Head of School Chris Watson served as judge and stenographer for our mock trial of the People v Columbus et. al. It was an exercise in getting the 7th & 8th graders to be able to articulate positions that maybe they themselves find unsavory, which is always a great thing to do when sharpening one's critical thinking skills. Let's dive into the play-by-play:
As with all good marathon tweet sessions, we begin with an introduction:
As the prosecutor, I chose the order of the defendants. I followed the prescrisbed order Bill Bigelow lays out in his book, and I found it to be pretty spot-on. We started with Columbus's Men.
The defense team immediately jumped to kick the can down the road.
A very interesting and thought-provoking question from the jury. I wonder what pressures they were all under to follow orders, lost as they were in an unknown land. We then moved on to man himself, admiral and governor of Hispaniola:
Above was my indictment, and below we have Columbus's defense team's response:
Above Columbus immediately goes to point fingers at the King & Queen, as well as the System of Empire. The jury is not interested in excuses, only in responsibility.
The above was a specious argument at best, but I give credit to the defense team for trying to push off the blame for spreading disease. In truth, how could they have known?
The jury really was not buying the argument that Columbus's ignorance was an excuse for his atrocities. Next up was the King and Queen:
As you can see by the above, the King and Queen did their best to plead ignorance. They were not there, they did not see it happen, they did not directly or explicitly authorize the use of force & torture.
The cross-examination really got them here. There is evidence that King Fredinand and Queen Isabella knew of the atrocities and turned a blind eye. A "gotcha" moment.
Again, placing all their faith in Columbus, and then giving the wide-eyed defense. The monarch's defense team was really in a tough position here, and the jury was relentless:
The last comment above was a response from Columbus's Men, out of turn but noted in the court proceedings. Next up were the Tainos:
This was a tough role to both prosecute and defend. It starts feeling like victim blaming early on, but the students were all eager to engage in this discussion. The question of "why didn't we do more?" persists in all conflicts, both overt and implicit. What an interesting question for middle schoolers to tackle!
Next up was the System of Empire, a nebulous manifestation of the times in which these atrocities took place:
A great question - would any other explorer have acted differently? Impossible to say for sure, but I am inclined to agree with the defense here that no matter who the "Columbus" was, it's tough to imagine a different scenario. Maybe
Cabeza de Vaca and his adherents would disagree, but that's a post for a different time. Back to the words of my students:
This, for me, was the home run for the System of Empire. There were still good people, doing good things, even in the face of this tragedy.
How did it turn out? Who's guilty? Well, the jury's deliberating, and we'll discuss tomorrow in class. But for now:
