Editing Christopher Columbus (section)

==== Brutality ====
[[File:Pedestal base of Christopher Columbus statue 2.jpeg|thumb|The remains of the pedestal base of [[Statue of Christopher Columbus (Baltimore)|the Columbus statue]] in the Baltimore inner harbor area. The statue was thrown into the harbor on 4 July 2020, as part of the [[George Floyd protests]].]]

Some historians have criticized Columbus for initiating the widespread colonization of the Americas and for abusing its native population.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bigelow |first1=Bill |date=1992 |title=Once upon a Genocide: Christopher Columbus in Children's Literature |journal=[[Social Justice (journal)|Social Justice]] |volume=19 |issue=2 |pages=106–121 |jstor=29766680}}.</ref><ref name="Zinn" /><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.hartford-hwp.com/Taino/docs/columbus.html |first=Jack |last=Weatherford |title=Examining the reputation of Christopher Columbus |website=Hartford-hwp.com |date=20 April 2001 |access-date=29 July 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/100.html |title=Pre-Columbian Hispaniola – Arawak/Taino Indians |website=Hartford-hwp.com |date=15 September 2001 |access-date=29 July 2009}}</ref> On [[St. Croix]], Columbus's friend Michele da Cuneo—according to his own account—kept an indigenous woman he captured, whom Columbus "gave to [him]", then brutally raped her.{{Sfn|Morison|1991|p=417}}{{efn|Cuneo wrote,
<blockquote>While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked—as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. But—to cut a long story short—I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for whores.<ref>{{cite book |last=Cohen |first=J.M. |title=The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus |year=1969 |publisher=Penguin |location=NY |isbn=978-0-14-044217-5 |page=139}}</ref></blockquote>}}{{efn|Author [[Tony Horwitz]] notes that this is the first recorded instance of sexuality between a European and Native American.{{sfn|Horwitz|2008|p=69}}}}

According to some historians, the punishment for an indigenous person, aged 14 and older, failing to pay a hawk's bell, or ''cascabela'',<ref name="DeaganCruxent2002">{{cite book |last1=Deagan |first1=Kathleen A. |last2=Cruxent |first2=José María |title=Archaeology at La Isabela: America's First European Town |year=2002 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-09041-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=twI0PjfqdGYC&pg=PA201 |page=201}}</ref> worth of gold dust every six months (based on [[Bartolomé de las Casas]]'s account) was cutting off the hands of those without tokens, often leaving them to bleed to death.<ref name="TinkerFreeland2008" /><ref name="Zinn" /><ref name="Koning">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Oxa-SjBh_cYC |title=Columbus |last=Koning |first=Hans |date=1976 |publisher=Monthly Review Press |isbn=978-0-85345-600-1 |page=86 |ref=Koning |access-date=1 May 2015}}</ref> Other historians dispute such accounts. For example, a study of [[National Archives of Spain|Spanish archival sources]] showed that the ''cascabela'' quotas were imposed by [[Guarionex]], not Columbus, and that there is no mention, in the primary sources, of punishment by cutting off hands for failing to pay.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lynch |first=Lawrence Dixson |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B93gAAAAMAAJ |title=Discovery in the Archives of Spain and Portugal: Quincentenary Essays, 1492–1992 |date=1993 |publisher=Haworth Press |isbn=978-1-56024-643-5 |editor-last=McCrank |editor-first=Lawrence J. |page=265 |chapter=Columbus in Myth and History |series=Primary Sources & Original Works |volume=2 |issue=1–2 |doi=10.1300/J269v02n01_09 |chapter-url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J269v02n01_09}}</ref> Columbus had an economic interest in the enslavement of the Hispaniola natives and for that reason was not eager to baptize them, which attracted criticism from some churchmen.<ref name="varela">{{cite book |last1=Varela |first1=Consuelo |title=La caída de Cristóbal Colón: el juicio de Bobadilla |last2=Aguirre |first2=Isabel |date=2006 |publisher=Marcial Pons Historia |isbn=978-84-96467-28-6 |pages=111–118 |language=es |trans-title=The fall of Christopher Columbus: the Bobadilla trial |chapter=La venta de esclavos |trans-chapter=The sale of slaves |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SwtMUtesSDEC&pg=PA111}}</ref> Consuelo Varela, a Spanish historian, stated that "Columbus's government was characterized by a form of tyranny. Even those who loved him had to admit the atrocities that had taken place."<ref name="newspaper1">{{Cite news |first=Giles |last=Tremlett |author-link=Giles Tremlett |date=7 August 2006 |title=Lost document reveals Columbus as tyrant of the Caribbean |work=[[The Guardian]] |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/aug/07/books.spain |access-date=16 May 2013}}</ref> Other historians have argued that some of the accounts of the brutality of Columbus and his brothers have been exaggerated as part of the [[Black Legend]], a historical tendency towards anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic sentiment in historical sources dating as far back as the 16th century, which they speculate may continue to taint scholarship into the present day.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hanke |first1=Lewis |date=1 February 1971 |title=A Modest Proposal for a Moratorium on Grand Generalizations: Some Thoughts on the Black Legend |journal=[[Hispanic American Historical Review]] |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |location=Durham, North Carolina |volume=51 |issue=1 |pages=112–127 |doi=10.1215/00182168-51.1.112 |jstor=2512616 |doi-access=free |author-link1=Lewis Hanke}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Keen |first1=Benjamin |date=1 November 1969 |title=The Black Legend Revisited: Assumptions and Realities |journal=[[Hispanic American Historical Review]] |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |location=Durham, North Carolina |volume=49 |issue=4 |pages=703–719 |doi=10.1215/00182168-49.4.703 |jstor=2511162 |doi-access=free |author-link1=Benjamin Keen}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Keen |first1=Benjamin |date=1 May 1971 |title=The White Legend Revisited: A Reply to Professor Hanke's 'Modest Proposal' |journal=[[Hispanic American Historical Review]] |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |location=Durham, North Carolina |volume=51 |issue=2 |pages=336–355 |doi=10.1215/00182168-51.2.336 |jstor=2512479 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

