James Barron, "He's the Explorer/Exploiter You Just Have to Love/Hate," New
York Times, 12 October 1992, p. B7. See also Sam Dillon, "Schools Grow Harsher in
Scrutiny of Columbus," ibid., p. Al. Although "Native American" is now the ac-
cepted and acceptable name for people descended from the original (first) inhabitants
of the western hemisphere, some have objected that "American" is a European, and
hence inappropriate, designation. One should speak of "natives" instead. But what of
all the other people born in the hemisphere? Are they not natives? Apparendy some na-
tives are more native than others.
See Joel Sable, "Mexico Hails Aztecs with Multiple Issues," Boston Globe, 3 April
1994, p. B34.
Cf. Schama, "They All Laughed." The superbly illustrated catalogue: Levenson,
ed., Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration.
Vitorino Magalhaes Godinho righdy speaks of the absurdity of this no-discovery
thesis, which he describes as an "infantile trap." "Rôle du Portugal," p. 58.
On these issues, see King, Art of Mathematics, pp. 41^i6.
Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, cited in Fernandez-Armesto, Before Columbus, p.
Fernandez-Armesto, Before Columbus, p. 49.
10. See the discussion ibid., pp. 84-85.
11. Ibid., p. 12.
12. For the Portuguese, the first encounter with the Madeiras seems to date from
1419. Huygue, Coureurs d'épices, p. 119, gives it as accidental.
13. Bennassar and Bennassar, 1492, p. 252.
14. Axtell, After Columbus, p. 168.
15. Bartolomé de Las Casas, Brief Relation of the Destruction of the Indies, cited in
Josephy, Indian Heritage, p. 287.
16. These reports are from a letter of 1516 from a group of Dominican friars to the
minister of Charles I (later Charles V) in Spain, cited in Todorov, La conquête de
^Amérique, p. 146. The letter cites among other atrocities the case of a poor mother
with nursing child who had the misfortune to pass before a group of Spaniards whose
dog was hungry. Exaggerated? We have corroborative evidence from other witnesses.
17. Most of what follows is drawn from the vivid presentation of Fernandez-Armesto,
Before Columbus, pp. 143-47.
18. Bruckner, The Tears of the White Man, p. 10, suggests that Columbus was prepared
to believe by reading in Pierre d'Ailly's Imago mundi (written 1410, published 1480)
that the Garden of Eden had to be in a warm land somewhere on the other side of the
equator. To be sure, this new land, though warm, was not on the other side of the
equator. But what really mattered to Columbus in my opinion was the nakedness and
innocence of these beautiful people. How could Ailly know which side of the equator
the Garden was on?
19. The above quotations come from Bruckner, ibid., who has them from a French
translation of Columbus's journals: Christophe Colomb, La découverte de l Amérique,
2 vols. (Paris: Maspero, 1979).
See the article by Henley, "Spanish Stew," p. 5, reviewing Boucher, Cannibal
Encounters: "Boucher reviews the current state of the argument among the specialists,
concluding that the evidence for cannibalism is very weak. If it was practised at all, it
was probably only a highly ritualized procedure which may have involved the eating
of the fat of slain enemies on certain restricted occasions. Certainly, they would never
simply have boiled somebody up in a stew-pot."
See also Wright, "The Two Cultures," p. 3, who argues that European accounts of this
practice should be treated with suspicion. "The case against the Mexicans is far from
proven, and the Spaniards, by their own reports, were not above an occasional lapse
in this regard." Wright notes that during the siege of Mexico, there were plenty of dead
