Not one textbook—old or new—mentions the West Africans, however.
While leaving out Columbus’s predecessors, American history books
continue to make mistakes when they get to the last “discoverer.” They present
cut-and-dried answers, mostly glorifying Columbus, always avoiding
uncertainty or controversy. Often their errors seem to be copied from other
textbooks. Let me repeat the collective Columbus story they tell, this time
italicizing everything in it that we have solid reason to believe is true.
Born in Genoa, of humble parents, Christopher Columbus grew
up to become an experienced seafarer, venturing as far as
Iceland and West Africa. His adventures convinced him that the
world must be round and that the fabled riches of the East—
spices and gold—could be had by sailing west, superseding the
overland routes, which the Turks had closed off to commerce.
To get funding for his enterprise, he beseeched monarch after
monarch in Western Europe. After at first being dismissed by
Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Columbus finally got his
chance when Isabella decided to underwrite a modest
expedition. Columbus outfitted three pitifully small ships, the
Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, and set forth from
Spain. After an arduous journey of more than two months,
during which his mutinous crew almost threw him overboard,
Columbus discovered the West Indies on October 12, 1492.
Unfortunately, although he made three more voyages to
America, he never knew he had discovered a New World.
Columbus died in obscurity, unappreciated and penniless. Yet
without his daring American history would have been very
different, for in a sense he made it all possible.
As you can see, textbooks get the date right, and the names of the ships. Most
of the rest that they tell us is untrustworthy. Many aspects of Columbus’s life
remain a mystery. He claimed to be from Genoa, Italy, and there is evidence
that he was. There is also evidence that he wasn’t: Columbus didn’t seem to be
able to write in Italian, even when writing to people in Genoa. Some historians
believe he was Jewish, a converso or convert to Christianity, probably from
Spain. (Spain was pressuring its Jews to convert or leave the country.) He may
have been a Genoese Jew. Still other historians claim he was from Corsica,
Portugal, or elsewhere.^41