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AF
By ELMO SCOTT WATSON
OES the old familiar school-boy rhyme
about the fact that “In fourteen hun-
dred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed
the ocean blue.” need revision? Have
we been wrong all these years in
our annual celebration of October 12
as “Discovery Day”? The answer to
both questions is “Yes” if we are
to believe the results of researches
made by a South American scholar,
A short time ago Prof. Luis Uli
director of the Peruvian national li-
JY : at Lima, Peru, made an address before
the congress of Americanists in Hamburg, Ger-
many, which stirred up a world-wide discus
sion among historical scholars, In that address
he declared that Christopher Columbus “discov-
ered” America in 1477, that his voyage in 1462
was a second voyage, that this same Columbus
was not the son of a Genoese wool weaver, as
the world has come to believe him to have been,
but that he was a Catalonlan corsair and there
fore a native of Spain and not of Italy.
“After eight months study among Spanish
archives In Madrid, where 1 found much hither
to unknown, authentic and incontrovertible ma-
terial, I ean definitely assert that Columbus paid
his first visit to the New world by way of Ire
land, Greenland, Labrador and Newfoundland”
said Professor Ulloa. “This was before Amer
ica’s official discovery, indeed before he was in
contact with the Spanish king.
“This same Columbus, who later captained
Spanish ships to the West indies for a time,
was a comrade of Danish corsairs with whom,
without the aid of Spanish kings, he made the
previous discovery of the American continent,
“Documents which 1 found further showed
that Columbus was not identical with the son
of the Genoese wool weaver, Domenico Colum-
bus, but with a Catalonian corsair who rebelled
against King Juan II of Aragonia. He was also
& relative of a corsair named Casanova-Couillon,
who was In the services of Louis of France.”
All of which is certainly yevolutionary enough
and adds further to the confusion that exists
among scholars as to the nativity of Columbus,
But more interesting to Americans than the
question of Columbus's nationality Is the ques.
tion of whether or not the history of this na-
tion, which we have become accustomed to date
from 1402, should date from an event 15 years
earlier and whether the “landing of Columbus”
should be pictured as taking place on a bleak
northern shore of the mainland of North Amer.
fea instead of a palm-fringed island in the West
Ipdies According to the Peruvian scholar, the
dite should be 1477 and the place Labrador or
Newfoundland, depending upon which you pre-
fer to consider as the “shores of America.”
And now as for the “discovery” in 1402, Pro-
fessor Ulloa declares that our acceptance of
that date arises from a distortion of historical
fact made by a Spanish scholar, more than a
century ago. Here is how it came about: On
April 17, 1492, their Catholic Majesties, Ferdi
nand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, rulers
of Spain, signed a contract of “capitulations”
with Columbus for the “official discovery” of
America which took place in October of that
year, The original document of these capitu-
lations was preserved in the archives of the
Duke of Veragua but its existence seems to
have been unknown to scholars for more tham
three centuries,
In 1825 a certain Fernandes de Navarrete
published the text of the capitulations, asserting
that he took it from the original document. But
in reproducing the text he arbitrarily changed
an essential phrase in it for reasens which will
be revealed Inter, The authentic text states
that. the concessions granted to Columbus were
made “in recompense for what he has discov
ered (ha descubierto) in the seas of the ocean
and of the voyage that he is now, with the help
of God, to make upon them.” Navarrete wrote it
“In recompense for what he is to discover {he
de descubrir) and of the voyage that he is now,
with the help of God, to make upon them.” So by
tnserting the word “de” and changing the letters
in another word, the Spanish scholar put in the
future what was already in the past, thus pro-
foundly affected the writing of all future history
and gave to Americans, as to the rest of the
world, the date of 1402 to remember Instead of
some previous date,
As for the reasons which led Navarrete to
make the grammatical alteration Professor Ulloa
gays: “The old Spanish chroniclers especially
the official writers in the pay of the kings, did
not try to write the real history of the discov.
ery but rather the apologia of the monarchs
Ferdinand and Isabella in the enterprise. The
Inquisition contributed In great part to this
warding off of criticism. As the Inquisition
had been established by these rulers some years
before 1402, itd analysts and apologists have
maintained that the discovery of America was
only the recompense given by God to Ferdinand
and Isabella for the foundation of this famous
tribunal.
