is that Columbus, his men and most of their
Speaker 1: possessions get rescued by a local leader a caseique, which
Speaker 1: is kind of I don't know, vaguely speaking, it's like
Speaker 1: a chief, right. A caseque is like kind of a
Speaker 1: local kind of villager town level leaders. Something. They seem
Speaker 1: to have pretty widely differing kind of like numbers of
Speaker 1: people following the little management. No, I mean definitely, I
Speaker 1: know it just yeah, it doesn't it doesn't look like
Speaker 1: there's like a long chain. But yeah. One of these
Speaker 1: guys is named Um guacanagari Um, and Guacanagari is either,
Speaker 1: depending on kind of how you interpret things, either one
Speaker 1: of these guys who sees the Spaniards is maybe some
Speaker 1: semi divine or he's just a very savvy local politician
Speaker 1: who sees them as powerful military allies against his enemies. Right,
Speaker 1: he recognizes, well, these guys have good weapons, and if
Speaker 1: I get in their good books, they will help protect
Speaker 1: me from my enemies. Right. So, after he rescues Columbus
Speaker 1: and his men from this sinking, he offers to build
Speaker 1: houses for the admiral and his men and like let
Speaker 1: them live there. And he presents them with several gold gifts,
Speaker 1: like he gives them kind of some of the biggest
Speaker 1: pieces of gold Columbus has found um and he tearfully
Speaker 1: expresses his intense desire for friendship. Now, Carol Delaney writes
Speaker 1: about this at length and presents it as a beautiful
Speaker 1: example of platonic cross cultural love between these two men
Speaker 1: into Charlie Brown special effire exactly yeah, yeah, he had,
Speaker 1: he had. Guacanagari are like just the best of buds
Speaker 1: um Bear. Green's writing makes it clear that the caseque
Speaker 1: was motivated as much by real politique as anything else. Quote.
Speaker 1: Striding past groves of trees next to the houses, the
Speaker 1: Spaniards found themselves escorted to their guest quarters by a
Speaker 1: good thousand people, all naked except for Guacanagari, who out
Speaker 1: of respect for his guests, now wore a shirt and
Speaker 1: gloves that the Admiral had given him, and over the
Speaker 1: gloves he made more rejoicing than anything. They talked of
Speaker 1: strategic matters of the Indians, fierce rifles, the Caribs, who
Speaker 1: carried bows and arrows reminiscent of the Spaniards, exhausted weapons
Speaker 1: but made without any iron, and of the way the
Speaker 1: Caribs captured the Indians at will. At once the Admiral
Speaker 1: said by signs that the sovereigns of Castile would order
Speaker 1: the Caribs to be destroyed and would order them all
Speaker 1: brought with their hands bound. To reinforce his show of strength,
Speaker 1: Columbus ordered a lombard and must get to be fired.
Speaker 1: The two shots, powered by gunpowder technology unknown to the Indians,
Speaker 1: shattered the Caribbean calm and the Indians fell to the earth.
Speaker 1: So this guy is like, you can stay here, we
Speaker 1: can be friends. Um. You know, by the way, would
Speaker 1: you help us out with these local enemies of ours
Speaker 1: who are like rating us and taking some of our
Speaker 1: people captive. And Columbus is like, oh, once I tell
Speaker 1: the Queen this, you know she's going to approve a genocide,
Speaker 1: will wipe them out. Don't worry. Look at look at
Speaker 1: our guns. Um. And this is going to be note
Speaker 1: where they lay here, because now that the Caribs are
Speaker 1: kind of in the picture, we've established basically everyone he's
Speaker 1: met before is like peaceful and and friendly. Um, the
Speaker 1: Caribs are not peaceful, or at least it is. He
Speaker 1: has have agendas. They're doing things well there. They can
Speaker 1: at least be portrayed that way. And if there is
Speaker 1: a group of people here who are aggressive, well then
Speaker 1: suddenly a whole world of military options opens up. Right.
