07/07/2026
The popular myth says Columbus was only “smeared” by modern historians. The historical record says otherwise.
The first people to denounce Columbus were not 20th and 21st-century academics. They were his own contemporaries…the Crown of Castile, Spanish colonists, and even members of the Church.
Begin with his own letters.
In 1493, Columbus wrote to the monarchs describing the peoples of the Caribbean as commodities. He promised as many slaves as Their Highnesses shall order, and soon acted on it. Capturing, transporting, and selling Taínos in Spain and across Hispaniola.
By 1495, he shipped 550 Indigenous captives to Seville. Nearly half died on the voyage. The rest were sold at auction. Columbus did not hide this. He documented it as policy.
And in 1500, after being arrested and sent back to Spain in chains, Columbus wrote a defensive letter to Doña Juana de la Torre, a noblewoman close to Queen Isabella.
The purpose of the letter was to complain about disorder on Hispaniola and defend his administration.
Yet in the course of doing so, Columbus casually describes a slave market that had developed on the island. He explains that women were being bought and sold openly. That prices were being set in castellanos. That dealers were traveling the countryside in search of girls.
Columbus writes that there were “from nine or ten on sale,” and that they fetched a good price, “let their age be what it will.”
Whatever Columbus’s intent in mentioning it, the meaning is damning. By the late 1490s, it proves there was a recognized commercial market for Indigenous girls on Hispaniola. Girls were being searched for, priced, bought, and sold. And Columbus knew the trade well enough to reference it without explanation.
That’s not modern revisionism. That’s Columbus, in his own defensive letter, acknowledging that girls of any age had become part of the market economy of conquest.
And then came Michele de Cuneo.
One of the most disturbing indictments of Columbus’s regime doesn’t come from an enemy. It comes from his 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥.
Michele de Cuneo was a nobleman from Savona who sailed with Columbus on the Second Voyage. In 1495, he wrote a private letter describing what he had witnessed in the Caribbean.
Cuneo describes how Columbus’s forces carried out slaving raids on Caribbean communities, capturing Indigenous men, women, and girls. These captives were gathered, divided, and distributed among the Spaniards like spoils of war.
Columbus himself presided over the allocations.
In one passage, Cuneo writes that he took “a very beautiful Carib woman” whom Columbus had given to him.
Cuneo then describes taking her into his cabin, attempting to force himself on her, being resisted, tying her up with a rope, and assaulting her.
This isn’t a modern accusation. This is Columbus’s own companion describing a captive woman Columbus personally handed over to him.
The source appears in the De Lollis edition of the 𝘙𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘵𝘢 𝘥𝘪 𝘥𝘰𝘤𝘶𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪 𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘪, vol. III, part II, p. 97.
In the very same 1495 letter, Cuneo also describes one of the earliest large-scale slave shipments across the Atlantic under Columbus’s authority.
He writes that the Spaniards gathered 1,600 Indigenous captives, “male and female,” at La Isabela. Of these, he says, “the best men and women” were loaded onto caravels bound for Spain on February 17, 1495.
The number he gives is 550 souls.
For the remaining captives, Cuneo says a proclamation was made that whoever wanted any could take them at will. Among them were women with nursing infants. Cuneo describes mothers fleeing so desperately from the Spaniards that they left their children behind on the ground and escaped into the mountains.
He also records that one Indigenous king and two captains were placed in stocks and sentenced to be shot with arrows the next day. During the night, they escaped.
This passage appears in the same De Lollis edition, 𝘙𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘵𝘢 𝘥𝘪 𝘥𝘰𝘤𝘶𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪 𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘪, vol. III, part II, p. 106.
The crossing that followed became a death corridor. Around 200 of the 550 captives died during the voyage, their bodies thrown into the sea.
Columbus’s role is not ambiguous.
He authorized the raids. He oversaw the capture and distribution of Indigenous people. And his own friend recorded the system in real time.
Then came the royal investigation…
Reports of cruelty, corruption, and unrest reached Ferdinand and Isabella.
They sent Francisco de Bobadilla with full judicial authority to seize evidence, question witnesses, and, if necessary, arrest Columbus.
Bobadilla collected sworn testimony from dozens of Spaniards, not Indigenous witnesses.
Their depositions alleged...
Mutilation and torture with ropes, shackles, and whipping posts.
