Christopher Columbus

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Christopher Columbus

Posthumous portrait of Christopher Columbus by Sebastiano del

Piombo, 1519. There are no known authentic portraits of Columbus. [1]

1st Governor of the Indies

In office

1492–1499

Appointed by Isabella I of Castile

Succeeded by Francisco de Bobadilla

Personal details

Born Before 31 October 1451

Genoa, Genoa

Died 20 May 1506 (aged c. 54)

Valladolid, Castile

Resting place Seville Cathedral, Seville, Spain

 Spouse(s) Filipa Moniz Perestrelo

Domestic partner Beatriz Enríquez de Arana

Children Diego

Fernando

Parents Domenico Colombo

Susanna Fontanarossa

Władysław III of Poland (possibly)[2]

Eanes João dos Reis Gomes (possibly)[2]

Relatives Brothers:

Giovanni Pellegrino

Giacomo (also called Diego)[3]

Bartholomew

Sister:

Bianchinetta Columbus

Occupation Maritime explorer

Signature

Military service

Rank Admiral of the Ocean Sea

Christopher Columbus[a] (/kəˈlʌmbəs/;[4] before 31 October 1451 – 20 May

1506) was an Italian explorer and colonizer who completed four voyages across
the Atlantic Ocean that opened the New World for conquest and
permanent European colonization of the Americas. His expeditions, sponsored
by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, were the first European contact with
the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.
Columbus's early life is somewhat obscure, but scholars generally agree that he
was born in the Republic of Genoa and spoke a dialect of Ligurian as his first
language. He went to sea at a young age and travelled widely, as far north as
the British Isles (and possibly Iceland) and as far south as what is now Ghana.
He married Portuguese noblewoman Filipa Moniz Perestrelo and was based
in Lisbon for several years, but later took a Castilian mistress; he had one son
with each woman. Though largely self-educated, Columbus was widely read in
geography, astronomy, and history. He formulated a plan to seek a western sea
passage to the East Indies, hoping to profit from the lucrative spice trade.
Following persistent lobbying, Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II agreed to
sponsor a journey west, in the name of the Crown of Castile. Columbus left
Castile in August 1492 with three ships, and after a stopover in the Canary
Islands made landfall in the Americas on 12 October (later celebrated
as Columbus Day). His landing place was an island in the Bahamas, known by
its native inhabitants as Guanahani; its exact location is uncertain. Columbus
subsequently visited the islands now known as Cuba and Hispaniola,
establishing a colony in what is now Haiti—the first European settlement in the
Americas since the Norse colonies nearly 500 years earlier. He arrived back in
Castile in early 1493, bringing a number of captive natives with him. Word of his
voyages soon spread throughout Europe.
Columbus made three further voyages to the New World, exploring the Lesser
Antilles in 1493, Trinidad and the northern coast of South America in 1498, and
the eastern coast of Central America in 1502. Many of the names he gave to
geographical features—particularly islands—are still in use. He continued to
seek a passage to the East Indies, and the extent to which he was aware that
the Americas were a wholly separate landmass is uncertain. He never clearly
renounced his belief that he had reached the Far East and gave the
name indios ("Indians") to the indigenous peoples he encountered. Columbus's
strained relationship with the Spanish crown and its appointed colonial
administrators in America led to his arrest and removal from Hispaniola in 1500,
and later to protracted litigation over the benefits that he and his heirs claimed
were owed to them by the crown. Columbus's expeditions inaugurated a period
of exploration, conquest, and colonization that lasted for centuries, helping
create the modern Western world. The transfers between the Old World and
New World that followed his first voyage are known as the Columbian
exchange, and the period of human habitation in the Americas prior to his
arrival is referred to as the Pre-Columbian era.
Columbus's legacy continues to be debated. He was widely venerated in the
centuries after his death, but public perceptions have changed as recent
scholars have given greater attention to negative aspects of his life, such as
his enslavement of the indigenous population in his quest for gold and his brutal
subjugation of the Taíno people, leading to their near-extinction, as well as
allegations of tyranny towards Spanish colonists. Many landmarks and
institutions in the Western Hemisphere bear his name, including the country
of Colombia and the name Columbia, which is used as a personification for
the United States, and appears in many place names there.

Contents

 1Early life
 2Quest for Asia
o 2.1Background
o 2.2Geographical considerations
o 2.3Nautical considerations
o 2.4Quest for financial support for a voyage
o 2.5Agreement with the Spanish crown
  3Voyages
o 3.1First voyage
o 3.2Second voyage
o 3.3Third voyage
o 3.4Fourth voyage
 4Accusations of tyranny and brutality
 5Later life
 6Illness and death
 7Commemoration
 8Legacy
o 8.1Discoverer
o 8.2Flat Earth mythology
o 8.3America as a distinct land
o 8.4Criticism and defense in modern scholarship
 8.4.1Slavery and serfdom
 8.4.2Violence towards Natives and Spanish colonists
 8.4.3Black Legend, relativism, and disease
 9Physical appearance
 10See also
 11References
 12Further reading
 13External links

Early life
Further information on Columbus's birthplace and family background: Origin
theories of Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus at the gates of the  monastery of Santa María de la Rábida with his son
Diego, by Benet Mercadé

The name Christopher Columbus is the Anglicisation of

the Latin Christophorus Columbus. His name in Ligurian is Cristoffa
Corombo, in Italian Cristoforo Colombo, in Spanish Cristóbal Colón, and
in Portuguese, Cristóvão Colombo.[5] He was born before 31 October 1451 in
the territory of the Republic of Genoa (now part of modern Italy), though the
exact location remains disputed.[6][b] His father was Domenico Colombo,[5] a wool
weaver who worked both in Genoa and Savona and who also owned a cheese
stand at which young Christopher worked as a helper. His mother was Susanna
Fontanarossa.[5] He had three brothers, Bartolomeo, Giovanni Pellegrino, and
Giacomo . He also had a sister named Bianchinetta. [7] His brother Bartolomeo
worked in a cartography workshop in Lisbon for at least part of his adulthood.[8]
Columbus never wrote in his native language, which is presumed to have been
a Genoese variety of Ligurian: his name in the 16th-century Genoese language
would have been Cristoffa[9] Corombo[10] (Ligurian pronunciation: [kriˈʃtɔffa kuˈɹuŋbu]).[11]
[12]
 In one of his writings, he says he went to sea at the age of 10. In 1470, the
Columbus family moved to Savona, where Domenico took over a tavern. In the
same year, Christopher was on a Genoese ship hired in the service of René of
Anjou to support his attempt to conquer the Kingdom of Naples. Some modern
authors have argued that he was not from Genoa but, instead, from
the Aragon region of Spain[13] or from Portugal.[14] These competing hypotheses
have generally been discounted by mainstream scholars. [15][16]

Columbus's copy of The Travels of Marco Polo, with his handwritten notes in Latin written on the
margins

In 1473, Columbus began his apprenticeship as business agent for the

important Centurione, Di Negro and Spinola families of Genoa. Later, he
allegedly made a trip to Chios, an Aegean island then ruled by Genoa.[17] In May
1476, he took part in an armed convoy sent by Genoa to carry valuable cargo to
northern Europe. He docked in Bristol, England[18] and Galway, Ireland. A few
writers speculate that in 1477, he was in Iceland. [5][19] It is known that in the
autumn of 1477, he sailed on a Portuguese ship from Galway to Lisbon, where
he found his brother Bartolomeo, and they continued trading for the Centurione
family. Columbus based himself in Lisbon from 1477 to 1485. He married Filipa
Moniz Perestrelo, daughter of the Porto Santo governor and Portuguese
nobleman of Lombard origin Bartolomeu Perestrello.[20]
In 1479 or 1480, his son Diego Columbus was born. Between 1482 and 1485,
Columbus traded along the coasts of West Africa, reaching the Portuguese
trading post of Elmina at the Guinea coast (in present-day Ghana).[21] Some
records report that Filipa died sometime around 1485, while Columbus was
away in Castile. He returned to Portugal to settle her estate and take his son
Diego with him.[22] He had left Portugal for Castile in 1485, where he found a
mistress in 1487, a 20-year-old orphan named Beatriz Enríquez de Arana.[23] It is
likely that Beatriz met Columbus when he was in Córdoba, a gathering site of
many Genoese merchants and where the court of the Catholic Monarchs was
located at intervals. Beatriz, unmarried at the time, gave birth to
Columbus's natural son Fernando Columbus in July 1488, named for the
monarch of Aragón. Columbus recognized the boy as his offspring. Columbus
entrusted his older, legitimate son Diego to take care of Beatriz and pay the
pension set aside for her following his death, but Diego was negligent in his
duties.[24]
Ambitious, Columbus eventually learned Latin, Portuguese, and Castilian. He
read widely about astronomy, geography, and history, including the works
of Claudius Ptolemy, Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi, the travels of Marco
Polo and Sir John Mandeville, Pliny's Natural History, and Pope Pius
II's Historia Rerum Ubique Gestarum. According to historian Edmund Morgan,
Columbus was not a scholarly man. Yet he studied these books, made
hundreds of marginal notations in them and came out with ideas about the
world that were characteristically simple and strong and sometimes wrong, ... [25]
Throughout his life, Columbus also showed a keen interest in the Bible and
in Biblical prophecies, often quoting biblical texts in his letters and logs. For
example, part of the argument that he submitted to the Spanish Catholic
Monarchs when he sought their support for his proposed expedition to reach the
Indies by sailing west was based on his reading of the Second Book of
Esdras (Ezra): see 2 Esdras 6:42, which he took to mean that the Earth is made
of six parts of land to one of water. Towards the end of his life, he produced
a Book of Prophecies in which his career as an explorer is interpreted in the
light of Christian eschatology and of apocalypticism.[8]
Carol Delaney has argued that Columbus was a millennialist and that these
beliefs motivated his quest for Asia in a variety of ways. [26] Columbus wrote often
about seeking gold in the diaries of his voyages and writes about acquiring the
precious metal “in such quantity that the sovereigns…will undertake and
prepare to go conquer the Holy Sepulcher” [27] Comparative Studies in Society
and History. April, 2006. In an account of his fourth voyage, Columbus wrote
that “Jerusalem and Mount Sion must be rebuilt by Christian hands”. [28] It has
also been written that “conversion of all people to the Christian faith” is a central
theme in Columbus's writings which is a central tenet of some Millenarian
beliefs.[29] In a more specific identification of his motivations, Hamandi writes that
the “deliverance of Jerusalem from Muslim hands” could be accomplished by
“using the resources of newly discovered lands”.[30]

Quest for Asia

Background

Toscanelli's notions of the geography of the Atlantic Ocean (shown superimposed on a modern
map), which directly influenced Columbus's plans.