Speaker 1: I guess that's like me. That's like me sticking my
Speaker 1: fist to do a wasps nest and going, well, this man,
Speaker 1: you see that I had no choice. Um. That is
Speaker 1: basically what happens here. Now. The show of modern arms
Speaker 1: has two purposes for Columbus. For one thing, obviously, it
Speaker 1: does establish his value as an ally to this guy,
Speaker 1: but it also acts as a show of force to
Speaker 1: Guacanagari and his people, because with the Santa Maria sunk,
Speaker 1: Columbus doesn't have space on his boats to take all
Speaker 1: of his people back to Spain. But when the Cacique
Speaker 1: offers him a home on the island. The admiral is like, well,
Speaker 1: wait a second, I can make a fortress here, Like
Speaker 1: I can leave some guys behind. We can fortify it,
Speaker 1: and I'll have built the first strong point for Spanish
Speaker 1: power in the region. It'll be like the start of
Speaker 1: our of our trading system and stuff throughout the islands
Speaker 1: Um and Columbus. Now, because he's kind of taken with
Speaker 1: this vision, he starts to see the loss of his flagship,
Speaker 1: the sinking of the Santa Maria, as divinely inspired. He was.
Speaker 1: He decided quote preordained to run aground and to meet Guacanagari.
Speaker 1: And while his initial mission had been simple exploration, he
Speaker 1: was obligated now by Holy Fiat to actually start colonizing
Speaker 1: this new land. Quote now I have given orders to
Speaker 1: erect a tower and a fortress, all very well done,
Speaker 1: and a great mote. Not that I believe it to
Speaker 1: be necessary for these people. For I take it for
Speaker 1: granted that with this people, I could conquer all this island,
Speaker 1: which I believe to be bigger than Portugal, and double
Speaker 1: the number of inhabitants. So he's like, I'm building a fortress,
Speaker 1: even though I don't really need one, right, like I
Speaker 1: could conquer it without one, But I'm gonna make one.
Speaker 1: Um now of the people who are already there, Columbus
Speaker 1: showed now no real pretense of kindness. He described them
Speaker 1: as cow wardly and beyond hope of cure. It is
Speaker 1: right that this tower should be built, he insisted. And
Speaker 1: it is as it should be. Being so far from
Speaker 1: your Highness is that they may recognize the skill of
Speaker 1: Your Highness's subjects and what they can do, so that
Speaker 1: they may serve them with love and fear. So he's like,
Speaker 1: part of what he's saying here is that the reason
Speaker 1: we should build a fortress here is to show these
Speaker 1: people is to have, is to provide a physical, like
Speaker 1: a physical example of the power of the Spanish crown. Right.
Speaker 1: We don't need this fortress because to defend ourselves from them,
Speaker 1: because they're harmless. What we need it for is that
Speaker 1: they never forget that now they're subjects of the kingdom.
Speaker 1: Here exactly we are, pennywise. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna build
Speaker 1: us a little death star in the middle of their
Speaker 1: nice little Caribbean islands so they never forget that the
Speaker 1: empires on their fucking absolute construction on the town. The
Speaker 1: death that is, that is his brilliant idea. So he said,
Speaker 1: he leaves about forty of his guys there to create
Speaker 1: a new settlement, and they're meant to build up infrastructure
Speaker 1: using native labor to hell and collect gold for Spain
Speaker 1: that's going to be there upon their return. Carol Delaney
Speaker 1: writes that the men he left behind were just super
Speaker 1: jazzed for the opportunity. Quote, Well, once his men had
Speaker 1: desperately feared they would not be able to return to Spain,
Speaker 1: they now began to happle who over who would be
Speaker 1: fortunate enough to stay on the island while Columbus and
Speaker 1: the rest of the crew would attempt to return to
Speaker 1: Spain on the tiny Nina. That's good, now, Michael. Let's
Speaker 1: let's let's let's think here. Let's wargame this out right.
