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Christopher ColumbusExplorer of The New World

(Document 1)

He led four expeditions to the New World, but never accomplished his original goal—a western ocean route to Asia. Instead, Christopher Columbus opened up exploration between Europe and America. Discover the history behind the holiday of Columbus Day.He was determined to find a western route to Asia, but wound up discovering the New World. Despite his accomplishments, he died a broken, largely forgotten man. Christopher Columbus wanted to find a new route to Asia, but became the first European to set foot on the New World. Evidence now proves that the Vikings were there long before him, but even in his own time, later explorers usurped his glory! He convinced Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to fund his journey. He never gave up believing that he had reached Asia. His fortunes and reputation sank so quickly that by the time of his fourth voyage Spanish officials would not let him anchor in their waters.The dream that led him across the horizon to the fortunes that deserted him and the ongoing controversy over his true place in history, form the dramatic story of Christopher Columbus.

Christopher ColumbusIn Spanish he is called Cristobal Colon, in Portuguese Cristovio Colombo and in Italian Cristoforo Colombo. Italian mariner and navigator Christopher Columbus was widely believed to be the first European to sail across the Atlantic Ocean and successfully land on the American continent. Born between August and October 1451, in Genoa, Italy, Columbus was the eldest son of Domenico Colombo, a wool-worker and small-scale merchant, and his wife, Susanna Fontanarossa; he had two younger brothers, Bartholomew and Diego. He received little formal education and was a largely self-taught man, later learning to read Latin and write Castilian. Columbus began working at sea early on, and made his first considerable voyage, to the Aegean island of Chios, in 1475. A year later, he survived a shipwreck off Cape St. Vincent and swam ashore, after which he moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where his brother Bartholomew, an expert chart maker, was living. Both brothers worked as chartmakers, but Columbus already nurtured dreams of making his fortune at sea. In 1477, he sailed to England and Ireland, and possibly Iceland, with the Portuguese marine, and he was engaged as a sugar buyer in the Portuguese islands off Africa (the Azores, Cape Verde, and Madeira) by a Genoese mercantile firm. He met pilots and navigators who believed in the existence of islands farther west. It was at this time that he made his last visit to his native city, but he always remained a Genoese, never becoming a naturalized citizen of any other country.Returning to Lisbon, he married the well-born Dona Filipa Perestrello e Moniz in 1479. Their son, Diego, was born in 1480. Felipa died in 1485, and Columbus later began a relationship with Beatriz Enríquez de Harana of Cordoba, with whom he had a second son, Ferdinand. (Columbus and Beatriz never married, but he provided for her in his will and legitimatized Ferdinand, in accordance with Castilian law.)By the time he was 31 or 32, Columbus had become a master mariner in the Portuguese merchant service. It is thought by some that he was greatly influenced by his brother, Bartholomew, who may have accompanied Bartholomew Diaz on his voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, and by Martin Alonso Pinzon, the pilot who commanded the Pinta on the first voyage. Columbus was but one among many who believed one could reach land by sailing west.By the mid-1480s, Columbus had become focused on his plans of discovery, chief among them the desire to discover a westward route to Asia. In 1484, he had asked King John II of Portugal to back his voyage west, but had been refused. The next year, he went to Spain with his young son, Diego, to seek the aid of Queen Isabella of Castile and her husband, King Ferdinand of Aragon. Though the Spanish monarchs at first rejected Columbus, they gave him a small annuity to live on, and he remained hopeful of convincing them. In January of 1492, after being twice rebuffed, Columbus obtained the support of

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Ferdinand and Isabella. The favorable response came directly after the fall of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, which led Spanish Christians to believe they were close to eliminating the spread of Islam in southern Europe and beyond. Christian missionary zeal, as well as the desire to increase Spanish prominence in Europe over that of Portugal and the desire for gold and conquest, were the primary driving forces behind Columbus' historic voyage.Columbus would make four voyages to the West Indies, but by the end of his final voyage, Columbus' health had deteriorated; he was suffering from arthritis as well as the aftereffects of a bout with malaria. With a small portion of the gold brought from Hispaniola, Columbus was able to live relatively comfortably in Seville for the last year of his life. He was emotionally diminished, however, and felt that the Spanish monarchs had failed to live up to their side of the agreement and provide him with New World property and gold, especially after Isabella's death. Columbus followed the court of King Ferdinand from Segovia to Salamanca to Vallodid seeking redress, but was rejected. He died in Vallodid on May 20, 1506. His remains were later moved to the Cathedral of Santo Domingo in Hispaniola, where they were laid with those of his son Diego. They were returned to Spain in 1899 and interred in Seville Cathedral.

