The Rediscovery of North America

By Barry Lopez

Five hundred years ago an Italian whose name, translated into English, meant Christopher Dove, came to America and began a process not of discovery, but incursion: "a ruthless, angry search for wealth" that continues to the present day.

This provocative and superbly written book gives a true assessment of Columbus's legacy while taking the first steps toward its redemption. Even as he draws a direct line between the atrocities of Spanish conquistadors and the ongoing pillage of our lands and waters, Barry Lopez challenges us to adopt an ethic that will make further depredations impossible. The Rediscovery of North America is a ringingly persuasive call for us, at long last, to make this country our home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307806468

Barry Lopez

Barry Lopez (1945–2020) was the author of thirteen books of essays, short stories, and nonfiction. He was a recipient of the National Book Award, the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and numerous other literary and cultural honors and awards. His highly acclaimed books include Arctic Dreams, Winter Count, and Of Wolves and Men, for which he received the John Burroughs and Christopher medals. He lived in western Oregon.

Book preview

A FEW HOURS after midnight on the morning of October twelfth in the Julian calendar of the West—or October twenty-second, according to the modern Gregorian calendar—Juan Rodriguez Bermeo, a lookout aboard the caravel Pinta, spotted the coast of either San Salvador Island or Samana Cay in the Bahamas and shouted his exclamation into the darkness. It was the eighteenth year of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile, and these mariners were their emissaries.

Cristoforo Colombo—or Christopher Dove as it would be in English—commander of the fleet of three ships, gave orders to take in sail, and to lay closehauled five miles off shore awaiting the rise of the sun. The seas were rolling. Strong winds tore at the crests of the waves. A gibbous moon was setting in a clear sky.

As they awaited dawn, Columbus let it be known that he had earlier seen a light on the island, a few hours before midnight. The ships were making about ten knots when Bermeo cried out. By his claim the commander would had to have seen the light at a distance of more than thirty miles over the curve of the Earth. Columbus thereby took for himself the lifetime pension promised the first man to sight