Columbus in the Americas

by William Least Heat-Moon, Lois Wallace

A stirring tale of adventure and tragedy

"They brought balls of spun cotton and parrots and javelins and other little things that it would be tiresome to write down, and they gave everything for anything that was given to them. I was attentive and labored to find out if there was any gold."

With these portentous words, Christopher Columbus described one of his first encounters with Native Americans on the island of Guanahani, which he had named San Salvador and claimed for Spain the day before. In  Columbus in the Americas,  bestselling author William Least Heat-Moon reveals that Columbus's subsequent dealings with the cultures he encountered not only did considerable immediate harm, but also set the pattern of behavior for those who followed him.

Based on the logbook of Columbus and numerous other firsthand accounts of his four voyages to the New World, this vividly detailed history also examines the strengths and weaknesses of Columbus as a navigator, explorer, and leader. It recounts dramatic events such as the destruction of Fortress Navidad, the very first European settlement in the New World; a pitched battle in northern Panama with the native Guaymi people; and an agonizing year Columbus and his men spent marooned on a narrow spit of land in southern Jamaica.

Filled with stories of triumph and tragedy, courage and villainy,  Columbus in the Americas  offers a balanced yet unflinching portrait of the most famous and controversial explorer in history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, American History

192 pages, Hardcover

First published February 10, 2002

About the author

From wikipedia:

William Least Heat-Moon, byname of William Trogdon is an American travel writer of English, Irish and Osage Nation ancestry. He is the author of a bestselling trilogy of topographical U.S. travel writing.

His pen name came from his father saying, "I call myself Heat Moon, your elder brother is Little Heat Moon. You, coming last, therefore, are Least." Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Heat-Moon attended the University of Missouri where he earned bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. degrees in English, as well as a bachelor's degree in photojournalism. He also served as a professor of English at the university.

Reviews

[Paul Haspel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Columbus’ stock has been losing value, in terms of his historical reputation, for some time now. The Genoese navigator in whose honor Columbus Day was established in 1934 is now widely seen, among many communities within the United States of America and around the world, as a perpetrator of genocide against Indigenous Americans. This change in perceptions has led to the removal or destruction of Columbus monuments in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Chicago, and other U.S. cities. And the aspects of Christopher Columbus’ life and legacy that have brought him into such disrepute are on full display in William Least Heat-Moon’s 2002 book Columbus in the Americas.

Least Heat-Moon is best-known for travel books such as Blue Highways (1982). In that book, he wrote of journeying across the United States by staying away from the interstates and other major highways, and instead traveling on the relatively obscure local roads that are drawn in blue on the U.S. highway maps printed by many map companies. But as his cultural heritage includes Osage ancestry, it makes sense that he would be interested in the impact of Christopher Columbus’ four trans-Atlantic voyages upon the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

And Least Heat-Moon pulls no punches when evaluating what Columbus did to the original inhabitants of the American continent. On Columbus’ first voyage, for instance, he wrote a notorious letter to Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the monarchs who in 1492 financed Columbus’ improbable idea of finding a westward maritime route to China and “the Indies.” Reminding the monarchs of their infamous Alhambra Decree – in which Ferdinand and Isabella had ordered the expulsion of Spain’s entire Jewish population – Columbus told the monarchs how ready the Taino people seemed to be for conversion to Christianity, right down to a willingness to make the Sign of the Cross. Columbus, in his letter, assures Ferdinand and Isabella that with enough priests sent to the Americas, it would be easy “to convert [the Taino] as you have destroyed those…who would not seek to confess the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost”. Least Heat-Moon’s assessment:

These words, to all but those possessed of fervid messianism, must make the blood run cold of anyone who values cultural diversity and respects the rights of indigenous societies to retain their unique ways. Although Columbus continually failed to comprehend it, Taino life was rich with spiritual beliefs that had maintained them for centuries, beliefs that did not urge them to force heir convictions upon others or kill in the name of a deity. Their willingness to imitate uncomprehendingly the sign of the cross was not, as Columbus believed, a desire for conversion but more probably an amusement and a wish to please… (p. 54).