Columbus ControversyAlthough Columbus was not the first European mariner to sail to the New World - the Vikings set up colonies (c.1000) in Greenland and Newfoundland - his voyages mark the beginning of continuous European efforts to explore and colonize the Americas. The debate over Columbus' character and legacy has continued into the twenty-first century, revived in 1992 with the celebration of the quincentenary of his first voyage to the New World. During the 1980s and 90s, the image of Columbus as a hero was tarnished by criticism from Native Americans and revisionist historians. Though the United States celebrates a national holiday in his honor (on the second Monday of October, closest to October 12, the date of the first landfall in 1492), much more attention has been paid in recent years to the Spanish explorers' treatment of the Native American peoples, and the word "discovery" has been replaced by "encounter" when used to describe Columbus' achievements in regard to the Americas. Columbus went to his grave believing he had reached the shores of Cathay, and that he was a divine missionary, ordained by God to spread Christianity into the New World.In modern society, many have made Columbus out to be a villain and a symbol for all that is exploitative and predatory about the colonization of the Americas by Europe. Traditional historians view his voyages as opening the New World to Western civilization and Christianity. For revisionist historians, however, his voyages symbolize the more brutal aspects of European colonization and represent the beginning of the destruction of Native American peoples and culture. One point of agreement among all interpretations is that his voyages were one of the turning points in history.

History of the holiday The first recorded celebration honoring the discovery of America by Europeans took place on October 12, 1792 in New York City. The event, which celebrated the 300th anniversary of Columbus' landing in the New World, was organized by The Society of St. Tammany (also known as the Columbian Order). San Francisco's Italian community held their first Columbus Day celebration in 1869. In 1892, President Benjamin Harrison urged citizens to participate in the the 400th anniversary celebration of Columbus' first voyage. It was during this event that the Pledge of Allegiance, written by Francis Bellamy, was recited publicly for the first time.Colorado was the first state to observe the holiday in 1905.In 1937, President Roosevelt proclaimed October 12 as "Columbus Day" and in 1971, President Nixon declared the second Monday of October a national holiday.

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PAGE The first recorded celebration honoring the discovery of America by Europeans took place on October 12, 1792 in New York City.

Source:History.comhttp://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=mini_home&mini_id=1044(Checked 5 July 2012)

(Document 2)Christopher Columbus

Biography

Born: c. 1450, Genoa? ItalyDied: May 20, 1506, Valladolid, Spain

Occupation: Maritime explorer for the Crown of CastileSummaryChristopher Columbus (Genoa?, Italy, 1451? – Valladolid, Spain, May 20, 1506) was a navigator and maritime explorer credited as the discoverer of the Americas. Born in Italy, his birth name was Cristoforo Colombo, though he is commonly more associated with Spain because he was sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs. He eventually became an admiral for the Crown of Castillo. The name Christopher Columbus is the English translation of the Italian Cristoforo Colombo.Columbus' voyages across the Atlantic Ocean began a European effort at exploration and colonization of the Western Hemisphere. While history places great significance on his first voyage of 1492, he did not actually reach the mainland until his third voyage in 1498. He was not the earliest European explorer to reach the Americas, as there are accounts of European transatlantic contact prior to 1492. Nevertheless, Columbus's voyage came at a critical time of growing national imperialism and economic competition between developing nation states seeking wealth from the establishment of trade routes and colonies. Therefore, the period before 1492 is known as “Pre-Columbian”.The anniversary of the 1492 voyage (“Columbus Day”) is observed throughout the Americas and in Spain and Italy. Columbus has always been a divisive figure - contemporary perceptions of him at various royal courts, among the people living in the lands that he claimed for Spain, and even among his own followers and colleagues evidenced extreme disagreements about his actions and intentions. Competing historical interpretations of his life and legacy continue this tradition of discord.

LifeNo authentic contemporary portrait of Columbus has ever been found. The identity of Columbus is still not certain. It is most widely accepted that he was Italian, born in the Republic of Genoa, in Italy. It has also been surmised he could have been from Catalonia, Spain, or Portugal; which produced the greatest navigators of his time. Certainly, there were ties between Spain and the Italian nation-states; King Ferdinand II of Aragon was also the King of Sicily. Some theories suggest that he was actually Basque; the Basques are one of the most ancient mariner communities of Middle Ages Europe. Clues to Columbus' origin such as learned languages and DNA samples have been studied; but no definitive answer has yet been revealed.

Early lifeAccording to generally recognized theory, Columbus was born between August and October 1451 in Genoa. His father was Domenico Colombo, a middle-class wool weaver working between Genoa and Savona. Susanna Fontanarossa was his mother and Bartolomeo was his brother. Bartolomeo worked in a cartography workshop in Lisbon for at least part of his adulthood.While information about Columbus' early years is scarce, he probably received an incomplete education. He spoke a Genoese dialect of Italian. In one of his writings, Columbus claims to have gone to the sea at the

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PAGE age of 10. In the early 1470s, he was in the service of René I of Anjou in a Genoese ship hired to support his unfortunate attempt to conquer the Kingdom of Naples. Later he allegedly made a trip to Chios, in the Aegean Sea. In May 1476, he took part in an armed convoy sent by Genoa to carry a valuable cargo to northern Europe. On August 13, 1476, the convoy was intercepted by Portuguese ships off the coast of southern Portugal. Columbus was wounded in the battle that ensued, but managed to land at the small town of Lagos.

Physical appearance Although an abundance of artwork involving Christopher Columbus exists, no authentic contemporary portrait of the man has been found. In 1595, Theodore de Bry made an etching after a painting of Columbus, made in his lifetime. The etching shows resemblance with the portrait of Sebastiano del Piombo, so this painting might depict Columbus with some accuracy. Over the years, artists who reconstruct his appearance have done so from written descriptions. These writings describe him as having reddish hair, which turned to white early in his life, as well as being a lighter skinned person with too much sun exposure turning his face red.

