Past Mistakes by David Mountain

Author:David Mountain
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

As Columbus grew in popularity, however, so too did his critics. In 1874 the American diplomat Aaron Goodrich published his scathing History of the Character and Achievements of the So-Called Christopher Columbus, denouncing the Columbus legend as ‘but a gilded lie … full of rottenness and dead men’s bones’.49 In his wake there followed a series of critical – if more measured – assessments from professional historians. In 1891 Justin Winsor, librarian of Harvard University, unapologetically described Columbus as a man of ‘overwhelming selfishness’ with ‘no pity for the misery of others’, whose colonisation of Hispaniola left a ‘legacy of devastation and crime’.50

Other critics seemed more upset by Columbus’ newfound status as a champion of immigrants and Catholics. ‘God’s plan was that Protestantism and not Catholicism should have its chance in the New World,’ fumed one historian.51 Proof of God’s plan was therefore quickly sought, and the late 19th century saw strenuous efforts to credit the discovery of America to a more suitably Protestant explorer. Detractors gleefully pointed to the Norse, whose ancient sagas described a series of expeditions to lands west of Greenland sometime around the year 1000 CE. True, the Norse weren’t Protestants (many weren’t even Christians 1,000 years ago), but they were suitably Anglo-Saxon enough to satisfy the anti-Catholic brigade. A full five centuries before Columbus, the sagas claimed, the explorer Leif Erikson set sail after hearing rumours of thickly wooded lands to the west – an enticing prospect for someone living on treeless Greenland, where timber was constantly in short supply. Living up to his nickname ‘Leif the Lucky’, he found not one but three lands: the barren Helluland, the wooded Markland and the fertile Vinland. A subsequent expedition returned a few years later with the aim of creating a permanent settlement in Vinland, but severe winters and clashes with the natives eventually put an end to such ambitions.52

It was an exciting story, and not beyond the realms of possibility: the Norse were accomplished sailors, they were familiar with the North Atlantic, and Greenland was closer to mainland North America than Europe. The only trouble was in substantiating the claim. The sagas were too vague, too unreliable to be considered proof. They contradicted each other in places. Believable accounts of exploration were intermingled with clear strains of fantasy. Moreover, hard evidence was conspicuously absent. No shortage of purportedly ‘Viking’ discoveries had begun cropping up all across north-east USA, but none passed muster with professional archaeologists, who found them all to be either hoaxes or misidentifications. For some, this lack of evidence wasn’t a problem: in 1887 the amateur historian Marie Brown argued that the Catholic Church, ‘the foulest tyrant the world has ever had’, had for centuries deliberately suppressed any evidence of the Norse discovery of America as part of its merciless quest for world domination.53

The difficulty in evidencing the Norse discovery of America did nothing to discourage similar efforts, and there soon began a veritable industry in ‘proving’ that Columbus wasn’t the first person to discover America.

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