Under the Mongol Empire's hegemony over Asia (the Pax Mongolica, or Mongol

peace), Europeans had long enjoyed a safe land passage, the Silk Road, to
the Indies (then construed roughly as all of south and east Asia) and China,
which were sources of valuable goods such as spices and silk. With the fall of
Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the land route to Asia became
much more difficult and dangerous. Portuguese navigators tried to find a sea
way to Asia.
In 1470, the Florentine astronomer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli suggested to
King Afonso V of Portugal that sailing west across the Atlantic would be a
quicker way to reach the Spice Islands, Cathay, and Cipangu than the route
around Africa, but Afonso rejected his proposal.[31] In 1474, Toscanelli sent
Columbus a map with the notion of a westward route to Asia. [32][33] In the 1480s,
the Columbus brothers proposed a plan to reach the Indies by sailing west
across the "Ocean Sea" (the Atlantic). However, this was complicated by the
opening of the southeast passage to Asia around Africa by Bartolomeu Dias in
1488, when he reached the Cape of Good Hope (modern-day South Africa).[34]
Geographical considerations
Washington Irving's 1828 biography of Columbus popularized the idea that
Columbus had difficulty obtaining support for his plan because many Catholic
theologians insisted that the Earth was flat.[35] In fact, nearly all educated
Westerners had understood, at least since the time of Aristotle, that the Earth is
spherical.[36][34] The sphericity of the Earth is also accounted for in the work
of Ptolemy, on which medieval astronomy was largely based. Christian writers
whose works clearly reflect the conviction that the Earth is spherical include
Saint Bede the Venerable in his Reckoning of Time, written around AD 723. In
Columbus's time, the techniques of celestial navigation, which use the position
of the sun and the stars in the sky, together with the understanding that the
Earth is a sphere, had long been in use by astronomers and were beginning to
be implemented by mariners.[37]
As far back as the 3rd century BC, Eratosthenes had correctly computed the
circumference of the Earth by using simple geometry and studying the shadows
cast by objects at two remote locations.[38][39] In the 1st century
BC, Posidonius confirmed Eratosthenes's results by comparing stellar
observations at two separate locations. These measurements were widely
known among scholars, but confusion about the old-fashioned units of distance
in which they were expressed led to some debate about the size of the Earth.
[citation needed]

"Columbus map", drawn c. 1490 in the Lisbon workshop of Bartolomeo and Christopher Columbus [40]

From Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi Columbus learned of Alfraganus's estimate

that a degree of latitude (or a degree of longitude along the equator) spanned
562⁄3 Arabic miles (which works out to 66.2 nautical miles (122.6 km)), but did
not realize that this was expressed in the Arabic mile rather than the
shorter Roman mile with which he was familiar.[41] He therefore would have
estimated the circumference of the Earth to be about 30,200 kilometres
(16,300 nmi) at the equator and 26,200 kilometres (14,100 nmi) at 30 degrees
north (around where he was sailing), whereas the correct value is 40,075
kilometres (21,639 nmi) at the equator and 34,735 kilometres (18,755 nmi) at 30
degrees north.[citation needed]
Furthermore, most scholars accepted Ptolemy's estimate that Eurasia spanned
180° longitude, rather than the actual 130° (to the Chinese mainland) or 150°
(to Japan at the latitude of Spain). Columbus, for his part, believed an even
higher estimate, leaving a smaller percentage for water. Some people have
suggested he followed the estimate of Marinus of Tyre, which put the
longitudinal span of the Eurasian landmass at 225°. [citation needed] Other people have
suggested he followed Esdras's statement that "six parts [of the globe] are
habitable and the seventh is covered with water." [32] He also believed that Japan
(which he called "Cipangu", following Marco Polo) was much larger, farther to
the east from China ("Cathay"), and closer to the equator than it is, and that
there were inhabited islands even farther to the east than Japan, including the
mythical Antillia, which he thought might lie not much farther to the west than
the Azores. In this, he was influenced by the ideas of Toscanelli. [32]
Columbus therefore would have estimated the distance from the Canary
Islands west to Japan to be about 9,800 kilometres (5,300 nmi) or 3,700
kilometres (2,000 nmi), depending on which estimate he used for Eurasia's
longitudinal span. The true figure is now known to be vastly larger: about 20,000
kilometres (11,000 nmi).[42][c] No ship in the 15th century could have carried
enough food and fresh water for such a long voyage, and the dangers involved
in navigating through the uncharted ocean would have been formidable. Most
European navigators reasonably concluded that a westward voyage from
Europe to Asia was unfeasible. The Catholic Monarchs, however, having
completed an expensive war in the Iberian Peninsula, were eager to obtain a
competitive edge over other European countries in the quest for trade with the
Indies. Columbus's project, though far-fetched, held the promise of such an
advantage.[citation needed]
Nautical considerations
Though Columbus was wrong about the number of degrees of longitude that
separated Europe from the Far East and about the distance that each degree
represented, he did possess valuable knowledge about the trade winds, which
would prove to be the key to his successful navigation of the Atlantic Ocean.
During his first voyage in 1492, the brisk trade winds from the east, commonly
called "easterlies", propelled Columbus's fleet for five weeks, from the Canary
Islands to The Bahamas. The precise first land sighting and landing point
was San Salvador Island.[34] To return to Spain against this prevailing wind would
have required several months of an arduous sailing technique, called beating,
during which food and drinkable water would probably have been exhausted.
Instead, Columbus returned home by following the curving trade winds
northeastward to the middle latitudes of the North Atlantic, where he was able to
catch the "westerlies" that blow eastward to the coast of Western Europe.
There, in turn, the winds curve southward towards the Iberian Peninsula. [43][44]
It is unclear whether Columbus learned about the winds from his own sailing
experience or if he had heard about them from others. The corresponding
technique for efficient travel in the Atlantic appears to have been exploited first
by the Portuguese, who referred to it as the Volta do mar ("turn of the sea").
Columbus's knowledge of the Atlantic wind patterns was, however, imperfect at
the time of his first voyage. By sailing directly due west from the Canary Islands
during hurricane season, skirting the so-called horse latitudes of the mid-
Atlantic, Columbus risked either being becalmed or running into a tropical
cyclone, both of which, by chance, he avoided. [32]
Quest for financial support for a voyage
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Columbus offers his services to the King of Portugal; Chodowiecki, 17th c.

In 1485, Columbus presented his plans to King John II of Portugal. He proposed

that 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 the Orient, and return.
Columbus also requested he be made "Great Admiral of the Ocean", appointed
governor of any and all lands he discovered, and given one-tenth of all revenue
from those lands. The king submitted Columbus's proposal to his experts, who
rejected it. It was their considered opinion that Columbus's estimation of a travel
distance of 2,400 miles (3,860 km) was, in fact, far too low.[32]
In 1488, Columbus again appealed to the court of Portugal, resulting in John II
again inviting him for an audience. That meeting also proved unsuccessful, in
part because not long afterwards Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal with
news of his successful rounding of the southern tip of Africa (near the Cape of
Good Hope). With an eastern sea route to Asia apparently at hand, King John
was no longer interested in Columbus's far-fetched project.

Columbus before the Queen, as imagined[45] by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, 1843

Columbus traveled from Portugal to both Genoa and Venice, but he received

encouragement from neither. He had also dispatched his
brother Bartholomew to the court of Henry VII of England to inquire whether the
English crown might sponsor his expedition, but also without success.
Columbus had sought an audience from the monarchs Ferdinand II of
Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, who had united several kingdoms in the Iberian
Peninsula by marrying and were ruling together. On 1 May 1486, permission
having been granted, Columbus presented his plans to Queen Isabella, who, in
turn, referred it to a committee. After the passing of much time, the savants of
Spain, like their counterparts in Portugal, replied that Columbus had grossly
underestimated the distance to Asia. They pronounced the idea impractical and
advised their Royal Highnesses to pass on the proposed venture.
However, to keep Columbus from taking his ideas elsewhere, and perhaps to
keep their options open, the Catholic Monarchs gave him an annual allowance
of 12,000 maravedis and, in 1489, furnished him with a letter ordering all cities
and towns under their domain to provide him food and lodging at no cost. [46]
Agreement with the Spanish crown

The Flagship of Columbus and the Fleet of Columbus. 400th Anniversary Issues of 1893. (On ships.)