LanguageAlthough Genoese documents have been found about a weaver named “Colombo”, it has also been noted that, in the preserved documents, Columbus wrote almost exclusively in Spanish, and that he used the language, with Portuguese or Catalan phonetics, even when writing personal notes to himself, to his brother, Italian friends, and to the Bank of Genoa. His two brothers, wool-weavers from Genoa, also wrote in Spanish.There is a small handwritten Genoese gloss in an Italian edition of Pliny's Natural History that he read on his second voyage to America. However, it displays both Spanish and Portuguese influences. Genoese Italian was not a written language in the 15th century. There is also a note in non-Genoese Italian in his own Book of Prophecies exhibiting, according to historian August Kling, "...characteristics of northern Italian humanism in its calligraphy, syntax, and spelling." Columbus took great care and pride in writing this form of Italian.Phillips and Phillips point out that 500 years ago, the Latinate languages had not distanced themselves to the degree they have today. Bartolomé de las Casas in his Historia de las Indias claimed that Columbus did not know Spanish well and that he was not born in Castile. In his letters he refers to himself frequently, if cryptically, as a "foreigner." Ramón Menéndez Pidal studied the language of Columbus in 1942, suggesting that while still in Genoa, Columbus learned notions of Portugalized Spanish from travelers, who used a sort of commercial Latin or lingua franca (latín ginobisco for Spaniards). He suggests that Columbus learned Spanish in Portugal through its use in Portugal as or "adopted language of culture" from 1450. This same Spanish is used by poets like Fernán Silveira and Joan Manuel. The first testimony of his use of Spanish is from the 1480s. Menendez Pidal and many others detect a lot of Portuguese in his Spanish, where he mixes, for example, falar and hablar. But, Menendez Pidal does not accept the hypothesis of a Galician origin for Columbus by noting that where Portuguese and Galician diverged, Columbus always used the Portuguese form.Latin, on the other hand, was the language of scholarship, and here Columbus excelled. He also kept his journal in Latin, and a "secret" journal in Greek.According to historian Charles Merrill, analysis of his handwriting indicates that it is typical of someone who was a native Catalan, and Columbus' phonetic mistakes in Spanish are "most likely" those of a Catalan. Also, Merrill claims that he married a Portuguese noblewoman, Filipa Perestrello e Moniz, the daughter of Bartolomeu Perestrelo, who had been made first governor of Porto Santo in the Madeiras. She was also the granddaughter of Gil Moniz, who came from one of the oldest families in Portugal, and who

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PAGE had been a close companion of Prince Henry the Navigator. This is presented as evidence that his origin was of nobility rather than the Italian merchant class, since it was unheard of during his time for nobility to marry outside their class. This same theory suggests he was the illegitimate son of a prominent Catalan sea-faring family, which had served as mercenaries in a sea battle against Castilian forces. Fighting against Ferdinand and being illegitimate were two excellent reasons for keeping his origins obscure. Furthermore, the disinterment of his brother's body shows him to be a different age, by nearly a decade, than the "Giacomo Colombo" of the Genoese family.In a little accepted theory expanding upon the "Chios theory" of Columbus' origin; he was the son of a Genoese noble family in Greece—which accounts for his penchant for the Greek language—who migrated at an early age to Castilla & Leon near a large Portuguese city, where he adopted Latin, Portuguese, and Spanish (Castellano) for their potential uses in his journey. As such, this theory explains how he was an accomplished linguist and how his theories and plans could have been conceived much ahead of time than what is normally accepted.

Background to voyages: Navigational hypothesesEurope had long enjoyed a safe passage to China and India— sources of valued goods such as silk, spices and opiates— under the hegemony of the Mongol Empire (the Pax Mongolica, or "Mongol peace"). With the Fall of Constantinople to the Muslims in 1453, the land route to Asia was no longer an easy route. Portuguese sailors took to traveling south around Africa to get to Asia. Columbus had a different idea. By the 1480s, he had developed a plan to travel to the Indies, then construed roughly as all of south and east Asia, by sailing directly west across the "Ocean Sea," i.e., the Atlantic.Following Washington Irving's myth-filled 1828 biography of Columbus, it became common supposed knowledge that Columbus had difficulty obtaining support for his plan because Europeans believed that the earth was flat. In fact, few people at the time of Columbus’s voyage, and virtually no sailors or navigators, believed this. Most agreed that the earth was a sphere. This had been the general opinion of ancient Greek science, and continued as the standard opinion (for example of Bede in The Reckoning of Time) until Isidore of Seville misread the classical authors and stated the earth was flat, inventing the “T and O map concept”. This view was very influential, but never wholly accepted. Knowledge of the Earth's spherical nature was not limited to scientists: for instance, Dante's Divine Comedy is based on a spherical Earth. Columbus put forth arguments that were based on the circumference of the sphere. Most scholars accepted Ptolemy's claim that the terrestrial landmass (for Europeans of the time, comprising Eurasia and Africa) occupied 180 degrees of the terrestrial sphere, leaving 180 degrees of water.Columbus, however, believed the calculations of Marinus of Tyre that the landmass occupied 225 degrees, leaving only 135 degrees of water. Moreover, Columbus believed that one degree represented a shorter distance on the earth's surface than was commonly held. Finally, he read maps as if the distances were calculated in Italian miles (1,238 meters). Accepting the length of a degree to be 56⅔ miles, from the writings of Alfraganus, he therefore calculated the circumference of the Earth as 25,255 kilometers at most, and the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan as 3,000 Italian miles (3,700 km) which is 2300 statute miles. Columbus did not realize that Al-Farghani used the much longer Arabic mile of about 1,830 meters.The problem facing Columbus was that experts did not accept his estimate of the distance to the Indies. The true circumference of the Earth is about 40,000 kilometers (25,000 statute miles), and the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan is 19,600 kilometers (12,200 statute miles). No ship in the 15th century could carry enough food to sail from the Canary Islands to Japan. Most European sailors and navigators concluded, correctly, that sailors undertaking a westward voyage from Europe to Asia non-stop would die of starvation or thirst long before reaching their destination. Spain however, only recently unified through the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, was desperate for a competitive edge over other European countries in trade with the East Indies. Columbus promised them that edge.

