Genesis as Myth in Columbus’s Journal

Speculating about the predominance or absence of violence in a hypothetical invasion of North American tribes into Europe is less useful than tracing the obvious parallels between myth and history that exist in available narratives, such as Columbus’s journal. A fascinating complication in such analysis is that Columbus’s narratives were transcribed, as was the indigenous oral literature. The effects of transcription become especially apparent in the journal of Columbus’s first voyage, where Bartolome de las Casas ostensibly tones down the potentially racist tone of the narrative.

There are reasons to believe that Las Casas responded, in part, to the Papal Bull of 1537, in which Pope Paul III defined Native Americans as humans capable of experiencing spiritual conversion (never mind the implicit assumption that they needed and wanted such a conversion). Paul III also explicitly forbade the enslavement of natives, including deprivation of their rights to property, which were likely direct responses to Columbus’s enslavement of the Taino Indians during his second and third voyages (Sullivan 119-20). As a devout Catholic, Las Casas would have wished to comply with the latest orders from the Vatican, and evidence of his hand in softening the journal appears in suspicious phrases that seem to contradict Columbus’s behavior elsewhere and also conflict with later passages in the same narrative that are ostensibly quoted from the original text of the journal.

The first-person sections of the text are meant to be read as direct quotations from the original manuscript, but conspicuous phrases emerge that suggest Las Casas’s hand in tempering their potentially inflammatory natures. For instance, the journal claims that Columbus “suffered nothing to be touched” (120) when he initially found an abandoned village and later commanded that “nothing which they had left should be taken, not even the value of a pin” (121) after watching the population of a town flee in fear of the advancing Spanish. Later, Las Casas suggests in his paraphrase that “the Admiral gave orders that nothing should be touched, which directions were adhered to” (123), which could indicate his hand in altering the previous passages rather than quoting them directly.

Perhaps most significantly, other passages in the journal suggest that Columbus was not, in fact, scrupulous about forbidding his soldiers to take advantage of the natives, as he took one young man on board and “thought to carry him home to Spain” (125) and later detained five young men who had boarded his ship (127). The text suggests that Columbus allowed the first young man to return to his people and that he also “took seven women and three children…that the Indians might tolerate their captivity better with their company” (127), caveats which are apparently intended to soften the obvious humanitarian violations of the “Admiral’s” behavior. However, if Columbus was willing to detain five young men and capture seven more of their tribespeople, it seems unlikely that he would have given a moment’s thought to the safety of their belongings, as the earlier passages suggest he did.

The fact that Pope Paul III’s proclamation appeared in 1537, roughly ten years before Las Casas is thought to have begun his transcription of Columbus’s journal, coupled with the inconsistencies inherent in the transcribed text, suggest that it was doctored with the intent to salvage some of Columbus’s reputation and preserve the heroism of his legacy. In a word, Las Casas might be said to have been mythologizing Columbus with his redactions of the text.

The mythological influence of Genesis on Columbus’s journal is also evident in a number of passages, which reinforce my assumption that a major catalyst in the European colonization of North America was the cultural predisposition to empire building that Genesis invites. Genesis 1:26-28 most directly invites the colonial mindset:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

After the fall from grace, God informs Adam that the earth is “cursed,” that he will be forced to grapple with weeds and only eke out subsistence “by the sweat of [his] brow” (Genesis 3:17, 19). These are the most influential cultural forces in the use of technology such as guns and steel to subdue the earth and enact dominion over native peoples, as per my earlier critique of Diamond’s premise.

One might reject statements like Columbus’s assertion that the “language is the same throughout these islands” (124) out of hand for their ignorance and seemingly willful inaccuracy, but this would overlook the mythological function of the text. Columbus likely would have observed the differences in language or at least have heard about them from some of the natives who were telling him stories about neighboring cannibals, so it seems that he had other reasons for presenting a simplified version to Fernando. The mythical narrative of dominion assumes that conversion to Christianity is necessary and inevitable; thus, linguistic barriers would pose a problem. Telling a story about the New World that implies easy passage for Christian values would serve a mythological purpose very well.

Similarly, Columbus maintains that “these people have no religion, neither are they idolaters, but are a very gentle race, without the knowledge of any iniquity; they neither kill, nor steal, nor carry weapons” (127). Elsewhere, he claims that the natives believed the Spanish conquistadores to have come from heaven, which precludes the dearth of religion that he ostensibly observes. From the Yuchi myth, “The Creation of the Whites,” which describes the emergence of white man from sea foam, it is clear that natives did not necessarily all associate the Spanish with angels. “Wohpe and the Gift of the Pipe,” from the Lakota tradition, suggests that some tribes assumed that deities could assume human forms and may have associated the Spanish with wakan or supernatural figures. But the very association requires a religious consciousness that Columbus identifies and denies in one breath. His mythological purpose suffers no damage from the contradiction, because the story of European dominance through conversion depends upon a spiritual consciousness–natives would not need to be “liberated” by faith otherwise–and upon obsequiousness to the one “true” Catholic faith, as is implied by the ostensible association of Columbus’s army with heaven. Historically, the contradiction doesn’t work. Mythologically, it makes perfect sense.

Columbus’s assertion that the indigenous peoples carried no weapons must have raised some eyebrows back in Spain, particularly alongside his reports of cannibalism (since the cannibals purportedly took prisoners and dismembered them, which would have required some sort of weaponry). Historically, such a claim seems ludicrous. Mythologically, however, it reinforces the sense of religious and cultural superiority that extends from Genesis: in other words, it would have been easier to imagine colonists tending the garden of the New World if the natives were not seen as a real threat and if the colonists’ entitlement to subjugate the earth and have dominion over its wildlife (which Columbus and the Puritans associated with the “heathens”) were not in jeopardy.

Thus, the mythical thrust of Columbus’s journal can be seen as a direct extension of Genesis, with echoes of the Jewish Eden in the New World, a fertile landscape ready to yield itself to the sweat of the colonist’s brow, and a population ripe for conversion. Dominion seems obvious and inevitable–even humane–through Las Casas’s transcription of Columbus’s narrative.