"The Seeds of Change"
 
by Herman J. Viola
 
in OAH "Magazine of History" (Vol. 5, No. 4, Spring 1991,
pp. 31-32)
 
     Little could Christopher Columbus realize upon reaching
America's shores in 1492 that he was about to set in motion
processes of encounter and exchange that would dramatically alter
life in both the New and Old Worlds.  Indeed, who could have
foretold that, as a consequence of the tiny flotilla's voyage,
Africans would one day become the dominant ethnic group in the
Caribbean, that New World foods such as potatoes and corn would
become major crops in Asia, or that tomatoes would transform
cuisine in Europe?  Nonetheless, Columbus began a process of change
that eventually altered the world's flora and fauna, reordered the
ethnic composition of entire countries, and changed the diet and
health of peoples everywhere.
     This fascinating story is the subject of "Seeds of Change,"
the quincentenary exhibition of the National Museum of Natural
History at the Smithsonian Institution.  Scheduled to open in
Washington 12 October 1991 (and to travel broadly thereafter), the
exhibition will demonstrate that the New World underwent rapid and
profound transformations because of certain "seeds of change" that
the Europeans introduced, sometimes deliberately, sometimes
accidentally.
     Columbus and those who followed gave little thought to the
impact of their actions as they sought to carve empires out of what
seemed to be an unclaimed Garden of Eden.  In fact, not until quite
recently have the consequences of the changes wrought by the New
World's early visitors been fully understood.  We now know what
occurs when the interrelationships among plants, animals, and the
forces of nature are disturbed.
     First to be affected by the Columbus voyages were the native
peoples of the Americas.  How unfortunate that almost five
centuries had to pass before the rich and diverse cultures of the
indigenous peoples of North and South America could be appreciated
and accepted by the European intruders.   Few Europeans ever
realized that Columbus had not found a "new" world but a previously
"unknown" world--one long populated by numerous and diverse peoples
with cultures as distinct, vibrant, and worthy as any to be found
in Europe or elsewhere on the planet.  Indeed, just a few miles
distant from his first landfall were the empires of the Mayas and
Aztecs, often referred to as the Greeks and Romans of the Western
Hemisphere.  Their ancestors were laying the foundations of their
empires around 2800 B.C., about the time the Old Kingdom pharaohs
of Egypt were building the great pyramids.  Sadly, the Europeans
regarded the peoples whom they encountered in the Americas more as
natural objects--another form of fauna to be discovered and
exploited--rather than as human beings with histories as rich and
ancient as their own.  They could not imagine that these people
could offer anything of aesthetic or cultural value.
     Consider, for example, what occurred on the island of
Hispaniola, where Columbus established Santo Domingo, the first
permanent European colony in the New World.  In neither Haiti nor
the Dominican Republic, who share this island today, are there any
descendants of the original Indian inhabitants.  They had
disappeared by 1600.  Although no one knows what their numbers were
in 1492, current estimates range from sixty thousand to as many as
eight million.  Columbus himself remarked that "Indians of this
island ... are its riches, for it is they who dig and produce the
bread and other food for the Christians and get gold from the mines
... and perform all the services and labor of men and of draft
animals."
     If Columbus believed the Indians were the island's riches, he
did little to protect Spain's fortune.  Bartolome de las Casas, the
Dominican friar and polemicist, whose father and uncle had come
with Columbus to Hispaniola in 1493, believed that three million
native peoples had perished after little more than a decade of
contact with the Europeans--the result of disease, warfare, forced
labor, and enslavement.  "Who of those in future centuries will
believe this?" he asked.  "I myself who am writing this and saw it
and know the most about it can hardly believe that such was
possible."
     Little wonder that some American Indians plan to wear black
arm bands in 1992 or that there is rising support for a national
day of mourning to honor all the Indians who died as a result of
the arrival of the Europeans.  Most Indians echo the sentiment of
George P. Horse Capture, an advisor to the "Seeds of Change"
exhibit: "For America's Indians, 1992 means that we will have
survived as a people for 500 years."
     About the only benefit the native Americans received from
Europe was the horse.  It is one gift from the Old World that many
tribes came to embrace and cherish.  At first amazed by these
strange creatures, the Indians of North and South America
eventually became some of the finest riders the world has known. 
Even today, members of many North American tribes regard the horse
as a vital part of their culture.
     Another tragedy of 1492 was the failure of Europeans to
recognize the fragility of the American environment.  They set to
work despoiling the resources of the New World as quickly as they
began destroying its peoples.  What had taken nature thousands of
centuries to create was largely undone in less than five years,
beginning in September 1493, when the Admiral of the Ocean Seas
returned to America at the head of an armada of seventeen ships. 
These ships disgorged on Hispaniola some fifteen hundred would-be
empire builders and a Noah's Ark of Old World animals and plants
including horses, cows, pigs, wheat, barley, and shoots of
sugarcane which next to disease, was perhaps the most detrimental
contribution of the Old World to the New.
     Sugarcane merits censure because it harmed both man and the
environment.  With sugarcane came the plantation system and the
initial assault on the tropical rain forests of the New World. 
Sugarcane was a labor-intensive crop that absorbed huge human
resources, beyond what was needed for altering the landscape, to
make large-scale production both possible and profitable.  When
there were no longer sufficient numbers of Indians to maintain the
New World plantations, Europeans turned to Africa for their labor
force.  The exact number of Africans kidnapped and sold into New
World slavery will never be known, but the estimates range from ten
to thirty million.  Because of sugar, therefore, the landscape of
the Caribbean was transformed--Africans replaced Indians as the
dominant ethnic group on many Caribbean islands, and the
populations of Africa were irreversibly altered.
     This continuing influence of Columbus's voyages is also an
important part of the "Seeds of Change" story.  The Columbian
legacy is apparent in the continuing destruction of the rain
forests at the rate of thirty-five acres a minute.  Today, many
people realize that the rain forests are not inexhaustible, as the
conquistadors and later the sugar planters thought them to be--if
they thought of them at all.  More and more people consider the
rain forests treasures, essential to all aspects of human welfare. 
Not only are rain forests a major influence on the world's climate
but they shelter plant and animal species unknown to science.  This
flora could, for example, contain potential cures for AIDS and
cancer.  The continued destruction of the rain forest is likened to
the destruction of a vast library whose volumes remain unread and
unappreciated because languages in which they are written have not
yet been translated.
     In keeping with the enormity of its subject, the "Seeds of
Change" exhibit will have many components.  In addition to the main
exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History, there will be
collaborative versions of the exhibition in at least eight museums
across the nation for two years (see accompanying itinerary). 
Complementing the exhibition in all its formats will be: activity
books and teacher's guides for fifth and eighth grade classes,
developed by the National Council for the Social Studies; reading
programs for adults sponsored by the American Library Association;
and, of course, the National History Day competition for 1991-92
with its theme, "Discovery, Encounter, Exchange in History: The
Seeds of Change."
 
Reprint permission granted by author and publisher.