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PAGE Columbus' calculations were inaccurate concerning the circumference of the Earth and the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan. However, almost all Europeans were mistaken in thinking the aquatic expanse between Europe and Asia was uninterrupted. Although Columbus died believing he had opened up a direct nautical route to Asia, in fact he had established a nautical route between Europe and the Americas. The route to America, rather than to Japan, gave Spain a competitive edge in developing a mercantile empire.

Campaign for fundingIn 1485, Columbus presented his plans to John II, King of Portugal. He proposed the king equip three sturdy ships and grant Columbus one year's time to sail out into the Atlantic, search for a western route to Orient, and then return home. Columbus also requested he be made "Great Admiral of the Ocean", created governor of any and all lands he discovered, and given one-tenth of all revenue from those lands discovered. The king submitted the proposal to his experts, who rejected it. It was their considered opinion that Columbus' proposed route of 2,400 miles was, in fact, far too short.In 1488, Columbus appealed to the court of Portugal once again, and once again John invited him to an audience. It too was to come to nothing, for not long afterwards came the arrival of Portugal's native son

Bartholomeu Dias from a successful rounding of the Horn of Africa. Portugal was no longer interested in trailblazing a western route to the East.Columbus traveled from Portugal, weary but determined, once more to both Genoa and Venice; from neither was he given any encouragement. Previously he had his brother sound out Henry VII of England, to see if the British monarch might not be more amiable to Columbus' proposal. After much carefully considered hesitation, Henry's invitation came, but it came too late. Columbus had already committed himself to Spain.He had sought an audience from the monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, who had united the largest kingdoms of Spain by marrying and were ruling together. On May 1, 1486, permission having been granted, Columbus laid his plans before Queen Isabella, who, in turn, referred it to a committee. After the passing of much time, these savants of Spain, like their counterparts in Portugal, reported back that Columbus had judged the distance to Asia too short, much too short. They pronounced the idea impractical, and advised their Royal Highness' to pass on the proposed venture.However, to keep Columbus from taking his ideas elsewhere, and perhaps to keep their options open, the King and Queen of Spain gave him an annual annuity of 12,000 maravedis ($87,000?) and furnished him with a letter ordering all Spanish cities and towns to provide him food and lodging at no cost.After continually lobbying at the Spanish court, he finally had success in 1492. Ferdinand and Isabella had just conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian peninsula and they received Columbus in Córdoba, in the Alcázar castle. Isabella turned Columbus down on the advice of her confessor, and he was leaving town in despair, when Ferdinand intervened. Isabella then sent a royal guard to fetch him and Ferdinand later rightfully claimed credit for being "...the principal cause why those islands were discovered...". King Ferdinand is referred to as "losing his patience" in this issue, but this cannot be proven.About half of the financing was to come from private Italian investors, whom Columbus had already lined up. Financially broke after the Granada campaign, the monarchs left it to the royal treasurer to shift funds among various royal accounts on behalf of the enterprise. Columbus was to be made, "...Admiral of the Seas..." and would receive a portion of all profits. The terms were unusually generous, but as his own son later wrote, the monarchs did not really expect him to return.According to the contract that Columbus made with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, if Columbus discovered any new islands or mainland, he would receive many high rewards. In terms of power, he would be given the rank of “Admiral of the Ocean Sea” (Atlantic Ocean) and appointed Viceroy and Governor of all the new lands. He has the right to nominate three persons, from whom the sovereigns would choose one, for any office in the new lands. He would be entitled to 10 percent of all the revenues

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PAGE from the new lands in perpetuity; this part was denied to him in the contract, although it was one of his demands. Finally, he would also have the option of buying one-eighth interest in any commercial venture with the new lands and receive one-eighth of the profits.Columbus was later arrested in 1500, and supplanted from these posts. After his death, Columbus's sons Diego and Fernando took legal action to enforce their father's contract. Many of the smears against Columbus were initiated by the Spanish crown during these lengthy court cases, known as “ the pleitos colombinos”. The family had some success in their first litigation, as a judgment of 1511 confirmed Diego's position as Viceroy, but reduced his powers. Diego resumed litigation in 1512, which lasted until 1536, and further disputes continued until 1790.