Least Heat-Moon proceeds with a grim cataloguing of Columbus’ crimes. He presided over mass killings of whole nations of Indigenous Americans who resisted Spanish rule. Thousands of other Indigenous people were consigned to slavery – in spite of Columbus’ earlier assurances to the Spanish monarchs that he would enslave only those “Indians” who refused to accept Christianity. While he was about it – knowing, no doubt, the kinds of conquerors he would need to have along in order to reduce the continent under Spanish hegemony – Columbus also made a practice of giving Indigenous women to leading Spaniards as sexual slaves. Looking at one particular episode of Columbus’ brutality toward Indigenous people on what is now the island of St. Croix, during Columbus’ second voyage to the Americans in November of 1493, Least Heat-Moon writes that

People who believe that Divine Hands of Justice mete out rewards and punishments for human actions need look no further than that November day in 1493 on the Island of the Holy Cross for reasons why the fortunes of Columbus almost immediately began to turn….Columbus, never adept in accepting his own role in his ultimate fate, apparently saw himself blameless in such actions despite his practice of handing over to his men Indian women. (p. 106)

Columbus may have been a bold navigator – though he underestimated the size of the Earth, and his sailors would have died of hunger or thirst long before reaching China if they hadn’t happened upon the American continent. But he was a terribly incompetent administrator – to the extent that, not too long after being named “Admiral of the Ocean Sea” by a grateful Ferdinand and Isabella, he was shipped home to Spain in disgrace, and in irons. Of that shameful end to Columbus’ third voyage, Least Heat-Moon states grimly, if accurately, that “so the Admiral, in bondage, made his sixth crossing of his Ocean Sea, this time in the manner of the hundreds of Indian captives he’d sent over it” (p. 151).

Wanting to be fair to the magnitude of Columbus’ impact upon history, Least Heat-Moon closes this concise, 180-page study by writing that Columbus “accomplished what no one before him had: He found a route to open permanently the West to the East….In doing so, he left a name more recognized – if not always honored – than almost any other in history”. Against that, one must set Columbus’ “establishing practices and reinforcing attitudes that would lead to the extermination of cultures and peoples, perhaps as many as forty million.” On that basis, Least Heat-Moon concludes that “There is no reason, earth, to weep for Christopher Columbus” (p. 180).

Fans of Christopher Columbus – however many or few of them there still may be – probably would not enjoy Columbus in the Americas. Other readers, by contrast, should find it an interesting and informative historical study.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

"They brought balls of spun cotton and parrots and javelins and other little things that is would be tiresome to write down, and they gave everything for anything that was given to them. I was attentive and labored to find out if they was any gold."

"With these portentous words, Christopher Columbus described one of his first encounters with Native Americans on the island of Guanahani, which he had named San Salvador and claimed for Spain the day before. In Columbus in the Americas, ... Author William Least Heat-Moon reveals that Columbus's subsequent dealings with the cultures he encountered not only did considerable immediate harm, but also set the pattern of behavior for those who followed him.

"Based on the logbook of Columbus and numerous other firsthand accounts of his four voyages to the New World, this vividly detailed history also examines the strengths and weaknesses of Columbus as a navigator, explorer, and leader. It recounts dramatic events such as the destruction of Fortress Navidad, the very first European settlement in the New World; a pitched battle in northern Panama with the native Guyami people; and an agonizing year Columbus and his men spent marooned on a narrow spit of land in southern Jamaica.

"Filled with stories of triumph and tragedy, courage and villainy, Columbus in the Americasoffers a balanced yet unflinching portrait of the most famous and controversial explorer in history."
~~back cover

I'm so glad I'm not God! I wouldn't want to have the knowledge of what was going to happen; I wouldn't want to be able to look down, knowing what lay in the future. And that's what it was like to read this book, and it was heartbreaking to watch the initial successes and pleasure in success be gradually eroded away until ... well, if you don't know how Columbus' life ended, I will let you read the book for yourself.

It was even more heartwrenching to read about the effect of European contact on the native peoples, to read about the cruelty and rapacity of the Spaniards (while having to always keep in the front of my mind that they were acting within the culture of their times) and how those traits spelled the end of native cultures and lives.

Yes, I had a general idea of the results of Columbus' discovery of the New World. Mr. Least Heat-Moon has presented a non-European interpretation and it paints the event in shame, sorrow, and greed, wiping away the shining picture of a brave explorer.

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doesn't damn Columbus with opinion or vitriol, but with simple factual accounts of his actions.

[Paul Haspel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short but useful summary of Christopher Columbus's voyages to the Americas. Acknowledges Columbus' boldness as a mariner and the scope of his ambitions, and at the same time makes no bones regarding the enormity of the cruelties that Columbus perpetrated against the aboriginal peoples of the American continent.

Writing this review on this Columbus Day 2013 -- that's 521 years after Columbus made his first American landfall at what is now Watling Island, and 79 years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt made Columbus Day a federal holiday -- I still find it odd that Columbus Day is a national holiday for the United States of America. William Least Heat-Moon's little book captures well what is paradoxical about the American attitude toward Columbus.