According to historian Emily Berquist Soule, the immense Portuguese profits from the maritime trade in African slaves along the West African coast served as an inspiration for Columbus to create a counterpart of this apparatus in the New World using indigenous American slaves.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Soule |first1=Emily Berquist |date=23 April 2017 |title=From Africa to the Ocean Sea: Atlantic slavery in the origins of the Spanish Empire |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14788810.2017.1315514 |journal=Atlantic Studies |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=16–39 |doi=10.1080/14788810.2017.1315514 |s2cid=218620874 |access-date=29 March 2022}}</ref> Historian [[William J. Connell (historian)|William J. Connell]] has argued that while Columbus "brought the entrepreneurial form of slavery to the New World", this "was a phenomenon of the times", further arguing that "we have to be very careful about applying 20th-century understandings of morality to the morality of the 15th century."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Fusco |first=Mary Ann Castronovo |date=8 October 2000 |title=In Person; In Defense Of Columbus |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/08/nyregion/in-person-in-defense-of-columbus.html |access-date=9 August 2018}}</ref> In a less popular defense of colonization, Spanish ambassador {{Ill|María Jesús Figa|es}} has argued, "Normally we melded with the cultures in America, we stayed there, we spread our language and culture and religion."{{sfn|Horwitz|2008|p=84}}

British historian [[Basil Davidson]] has dubbed Columbus the "father of the [[Atlantic slave trade|slave trade]]",<ref>{{cite journal |first=Basil |last=Davidson |author-link=Basil Davidson |title=Columbus: the bones and blood of racism |journal=[[Race & Class]] |volume=33 |issue=3 |publisher=[[SAGE Publishers]] |location=Thousand Oaks, California |date=January 1992 |pages=17–25 |doi=10.1177/030639689203300303 |s2cid=145462012}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Bigelow |first=Bill |date=10 October 2015 |title=Columbus Day must be abolished |url=https://www.ottawaherald.com/article/20151010/OPINION/310109846 |access-date=16 July 2021 |newspaper=[[The Ottawa Herald]] |archive-date=24 May 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210524142025/https://www.ottawaherald.com/article/20151010/OPINION/310109846}}</ref> citing the fact that the first license to ship enslaved Africans to the Caribbean was issued by the Catholic Monarchs in 1501 to the first royal governor of Hispaniola, [[Nicolás de Ovando]].<ref name="Jennings2020">{{cite book |last1=Jennings |first1=Evelyn |title=Constructing the Spanish Empire in Havana: State Slavery in Defense and Development, 1762–1835 |date=2020 |publisher=LSU Press |isbn=978-0-8071-7464-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kOHcDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA33}}</ref>