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus(Checked 5 July 2012)

(Document 3)U.S.News & World Report Inc.

From the 7/24/00 issue“A leaf from Leif: Columbus might have been a Viking disciple”

BY BRUCE B. AUSTER

Pirates attacked Columbus's ship west of Gibraltar, as he headed north to England. The young Italian crewman, his vessel ablaze, gripped an oar to keep from drowning and swam to shore. He caught the next ship to the end of the Earth. Fifteen years before his mission to the New World, the story goes, Columbus reached Iceland, the land

known in legend as Ultima Thule, the farthest possible place in the world, where "land, water, and air are all mixed together." The mysterious island boasted volcanoes, lava-black beaches, and snowy white landscapes. It may also have been the birthplace of Columbus's bold leap to America. Historians continue to search for new documentation to prove that Columbus reached Iceland and, if he did, whether his stay there, at age 25, stirred the adventurer to imagine that a passage to China lay to the west, across the Atlantic. Some 500 years earlier, the Vikings had set sail from Iceland and ultimately reached the New World. Could

Columbus have heard the stories of Leif Ericson's voyage to the place called Vinland? If the story is true, "Columbus would have learned from Icelandic sailors that there was land to the west," says William Fitzhugh, a curator of the Smithsonian Institution's exhibit "Vikings," which opened in April in Washington and will travel for two years throughout North America.

We're No.1. It is no coincidence that historians in Scandinavia are cheerleaders for the Columbus-in-Iceland saga while

those in Italy turn up their noses. If the Viking backers are right, Columbus not only arrived in America after the Vikings, he borrowed their idea. The Vikings did beat Columbus to America, an accomplishment no longer in dispute. Forty years ago, archaeologists discovered evidence of a Viking set tlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, in Newfoundland. No other Viking sites have been found despite exhaustive, and sometimes ridiculous, efforts. But the ruins of buildings discovered at L'Anse aux Meadows confirmed the essential details of the Vinland Sagas, the two oral tales that describe the journeys of Eric the Red to Greenland and Leif Ericson and others to North America. Scholars cannot be sure Columbus even reached Iceland. The case isn't ironclad because only one fragment

of evidence from Columbus's day remains: The explorer's son, in his biography of his father, cites Columbus's memoirs, in which he describes the voyage of February 1477. For years, historians did not know what to make of the account. Many details were accurate: The winter that year was mild, so waters in the north were navigable. Others were wrong: Columbus badly misstates Iceland's latitude. But the errors, because they reflect the limited knowledge of the time, are now seen as proof of the memoir's authenticity. In 1484, just

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seven years after he is believed to have stopped in Iceland, Columbus proposed to the king of Portugal that he could reach China by crossing the Atlantic.

Small world. No single spark lighted the explorer's imagination. Before his voyage, Columbus would have known of

Marco Polo's journey to China. He is also believed to have studied Ptolemy's Guide to Geography, a brilliant Roman-era work by the Greek astronomer who argued that the sun revolved around the Earth. His Geography, though influential, vastly underestimated the size of the Earth. That led Colum bus to believe a shorter route to China and India could be found to the west. Ptolemy's teachings may have only confirmed what he knew from the Viking sagas: that a westward passage was possible. That Columbus wasn't first to America is unthinkable to many. Ken Feder, debunker and author of Frauds,

Myths, and Mysteries, gets the most hate mail from Columbus lovers. "I expect psychic archaeologists to get on my case, not the Columbus appreciation society," he says. Others suggest the Viking discovery had no lasting importance. "It is unquestionable that the Vikings got there first, if getting there is all that matters," says historian David Henige, who analyzed the journal of Columbus's first voyage. "But Columbus catalyzed settlement of the New World." Might the Vikings have the jump there, too? New evidence being gathered by archaeologists may prove that the Vikings maintained elaborate trade relations with native North Americans for some 350 years. "If the Norse were huddling in Greenland trying to survive, that's one thing,'' says the Smithsonian's Fitzhugh. "But if they were exploring, meeting natives, and trading, then that's a new chapter in American history that hasn't been explored." Paolo Emilio Taviani entitled his biography of Columbus The Grand Design. But the adventures of

Columbus and the Vikings, five centuries apart, suggest how both will and chance shape history. Columbus's design was grounded in error and miscalculation–but it succeeded brilliantly. Olafur Egilsson, a former board member of Iceland's historical society who believes that Columbus reached Iceland, thinks the visit could have been crucial. "It might have given Columbus confidence to know there were lands on the other side of the ocean," he says. Perhaps that's why, when the crew of the Santa María nearly rebelled, afraid the winds would never turn and blow them home again, Columbus calmed them, then kept sailing west.

© U.S.News & World Report Inc. All rights reservedSource: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/doubleissue/mysteries/columbus.htm(Checked 5 July 2012)

(Document 4)The Washington Post/Newsweek

Columbus Day: Celebrating a Truly New WorldAnthony Stevens Arroyo

10 October 2008

Columbus Day is now "contested" - as current terminology would have it. Some view with joy the anniversary of the navigator's historic landing in part of the Bahamas. Others see October 12 as a day to mark the beginning of oppression, enslavement and genocide. Both sides claim Catholic America as their home.