Speaker 1: You've got these people who Columbus has already said every
Speaker 1: single time they come upon a village with the people
Speaker 1: that he has to stop them from stealing, right, And
Speaker 1: now he's like, I'm going to leave some of you
Speaker 1: here alone with weapons, and they're all suddenly very excited
Speaker 1: to be in that crew. Do you think they have plants? Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put this fox in this grain and the
Speaker 1: suck in my boat all together, and I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: over there. Do you think maybe something bad might be
Speaker 1: about to happen with these guys? But you know who
Speaker 1: would never for rob an island of people blind because
Speaker 1: I don't think it's physically possible. If you're going to
Speaker 1: say what I think you're gonna say, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: The products and services and support this podcast when sets
Speaker 1: up the island that you can hunt children on, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, Michael, you and I should hang out
Speaker 1: on one of these days. It's a great, great place
Speaker 1: for a vacation. They're not they're not robbing, they're island
Speaker 1: off the coast of Indonesia. They're creating value. You know,
Speaker 1: that island was just uninhabited by anything other than people
Speaker 1: when they came here. And now they've turned it into
Speaker 1: a hunting preserve. You know that's value. Right before then,
Speaker 1: we weren't aware that cloth could be cut in the
Speaker 1: shape that shape, that apron shape. It isn't worth it
Speaker 1: for the apron. The april alone. An has made their
Speaker 1: island worthwhile Michael, here's some AD's Okay, we're back. So
Speaker 1: you know, Columbus is uh. It's interesting here because, like
Speaker 1: he is, he's leaving these guys behind, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them are very excited to get to stay on
Speaker 1: the island and get up to the ship they're going
Speaker 1: to get up to. But it's also worth noting that
Speaker 1: like Columbus is potentially dooming them all based on his
Speaker 1: own vanity and desire for advancement, because he's very good
Speaker 1: at navigating, right, he has navigated his way to and
Speaker 1: through the Caribbean with extreme facility, But the notes that
Speaker 1: he's written on how to get there and back are
Speaker 1: totally nonsense from a nautical point of view. Purposefully, he
Speaker 1: has written the wrong way to get there and back
Speaker 1: in his notes because he doesn't want to risk getting
Speaker 1: intercepted by a foreign power and giving them directions to
Speaker 1: the New World. Right now, that's reasonable in a way, right,
Speaker 1: because this is a valuable secret and when you do
Speaker 1: it in code or in some way that you could
Speaker 1: still understand where you're going. Well, he can, he knows
Speaker 1: how to get but no one else he's so here's
Speaker 1: the thing, though, He's leaving all these dudes behind, and
Speaker 1: no one else is going to be able to find them,
Speaker 1: like where he to have died on the voyage in
Speaker 1: people died for no fucking reason back then, all of
Speaker 1: those guys would have just been doomed. It's also the screenwriter,
Speaker 1: and he just can't get over what a huge turn
Speaker 1: in like dooming so many lives. That that moment is
Speaker 1: where he decides in his sick little brain, Yeah, oh
Speaker 1: I was supposed to stay here. Why because I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to take dominion of this land, all of it. You're
Speaker 1: like done done Dune, Yes, fuck um. But it is
Speaker 1: it is funny that he is essentially gambling the lives
Speaker 1: of his men on the hope that he, a middle
Speaker 1: aged guy in the four hundreds, isn't going to like
Speaker 1: die and leave them stranded forever. I just do I
Speaker 1: find I find that also funny. Obviously that's not a
Speaker 1: particularly great crime in the Columbus canon, but it does
Speaker 1: say a lot about him as a dude that he
Speaker 1: just doesn't even think about it, not for a second time.
Speaker 1: Is there is an ounce of concern, what if we
Speaker 1: need to get back what you know, left at the
Speaker 1: Big Rock or whatever. I gotta just say, like, come on,
Speaker 1: figure it out. So Columbus begins his journey home on
Speaker 1: January two, but despite days of begging from the Cacique
Speaker 1: that he's stayed to provide protection from the Caribs. Before
Speaker 1: he left, he christened his new settlement on his Spaniola
Speaker 1: Novedad and wrote in a letter to his sovereigns that
Speaker 1: when he returned to the island, he was sure that
Speaker 1: he would quote find a barrel of gold that those
Speaker 1: who were left behind would have acquired by exchange, and
Speaker 1: that they would have found the gold mine and the
Speaker 1: spicery and those things in such quantity that the Sovereigns,
Speaker 1: before three years are over, will undertake to go and
Speaker 1: conquer the Holy Sepulcher. For this, I urged your highnesses
Speaker 1: to spend all the profits of this my enterprise on
Speaker 1: the conquest of Jerusalem. All right. So yeah, he's like,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be great, it's going to change the world.
Speaker 1: It is well, because what he's saying here is that
Speaker 1: what I'm leaving them on the island to to collect
Speaker 1: gold and find a mind and find spices, which number
Speaker 1: one Carol Delaney is like he just wanted them there
Speaker 1: to watch his friend and to set up a settle
Speaker 1: it so people could live essentially set up a human
Speaker 1: Bitcoin mine. Yeah, that that's actually what he's doing, and
Speaker 1: he wants he's doing it all for Jerusalem, baby. So
Speaker 1: one of the last things Columbus did was he delivered
Speaker 1: a letter to the man he was leaving in charge
Speaker 1: of navadad Uh. It contained instructions and was signed instead
Speaker 1: of with Columbus's usual signature, it was signed with something new.