After continually lobbying at the Spanish court and two years of negotiations, he

finally had success in January 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 him
down on the advice of her confessor. Columbus was leaving town by mule in
despair when Ferdinand intervened. Isabella then sent a royal guard to fetch
him, and Ferdinand later claimed credit for being "the principal cause why those
islands were discovered".[47]
In the April 1492 "Capitulations of Santa Fe", King Ferdinand and Queen
Isabella promised Columbus that if he succeeded he would be given the rank of
Admiral of the Ocean Sea and appointed Viceroy and Governor of all the new
lands he could claim for Spain. He had 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 from the new lands in
perpetuity. Additionally, 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.[32]
Columbus was later arrested in 1500 and dismissed from his posts. He and his
sons, Diego and Fernando, then conducted a lengthy series of court cases
against the Castilian crown, known as the pleitos colombinos, alleging that the
Crown had illegally reneged on its contractual obligations to Columbus and his
heirs. The Columbus 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.[48]

Voyages
Main article: Voyages of Christopher Columbus
The voyages of Christopher Columbus

Between 1492 and 1503, Columbus completed four round-trip voyages between
Spain and the Americas, each voyage being sponsored by the Crown of Castile.
On his first voyage, he independently discovered the Americas and magnetic
declination.[d][49][50] These voyages marked the beginning of
the European exploration and colonization of the American continents, and are
thus of enormous significance in Western history.[8]
Columbus always insisted, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, that
the lands that he visited during those voyages were part of the Asian continent,
as previously described by Marco Polo and other European travelers.
[8]
 Columbus's refusal to accept that the lands he had visited and claimed for
Spain were not part of Asia might explain, in part, why the American continent
was named after the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci and not after
Columbus.[51]
First voyage

First voyage. Modern place names in black, Columbus's place names in blue

On the evening of 3 August 1492, Columbus departed from Palos de la

Frontera with three ships. The largest was a carrack (Spanish: nao), the Santa
María ex-Gallega ("Galician")[further explanation needed]. The other two were smaller caravels.
The name of one is lost: it is known today only by the nickname Pinta, which in
Castilian of the time meant "painted one". [52] The Santa Clara was nicknamed
affectionately the Niña ("the little one"), a pun on the name of her owner, Juan
Niño of Moguer.[53] The monarchs forced the citizens of Palos to contribute to the
expedition. The Santa María was owned by Juan de la Cosa and captained by
Columbus. The Pinta and the Niña were piloted by the Pinzón brothers (Martín
Alonso and Vicente Yáñez).[34]
Columbus first sailed to the Canary Islands, which belonged to Castile. He
restocked provisions and made repairs in Gran Canaria, then departed
from San Sebastián de La Gomera on 6 September, for what turned out to be a
five-week voyage across the ocean. At about 2:00 in the morning of 12 October
(21 October, Gregorian Calendar New Style), a lookout on the Pinta, Rodrigo de
Triana (also known as Juan Rodríguez Bermeo), spotted land, and immediately
alerted the rest of the crew with a shout. Thereupon, the captain of the Pinta,
Martín Alonso Pinzón, verified the sight of land and alerted Columbus by firing
a lombard.[54] Columbus later maintained that he himself had already seen a light
on the land a few hours earlier, thereby claiming for himself the lifetime pension
promised by Ferdinand and Isabella to the first person to sight land. [34][55]
Columbus called the island (in what is now the Bahamas) San
Salvador (meaning "Holy Savior"); the natives called it Guanahani. Exactly
which island in the Bahamas this corresponds to is unresolved. Based on
primary accounts and the geographic positions of the islands given Columbus's
course, the prime candidates are San Salvador Island (so named in 1925 on the
theory that it was Columbus's San Salvador), [56] Samana Cay, and Plana Cays.[34]

Landing of Columbus (12 October 1492), painting by John Vanderlyn

The indigenous people he encountered, the Lucayan, Taíno, and Arawak, were

peaceful and friendly. He called the inhabitants of the lands that he
visited indios (Spanish for "Indians").[57][58][59] Noting their gold ear ornaments,
Columbus took some of the Arawaks prisoner and insisted that they guide him
to the source of the gold.[60] From the entry in his journal of 12 October 1492, in
which he wrote of them: "Many of the men I have seen have scars on their
bodies, and when I made signs to them to find out how this happened, they
indicated that people from other nearby islands come to San Salvador to
capture them; they defend themselves the best they can. I believe that people
from the mainland come here to take them as slaves. They ought to make good
and skilled servants, for they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them. I
think they can very easily be made Christians, for they seem to have no religion.
If it pleases our Lord, I will take six of them to Your Highnesses when I depart,
in order that they may learn our language." [61] Columbus noted that their primitive
weapons and military tactics made them susceptible to easy conquest, writing,
"these people are very simple in war-like matters … I could conquer the whole
of them with 50 men, and govern them as I pleased." [62]
Columbus also explored the northeast coast of Cuba, where he landed on 28
October. On 22 November, Martín Alonso Pinzón took the Pinta on an
unauthorized expedition in search of an island called "Babeque" or "Baneque",
which the natives had told him was rich in gold. Columbus, for his part,
continued to the northern coast of Hispaniola, where he landed on 5 December.
[63]
 There, the Santa María ran aground on Christmas Day 1492 and had to be
abandoned. The wreck was used as a target for cannon fire to impress the
native peoples.[34] Columbus was received by the native cacique Guacanagari,
who gave him permission to leave some of his men behind. Columbus left 39
men, including Luis de Torres, the converso interpreter, who
spoke Hebrew and Arabic,[citation needed] and founded the settlement of La Navidad at
the site of present-day Bord de Mer de Limonade, Haiti.[64] Columbus took more
natives prisoner and continued his exploration.[60] He kept sailing along the
northern coast of Hispaniola with a single ship, until he encountered Pinzón and
the Pinta on 6 January.

The return of Christopher Columbus; his audience before King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella,
painting by Eugène Delacroix

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On 13 January 1493, Columbus made his last stop of this voyage in the New
World, in the Bay of Rincón at the eastern end of the Samaná Peninsula in
northeast Hispaniola.[65] There he encountered the warlike Cigüayos, the only
natives who offered violent resistance during his first voyage to the Americas.
[66]
 The Cigüayos refused to trade the amount of bows and arrows that Columbus
desired; in the ensuing clash one Ciguayo was stabbed in the buttocks and
another wounded with an arrow in his chest.[67] Because of this and because of
the Cigüayos' use of arrows, he called the inlet where he met them the Bay of
Arrows (or Gulf of Arrows).[68] Columbus captured about 10 to 25 natives and
took them back with him (only seven or eight of the natives arrived in Spain
alive).[69]
Columbus headed for Spain on the Niña, but a storm separated him from
the Pinta, and forced the Niña to stop at the island of Santa Maria in the Azores.
Half of his crew went ashore to say prayers in a chapel to give thanks for having
survived the storm. But while praying, they were imprisoned by the governor of
the island, ostensibly on suspicion of being pirates. After a two-day standoff, the
prisoners were released, and Columbus again set sail for Spain. [70]
Another storm forced him into the port at Lisbon.[34] He anchored next to the
King's harbor patrol ship on 4 March 1493 in Portugal. There, he was
interviewed by Bartolomeu Dias, who had rounded the Cape of Good Hope a
few years earlier, in 1488–1489. Dias's success had complicated Columbus's
attempts to secure funding from the Portuguese court because the sure route to
the Indies that Dias pioneered made a risky, conjectural western route
unnecessary.[34] Not finding King John II of Portugal in Lisbon, Columbus wrote a
letter to him and waited for John's reply. John asked Columbus to go to Vale do
Paraíso north of Lisbon to meet him. Relations between Portugal and Castile
were poor at the time. Columbus went to meet with John at Vale do Paraíso.
Hearing of Columbus's voyage, John told him that he believed the voyage to be
in violation of the 1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas.
After spending more than a week in Portugal, and paying his respects
to Eleanor of Viseu, Columbus again set sail for Spain. Ferdinand Magellan was
a young boy and a ward of Eleanor's court; it is likely he saw Columbus during
this visit.[34] After departing, and after reportedly being saved from assassins by
King John, Columbus crossed the bar of Saltes and entered the harbor of Palos
de la Frontera on 15 March 1493. Word of his finding new lands rapidly spread
throughout Europe.
Second voyage

Columbus's second voyage

Columbus left the port of Cádiz on 24 September 1493, with a fleet of 17
ships carrying 1,200 men and the supplies to establish permanent colonies in
the New World. The passengers included priests, farmers, and soldiers, who
would be the new colonists. This reflected the new policy of creating not just
"colonies of exploitation", but also "colonies of settlement" from which to launch
missions dedicated to converting the natives to Christianity. [71] Modern studies
suggest that "crew members may have included free black Africans who arrived
in the New World about a decade before the slave trade began". [72]
As in the first voyage, the fleet stopped at the Canary Islands, from which it
departed on 13 October, following a more southerly course than on the previous
expedition. On 3 November, Columbus sighted a rugged island that he
named Dominica (Latin for Sunday); later that day, he landed at Marie-Galante,
which he named Santa María la Galante. After sailing past Les Saintes (Los
Santos, "The Saints"), he arrived at the island of Guadeloupe, which he
named Santa María de Guadalupe de Extremadura, after the image of the
Virgin Mary venerated at the Spanish monastery of Villuercas, in Guadalupe,
Cáceres, Spain. He explored that island from 4 to 10 November.
Michele da Cuneo, Columbus's childhood friend from Savona, sailed with
Columbus during the second voyage and wrote: "In my opinion, since Genoa
was Genoa, there was never born a man so well equipped and expert in the art
of navigation as the said lord Admiral." [73] Columbus named the small island of
"Saona ... to honor Michele da Cuneo, his friend from Savona." [74]
The same childhood friend reported in a letter that Columbus had provided one
of the captured indigenous women to him. He wrote, "While I was in the boat, I
captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral gave to
me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked—as was their custom. I
was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my
desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had
never begun. But—to cut a long story short—I then took a piece of rope and
whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would
not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you,
that you would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for
whores."[75]

