In 1780, The Pennsylvania Packet published an excerpt from historian William Robertson’s The History of America, offering a rare, unflinching look at how Christopher Columbus’ voyages reshaped the world and altered the course of Indigenous history.
Rather than glorifying him as a heroic explorer, Robertson traced how Columbus’ arrival set in motion a system of enslavement that devastated Indigenous peoples and gave rise to the transatlantic slave trade.
“The native Americans are all freemen; all feel themselves to be such, and assert with firmness the rights which belong to that condition,” he wrote. “This sentiment of independence is so imprinted in their nature, that no change of condition can eradicate it, or bend their minds to servitude. Accustomed to be absolute masters of their own conduct, they disdain to execute the orders of another… Many of them, when they found they were treated as slaves by the Spaniards, died of grief; many destroyed themselves in despair.”
