The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking to the sea: They sailed south along the West African coast and around the Cape of Good Hope.
But Columbus had a different idea: Why not sail west across the Atlantic instead of around the massive African continent? He argued incorrectly that the circumference of the Earth was much smaller than his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that the journey by boat from Europe to Asia should be not only possible, but comparatively easy via an as-yet undiscovered Northwest Passage.
He presented his plan to officials in Portugal and England, but it was not until that he found a sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.
Columbus wanted fame and fortune. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the same, along with the opportunity to export Catholicism to lands across the globe. Columbus, a devout Catholic, was equally enthusiastic about this possibility. On October 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, as Columbus assumed, but on one of the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.
In January , leaving several dozen men behind in a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic , he left for Spain. He kept a detailed diary during his first voyage. More troublingly, it also recorded his initial impressions of the local people and his argument for why they should be enslaved. They have no iron …They would make fine servants … With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.
About six months later, in September , Columbus returned to the Americas. Then he headed west to continue his mostly fruitless search for gold and other goods. His group now included a large number of indigenous people the Europeans had enslaved. In lieu of the material riches he had promised the Spanish monarchs, he sent some enslaved people to Queen Isabella. His first voyage into the Atlantic Ocean in nearly cost him his life as the commercial fleet he was sailing with was attacked by French privateers off the coast of Portugal.
His ship was burned and Columbus had to swim to the Portuguese shore. He made his way to Lisbon, Portugal, where he eventually settled and married Filipa Perestrelo. The couple had one son, Diego, around His wife died soon after, and Columbus moved to Spain. He had a second son, Fernando, who was born out of wedlock in with Beatriz Enriquez de Arana.
After participating in several other expeditions to Africa, Columbus gained knowledge of the Atlantic currents flowing east and west from the Canary Islands. The Asian islands near China and India were fabled for their spices and gold, making them an attractive destination for Europeans — but Muslim domination of the trade routes through the Middle East made travel eastward difficult.
Columbus devised a route to sail west across the Atlantic to reach Asia, believing it would be quicker and safer. He estimated the earth to be a sphere and the distance between the Canary Islands and Japan to be about 2, miles.
Many of Columbus' contemporary nautical experts disagreed. They adhered to the now known to be accurate second-century B. Despite their disagreement with Columbus on matters of distance, they concurred that a westward voyage from Europe would be an uninterrupted water route. Columbus proposed a three-ship voyage of discovery across the Atlantic first to the Portuguese king, then to Genoa and finally to Venice. He was rejected each time. Their focus was on a war with the Muslims, and their nautical experts were skeptical, so they initially rejected Columbus.
The idea, however, must have intrigued the monarchs, for they kept Columbus on a retainer. Columbus continued to lobby the royal court, and soon the Spanish army captured the last Muslim stronghold in Granada in January Shortly thereafter, the monarchs agreed to finance his expedition. On October 12, , after 36 days of sailing westward across the Atlantic, Columbus and several crewmen set foot on an island in the present-day Bahamas, claiming it for Spain. Stories and legends about incredible wealth stimulated the Spanish exploration of North America.
Between and , Hernando de Soto led a large force from western Florida to the Appalachian Mountains and then west across the Mississippi River with the major consequence of spreading smallpox throughout the lower Mississippi Valley. Meanwhile, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed up the west coast and claimed the California area for Spain. The founding of the two oldest cities in the United States—St. Augustine, Florida, and Santa Fe, New Mexico —was the chief result of almost a century of Spanish exploration.
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The fleet also came across other Caribbean islands on this expedition, including modern-day Cuba and Haiti, which Columbus believed were the Indies. While it has been commonly said that Columbus discovered the Americas, that is not accurate. Even before he set sail from Spain, thousands of people were already living on these lands for centuries. There is also the saga of Leif Eriksson's voyage to Vinland—the mysterious spot on which he landed in North America. The exact location of Vinland is debated among scholars, but it is generally agreed it was somewhere along the northern Atlantic coast.
Columbus may not have discovered the Americas, but it was his arrival—and subsquent three additional voyages over the next twelve years—that shephereded in an era of exploration and colonization of North and South America. While this opened up economic and political opportunities for European powers, the colonization of the New World led to the exploitation of its indigenous peoples, often violently and eventually with disastrous results for many cultures.
Columbus Day is a national holiday in the United States, but due to inhumane actions taken by the European powers who came in waves to the Americas, several states have replaced the holiday with Indigenous People's Day to honor the original inhabitants of these lands. Columbus also continued to believe that he had found a route to Asia, despite the increasing evidence that proved otherwise—a denial that would severely tarnish his reputation.
While Columbus obtained great wealth from his expeditions, he became an outcast and died of age-related causes on May 20, in Valladolid, Spain. All rights reserved. Why do we celebrate it?
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