I don’t remember the first time I learned about Columbus. I know that in third grade I read Encounter, by Jane Yolan, which was the book that we talked about in class about Columbus’ landing and the effects of it from a Taino boy’s perspective. I must have learned about Columbus before third grade, because I knew who he was when I read the book.
I think my main misconception about Columbus as a kid was that I assumed he landed in what would eventually become the United States. I think this is a pretty common misconception in the United States, and I don’t know why. We always talk about Columbus like a founder of the nation, which I’m sure drives that misconception, but I don’t know why we talk about him in the way we do.
In middle and high school I remember reading about Columbus’ journal and other primary accounts of the encounter from the European point of view, but I don’t think I have ever read Columbus’ journal itself before this class. What struck me most about his journal was that he seemed to make a lot of assumptions without proof, like when he says, “[t]hey go as naked as when their mothers bore them, and so do the women, although I did not see more than one young girl” (paragraph 1). In this case, Columbus himself immediately confesses that he has a lack of proof. In other cases, he relates what Native people told him, but without explaining how this information was communicated, which makes all of these claims seem less legitimate. Columbus also writes about the Indigenous people, “[..] I believe that they would easily be made Christrians, as it appeared to me that they had no religion” (paragraph 1). To me, that seems like such a clear example of having insufficient information to make a claim but not recognizing that lack of information, because of course people have religion. Especially in the 1400s, it seems reasonable to think that any community will have some exposure to some type of religion, even if it is not obvious to an outside observer.
All of this is to say that I really don’t understand the historical experiences and opinions that Columbus was living with, and I don’t know how much of his journal was him being willfully ignorant, genuinely ignorant, or writing for a European audience that he was expecting to tell this story to.