Everybody needs the goods. Throughout history, people try to make their lives easier by acquiring the goods. Goods could be anything. Heck, if people back then could see how we live now? Most of us, with relative wealth, have refrigerators that keep packaged food cold. We have cars that take us near and far, fast or slow. We keep our living rooms at a temperature that makes us comfortable by a degree or two. Just by touching a switch on the wall. These are goods. Good goods, I’ll tell you.
But back at the end of the 15th century, people were in search of riches, spices, silks, and other commodities. European people. A lot of the things they wanted were in Asia. But at that time, it was nearly impossible to reach Asia from Europe by land. The route was long and arduous. It was fraught with encounters from hostile armies. There was no easy path. So, the people, the explorers, to be exact, solved this problem by getting in their boats and taking to the sea. They sailed south along the West African coast and around the Cape of Good Hope. It was dicey but doable.
Then came along Christopher Columbus. Now. I know a lot of you think Columbus should be kicked to the curb. And then, some of you are very fond of him.
Regardless, Chris came up with a fresh thought. Why not sail west across the Atlantic instead of around the massive African continent? A pretty good idea, really. His logic was sound, but like me, his math was always faulty. He argued that the circumference of the Earth was much smaller than his contemporaries believed it was. Whoops. He was wrong. But, accordingly, he believed that the journey from Europe to Asia should be easy-peasy by boat. Just sail west from Europe, through the “undiscovered Northwest Passage” and on to Asia.
He tried four times. Unsuccessfully.
Yes. Our Christopher Columbus made four trips across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain: in 1492, 1493, 1498 and 1502. He was quite determined to find a direct water route west from Europe to Asia, but he never did.
I’ll tell you what he did find on those trips, in order. The Bahamas in 1492. Hispaniola in 1493. Trinidad and the South American mainland in 1498. And finally, he found Panama in 1502, where he had to abandon two of his four ships after damage from storms and some very hostile natives.
Empty-handed, that tired explorer returned to Spain, where he died in 1506. He did not really “discover” the New World—millions of people already lived there. And he certainly never made it to the continental United States as we know it today.
I write about him today, because on this date, in 1498, Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Trinidad on his third voyage. He didn’t do much good on any of those trips, bringing disease, violence, and the curse of slavery with him. I’m not sure if he was just teed off because he wasn’t finding Asia, or if his Vitamin C levels were too low. Either way, the history of this did not involve the current-day United States.
And let’s face it. He wasn’t a very good driver. If he was in search of a “northern passage” he was off by about four thousand miles. Or so.
It is my feeling that we shouldn’t be celebrating Columbus Day any longer in the USA. We had it all wrong. Besides, evidence now shows that humans were in the Americas some 33,000 years ago. And before this evidence, there have been discoveries of nearly 2,000 stone tools, suggesting people have been here for at least 20,000 years. Either way. Columbus didn’t discover this place.
Now, a good portion of the U.S. population are seeds of immigrants, coming to this place a lot later. Just 400 years ago, or so.
So let’s call it what it is, a land without any help from Chris.
And then be grateful we came when we did, now in a place where so many of us can have of our “goods” whenever we want them.
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“What I learned on my own I still remember”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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“Give me but a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth.”
― Archimedes
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“Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
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