The Inspiration of Christopher Columbus by José María Obregón, 1856

Pedro de las Casas, father of the priest Bartolomé de las Casas, also

accompanied Columbus on this voyage.[76]
The exact course of Columbus's voyage through the Lesser Antilles is debated,
but it seems likely that he turned north, sighting and naming several islands,
including:
  Montserrat (for Santa María de Montserrate, after
the Blessed Virgin of the Monastery of Montserrat,
which is located on the Mountain of Montserrat, in
Catalonia, Spain),
 Antigua (after a church in Seville, Spain, called
Santa María la Antigua, meaning "Old St. Mary's"),
 Redonda (Santa María la Redonda, Spanish for
"St. Mary the Round", owing to the island's shape),
 Nevis (derived from the Spanish Nuestra Señora
de las Nieves, "Our Lady of the Snows", because
Columbus thought the clouds over Nevis Peak
made the island resemble a snow-capped
mountain),
 Saint Kitts (for St. Christopher, patron of sailors
and travelers),
 Sint Eustatius (for the early Roman martyr, St.
Eustachius),
 Saba (after the Biblical Queen of Sheba),
 Saint Martin (San Martín), and
 Saint Croix (from the Spanish Santa Cruz, meaning
"Holy Cross").[77]
Columbus also sighted the chain of the Virgin Islands, which he named Islas de
Santa Úrsula y las Once Mil Vírgenes, "Islands of Saint Ursula and the 11,000
Virgins" (shortened, both on maps of the time and in common parlance, to Islas
Vírgenes). He also named the islands of Virgin Gorda ("Fat Virgin"), Tortola,
and Peter Island (San Pedro).
One of the first skirmishes between Native Americans and Europeans since the
time of the Vikings occurred on 14 November, when at Saint Croix, Columbus's
men rescued two native boys from several cannibalistic Island Caribs.
[78]
 Columbus's men pursued the Carib canoe, which met them with arrows.
Several Europeans were wounded, but they killed all of the Caribs, and learned
that the two boys had recently been castrated by their captors. Columbus
continued to the Virgin Islands, and landed in Puerto Rico, which he
named San Juan Bautista[79] in honor of Saint John the Baptist (a name that was
later given to the capital city of San Juan).
On 22 November, Columbus returned to Hispaniola, where he intended to visit
the fort of La Navidad, built during his first voyage and located on the northern
coast of Haiti. Columbus found the fort in ruins, destroyed by the
native Taino people.[80] Among the ruins were the corpses of 11 of the 39
Spaniards who had stayed behind as the first colonists in the New World.
Columbus then sailed more than 100 kilometres (62 miles) eastwards along the
northern coast of Hispaniola, establishing a new settlement, which he called La
Isabela, in the present-day Dominican Republic.[81] However, La Isabela proved
to be poorly located and the settlement was short-lived.
Third voyage
Third voyage

According to the abstract of Columbus's journal made by Bartolomé de Las

Casas, the objective of the third voyage was to verify the existence of a
continent that King John II of Portugal suggested was located to the southwest
of the Cape Verde Islands. King John reportedly knew of the existence of such
a mainland because "canoes had been found which set out from the coast of
Guinea [West Africa] and sailed to the west with merchandise." [82][83]
On 30 May 1498, Columbus left with six ships from Sanlúcar, Spain, for his third
trip to the New World. Three of the ships headed directly for Hispaniola with
much-needed supplies, while Columbus took the other three in an exploration of
what might lie to the south of the Caribbean islands he had already visited,
including a hoped-for passage to continental Asia. [84]
Columbus led his fleet to the Portuguese island of Porto Santo, his wife's native
land. He then sailed to Madeira and spent some time there with the Portuguese
captain João Gonçalves da Camara, before sailing to the Canary
Islands and Cape Verde. As he crossed the Atlantic, Columbus discovered that
the angle between North as indicated by a magnetic compass and North as
measured by the position of the pole star changed with his position (a
phenomenon now known as "compass variation"). He would later use his
previous measurements of the compass variation to adjust his reckoning. [21]
After being becalmed for several days in the doldrums of the mid-Atlantic,
Columbus's fleet regained its wind and, dangerously low on water, turned north
in the direction of Dominica, which Columbus had visited in his previous
voyage. The ships arrived at King John's hypothesized continent, which
is South America, when they sighted the land of Trinidad on 31 July
approaching from the southeast.[85] The fleet sailed along the southern coast and
entered Dragon's Mouth, anchoring near Soldado Rock where they made
contact with a group of native Amerindians in canoes.[86] Columbus then landed
on Trinidad at Icacos Point (which he named Punta de Arenal) on 2 August.
[87]
 After resupplying with food and water, from 4 to 12 August Columbus
explored the Gulf of Paria, which separates Trinidad from what is
now Venezuela, near the delta of the Orinoco River. He then touched the
mainland of South America at the Paria Peninsula.[citation needed]
Exploring the new continent, Columbus correctly interpreted the enormous
quantity of fresh water that the Orinoco delivered into the Atlantic Ocean as
evidence that he had reached a large landmass rather than another island. He
also speculated that the new continent might be the location of the
biblical Garden of Eden. He then sailed to the islands
of Chacachacare and Margarita. He sighted Tobago (which he named "Bella
Forma") and Grenada (which he named "Concepción").[88]
In poor health, Columbus returned to Hispaniola on 19 August, only to find that
many of the Spanish settlers of the new colony were in rebellion against his
rule, claiming that Columbus had misled them about the supposedly bountiful
riches of the New World. A number of returning settlers and sailors lobbied
against Columbus at the Spanish court, accusing him and his brothers of gross
mismanagement. Columbus had some of his crew hanged for disobedience. He
had an economic interest in the enslavement of the Hispaniola natives and for
that reason was not eager to baptize them, which attracted criticism from some
churchmen.[89] An entry in his journal from September 1498 reads: "From here
one might send, in the name of the Holy Trinity, as many slaves as could be
sold ..."[90]
Columbus was eventually forced to make peace with the rebellious colonists on
humiliating terms.[91] In 1500, the Crown had him removed as governor, arrested,
and transported in chains to Spain (see "Accusations of tyranny" section below).
He was eventually freed and allowed to return to the New World, but not as
governor.[citation needed]
Fourth voyage
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Columbus's fourth voyage

Coat of Arms granted to Christopher Columbus and the House of Colon by Pope Alexander VI motu
proprio in 1502.

Before leaving for his fourth voyage, Columbus wrote a letter to the Governors
of the Bank of Saint George, Genoa, dated at Seville, 2 April 1502.[92] He wrote
"Although my body is here my heart is always near you." [93]
Columbus made a fourth voyage nominally in search of the Strait of Malacca to
the Indian Ocean. Accompanied by his brother Bartolomeo and his 13-year-old
son Fernando, he left Cádiz on 11 May 1502, with his flagship Santa María and
the vessels Gallega, Vizcaína, and Santiago de Palos. He sailed to Arzila on the
Moroccan coast to rescue Portuguese soldiers whom he had heard were under
siege by the Moors.
On 15 June, they landed at Carbet on the island of Martinique (Martinica).
A hurricane was brewing, so he continued on, hoping to find shelter on
Hispaniola. He arrived at Santo Domingo on 29 June, but was denied port, and
the new governor refused to listen to his storm prediction. Instead, while
Columbus's ships sheltered at the mouth of the Rio Jaina, the first Spanish
treasure fleet sailed into the hurricane. Columbus's ships survived with only
minor damage, while 29 of the 30 ships in the governor's fleet were lost to a
storm on 1 July. In addition to the ships, 500 lives (including that of the
governor, Francisco de Bobadilla) and an immense cargo of gold were
surrendered to the sea.
After a brief stop at Jamaica, Columbus sailed to Central America, arriving
at Guanaja (Isla de Pinos) in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras on 30
July. Here Bartolomeo found native merchants and a large canoe, which was
described as being "long as a galley" and filled with cargo. On 14 August, he
landed on the continental mainland at Puerto Castilla, near Trujillo, Honduras.
He spent two months exploring the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa
Rica, before arriving in Almirante Bay in Panama on 16 October.
On 5 December 1502, Columbus and his crew found themselves in a storm
unlike any they had ever experienced. In his journal Columbus writes,
For nine days I was as one lost, without hope of life. Eyes never beheld the sea
so angry, so high, so covered with foam. The wind not only prevented our
progress, but offered no opportunity to run behind any headland for shelter;
hence we were forced to keep out in this bloody ocean, seething like a pot on a
hot fire. Never did the sky look more terrible; for one whole day and night it
blazed like a furnace, and the lightning broke with such violence that each time I
wondered if it had carried off my spars and sails; the flashes came with such
fury and frightfulness that we all thought that the ship would be blasted. All this
time the water never ceased to fall from the sky; I do not say it rained, for it was
like another deluge. The men were so worn out that they longed for death to
end their dreadful suffering.[94]

Columbus awes the Jamaican natives by predicting the lunar eclipse of 1504.

