The Changing Narrative of Christopher Columbus
In his book, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Michel-Rolph Trouillot defines history as both “what happened” and “what is said to have happened.” History is a story that contains both actors and narrators. The actors are people that perform history while narrators create a narrative for future generations to look back on. Often times, the narrators are people in power, the so-called “winners of history”. These narratives do not necessarily follow fact as they are simply recollections of history; the truth of the past may or may not be recounted properly by the narrators. Rather, the narratives track power. The groups who hold the most control over producing the historical narrative are the groups who have historically held the most power.
Trouillot writes that:
Tracking power requires a richer view of historical production than most theorists acknowledge.
This richer view of historical production is inclusive of the silences in history which represent gaps in the historical narrative. Silences can occur at 4 moments in the production of history: the moment of fact creation, the moment of fact assembly, the moment of fact retrieval and the moment of retrospective significance.
The historical narrative of Christopher Columbus is a prime example of how power dynamics can affect how history is produced and create a narrative which effectively silences the struggles of disadvantaged groups. The current changing narrative is proof that history is prone to change when the silences are uncovered and accounted for.
HISTORY, a popular television history channel, describes Christopher Columbus as an Italian explorer who was most famously known for introducing the Western world, the Americas, to Europe. Funded by Spanish monarchs, Columbus set sail to Asia but ended up landing on one of the Caribbean islands. After realizing that he had stumbled upon the New World and all of its inhabitants, Columbus traveled from island to island looking for profitable riches.
The website is clear when describing Columbus’s views on the Native Americans who had been living on the land before. Immediately deeming them unsophisticated, Columbus realized that they lacked common knowledge of European weapons, which made them prime targets for enslavement and servitude.
He wrote in his journal that
They [the natives] should be good servants and intelligent, for I observed that they quickly took in what was said to them, and I … will take hence, at the time of my departure, six natives for your Highnesses that they may learn to speak.
The Smithsonian Institute is one of the largest research institutes in the United States. Their research and historical data regarding the Taíno, a native tribe that interacted with Columbus upon his arrival, describes how the Taíno were peaceful before their downfall. Columbus’s arrival was the catalyst for American colonization. Soon after, the Taíno, along with other native groups, were forced to work on plantations. Any revolts against Columbus or the other explorers who were in charge of the colonies lead to violent suppressions which resulted in the death of many slaves whose dismembered bodies were paraded down streets. During the Colombian Exchange, Columbus sold thousands of natives to Spain, initiating the transatlantic slave trade. He also brought strains of disease that decimated the native population. The natives had no immunity against the European diseases which caused massive outbreaks in the New World. Not even a century after Columbus first landed, the native population had drastically decreased from hundreds of thousands of inhabitants to only a couple hundred.
Columbus has long prevailed throughout American history as a hero, celebrated every year on Columbus Day. NPR details the history of the celebration of Columbus Day all the way back to the publication of A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus by Washington Irving in 1828. This bestseller sold a story of Columbus that portrayed him as a brave conqueror who was kind to the natives he encountered which is far from the reality of what happened. Columbus Day was originally deemed a national holiday in 1934 to celebrate Italian-American history in a time where they were subject to discrimination. In their timeline of Columbus Day history, NPR notes that awareness about native mistreatment has been growing since the 1970s, inspiring protest marches against the holiday. Several states have since refused to honor Columbus Day, instead celebrating Indigenous People’s Day as an alternative. This timeline is clear evidence of how historical production is constantly changing, and how silences in history can lead to centuries of society believing a fictionalized narrative as fact.
One question still remains. If Columbus sparked centuries of devastation for the native population, then how did he preclude a negative reputation for centuries while becoming a hero?
The answer to this question lies within the silences in the historical narrative of Christopher Columbus. The natives’ voices were suppressed for centuries because of a silence that occurred at the moment of fact creation. While Christopher Columbus kept a detailed journal in which he recorded everything he observed on his exploration to the Americas, the natives did not have a written record of what occurred during Columbus’ visit. The Smithsonian research details how the Taíno never developed a written language, and their culture and oral traditions, which were passed down generation to generation, slowly withered away as the population was decimated by disease.
