Discovering Gold, God, and Generalization

In all honesty, I like to blame Columbus for what happend to the Native Americans.  In elementary school, "sailing the ocean blue in 1492" was quite a heroic task, but then in high school, it seemed that hating him for all the rape, diseases, and repression was a good way to take avengeance for the genocide.

Yet, Todorov's remarks on the "self" and "other," as well as his portrayal of Columbus, make me realize that the blame has many dimensions.  Though Columbus was the catalyst of the many horrible outcomes of conquest, he really was a participant of a greater social context and a slave to human nature.  In terms of social context, Columbus is the quintessential man from the Age of Exploration.  He had the courage and ambition to finanace a trip across unchartered territory.  He wanted to be considered a pious Christian figure, with the Spanish version of his name meaning "bearer of Christ" (Cristobal) and "repopulator" (Colón) (26).  Yet, his monetary "means" replaced this "end."  Like most human beings, Columbus became greedy. . . .

Or, for a more exact emotion, Columbus was too proud.  This pride was most dangerous because it was rooted in ignorance.  Believing his own culture and ways to communicate to be right, the "conquest of knowledge" became a "conquest of power" (Pagden qtd. xii).  Thus, ignorance was bliss because he usurped unlimited authority over the Native Americans.  They could not resist his orders because the whole theme of conquest from an outsider was unprecedented. 

Consequently, we cannot "blame" Columbus in the sense that he mirrors Caesar, the notion of U.S. paternalism, or our own inward human instincts.  It is difficult to blame blindness and narrow-mindedness.  If we do wish to "blame" Columbus, it can only because he was the performer of unjustly acts which did cause destruction.  All actions have consequences.  "Taking the fifth" because of cultural ignorance cannot erase the guilt and his decision to perpetuate those norms.  Columbus's thinking could have been a product of both the conscious and un-conscious, but if supposing the conscious, remember that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out against slavery.