“Consequently, the chroniclers and inquisitors
have presumed in general to take merit from
Columbus and to add it to the Catholic mon-
arches, particularly Isabella. In this way it came
about that she was made the real inspirer of
the discovery and Columbus the instrument
which she employed, .
“The real history, as I have already shown
by documents in my books, is contrary to this
exaggerated apologia of the Catholic monarchs,
and especially of Isabella, whom the Inguisitors
and modern admirers have regarded as a saint
and the grand protectress of Columbus. Far
from that, Isabella opposed even more than her
husband the proposals and demands of Colum-
bus, bending herself rather to win from him the
secret he concealed. She did not consent to
deal with Columbus until he was about to de-
part to seek the protection of a foreign King;
she made up her mind when, through the in-
tervention of her former confessor, Father Juan
Perez (it was he who drew up the convention),
she became convinced that the affair was abso.
lutely certain, since the discovery had already
been made, The Inquisition and the historians
who served it could not make public the truth,
which would so far reduce the credit of Isa-
bella”
As for his ovidence that Columbus discovered
America before 1402 Professor Ulloa goes about
it in this way:
After Queen Isabella died a high tribunal was
established to adjust the wrongs which had been
done to various persons through the failure of
the queen to earry out promises she had made
to them. Among them was Columbus and he
presented a memorial to the tribunal in which
he complained that neither Ferdinand nor Ton
bella had carried out the provisions of his now-
famous “capitulations” In his memorial ap-
pears this significant paragraph
from the age of twenty-eight years
bus) had served in the enter a
aquest of the said Indies, doing for
their Hig
nesses a so great and notable
1 service without
expense to the royal treasury and without dar
and usefulness for these Kingdoms, as is wel
to render this service to any other Christin
king without burden to his conscience,
have not carried out with him
jations and they have not kept nor executed the
said privileges, graces and confirmations as
they had promised at the time of according then
to him.”
the said capitu
“Thus” says Professor Ulloa, “Columbus had
begun to discover and even to conquer the In
dies—that is, our present-day America-—whet
he.was not more than twenty-eight years old
Furthermore, for this enterprise he had no sup
port from the Spanish monarchs, either in money
or men. It is evident that these circumstances
cannot be related to the expedition of 1402, be
cause it is well known that at this later date
Columbus was much more than twenty-eight
years old, and also because, hy virtue of the
capitulations, the monarchs supplied him with
money, men and ships,
“When could this conquest of which Colum
bus speaks im his memorial which we have
quoted have had its beginning? We have knowr
for a long time and in a positive manner that
his son Diego was born about 1480 and that
from this date Columbus had not left Portugal
and Spain until August, 1402, when he set oul
on the ‘official discovery. Cofisequently, it was
before 1480 that the prediscovery was made. |
should add that when he died, in 1506, he was
more than sixty years old, Therefore, one must
put his age at twenty-eight between 1470 and
1450."
As for the Peruvian scholar’'s method of fix
ing 1477 as the date of Columbus's “first discov
ery” of America he bases it upon a passage it
the “Historie,” attributed to Don Fernando, the
son of Columbus, which was a blography of
Columbus. One passage in it, came, according
to the book, from Columbus himself and in it
Columbus declared that In February, 1477, he
galled as far as Tile (Iceland) and even “one
hundred leagues beyond.”
“Let us now mark that Columbus says that
at this date he went 100 leagues beyond lce
fand,” says Professor Ulloa. “Those who deny
the veracity of the great mariner assume that
this 100 leagues should be measured toward the
porth and that Columbus then would have
come near the pole, as far as 78 degrees, which
is impossible, But as early as the first yem
of the Seventeenth century the Italian annalist
Casoni correctly interpreted, as I have dope
the phrase of Columbus, the true meaning of
which places this 100 leagues to the west, Cason)
thus understood that it was Greenland whict
the discoverer had touched.”
80 the time may come when our schoolbook
histories may tell us a different tale of the dis
covery of America from the one we now know
And perhaps American schoolboys will repeat
a couplet different from “In fourteen hurelred
and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue,’
Will it be “Christopher Columbus, by the grace
of heaven, reached North America in fourteer
seventy-seven”?
1 by Western Nowepaper Union.)
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