Speaker 1: This is the first time he starts using what instead
Speaker 1: of like his signature. Is this bizarre glyph that he
Speaker 1: invints for himself during the voyage um and he creates
Speaker 1: this like glyph to sign things with because he's now
Speaker 1: grown convinced that he's being guided by God to some
Speaker 1: holy end. And here's how Carol Delaney describes this. The
Speaker 1: sigil resembles a ship in full sale and consists of
Speaker 1: three rows of letters in the shape of a triangle.
Speaker 1: The meaning of the last line is clear. Expo Ferends
Speaker 1: is a combination of Greek and Latin words meaning Christ bearer.
Speaker 1: Columbus must have believed that he had made good on
Speaker 1: his identification with his namesake St. Christopher, though during the voyage,
Speaker 1: Columbus must have gotten much thought to the letters in
Speaker 1: their arrangement. To this day, they remain undeciphered, despite the
Speaker 1: efforts of many people through the ages. What interpretation is
Speaker 1: that the initials stand for serve Us at the top,
Speaker 1: and then some altissimy Salvadorus on the second line and
Speaker 1: Christe Maria Jesu on the third, all of which translates
Speaker 1: as I am the servant of the Most High Savior,
Speaker 1: Oh Christ Mary Joseph. Another interpretation is servadors who's als
Speaker 1: Teca's sacras Christo Maria Isabel, that is, the humble servant
Speaker 1: of their most sacred Majesty's Christ Mary and Isabella. So
Speaker 1: he's he's he's kind of gone full extremist here. Um,
Speaker 1: he's he's. He's like built himself a logo. That doesn't
Speaker 1: that number one. He's like among primarily himself. Yeah, he is,
Speaker 1: he is, he is. He is signing himself now as
Speaker 1: like the agent of God, right, like the person who
Speaker 1: is going to like bring about the apocalypse and designs
Speaker 1: of Jerusalem. Yeah, like put it in a little cool triangle.
Speaker 1: He's spending a lot of writing figured it out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got we never got his notes, his little trapper
Speaker 1: keeper as he figured out how to do all the
Speaker 1: fail the alternate ones, and takes some little ship he
Speaker 1: was gonna doodle anyway. That's that we're now at like
Speaker 1: full christ Bearer Columbus, who is number one, convinced that
Speaker 1: he and by like he and the sovereigns now own
Speaker 1: this place right because again he part of his deal
Speaker 1: with them is that if they take it, he gets
Speaker 1: to be the governor and he gets a cut of
Speaker 1: all the profits um. And he's also convinced that he
Speaker 1: is being directly guided by God to take possession of
Speaker 1: this in order to fund the Holy War. So that's
Speaker 1: it is striking how often people who have acquired or
Speaker 1: on the verge of acquiring completely like you know, unevenly levered,
Speaker 1: like advantage over something, or to suck a huge amount
Speaker 1: of resource up, suddenly decide that it's good. This is happening,
Speaker 1: and God one to this to happen, and it's great.
Speaker 1: And that's why it's fine. I love it. I love
Speaker 1: being on the show, Robert. I'm glad this is all
Speaker 1: we ever do together, episode after episode. Yes, next we
Speaker 1: will be talking about Christopher Columbus's feet. Now, this is
Speaker 1: largely going to be based on you know my personal
Speaker 1: theories um slash erotic dreams. But I think people will
Speaker 1: still get a lot out of it. Michael, I hope
Speaker 1: you do. I'm turgid, So let's go. Do you have
Speaker 1: any plugs you want to plug before we roll out? God?
Speaker 1: Not after that. Thanks for the opportunity, Robert, always have
Speaker 1: a blast here. Uh yeah, my name's Michael Swain. You
Speaker 1: can find me on Twitter mostly at swain Underscore Corp.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear me on a whole
Speaker 1: variety of podcasts, search up small Beans, which is the
Speaker 1: name of my imprint, or head over to patreon dot
Speaker 1: com slash small Beans. I've also got another show that's
Speaker 1: not on that network called One Upsmanship, a brand new
Speaker 1: video games podcas test on the I Heart network. Check
Speaker 1: it out if you're interested in video games as an
Speaker 1: art form, because that's what we think it is. By we,
Speaker 1: I mean myself and my co host Adam Ganzer again
Speaker 1: that's the number one and then ups men ship check
Speaker 1: it out. Excellent. Alright, so the episodes over go home.
Speaker 1: Everybody Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 1: Zone Media. Dot com, or check us out on the
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