In Panama, Columbus learned from the Ngobe of gold and a strait to another

ocean, but was told by local leader Quibían not to go past a certain point down
the river. After much exploration, in January 1503, he established a garrison at
the mouth of the Belén River. On 6 April, one of the ships became stranded in
the river. At the same time, the garrison was attacked by Quibían and the other
ships were damaged. Shipworms also damaged the ships in tropical waters.[95]
Columbus left for Hispaniola on 16 April heading north. On 10 May he sighted
the Cayman Islands, naming them "Las Tortugas" after the numerous sea
turtles there. His ships next sustained more damage in a storm off the coast of
Cuba. Unable to travel farther, on 25 June 1503 they were beached in St. Ann's
Bay, Jamaica.
For one year Columbus and his men remained stranded on Jamaica. A
Spaniard, Diego Méndez, and some natives paddled a canoe to get help from
Hispaniola. The governor, Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres, detested Columbus
and obstructed all efforts to rescue him and his men. In the meantime
Columbus, in a desperate effort to induce the natives to continue provisioning
him and his hungry men, won their favor by predicting a lunar eclipse for 29
February 1504, using Abraham Zacuto's astronomical charts.[96][97][98] Help finally
arrived, no thanks to the governor, on 29 June 1504, and Columbus and his
men arrived in Sanlúcar, Spain, on 7 November.

Accusations of tyranny and brutality

Following his first voyage, Columbus was appointed Viceroy and Governor of
the Indies under the terms of the Capitulations of Santa Fe. In practice, this
primarily entailed the administration of the colonies in the island of Hispaniola,
whose capital was established in Santo Domingo. By the end of his third
voyage, Columbus was physically and mentally exhausted, his body wracked
by arthritis and his eyes by ophthalmia. In October 1499, he sent two ships to
Spain, asking the Court of Spain to appoint a royal commissioner to help him
govern.[citation needed]
By this time, accusations of tyranny and incompetence on the part of Columbus
had also reached the Court. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand responded by
removing Columbus from power and replacing him with Francisco de Bobadilla,
a member of the Order of Calatrava. Bobadilla, who ruled as governor from
1500 until his death in a storm in 1502, had also been tasked by the Court with
investigating the accusations of brutality made against Columbus.
Arriving in Santo Domingo while Columbus was away during the explorations of
his third voyage, Bobadilla was immediately met with complaints about all three
Columbus brothers: Christopher, Bartolomeo, and Diego. Bobadilla reported to
Spain that Columbus regularly used torture and mutilation to govern Hispaniola.
The 48-page report, found in 2006 in the national archive in the Spanish city
of Simancas, contains testimonies from 23 people, including both enemies and
supporters of Columbus, about the treatment of colonial subjects by Columbus
and his brothers during his seven-year rule.[99]
According to the report, Columbus once punished a man found guilty of stealing
corn by having his ears and nose cut off and then selling him into slavery.
Testimony recorded in the report stated that Columbus congratulated his
brother Bartolomeo on "defending the family" when the latter ordered a woman
paraded naked through the streets and then had her tongue cut out for
suggesting that Columbus was of lowly birth. [99] The document also describes
how Columbus put down native unrest and revolt: he first ordered a brutal
crackdown in which many natives were killed, and then paraded
their dismembered bodies through the streets in an attempt to discourage
further rebellion.[100]
"Columbus's government was characterised by a form of tyranny," Consuelo
Varela, a Spanish historian who has seen the document, told journalists. "Even
those who loved him had to admit the atrocities that had taken place." [99]
Because of their gross misgovernance, Columbus and his brothers were
arrested and imprisoned upon their return to Spain from the third voyage. They
lingered in jail for six weeks before King Ferdinand ordered their release. Not
long after, the king and queen summoned the Columbus brothers to
the Alhambra palace in Granada. There, the royal couple heard the brothers'
pleas; restored their freedom and wealth; and, after much persuasion, agreed to
fund Columbus's fourth voyage. But the door was firmly shut on Columbus's
role as governor. Henceforth Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres was to be the new
governor of the West Indies.[101]

Later life
Replica of the Santa María, Columbus's flagship during his first voyage, at his Valladolid house[102]

Columbus had always claimed the conversion of non-believers as one reason

for his explorations, but he grew increasingly religious in his later years.
Probably with the assistance of his son Diego and his friend
the Carthusian monk Gaspar Gorricio, Columbus produced two books during
his later years: a Book of Privileges (1502), detailing and documenting the
rewards from the Spanish Crown to which he believed he and his heirs were
entitled, and a Book of Prophecies (1505), in which he considered his
achievements as an explorer but a fulfillment of Bible prophecy in the context
of Christian eschatology.[8][103]
In his later years, Columbus demanded that the Spanish Crown give him 10
percent of all profits made in the new lands, as stipulated in the Capitulations of
Santa Fe. Because he had been relieved of his duties as governor, the crown
did not feel bound by that contract and his demands were rejected. After his
death, his heirs sued the Crown for a part of the profits from trade with America,
as well as other rewards. This led to a protracted series of legal disputes known
as the pleitos colombinos ("Columbian lawsuits").

Illness and death

The death of Columbus, lithograph by L. Prang & Co., 1893

During a violent storm on his first return voyage, Columbus, then 41, suffered
an attack of what was believed at the time to be gout. In subsequent years, he
was plagued with what was thought to be influenza and other fevers, bleeding
from the eyes, temporary blindness and prolonged attacks of gout. The attacks
increased in duration and severity, sometimes leaving Columbus bedridden for
months at a time, and culminated in his death 14 years later.

Tomb in Seville Cathedral. The remains are borne by kings of Castile, Leon, Aragon, and Navarre.[104]

Based on Columbus's lifestyle and the described symptoms, modern doctors

suspect that he suffered from reactive arthritis, rather than gout.[105][106] Reactive
arthritis is a joint inflammation caused by intestinal bacterial infections or after
acquiring certain sexually transmitted diseases
(primarily chlamydia or gonorrhea). "It seems likely that [Columbus] acquired
reactive arthritis from food poisoning on one of his ocean voyages because of
poor sanitation and improper food preparation," writes Dr. Frank C. Arnett,
a rheumatologist and professor of internal medicine, pathology and laboratory
medicine the University of Texas Medical School at Houston. [105]
On 20 May 1506, aged probably 54, Columbus died in Valladolid, Spain. His
remains were first interred at Valladolid, then at the monastery of La
Cartuja in Seville (southern Spain) by the will of his son Diego Colón, who had
been governor of Hispaniola. In 1542, the remains were transferred to Colonial
Santo Domingo, in the present-day Dominican Republic. In 1795, when France
took over the entire island of Hispaniola, Columbus's remains were moved
to Havana, Cuba. After Cuba became independent following the Spanish–
American War in 1898, the remains were moved back to Spain, to the Cathedral
of Seville,[107] where they were placed on an elaborate catafalque.

Silver Caravel containing a small portion of Christopher Columbus's remains [108]

However, a lead box bearing an inscription identifying "Don Christopher

Columbus" and containing bone fragments and a bullet was discovered
at Santo Domingo in 1877. These bones were considered legitimate by
physician and future United States Assistant Secretary of State John Eugene
Osborne, who suggested in 1913 that the remains be placed on a battleship
and travel through the Panama Canal as a part of its opening ceremony.
Ultimately, it was decided not to do so. [109]
To lay to rest claims that the wrong relics had been moved to Havana and that
Columbus's remains had been left buried in the Cathedral of Santo
Domingo, DNA samples of the corpse resting in Seville were taken in June
2003 (History Today August 2003) as well as other DNA samples from the
remains of his brother Diego and younger son Fernando Colón. Initial
observations suggested that the bones did not appear to belong to somebody
with the physique or age at death associated with Columbus. [110] DNA extraction
proved difficult; only short fragments of mitochondrial DNA could be isolated.
The mitochondrial DNA fragments matched corresponding DNA from
Columbus's brother, giving support that both individuals had shared the same
mother.[111]

Tomb in Columbus Lighthouse, Santo Domingo Este, Dominican Republic.

Such evidence, together with anthropologic and historic analyses, led the

researchers to conclude that the remains found in Seville belonged to
Christopher Columbus.[112] The authorities in Santo Domingo have never allowed
the remains there to be exhumed, so it is unknown if any of those remains could
be from Columbus's body as well.[111][112] The Dominican remains are located in
"The Columbus Lighthouse" (Faro a Colón), in Santo Domingo.

Commemoration
The anniversary of Columbus's 1492 landing in the Americas is usually
observed on 12 October in Spain and throughout the Americas, except Canada.
In Spain it is called the Fiesta Nacional de España y Día de la Hispanidad, while
a number of countries in Latin America celebrate it as Día de la Raza. In the
United States it is called Columbus Day and is observed annually on the second
Monday in October. There are efforts in the US to rename Columbus Day
as Indigenous Peoples' Day.
Historically, the English had downplayed Columbus and emphasized the role of
the Venetian John Cabot as a pioneer explorer, but for the emerging United
States, Cabot made for a poor national hero. Veneration of Columbus in
America dates back to colonial times. The name Columbia for "America" first
appeared in a 1738 weekly publication of the debates of the British Parliament.
[113]
 The use of Columbus as a founding figure of New World nations and the use
of the word "Columbia", or simply the name "Columbus", spread rapidly after
the American Revolution. Columbus's name was given to the federal capital of
the United States (District of Columbia), the capital cities of two
U.S. states (Ohio and South Carolina), and the Columbia River. Outside the
United States the name was used in 1819 for the Gran Colombia, a precursor of
the modern Republic of Colombia. Numerous cities, towns, counties, streets,
and plazas (called Plaza Colón or Plaza de Colón throughout Latin America and
Spain) have been named after him. A candidate for sainthood in the Catholic
Church in 1866, celebration of Columbus's legacy perhaps reached a zenith in
1892 with the 400th anniversary of his first arrival in the Americas. Monuments
to Columbus like the Columbian Exposition in Chicago and Columbus Circle in
New York City were erected throughout the United States and Latin America
extolling him.
The World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893, commemorated the 400th
anniversary of the landing of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. [114] Over 27
million people attended the exposition during its six-month duration.

