Judging Columbus: Irving and Winsor

“His conduct was characterized by the grandeur of his views, and the magnanimity of his spirit. Instead of scouring the newly-found countries, like a grasping adventurer eager only for immediate gain, as was too generally the case with contemporary discoverers, he sought to ascertain their soil and productions, their rivers and harbors: he was desirous of colonizing and cultivating them; of conciliating and civilizing the natives; of building cities; introducing the useful arts; subjecting every thing to the control of law, order, and religion; and thus of founding regular and prosperous empires. In this glorious plan he was constantly defeated by the dissolute rabble which it was his misfortune to command. . . .

“It cannot be denied, however, that his piety was mingled with superstition, and darkened by the bigotry of the age. . . . In this spirit of bigotry he considered himself justified in making captives of the Indians, and transporting them to Spain to have them taught the doctrines of Christianity, and in selling them for slaves if they pretended to resist his invasions. . . . It is proper to show him in connection with the age in which he lived, lest the errors of the times should be considered as his individual faults.”

[Magnanimity: generosity of spirit. Dissolute rabble: disorderly, immoral crowd. Pretended to: here, attempted to.]

“The mines which Columbus went to seek were hard to find. The people he went to save to Christ were easy to exterminate. . . . Yet, with a chance to establish a humane life among peoples ready to be moulded to good purposes, he sought from the very first to organize among them the inherited evils of ‘established countries.’ He talked a great deal about making converts of the poor souls, while the very first sight which he had of them prompted him to consign them to the slave-mart . . . .

“It is to Columbus, also, that we trace the beginning of that monstrous guilt which Spanish law sanctioned under the name of repartimientos, and by which to every colonist, and even to the vilest, absolute power was given over as many natives as his means and rank entitled him to hold. . . .

“It was indeed the misery of Columbus to miss the opportunity of being wiser than his fellows, the occasion always sought by a commanding spirit, and it was offered to him almost as to no other.”

[Repartimientos: grants of Native workers to Spanish colonists, closely related to the encomienda system.]