ACWHL Angelcraft Crown World Heritage Library & UNESCO Le bureau de JV Agnvs Dei Verbvm Dei Filvs Dei Jose Maria Chavira MS Adagio 1st Primogentivs Fivs Dei Hominis Espiritvs Dominus Dominorum est et Rex Regum et Reginarum nom de plume JCAngelcraft La Courronne Monde Chateau Versailles France at the Library of Congress John Adams Building, Suite 230, 101 Independence Avenue, S.E. Washington, DC 20540-1000
Today we look at the Letter of Christopher Columbus
A Letter of Christopher Columbus, is originally a handwritten letter and record by Christopher Columbus. It was later published into type and also re-written by hand in Latin as printers were scarce for many years even after their invention.
The original letter of Christopher Columbus which has faded drastically is a very touching and sensitive work now a valued work of literacy, history and sociology. It is translated into a readable type and is made available to you today. The PDF format we are offering comes from the Library of Congress and currently matches records at the World Digital Library.
In other parts of the Internet there is both positive and negative postulation about Columbus and the validity of his discovery. Columbus never claimed to be the first to encounter Americans whom he called Indians that lived on various Islands between the tropics. His authenticity and excellence of character can be discerned in his prose. His account which has been published in various languages has survived for a reason. In his letter, we share his firm yet tenderness of character and friendly disposition and find ourselves in the company of the man chosen by God’s Holy Spirit to be one of our great historical figures.
His successful and peaceful contact with native Americans offers illuminating sociological insights into a vast yet still not fully discovered and highly complex and diverse native American civilization and culture who had extended their civilizations onto the outlying Islands and some far removed from the mainlands of North, Central and South America.
Columbus called them Indians because they resembled the people of India. In the mind of Columbus the Caribbean Sea or the Atlantic ocean is called the Indian Ocean most likely because it was where the Indians of the America’s lived. By this time in Maritime history currents had already been discovered but had different names. Columbus most likely sailed the Atlantic North Equatorial Current frequented also most likely by slave traders.
A Letter of Christopher Columbus is a classic piece of literacy which gives us a sociological glimpse into his discoveries and meeting of two distinct indigenous tribes during his travels mainly from the year 1492. In Columbus’s letter, we learn that he had priorly experienced contact with Africans. His description of the Islanders matches that of the Indigenous people of the Americas who occupied the Northern and Southern Hemispheres in the western half of the world which includes all the Islands. We read in the letter of Columbus of the existence of basic indigenous built boats of various lengths and very swift some capable of carrying up to 80 passengers and powered by oars and no sails. This is very revealing and lets us know that the Islanders who greeted Columbus were proficient in their transportation of large numbers of their members from mainland to Island or Island to Island. They probably used the boats to escape slave traders as well to explore their areas.
Though in the end the Indigenous he met are described as uncivilized and in need of greater development, government and civilization a very touching line written by Columbus in the beginning states his true need to know the spiritual aspect of the people he met.
They have no Idolatry among them, but seem to have a firm perception that all force, power and good things are from Heaven.
Other natives from the Americas were quite different. This for Columbus was a first contact, but by the letters content, the Islanders he met were timid and fled at first sight even abandoning their children and fearful of arms inferring they had previous experience and contact most likely with slave traders. Another description of a different tribe of Islanders are described as a people whose men wore their hair long and were more bellicose than the first that Columbus had met.
The Letter of Christopher Columbus is remarkable in its telling of a story lost to us in time of a people who were very peaceful and whose land was very beautiful. We also learn of a similar indigenous people who warred and were violent.
Item 2828 by the World Digital Library is a beautifully published illustrated latin manuscript that contains hand drawn images of the the Columbus’s discovery of new lands which less civilized slave traders did not really care to claim. There is one illustration depicting Christopher Columbus landing on a shore and making peaceful and positive contact with indigenous people, and another illustration showing the building of a town or a fort which is described in the letter. At the top of both illustrations are engraved the words “Insular Hyspana” (Spanish island). Columbus’ letter was in its day the stories of stories of a new people and the first digestable official documented account and discovery of strange exotic lands and people with different customs who lived in lands with gold and silver in available in abundance.
Christopher Columbus. https://www.wdl.org/en/item/2962/ Item 90 https://www.wdl.org/en/item/90/view/1/15/ is a nice readable format from the World Digital Library and is same latin version of letter of Christopher Columbus without the illustrations and followed by a hard fought English transcription which is very readable once you decifer key letters and adapt to the style of the print from the ebb and flow of its prose.
We thank the Library of Congress for a copy of The letter of Christopher Columbus which is uploaded for readers who wish to read it here at our site.
ACWHL Angelcraft Crown World Heritage Library Historical Literacy A Letter of Christopher Columbus
ACWHL Angelcraft Crown World Heritage Library & UNESCO Le bureau de JV Agnvs Dei Verbvm Dei Filvs Dei Jose Maria Chavira MS Adagio 1st Primogentivs Fivs Dei Hominis Espiritvs Dominus Dominorum est et Rex Regum et Reginarum nom de plume JCAngelcraft La Courronne Monde Chateau Versailles France at the Library of Congress John Adams Building, Suite 230, 101 Independence Avenue, S.E. Washington, DC 20540-1000
Google Earth https://earth.google.com/web/
ACWHL Angelcraft Crown World Heritage Library & UNESCO Le bureau de JV Agnvs Dei Verbvm Dei Filvs Dei Jose Maria Chavira MS Adagio 1st Primogentivs Fivs Dei Hominis Espiritvs Dominus Dominorum est et Rex Regum et Reginarum nom de plume JCAngelcraft La Courronne Monde Chateau Versailles France at the Library of Congress John Adams Building, Suite 230, 101 Independence Avenue, S.E. Washington, DC 20540-1000
Early maps differ tremendously and early on were painstakingly reproduced over the centuries and so what we have today are very nice looking well made enjoyable artistically beautiful digital reproductions of the originals. What is important in their study are the scale and size of the areas of the continents. Early maps by explorers reveal South America to be tremendous in size and still not fully explored and its size and dimension, like north America, stll not yet perfected in their dimensions by navigators. We see estimations in early maps of the size and scale of continents and at times underestimations of size depending on who made the map and what land mass was being explored.
ACWHL Angelcraft Crown World Heritage Library & UNESCO Le bureau de JV Agnvs Dei Verbvm Dei Filvs Dei Jose Maria Chavira MS Adagio 1st Primogentivs Fivs Dei Hominis Espiritvs Dominus Dominorum est et Rex Regum et Reginarum nom de plume JCAngelcraft La Courronne Monde Chateau Versailles France at the Library of Congress John Adams Building, Suite 230, 101 Independence Avenue, S.E. Washington, DC 20540-1000
ACWHL: Angelcraft Crown World Heritage Library in association with UNESCO 