$5 Columbian Issue stamp, United States, 1893

20 colones coin, Costa Rica, 1897

The United States Postal Service participated in the celebration issuing the first

US commemorative postage stamps, a series of 16 postage issues called
the Columbian Issue depicting Columbus, Queen Isabella and others in the
various stages of his several voyages. The issues range in value from the 1-
cent to the 5-dollar denominations. Under Benjamin Harrison and his
Postmaster General John Wanamaker the Columbian commemorative stamps
were made available and were first issued at the World Columbian Exposition in
Chicago, Illinois, in 1893. Wanamaker originally introduced the idea of issuing
the nation's first commemorative stamp to Harrison, the Congress and the U.S.
Post Office. To demonstrate his confidence in the new Columbian
commemorative issues Wanamaker purchased $10,000 worth of stamps with
his own money. The Columbian Exposition lasted several months, and over
$40 million in commemorative postage stamps had been sold. [115] The 400th
anniversary Columbian issues were very popular in the United States. A total of
two billion stamps were issued for all the Columbian denominations, and 72
percent of these were the two-cent stamps, "Landing of Columbus", which paid
the first-class rate for domestic mail at the time.[116]
In 1992, a second Columbian issue was released that was identical to the first
to commemorate the 500th anniversary, except for the date in the upper right
hand corner of each stamp. These issues were made from the original dies of
which the first engraved issues of 1893 were produced. The United States
issued the series jointly for the first time with three other countries, Italy in lire,
Portugal in escudos and Spain in pesetas.[117]
In 1909, descendants of Columbus undertook to dismantle the Columbus family
chapel in Spain and move it to Boalsburg near State College, Pennsylvania,
where it may now be visited by the public.[118] At the museum associated with the
chapel, there are a number of Columbus relics worthy of note, including the
armchair that the "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" used at his chart table.

Legacy
Further information: Columbian Exchange and List of places named for
Christopher Columbus
Columbus's voyages are considered some of the most important events in
world history, kickstarting modern globalism and resulting in major
demographic, commercial, economic, social, and political changes. [119][120] These
explorations resulted in the permanent contact between the two hemispheres.
There was a massive exchange of animals, plants, fungi, diseases,
technologies, mineral wealth and ideas.[121][122][123][124] Exposed to old world diseases,
the indigenous populations of the New world collapsed and were largely
replaced by Europeans and Africans who brought with them new methods of
farming, business, governance, and religious worship. [125][126]
Discoverer

Columbus Lighthouse (Faro a Colón), Santo Domingo[127]

Though Christopher Columbus came to be considered the discoverer of

America in US and European popular culture, his historical legacy is more
nuanced. America had been discovered and populated by its indigenous
population. Columbus was not even the first European to reach its shores,
having been preceded by Erik the Red in 10th-century Greenland and Leif
Erikson in 11th-century Vinland at L'Anse aux Meadows.[128][129] However,
Columbus's efforts brought the Americas to the attention of Europe at a time
ripe for Europe to act upon. Thus, Columbus was able to initiate the enduring
association between the Earth's two major landmasses and their inhabitants.
"Columbus's claim to fame isn't that he got there first," explains historian Martin
Dugard, "it's that he stayed."[130]
Historians have traditionally argued that Columbus remained convinced to the
very end that his journeys had been along the east coast of Asia, [131] but
writer Kirkpatrick Sale argues that a document in the Book of
Privileges indicates Columbus knew he found a new continent. [132] Furthermore,
his journals from the third voyage call the "land of Paria" a "hitherto unknown"
continent.[133] On the other hand, his other writings continued to claim that he had
reached Asia, such as a 1502 letter to Pope Alexander VI where he asserted
that Cuba was the east coast of Asia.[134] He also rationalized that the new
continent of South America was the "Earthly Paradise" that was located "at the
end of the Orient".[133] Thus, it remains unclear what his true beliefs were.
The term "pre-Columbian" is usually used to refer to the peoples and cultures of
the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and his European successors.
Flat Earth mythology
Main article: Myth of the flat Earth
Columbus is often credited with refuting a prevalent belief in a flat Earth.
However, this legacy is a popular misconception. To the contrary, the spherical
shape of the Earth had been known to scholars since antiquity, and was
common knowledge among sailors. Coincidentally, the oldest surviving globe of
the Earth, the Erdapfel, was made in 1492, just before Columbus's return to
Europe. As such it contains no sign of the Americas and yet demonstrates the
common belief in a spherical Earth.[135]
America as a distinct land

Replicas of Niña, Pinta and Santa María sailed from Spain to the Chicago Columbian Exposition

Columbus monument near the state capitol in Denver, Colorado[136]

The scholar Amerigo Vespucci, who sailed to America in the years following
Columbus's first voyage, was the first to speculate that the land was not part of
Asia but in fact constituted some wholly new continent previously unknown to
Eurasians. His travel journals, published 1502–04, convinced German
cartographer Martin Waldseemüller to reach the same conclusion, and in 1507
—a year after Columbus's death—Waldseemüller published a world map calling
the new continent America from Vespucci's Latinized name "Americus".
According to Paul Lunde, "The preoccupation of European courts with the rise
of the Ottoman Turks in the East partly explains their relative lack of interest in
Columbus's discoveries in the West."[137]
Criticism and defense in modern scholarship
See also: Taíno genocide
Since the late 20th century, historians have criticized Columbus for initiating
colonization and for abuse of natives.[138][139][140][141] Among reasons for this criticism
is the poor treatment of the native Taíno people of Hispaniola, whose population
declined rapidly after contact with the Spanish. Columbus required the natives
to pay tribute in gold and cotton.[142] Modern estimates for the pre-
Columbian population of Hispaniola vary from several hundred thousand to
more than a million.[143] According to the historian Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo
y Valdes, by 1548, 56 years after Columbus landed, and 42 years after he died,
fewer than 500 Taíno were living on the island. [144] The indigenous population
declined rapidly, due primarily to the first pandemic of European endemic
diseases, which struck Hispaniola after 1519. The natives had no acquired
immunity to these new diseases and suffered high fatalities. There is also
documentation that they were overworked.[145][146][147] Historian Andrés
Reséndez of University of California, Davis, pushes back against this narrative,
and says the available evidence suggests "slavery has emerged as major killer"
of the indigenous populations of the Caribbean between 1492 and 1550 more
so than diseases such as smallpox, influenza and malaria. [148] He says that
indigenous populations did not experience a rebound like European populations
did following the Black Death because unlike the latter, the former were
subjected to deadly forced labor in gold and silver mines on a massive scale. [149]
Slavery and serfdom
The natives of the island were systematically subjugated via
the encomienda system implemented by Columbus.[150] Adapted to the New
World from Spain, it resembled the feudal system in Medieval Europe, as it was
based on a lord offering "protection" to a class of people who owed labor. [151] In
addition, Spanish colonists under his rule began to buy and sell natives as
slaves, including children.[152]
When natives on Hispaniola began fighting back against their oppressors in
1495, Columbus's men captured 1,500 Arawak men, women, and children in a
single raid. The strongest were transported to Spain to be sold as slaves; [153] 40
percent of the 500 shipped died en route.[60] Historian James W. Loewen asserts
that "Columbus not only sent the first slaves across the Atlantic, he probably
sent more slaves—about five thousand—than any other individual." [154]
According to Spanish colonist and Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas's
contemporary A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, when slaves
held in captivity began to die at high rates, Columbus ordered all natives over
the age of thirteen to pay a hawk's bell full of gold powder every three months.
Natives who brought this amount to the Spanish were given a copper token to
hang around their necks. The Spanish cut off the hands of those without tokens,
and left them to bleed to death.[60][155] Thousands of natives committed suicide by
poison to escape their persecution.[153]
Columbus' s forced labor system was also described by his son, Ferdinand: "In
the Cibao, where the gold mines were, every person of fourteen years of age or
upward was to pay a large hawk's bell of gold dust; all others were each to pay
twenty-five pounds of cotton. Whenever an Indian delivered his tribute, he was
to receive a brass or copper token which he must wear about his neck as proof
that he had made his payment; any Indian found without such a token was to be
punished." [156]
Violence towards Natives and Spanish colonists
During his brief reign, Columbus executed Spanish colonists for minor crimes,
and used dismemberment as another form of punishment.[157]
When Columbus fell ill in 1495, "what little restraint he had maintained over his
men disappeared as he went through a lengthy period of recuperation. The
troops went wild, stealing, killing, raping, and torturing natives, trying to force
them to divulge the whereabouts of the imagined treasure-houses of
gold."[158] According to Las Casas, 50,000 natives perished during this period.
Upon his recovery, Columbus organized his troops' efforts, forming a squadron
of several hundred heavily armed men and more than twenty attack dogs. Dogs
were used to hunt down natives who attempted to flee. [153] Columbus's men tore
across the land, killing thousands of sick and unarmed natives. Soldiers would
use their captives for sword practice, attempting to decapitate them or cut them
in half with a single blow.[159]
The Arawaks attempted to fight back against Columbus's men but lacked their
armor, guns, swords, and horses. When taken prisoner, they were hanged or
burned to death. Desperation led to mass suicides and infanticide among the
natives. In just two years under Columbus's governorship, over 125,000 of the
250,000–300,000 natives in Haiti were dead, [60] many died from lethal forced
labor in the mines, in which a third of workers died every six months. [160] Within
three decades, the surviving Arawak population numbered only in the hundreds.
[160]
 "Virtually every member of the gentle race ... had been wiped
out."[153] Disease, warfare and harsh enslavement contributed to the
depopulation.[161][162][163]
Within indigenous circles, Columbus is often viewed as a key agent of
genocide.[164] Samuel Eliot Morison, a Harvard historian and author of a
multivolume biography on Columbus writes, "The cruel policy initiated by
Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete
genocide."[165] Loewen laments that while "Haiti under the Spanish is one of the
primary instances of genocide in all human history", only one major history text
he reviewed mentions Columbus's role in it. [166]
Black Legend, relativism, and disease
Some of these accounts may be part of the Black Legend, an intentional
defamation of Spain,[167][168][169] while others challenge the genocide narrative.[170][157]
[171]
 Noble David Cook, writing about the Black Legend and the conquest of the
Americas wrote, "There were too few Spaniards to have killed the millions who
were reported to have died in the first century after Old and New World contact".
He instead estimates that the death toll was caused by diseases like smallpox,
  which according to some estimates had an 80–90% fatality rate in Native
[172]