As a Latino Catholic, I prefer a third option -- a Latin American version of Columbus Day as Día de la Raza, a day we celebrate the beginning of a "new breed" within the human family. José Vasconcelos, the Mexican philosopher, called it the Cosmic Breed.

The conflicting approaches to Columbus Day is not a trivial matter to be dismissed with a footnote that Columbus did not actually DISCOVER America, inasmuch as people had been there for centuries. This is a

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PAGE fight over control of the symbols of what constitutes America. Did the Western Hemisphere's continents become a "New World" because of Christopher Columbus or in spite of him? And is there another perspective?

Some hold up this Genovese sailor as the far-sighted free thinker who brought science to a benighted age that didn't even realize the world is round. He carried Western civilization to the red-skinned savages scattered about in un-Christian and unproductive societies. In a Protestant 19th-Century United States, Columbus was extolled for having transcended Catholic Spain and Europe when he had placed enterprise and science at the centerpiece of his vision. Thus, it was argued, he constituted the noble "first" American, because the United States alone has followed in his legacy. Towns were named after him in celebration of such achievements. Not to be outdone in this generally Protestant enthusiasm, the Catholic answer to Masonic Lodges named themselves "the Knights of Columbus," emphasizing his Catholicity.

Admittedly, the contrasting view of Columbus has emerged more recently. The Americas already were populated by peoples happily living in harmony with nature, it is said. Columbus brought genocidal epidemics, disastrous wars of conquest and continuing oppression by creating colonial societies that based superiority on racial whiteness. The deaths of tens of millions of Native Americans and the senseless attacks of their cultures and religions were the fault of Christopher Columbus. Rather than a day of rejoicing and parades, October 12th should be observed with mourning and funeral marches.

If you have an Italian Catholic as a friend, you can get a fuller explanation of the first vision of Columbus first hand; if you know a Latino or Latina, turn to them for chapter and verse on the second interpretation of the Admiral of the Ocean Sea. If you have a half-Italian-half-Puerto Rican in your family, as I do, prepare for bewilderment.

History does not provide much solution to this confusion. Columbus was an enigmatic character, both skilled at the helm of his ships and inept as a governor of his discoveries. Moreover, suffering what appears to have been a nervous breakdown when his hair turned completely white almost overnight, his last writings add to the mystery. Was he a nut case with wildly distorted understandings or a saintly mystic of deep piety? At any rate, the debate is about Columbus as a symbol, not as a historical figure.

I rest with the Latin American version of Columbus Day: Día de la Raza. We celebrate not so much the event as its result:-- a "new breed" within the human family. ("Raza" doesn't mean "race" in quite the same way as in English.) Whatever Columbus' intentions or mistakes, Latin America under Spain began to tolerate, legalize and eventually encourage racial intermarriage. Centuries later, the Mexican philosopher, José Vasconcelos, described us as "La Raza Cósmica" (The Cosmic Breed), because we have virtually all of the world's skin colors in our demographic rainbow: white, black, red and yellow.

Racial mixture is what we Latinos and Latinas celebrate on October 12th. As the Puerto Rican patriot Pedro Albizu Campos proclaimed, there is a distinctive Catholic pride in this holiday. Unlike so much of Protestant North America where racial mixing was looked down upon, Catholic Latin America officially recognized the equality of races at the dawn of modern history. I am happy to celebrate Columbus Day by thanking God for my Puerto Rican-Italian nephews and nieces. Let's make October 12 a day for the living, not for the dead.

Source: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/catholicamerica/2008/04/about_this_blog.html(Website no longer active-checked 5 July 2012)-source still good.

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The “American” Legacy of Christopher Columbus

IntroductionAlthough he never set foot in what became the United States, Columbus is often viewed as a hero because of his pivotal role in U.S. history. He has had a cultural significance beyond his actual achievements and actions as an individual, becoming a symbol and figure of legend. Numerous stories about Columbus have cast him as an archetypal figure for both good and for evil.

While other discoverers and immigrants had come to the new world of the Americas before Columbus and it had already been "discovered" many times, Columbus's impact and significance in history has more to do with his time and its effects. His journey came when technical developments in sailing techniques and communication made it possible to report his voyages easily throughout western Europe. In this way Europe was reacquainted with the Americas, and this was followed by many more voyages seeking wealth and expansion.

19th century views of ColumbusThe nascent countries of the New World, particularly the newly independent United States, seemed to need a historical narrative to give them roots. This narrative was supplied in part by Washington Irving in 1828 with The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, which may be the true source of much of the associations held about the explorer.Hero worship of Columbus perhaps reached a zenith around 1892 when the 400th anniversary of his first arrival in the Americas occurred. Monuments to Columbus like the Columbian Exposition in Chicago were erected throughout the United States and Latin America extolling him. Numerous cities, towns, and streets were named after him, including the capital cities of two U.S. states (Columbus, Ohio and Columbia, South Carolina).The story that Columbus thought the world was round while his contemporaries believed in a flat earth was often repeated despite the fact that the real issue was the size of the Earth rather than its roundness. In fact, even Aristotle, a key Classical figure in the Church doctrine of the day, had argued that the Earth was a globe. This tale was used to show that Columbus was enlightened and forward looking. Columbus' apparent defiance of convention in sailing west to get to the far east was hailed as a model of "American"-style can-do inventiveness.The admiration of Columbus was particularly embraced by some members of the Italian American, Hispanic, and Catholic communities. These groups point to Columbus as one of their own to show that Mediterranean Catholics could and did make great contributions to the U.S. The modern vilification of Columbus is seen by his supporters as being politically motivated.

