Did King Ferdinand tell Christopher Columbus to “Get gold, humanely if possible, but at all hazards-get gold”?
The short answer to the question is in Chapter 19 of my book, “Christopher Columbus The Hero 2”:
Revisionists are becoming more creative in the things they incorrectly attribute to Columbus. One of the new ones is that King Ferdinand wrote a letter to Columbus on June 6, 1511, saying, ‘Get gold, humanely if possible, but at all hazards-get gold.’ This quote is in several articles on the web, even in a school textbook. But the first problem we have is that Columbus died in 1506. The other problem is that the king did not say such a thing. Instead, the quote was a comment made by Sir Arthur Helps in 1856. It has nothing to do with Columbus. [1]
In addition, Sir Arthur Helps wrote a biography on Columbus where he portrayed him as a hero. His book is titled “The Life of Columbus.”
Sir Arthur’s “Get gold comment” comment came from another book he wrote [2]. In it, he quoted a letter King Ferdinand wrote to Diego Columbus (Columbus’ son) in 1511 by saying:
The conversion of the Indians is the principal foundation of the conquest, that which principally ought to be attended to. So act that the Indians there ( in Trinidad ) may increase, and not diminish, as in Hispaniola.
That’s the actual quote. Then Sir Arthur proceeded to comment the following:
This is a most unsatisfactory and vacillating letter, which it is not harsh to construe shortly in this way: ‘Get gold, humanely if you can, but at all hazards get gold, and here are facilities for you.’ The king tries to wash his hands of the ill consequences of this permission in a letter of the next month, in which he says, ‘Take care that our conscience be not burdened, and that the importation of Indians be without damage to them and to our people ...’ [3]
Whereas Sir Arthur saw Columbus with grace, he didn’t extend that benefit to the Spanish kingdom. Then he added, “These are but useless words: how was it possible to enter a country, take a number of its people, and transport them to another place, in any velvet manner?”
This is an ironic statement since Sir Arthur’s country of origin (England) became an empire by entering other countries, and they participated in the transatlantic slave trade as well. Not to mention that slavery was universal during the Spanish conquest era. This is clearly an anti-Spanish bias comment.
I will recommend people to read the entire letters [4] Sir Arthur Helps partially quoted and commented on, and I will challenge anyone to prove to me where the Spanish kingdom approved the abuse of the natives. They never did. In fact, it was unlawful. Those who did were reported and punished. In contrast, the Indigenous natives practiced slavery, accompanied with sanctioned abuses like cannibalism and human sacrifices. Yet, that part of the story is often swept under the rug.This is not a comment to shame the Indigenous people, but to bring a perspective that is usually ignored.
History is history, and universal slavery was part of it. Thankfully, we don’t practice it anymore. But to answer the question of this post, Did Christopher Columbus receive a letter saying, “Get gold Get gold, humanely if possible, but at all hazards-get gold”? The answer is, “no.”
1. Christopher Columbus The Hero 2 by Rafael Ortiz, Chapter 19, p. 157.
2. The Spanish Conquest in America, and its Relation to the History of Slavery and to the Government of Colonies. Vol. I. 1856.
3. Ibid, p. 234.
4. The title of the book is, Colección de Documentos Inéditos Relativos al Descubrimiento, Conquista y Organización de las Antiguas Posesiones Españolas de Ultramar. Tomo 5, De Los Documentos Legislativos, I. Madrid, 1890. The ebook version is free on Google Play Books.