American populations.[173] Disease played a significant role in the destruction of

the natives. Indirect evidence suggests that some serious illness may have
arrived with the 1500 colonists who accompanied Columbus's second
expedition in 1493.
By the end of 1494, disease and famine had claimed two-thirds of the Spanish
settlers.[146][174] A native Nahuatl account depicted the social breakdown that
accompanied the pandemics: "A great many died from this plague, and many
others died of hunger. They could not get up to search for food, and everyone
else was too sick to care for them, so they starved to death in their
beds."[175] When the pandemic finally struck in 1519 it wiped out much of the
remaining native population.[176][177] Charles C. Mann wrote "It was as if the
suffering these diseases had caused in Eurasia over the past millennia were
concentrated into the span of decades." [178]
Some historians have argued that, while brutal, Columbus was simply a product
of his time, and being a figure of the 15th century, should not be judged by the
morality of the 20th century.[179]

Physical appearance

In The Virgin of the Navigators, 1531–36

Although an abundance of artwork involving Christopher Columbus exists,

no authentic contemporary portrait has been found.[180] James W. Loewen,
author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, believes the various posthumous portraits
have no historical value.[181]
Sometime between 1531 and 1536, Alejo Fernández painted an altarpiece, The
Virgin of the Navigators, that includes a depiction of Columbus. The painting
was commissioned for a chapel in Seville's Casa de Contratación (House of
Trade) and remains there, as the earliest known painting about the voyages of
Columbus.[182][183]
At the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, 71 alleged portraits of Columbus
were displayed; most did not match contemporary descriptions. [184] These
writings describe him as having reddish or blond hair, which turned to white
early in his life, light colored eyes,[185] as well as being a lighter-skinned person
with too much sun exposure turning his face red. Accounts consistently
describe Columbus as a large and physically strong man of some six feet (1.83
metres) or more in height, easily taller than the average European of his day. [186]
The most iconic image of Columbus is a portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo,
which has been reproduced in many textbooks. It agrees with descriptions of
Columbus in that it shows a large man with auburn hair, but the painting dates
from 1519 and cannot, therefore, have been painted from life. Furthermore, the
inscription identifying the subject as Columbus was probably added later, and
the face shown differs from other images, including that of the "Virgin of the
Navigators."[187]

See also
 Christopher Columbus in fiction
 Jean Cousin
 Egg of Columbus
 Indigenous Peoples' Day
 Places named after Christopher Columbus
 List of monuments and memorials to Christopher
Columbus

References
Footnotes

1. ^ In other relevant languages:

 Italian: Cristoforo Colombo [kriˈstɔːforo koˈlombo]
 Ligurian: Cristoffa C(or)ombo [kɾiˈʃtɔffa kuˈɾuŋbu;
ˈkuŋbu]
 Spanish: Cristóbal Colón
 Portuguese: Cristóvão Colombo
 Catalan: Cristòfor (or Cristòfol) Colom
 Latin: Christophorus Columbus
2. ^ "Even with less than a complete record, however, scholars
can state with assurance that Columbus was born in the
republic of Genoa in northern Italy, although perhaps not in
the city itself, and that his family made a living in the wool
business as weavers and merchants. ... The two main early
biographies of Columbus have been taken as literal truth by
hundreds of writers, in large part because they were written
by individuals closely connected to Columbus or his
writings. ... Both biographies have serious shortcomings as
evidence." (Phillips, Jr & Phillips 1992, p. 9)
3. ^ About 10,600 nautical miles
4. ^ That is, Columbus was unaware that others had already
discovered each of these before he did.

Citations

1. ^ Lester, Paul Martin. "Looks Are Deceiving: the Portraits of

Christopher Columbus." Visual Anthropology, Vol. 5,
1993, Harwood Academic Publishers GmbH. pp. 211–227.
Portraits may be seen here: Portraits of Christopher
Columbus – Columbus Monuments Pages. Vanderkrogt.
2. ^ Jump up to:    Govan, Fiona (28 November
a b