Dr. Angela Cavender Wilson is a Native American professor of American history and taught at Arizona State University. An expert on the traditions of many indigenous tribes, she states that:
The fundamental difference between academic Native American history and Native American history from the native perspective is the medium through which the history is interpreted. For the vast majority of native cultures, the primary means of transmitting and understanding history has been through the oral tradition; for academic historians, the primary way of transmitting and understanding history is through the written narrative.
Academic historians rely on written primary sources when creating a historical narrative; the lack of primary sources from the natives affected by Columbus leads to a gap in history. The natives’ stories get written off legends and does not get included as a reliable source because it is not in the preferred written medium. This silence can be avoided if historians accept the cultural significance behind the oral tradition; in many native cultures, the stories told by the elders bring a sense of identity and community to the tribe. The importance of validating these oral histories is essential — otherwise, meaningful information about the history of Native Americans will be lost.
The current historian opposition to include oral history as a primary source rather than a supplemental source lead to centuries of misinformation as Columbus’s side of the story was told by Irving. The historical narrative was a one-sided recollection of an event that relied heavily on the observations Columbus made in his journal which may or may not be close to the truth of what actually happened but served as the closest thing to fact.
Silencing in the moment of fact creation is a common theme throughout history regarding minority groups. In this TedX Talk, Winnie Bueno talks about the silencing of Black people in history, and how she has personally experienced modern day silencing.
From slavery to present day, society has been silencing Black people as a way to keep them from power. African slaves that were brought to the United States were not allowed to learn how to read or write otherwise they were subject to severe punishment. They were unable to create primary sources which created a significant gap in history where the truly terrible experiences of slaves were kept hidden from the public. In fact, the predominating historical narrative at the time was written by white people to highlight the benefits of slavery.
That’s when I understood that I would often be silenced because society would be afraid of what I had to say.
— Winnie Bueno
In America, society is dominated by the white perspective; the U.S. Census recorded 77% of the population being white in the 2020 census. This society, that Bueno describes as being scared to let BIPOC talk, continues to indirectly silence them by excluding them from history textbooks. Many history textbooks focus on primary sources which don’t exist for minority groups who were not given access to resources to create primary sources or had different mediums of primary sources that current historians don’t fully accept. BIPOC are inherently disadvantaged compared to their white peers because the unofficial way of thinking, using written primary sources and excluding oral histories, creates a chasm in the power divide between different racial groups. White people are favored in the production of history because they created the most prevalent way to create and spread it. Tracing the history of white power and privilege results in a historical narrative that is eerily similar to the one being taught in the American school system — that the American white man’s history is the history of America. Donald Yacovone, a prominent historian at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, looked at American history textbooks and realized that:
We’re not teaching students the true American history because African American history is American history.
In order for textbooks to teach true American history, they must include Native American and Black history. If historians expanded what constituted a reliable and verifiable primary source to include oral histories that contain valuable information about the culture and traditions of these groups, then these textbooks could educate students and counteract the erasure these groups have faced for centuries in history.
Circling back to the NPR timeline of Columbus Day, it is clear that history is ever changing and evolving as new historical narratives are brought to light. Irving’s fictional narrative painted Columbus as a hero explorer — however, this view has been changing with the modern recognition of the struggles the natives faced due to his presence. Columbus wielded his power unethically and irresponsibly when he enslaved the natives after seeing how unfamiliar they were with Western arms. He misused his power, yet was rewarded for it by society due to the silencing of the natives’ voices.
The current education system is greatly impacting the way the historical narrative is changing. Teachers are retelling history in a way that highlights the injustices the natives, like the Taíno, faced to students to educate them on past power struggles. Historical narratives continue to be shaped by the way that they are passed down from generation to generation. The school system is changing the historical narrative by choosing to inform students of both the good and bad aspects of Columbus and letting them decide whether he should or should not be celebrated.
Further proof of the changing historical narrative lies in several states’ decisions to change the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day to honor and celebrate the Native Americans that resided on the land before colonization and had to endure many negative effects from various explorers. Historical narratives are not static — they change according to the social, cultural and political values of the time. The narrative aims to be as close to the truth as possible, but the reality is that we will never know exactly what happened because the only information on what occurred in the past comes from various primary sources. The only thing we can do is try to remove the silences in society in order to create one overarching history that best represents the histories of all different groups regardless of the power they held.