Modern day views of ColumbusCulpability is sometimes placed on contemporary governments and their citizens for the hardship suffered by Native Americans during the time of Christopher Columbus. Columbus myths and celebrations are generally a positive affair, making less room for this concept in history books. Ward Churchill, an associate professor of Native American Studies at the University of Colorado and a leader of the American Indian Movement, has argued thatVery high on the list of those expressions of non-indigenous sensibility which contribute to the perpetuation of genocidal policies against Indians are the annual Columbus Day celebration, events in which it is baldly asserted that the process, events, and circumstances described above are, at best, either acceptable or unimportant. More often, the sentiments expressed by the participants are, quite frankly, that the fate of Native America embodied in Columbus and the Columbian legacy is a matter to be openly and enthusiastically applauded as an unrivaled "boon to all mankind." Undeniably, the situation of American Indians will not—in fact cannot—change for the better so long as such attitudes are deemed socially acceptable by the mainstream populace. Hence, such celebrations as Columbus Day must be stopped.Columbus's colonization of the Americas, and the subsequent effects on the native peoples, were dramatized in the 1992 feature film 1492: Conquest of Paradise to commemorate the 500th anniversary of his landing in the Americas. In 2003, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged Latin Americans to not celebrate the Columbus Day holiday. Chavez blamed Columbus for leading the way in the mass genocide of the Native Americans.

Source: Adapted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus

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In Defense of Columbus

The New York TimesOctober 8, 2000IN PERSON; In Defense Of ColumbusBy MARY ANN CASTRONOVO FUSCO

SOUTH ORANGE— THROUGHOUT time, treasure has typically been measured in trinkets and pennyweights, coins and carats. But to William J. Connell, a historian at Seton Hall University, ''there's nothing more precious than a hard fact.''

''The more you look for them,'' Mr. Connell says, ''the more you see how many interpretations there are.'' Lately, the 42-year-old scholar has taken to weighing the facts about Columbus, who at 41 became the most famous treasure-seeker of all time.

The fact that the Genoese explorer was preceded by the Vikings no longer fires up a debate. Arguments over Columbus's ethnic origins -- various groups claim him as Italian, Spanish, Greek, and Jewish -- are as old and usually as good-natured as the celebration of Columbus Day itself.

But one controversy that has tarnished the seafarer's reputation persists, periodically fanned by prevailing political winds. Though many maintain that Columbus was a noble-minded visionary who opened up a new land of opportunity for the oppressed masses of Europe, others see him as a greedy imperialist who slaughtered and spread disease among the indigenous people and institutionalized the slave trade.

''On the one hand, we have people desperate to make him theirs,'' Mr. Connell said with a chuckle during a recent interview in his campus office, ''and on the other hand, we have people who are trying to erase him from history.''

Though Mr. Connell briefly flirted with a career in banking after graduating summa cum laude with distinction in history from Yale University, he made his life's work documenting facts, specifically those of the Renaissance. After earning a doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley, he taught history at Reed College in Portland, Ore., then at Rutgers.

In 1998 he became the first professor to hold the La Motta Chair in Italian studies at Seton Hall, where he is usually preoccupied with the Italian humanists and the political and economic strife of Italian city-states.

Mr. Connell, who was raised by parents of Irish, German, and Welsh descent in the Bronx and Westchester, has so enthusiastically embraced Italian culture that he reads fairy tales in Italian to his 16-month-old daughter, Zoe, at the Clinton home he shares with his wife, Nikki Shepardson, who teaches history at Rider University. His first book, La citta dei crucci (City of Sorrows), about a feud that destroyed the Tuscan city of Pistoia at the time of the Medici, was written in Italian and will be published next month in Florence.

And as a Renaissance man, Columbus fell within his area of expertise. Last year, Mr. Connell spoke on Columbus and the meaning of Columbus Day before both public school students in Elizabeth and the West Orange Rotary Club. This year, he will address the Columbus Day Dinner Dance in Hanover, sponsored by District 11 of UNICO, an Italian-American civic organization that spearheaded the campaign to endow the chair in Italian studies at Seton Hall.

''Certainly we don't want to downplay the tragedies that happened,'' said John Sebastiano, president of the Montville chapter of UNICO. ''But for a lot of individuals, the symbolism of Christopher Columbus was that of a voyage of freedom. It really was the start of the globalization of our world.''

As Mr. Connell noted, ''When history is made in this kind of fundamental way, there are also costs.'' The arrival of Dutch, Swedish and English to New Jersey in the 17th century, for example, led to

smallpox and measles epidemics among the native Lenape communities, which had no resistance to Old World diseases. Although the Lenape, also known as the Delaware, were the first tribe to sign a treaty with the newly formed American government in 1778, most were pushed West and to this day live in Bartlesville, Okla.