Ex*****on without trial.
Enslavement of entire villages.
Selling Indigenous girls for sexual exploitation.
Forced labor so severe that colonists themselves begged the Crown for help.
The result was that Columbus was arrested, placed in irons, shipped back to Spain, stripped of his governorship, and never restored to power.
The monarchs let him sail again, but only as a private citizen, not as a ruler. The empire that funded him ultimately judged him unfit to govern.
Enter Bartolomé de las Casas.
One of the earliest and most vocal critics of Columbus’s legacy was not a “modern activist,” but a 16th-century Spanish friar.
Bartolomé de las Casas arrived in the Caribbean in 1502, originally supported the conquest, and even received an 𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘢, a grant of Indigenous forced labor.
But after witnessing the brutality of Spanish rule, including the aftermath of Columbus’s policies, he renounced his privileges, freed his captives, and spent the rest of his life documenting the destruction of Indigenous societies.
In works like 𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘢 𝘥𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘴 𝘐𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘴 and 𝘈 𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘈𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘐𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘴, published in 1552, Las Casas described with eyewitness detail the mass enslavement, starvation, sexual violence, and forced labor that decimated Caribbean populations.
He wrote that the crimes began under the administration of Columbus and his brothers. His testimony circulated throughout Europe long before modern historians existed.
When detractors say “this all comes from Howard Zinn,” they reveal they’ve never read the 15th- and 16th-century sources.
Columbus’s own letters describe the capture and sale of human beings.
His 1500 letter to Doña Juana de la Torre describes a market where women were sold for castellanos and merchants searched for girls, who fetched a good price regardless of age.
Michele de Cuneo’s 1495 letter describes slaving raids, the distribution of captives, the forced shipment of 550 Indigenous people to Spain, and the assault of a captive woman given to him by Columbus himself.
The Bobadilla Report is sworn testimony by Spanish colonists, not enemies of the Crown.
Las Casas, a devout Catholic priest, documented the atrocities only decades after they occurred.
The Spanish Crown itself arrested Columbus, stripped his titles, and publicly removed him from authority.
No modern historian invented any of this.
The judgment of Columbus belongs to his own era. All we have done is stop ignoring it.
Italian Americans inherited the myth of Columbus as a symbol of pride during an era of extreme discrimination, an understandable impulse in the early 20th century.
But the historical record is clear.
Columbus’s own letters, Cuneo’s letter, the Bobadilla investigation, and Las Casas’s accounts stand as some of the strongest indictments of Columbus’s colonial abuse in the New World.
We deserve symbols rooted in truth, not nostalgia for a man whose legacy is enslavement, exploitation, and violence.
Italian Americans deserve better heroes than Christopher Columbus.
——
Sources:
Christopher Columbus, 𝘓𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘰 𝘋𝘰𝘯̃𝘢 𝘑𝘶𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘥𝘦 𝘛𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘴 (1500). Preserved in published collections of Columbus’s correspondence; the passage describing the sale of women and the demand for girls “from nine to ten years old” appears in multiple critical editions, including those edited by Consuelo Varela.
Christopher Columbus, 𝘚𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘓𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘶𝘴, translated and compiled in various academic editions (notably 19th–20th century scholarly collections drawing on the Archivo General de Indias).
Michele de Cuneo, 𝘓𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥 𝘝𝘰𝘺𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘶𝘴 (1495). A firsthand participant account describing the seizure, distribution, and export of Indigenous captives; published in collections of early New World narratives and cited by historians of early Spanish colonization.
Francisco de Bobadilla, 𝘐𝘯𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘳𝘺 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘶𝘴 𝘈𝘥𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 (1500). Testimony from witnesses collected during the Crown’s investigation of Columbus’s rule on Hispaniola; surviving through later transcription and analysis.
Bartolomé de las Casas, 𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘈𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘐𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘴 (Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, published 1552) Corroboration of systemic violence, enslavement, and sexual exploitation in the early Caribbean.
Consuelo Varela, 𝘊𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰́𝘣𝘢𝘭 𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘰́𝘯: 𝘛𝘦𝘹𝘵𝘰𝘴 𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘤𝘶𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘰𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘰𝘴 (Madrid, Alianza Editorial). Modern edition and analysis of Columbus’s writings and the Bobadilla inquiry, widely cited in academic scholarship.