[Ron]

A short, brisk overview of Columbus's four voyages, where he seems to have gone in the Caribbean, how he treated the natives (not very well at all), what he missed (the mainland, mostly), how he was treated by his sailing compatriots (rather shittily), and how he was regarded back home by the Spanish crown (nowhere near as well as he had hoped). Heat-Moon gives him plenty of kudos for his sailing skills (he made the trips quite expeditiously, especially when compared to later English voyages, that took twice as long to make the crossings, and he dead-reckoned his way to newly established ports of call in the islands almost unerringly). But he was a poor administrator, and he continued to believe the nonsense of the ancient writers about the so-called Indies, rather than his own two eyes.
Heat-Moon tries to distill what relatively little we know from various contemporary accounts, though much of Columbus's records themselves have been lost. As an overview, fairly good; with very mediocre maps showing the probable routes.
I will remember that the Santa Maria was wrecked on a reef on the first voyage, and salvaged to build a fort that was quickly overrun and abandoned after ol' Chris left for home. In his own time, he was treated rather shabbily, and his worst actions as a conqueror for Christ and the Crown have been whitewashed by history.

[Quad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Colombo nelle Americhe è un interessante excursus sui viaggi di Colombo e le sue varie tappe, analizzando i documenti dell'epoca, mettendo insieme una ricostruzione storica il più fedele possibile e cercando anche di depurare la scoperta dell'America da molte leggende che si sono incrostate alla storia vera, come ad esempio la falsa credenza che Colombo fosse l'unico a credere in una Terra rotonda, quando ormai l'idea era da tutti data per certa e si discuteva soltanto più sulle vere dimensioni del globo. Scrittura fluente e piuttosto accattivante.

[Barb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty darn interesting. Places Columbus within context quite well. Never knew about the other three voyages, or the political pressures Columbus was under to bring back wealth. Moon admires Columbus as a sailor, understands some of the impossible situations he found himself in, and still reminds us, from time to time, what wanton destruction this brought on to the native peoples of our continent. Very well balanced.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an interesting and fast read detailing all four of Columbus's voyages to the new world. It was based on abstracts of his ship's logs and other writings. Until the end, Columbus was convinced that he had actually reached the Orient and was finding some lesser known islands and people in that region. A great read for anyone wanting to have an overall picture of each of the voyages and what he did and experienced as the New World became more familiar to the Old World.

[MICHAEL]

Good overview from one of my favorite authors. If you are at all interested in this topic you would do well to look into the books 1491 and 1493.

[Svalbard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dire che gli statunitensi amano la loro patria è aderire ad un luogo comune trito e piuttosto stucchevole. Ma non saprei come definire altrimenti il sentimento di Heat-Moon per il suo Paese, se non come amore - amore che comunque non sfugge alla ragione e alla riflessione sugli aspetti meno edificanti del suo passato, e d'altra parte nessuno meglio di lui può farlo, data la sua discendenza tanto dai nativi (come si inferisce dal suo nome) quanto dai pionieri che combatterono con Washington per l'indipendenza. E probabilmente è stato questo alla radice del suo desiderio di penetrare l'intima essenza del suo Paese, cosa che ha fatto percorrendone le strade, d'asfalto prima, poi d'acqua, e raccontando tutto quello che vedeva e le persone che incontrava. Adesso invece ha voluto andare a fondo dell'origine dell'America come la conosciamo noi - il Nuovo Mondo - studiando Cristoforo Colombo, le sue idee e le sue imprese. E ovviamente, al di là dell'evidente stima ed ammirazione per l'uomo, senza tacere nulla delle sue azioni meno edificanti, appropriato preludio ai crimini e ai genocidi che sarebbero stati perpetrati da quelli venuti dopo di lui.

[Kyle Berry · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue".

"He named the discovered land after his boyhood friend, Amerigo. And that, kids, is how America got its name."

That was most of the story we learned as kids.

There is so much more to know, good and bad, about these adventures, and Heat-Moon illuminates those key events while keeping the story itself tight (less than 200 pages!). Based on accounts from Columbus himself, and those around him, you'll learn much about those voyages, what they meant for the future of European-Indian relations, and the choices Columbus made that set it all in motion.

Columbus is not presented as a sympathetic villain nor a damaged hero; he is given fair treatment and due credit for his accomplishments - and his catastrophic mistakes and failures of character.

This book is a very worthy read.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

A concise narrative of a monumental historical event, beautifully written. WLHM presents a full view of Columbus for his accomplishments as an explorer and the destruction he set in motion on an entire culture. Based on first-hand accounts of Columbus's four voyages, WLHM tells the story of Columbus's shipwrecks and struggles with surviving ocean storms.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely not the version of Columbus voyages and "discoveries" that I learned in elementary school. This book is probably banned from most school libraries in the red states because it might make someone feel bad because of the truly horrible acts perpetrated on the indigenous populations of the Americas by Europeans.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting overview of Columbus's voyages, including both his accomplishments and his mistakes.

[Laura Duffield Biegger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Columbus had a really tough time not finding what he thought he did.