2010).  "Christopher Columbus 'was son of Polish king'"  –

via www.telegraph.co.uk.
3. ^ Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds.
(1905). "Columbus, Diego. The youngest brother of
Christopher Columbus"  . New International
Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead. – The
names Giacomo and Diego are cognates, along with James,
all sharing a common origin. See Behind the Name, Mike
Campbell, pages Giacomo, Diego, and James. All retrieved
3 February 2017.
4. ^ "Columbus". Random House Webster's Unabridged
Dictionary.
5. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Beazley 1911, p. 741.
6. ^ Phillips, Jr & Phillips 1992, p. 9.
7. ^ Bergreen, Lawrence (2012). Columbus The Four
Voyages, 1493–1504. Penguin Group US.  ISBN  978-0-14-
312210-4.
8. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e Encyclopædia Britannica, 1993 ed., Vol. 16,
pp. 605ff / Morison, Christopher Columbus, 1955 ed., pp.
14ff
9. ^ Rime diverse, Pavia, 1595, p. 117
10. ^ Tasso, Torquato (1755).  Ra Gerusalemme deliverâ.
Genoa: Ra Stamparia de Tarigo. p. 32. Retrieved  2
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11. ^ Çittara zeneize – Regole d'Ortografia, Genoa, 1745
12. ^ Consulta ligure, Vocabolario delle parlate liguri, Sage,
1982, ISBN 88-7058-044-X
13. ^ The Daily Telegraph, 14 October 2009, Georgetown
University team led by Professor Estelle Irizarry claims that
Christopher Columbus was Catalan
14. ^ (in Portuguese) "Armas e Troféus." Revista de História,
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15. ^ Davidson 1997, p. 3.
16. ^ Phillips, Jr & Phillips 1992, p. 85.
17. ^ "Christopher Columbus". Archived from  the original on 23
March 2002.. Thomas C. Tirado, PhD Professor History.
Millersville University.
18. ^ "It is most probable that Columbus visited Bristol, where
he was introduced to English commerce with
Iceland." Bedini, Silvio A. and David Buisseret (1992). The
Christopher Columbus encyclopedia, Volume 1, University
of Michigan Press, republished by Simon &
Schuster, ISBN 0-13-142670-2, p. 175
19. ^ "Many Columbists, dismissing both these claims as
absurd, have doubted that Columbus could ever have gone
to Iceland." says Anne Paolucci and Henry
Paolucci, Columbus, America, and the world (1992) p. 140.
20. ^ Freitas, Antonio Maria de (1893). The Wife of Columbus:
With Genealogical Tree of the Perestrello and Moniz
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Schuster 1992.
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26. ^ . Delaney, Carol. “Columbus’s Ultimate Goal: Jerusalem”.
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29. ^ Delaney, Carol. “Columbus’s Ultimate Goal: Jerusalem”.
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30. ^ Hamandi, Abbas. “Columbus and the Recovery of
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31. ^ Charles R. Boxer (1951). The Christian Century in Japan:
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32. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean
Sea: The Life of Christopher Columbus, (Boston: Atlantic-
Little, Brown, 1942). Reissued by the Morison Press,
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33. ^ Journal article: Christopher Columbus. An address
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34. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j Murphy, Patrick J.; Coye, Ray W.
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Zinn, Howard 1980. A People's History of the United States,
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37. ^ See, e.g. "Mariner's Astrolabe", Navigation Museum,
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35404-007-9
41. ^ Morison (1942, pp. 65, 93).
42. ^ Phillips, Jr & Phillips 1992, p. 110.
43. ^ "The First Voyage Log". Archived from the original  on 7
March 2012. Retrieved 18 April  2008.
44. ^ "Trade Winds and the Hadley Cell". Retrieved 18
April2008.
45. ^ The Brooklyn Museum catalogue notes that the most likely
source for Leutze's trio of Columbus paintings is Washington
Irving's best-selling Life and Voyages of Columbus (1828).
46. ^ Durant, Will The Story of Civilization vol. vi, "The
Reformation". Chapter XIII, p. 260.
47. ^ Phillips, Jr & Phillips 1992, p. 132.
48. ^ Mark McDonald, "Ferdinand Columbus, Renaissance
Collector (1488–1539)", 2005, British Museum
Press, ISBN 978-0-7141-2644-9
49. ^ Shen Kuo discovered 400 years earlier, in Asia, the
concept of true north in terms of magnetic
declination towards the north pole, with experimentation of
suspended magnetic needles and "the improved meridian
determined by Shen's [astronomical] measurement of the
distance between the polestar and true north". For more see
Sivin, Nathan (1984). "Why the Scientific Revolution Did Not
Take Place in China – Or Didn't It?" in Transformation and
Tradition in the Sciences: Essays in Honor of I. Bernard
Cohen, 531–555, ed. Everett Mendelsohn. Cambridge:
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p. 22.
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52. ^ Real Academia Española  (1737). Diccionario de
autoridades. 5.
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54. ^ Morison (1942, p. 226); Lopez, (1990, p. 14); Columbus &
Toscanelli (2010, p. 35)
55. ^ Lopez, (1990, p. 15)
56. ^ William D. Phillips Jr., 'Columbus, Christopher', in David
Buisseret (ed.), The Oxford Companion to World
Exploration, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, online edition
2012).
57. ^ Hoxie, Frederick (1996). Encyclopedia of North American
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395-66921-1.
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as regards the use of arms … for with fifty men they can all
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65. ^ Fuson, Robert. The Log of Christopher
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129. ^ "Why Do We Celebrate Columbus Day and Not Leif
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135. ^ Jeffrey Burton Russell  (1991). Inventing the Flat Earth:
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670-83725-0.
154. ^ Loewen 1995, pp. 57–58.
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Christopher Columbus by His Son, Ferdinand. Translated
by Keen, Benjamin. Folio Society. Retrieved  16
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161. ^ Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange Westport,
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162. ^ Abbot 2010.
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316-58356-5.
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1 (Feb. 1971), pp. 112–127
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169. ^ Keen, Benjamin, "The White Legend Revisited: A Reply
to Professor Hanke's 'Modest Proposal,'" Hispanic American
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170. ^ "Christopher Columbus XX: Hey America, my ancestor
didn't cause your failings".  USA Today. Retrieved 4
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Langsjoen (1998). The Cambridge encyclopedia of human
paleopathology. Cambridge University Press. p.
205. ISBN 0-521-55203-6
174. ^ Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange, Westport,
1972, pp. 39, 45, 47.
175. ^ Cook, Noble David (1998).  Born to Die: Disease and the
New World Conquest. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. p. 202.
176. ^ Oliver, José R. (2009).  Caciques and Cemí idols  : the
web spun by Taíno rulers between Hispaniola and Puerto
Rico([Online-Ausg.]. ed.). Tuscaloosa: University of
Alabama Press. p.  192. ISBN 978-0-8173-5515-9.
Retrieved  25 December  2017.
177. ^ "Deadly Diseases: Epidemics throughout history". CNN.
Retrieved  25 December  2017.
178. ^ Mann, Charles C. (2011). 1493: Uncovering the New
World Columbus Created. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 12.
179. ^ Fusco, Mary Ann Castronovo (8 October 2000).  "In
Person; In Defense Of Columbus".  The New York Times.
Retrieved  9 August 2018.
180. ^ Alden, Henry Mills. Harper's New Monthly Magazine.
Volume 84, Issues 499–504. Published by Harper &
Brothers, 1892. Originally from Harvard University. Digitized
on 16 December 2008. 732. Retrieved on 8 September
2009. 'Major, Int. Letters of Columbus, ixxxviii., says "Not
one of the so-called portraits of Columbus is unquestionably
authentic." They differ from each other, and cannot
represent the same person.'
181. ^ Loewen 1995, p. 55.
182. ^ John Noble, Susan Forsyth, Vesna Maric, Paula Hardy.
Andalucía. Lonely Planet, 2007, p. 100
183. ^ Linda Biesele Hall, Teresa Eckmann. Mary, mother and
warrior, University of Texas Press, 2004, p. 46
184. ^ Morison, Samuel Eliot Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life
of Christopher Columbus, pp. 47–48, Boston 1942.
 185. ^ Bartolomé de Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, ed.
Agustín Millares Carlo, 3 vols. (Mexico City, 1951), book 1,
chapter 2, 1:29. The Spanish word garzos is now usually
translated as "light blue," but it seems to have connoted
light grey-green or hazel eyes to Columbus's
contemporaries. The word rubio can mean "blonde," "fair,"
or "ruddy." The Worlds of Christopher Columbus by William
D. and Carla Rahn Phillips, p. 282.
186. ^ "DNA Tests on Christopher Columbus' bones, on his
relatives and on Genoese and Catalan claimants".
Retrieved  9 February  2009.
187. ^ "Portrait of a Man, Said to be Christopher Columbus
(born about 1446, died 1506)", Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bibliography

 Cohen, J.M. (1969) The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus:

Being His Own Log-Book, Letters and Dispatches with
Connecting Narrative Drawn from the Life of the Admiral by His
Son Hernando Colon and Others. London UK: Penguin Classics.
 Columbus, Christopher (1847). Major, Richard Henry
(ed.). Select Letters of Christopher Columbus: With Other
Original Documents, Relating to His Four Voyages to the New
World. London: The Hakluyt Society. Retrieved 28
February 2016.
 Beazley, Charles Raymond (1911).  "Columbus, Christopher"  . In
Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica.  6 (11th ed.).
Cambridge University Press. pp.  741–746.
 Columbus, Christopher; Toscanelli, Paolo (2010) [1893].
Markham, Clements R. (ed.). The Journal of Christopher
Columbus (During His First Voyage). Cambridge University
Press.  ISBN  978-1-108-01284-3. Retrieved 28 February 2016.
 Columbus, Christopher (1991) [1938].  First Voyage to America:
From the log of the "Santa Maria". Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-
26844-6. Retrieved 28 February 2016.
 Columbus, Ferdinand (1571). A History of the Life and Actions of
Adm. Christopher Columbus. in Churchill, Awnsham  (1732). A
Collection of voyages and travels.  2. London : Printed by
assignment from Messrs. Churchill for John Walthoe ..., Tho.
Wotton ..., Samuel Birt ..., Daniel Browne ..., Thomas Osborn ...,
John Shuckburgh ... and Henry Lintot ... pp. 501–624.
 Crosby, A.W. (1987) The Columbian Voyages: the Columbian
Exchange, and their Historians. Washington, DC: American
Historical Association.
 Davidson, Miles H. (1997).  Columbus then and now: a life
reexamined. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma
Press.  ISBN  978-0-8061-2934-1. Retrieved 28 February 2016.
 Froom, LeRoy (1950).  The Prophetic Faith of our
Fathers  (DjVuand PDF). 1.
 Fuson, Robert H. (1992) The Log of Christopher Columbus.
International Marine Publishing
 Wey, Gómez Nicolás (2008). The tropics of empire: Why
Columbus sailed south to the Indies. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press. ISBN 978-0-262-23264-7
 Joseph, Edward Lanzar (1838).  History of Trinidad. A.K.
Newman & Co. Retrieved 28 February 2016.
 Irving, Washington (1828).  A History of the Life and Voyages of
Christopher Columbus. John Murray (UK), G. & C. Carvill
(US).Links to scans on the Internet Archive: Volume 1, Volume
2, Volume 3, Volume 4.
  Loewen, James W. (1995).  Lies My Teacher Told Me. The New
Press.
 Lopez, Barry (1990). The Rediscovery of North America.
Lexicon, KY: University Press of Kentucky.  ISBN  978-0-8131-
1742-3. Retrieved  28 February  2016.
 Morison, Samuel Eliot (1942).  Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life
of Christopher Columbus. Boston: Little, Brown and
Company. ISBN 978-1-4067-5027-0. Retrieved  28
February 2016.
 Morison, Samuel Eliot, Christopher Columbus, Mariner, Boston,
Little, Brown and Company, 1955
 Phillips, Jr, William D.; Phillips, Carla Rahn (1992).  The worlds
of Christopher Columbus. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.  ISBN  978-0-521-35097-6. Retrieved 28 February 2016.
 Sale, Kirkpatrick The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher
Columbus and the Columbian Legacy, Plume, 1991
 Varela, Consuelo (2006).  La Caída de Cristóbal Colón. Madrid:
Marcial Pons.  ISBN  978-84-96467-28-6. Retrieved 28
February2016.
 Wilford, John Noble (1991), The Mysterious History of
Columbus: An Exploration of the Man, the Myth, the Legacy,
New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Further reading
Library resources about
Christopher Columbus

Resources in your
library
Resources in other
libraries

 The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus by

His Son Ferdinand. Translated by Keen, Benjamin.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 1978
[1959]. ISBN 978-0-313-20175-2.
 Winsor, Justin (1891). Christopher Columbus and
How He Received and Iimparted the Spirit of
Discovery. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Retrieved 28
February 2016.

External links
Wikisource has original
works written by or about:
Christopher Columbus

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media related
 to Christopher Columbus.

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related to: Christopher
Columbus

 Works by Christopher Columbus at Project

Gutenberg
 Works by or about Christopher
Columbus at Internet Archive
 Works by Christopher Columbus at LibriVox (public
domain audiobooks) 
 Excerpts from the log of Christopher Columbus's
first voyage
 The Letter of Columbus to Luis de Sant Angel
Announcing His Discovery
 Columbus Monuments Pages (overview of
monuments for Columbus all over the world)
 "But for Columbus There Would Be No America",
Tiziano Thomas Dossena, Bridgepugliausa.it, 2012
 Journal article: Christopher Columbus. An address
delivered before the American Catholic Historical
Society
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