Blaming Columbus

Can we blame Columbus for what happened to the Native Americans? Surely he was no saint, and certainly had no respect for the indigenous people here, but we cannot blame him for Europe’s response to the new world. Even if Columbus had been an idealistic, altruistic adventurer who respected native people, was willing to be fair with them, and wanted to explore more than to make money, it would not have had any impact on the way the Native Americans were treated.

The culture of Europe at the time was one that combined the early renaissance values of developing new ideas, expanding fields of knowledge, and outwards-thinking expansionism; with the religion-infused, narrow-minded concepts that had been internalized and strengthened throughout the dark ages. Europeans had a great drive to become a successful, enlightened people; but were limited by the decades to centuries of a stagnant social condition, lack of attention to the evolution of schools of thought on multiple levels -- political, technological, scientific, artistic, philosophical --, crushing poverty, and religious fanaticism brought on by the massive death rates due to both the Black Plauge and the devastation that followed; that had drastically slowed the development of European society. When Europe emerged from the dark ages, they were socially not far removed from the crusades, invading and slaughtering to heroically spread the word of Christ among heathens. They were taking risks and venturing into the world with their rising power, but did not have the knowledge and development to match. In short, they were rather like uneducated enthusiasts secure in the knowledge that they knew best. It is ridiculous to think that upon discovering a new land, filled with an abundance of resources and populated by a people who seemed primitive savages to the best of their knowledge and were most certainly not Christian, Europeans would collectively decide to be respectful and diplomatic with these new people and lands, even if an important adventurer had protested.

Europeans at that time did not have the standards to measure up to that we do. They were convinced that the people they had discovered were lower than they were, and did not deserve to have their way of life respected, not when it so neatly fit their ideals about spreading the Christian and European way of life as the superior way. They were struggling to emerge into a period of renaissance, and would not have dreamed of leaving alone land and resources that were so abundant and easily taken. Perhaps if, by lucky chance, Columbus had been an unnaturally learned, experienced, and enlightened person who also had an immense amount of power; he might have been able to stall the European conquest of America slightly, or maybe inspired a school of thought that pushed for a less brutally oppressive campaign. But even so, the discovery of the new world was such a godsend, and arguments against its conquest so unsupported, that it never would have been left alone. Columbus may have done nothing to make the plight of the Native Americans easier, but he had a minimal impact on the European approach to the Americas after discovering them.