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Some Indians have urged that Columbus Day -- first celebrated in New York in 1792, the 300th anniversary of Columbus's arrival -- be rescinded as a holiday in their states. One hundred years later, Congress designated Columbus Day a national holiday to be celebrated each Oct. 12. And in 1971 Columbus Day became a federal holiday observed on the second Monday of October.

Throughout the years, Italian-American, Hispanic, and other groups have embraced the holiday as a occasion to celebrate their ethnic heritage, though some Indian groups prefer to refer to the day as ''Indigenous Peoples Day.''

Dee Ketchum, chief of the Delawares, said his tribe ''recognizes various holiday events in North America and allows paid time off to its tribal employees, but Columbus Day is not one of them.''

Other tribes are more vocal in their opposition. ''We believe that Columbus came and conquered,'' Mark (Quiet Hawk) Gould, tribal chairman of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Indians, said in a telephone interview, ''We really think that it was like a genocide.''

Roy Crazy Horse, chairman of the New Jersey Commission on American Indian Affairs and chief of the Powhatan Renape Nation, based at the Rankokus Indian Reservation in Westhampton Township, put it this way: ''Why celebrate a man who started looking for India and landed in the Caribbean, who never put down his foot in the United States, who brought slavery to this continent?'' Neither American Indian leader, however, is involved in protesting the holiday. Instead, they say they concentrate on educational programs.

The controversy over Columbus Day doesn't bother Mr. Connell, who said: ''The whole discussion around Columbus Day has been useful to the extent that it has reminded us of many of the tragic consequences of the contact.''

And he doesn't believe the holiday should be replaced with a celebration of ethnic diversity, which ''sounds like a hodgepodge.''

''We have ethnic diversity anyway; we celebrate it every day,'' Mr. Connell said. ''It's one of the best things about this country.''

As for doing away with the holiday, he said, ''I don't think that it should go to the point of taking away from the tremendous achievement of Columbus.''

Though modern textbooks no longer state that Columbus discovered the New World, his arrival marks ''where we as a country and as a hemisphere began our identity,'' said Mr. Connell. ''It's a question of the contact that matters. There wasn't a significant or important tradition that survived from the voyages of the Vikings.''

On the other hand, he noted, Columbus's contact with the New World had a profound effect, largely because of the time -- an era when Europe was still reeling from the psychological effects of the Black Death of 1348, fierce competition among the various monarchs and the newly invented printing press, which enabled accounts of Columbus's findings to spread rapidly.

''Columbus strikes me as a person of his time,'' said Mr. Connell. ''He was eager to push the envelope to go farther, to take the skills and the learning of the Renaissance in order to do something glorious.''

As a man of the Renaissance, Columbus operated under a set of assumptions that ''sound terrible to modern ears,'' Mr. Connell allowed. ''He justified slavery in the Caribbean as being a way of bringing people into the Christian faith.''

But the European concept of slavery was rooted in the Aristotelian concept that ''if a person is captured in war, they're legitimately a slave,'' he explained. ''There was nothing racial about it.''

Moreover, widely spread accounts that Columbus's followers wiped out the Taino people of the Caribbean were inaccurate, says Jorge Estevez, himself of Taino lineage, who is a program coordinator at the National Museum of the American Indian in Manhattan. Mr. Estevez says that although many natives were murdered, fell victim to European diseases, or were taken captive, others intermingled with the Spanish settlers. And the settlers who were given Tainos as slaves were required to pay taxes on them, resulting in the undercounting of the Tainos as a form of tax evasion and leading to reports of their eradication.

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''Columbus didn't start slavery,'' said Mr. Connell. ''He brought the entrepreneurial form of slavery to the New World. It was a phenomenon of the times. With all great figures of the past, we need more understanding, critical understanding that sees the person's flaws and the inaccuracies and myths that have arisen around him, but we shouldn't forget the tremendous changes that they created.''

The scholar went on: ''I think we have to be very careful about applying 20th-century understandings of morality to the morality of the 15th century.''

That said, Mr. Connell does not consider himself an apologist for Columbus. 'I'm just doing my job as a historian,'' he said. '' 'Celebrate' is a word we could use for Columbus's genius, his persistence against the odds in getting people who were much more powerful than he was to back him in a risky enterprise that had results way beyond anyone's imagination. We can celebrate his enterprise and ingenuity. A more appropriate word for what happened would be 'commemorate.' ''

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/08/nyregion/in-person-in-defense-of-columbus.html(Checked 5 July 2012)

Additional Sources:1. The Columbus Navigation Homepage: http://www.columbusnavigation.com/2. 1492 Christopher Man and Myth:

http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/1492.exhibit/c-Columbus/columbus.html3. The Catholic Encyclopedia Entry on Columbus:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04140a.htm4. The Internet Guide to Christopher Columbus:

http://www.franciscan-archive.org/columbus5. Christopher Columbus: http://www.christopher-columbus.eu/6. Columbus Website Glencoe: http://www.glencoe.com/sec/socialstudies/btt/columbus/

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