It Might Be A Surprise To Know That Spain, Not Italy, Discovered America

 COLUMBUS DAY IS OCTOBER 13TH, 2025 

In 1492, Spain Discovered America 

The Captain Was A Foreigner With Special Skills: An Italian Named Christopher Columbus Who Was Working For Spain  

Christopher Columbus 

In 1492, Spain discovered the eastern shore of the Americas. Christopher Columbus, the pilot of the little boats that made that first trip was an Italian – a hired hand from a foreign country. 

SPAIN HIRED AN ITALIAN TO MAN ITS SHIPS

Spain at that time was the big cheese in Europe. The flashy Spanish royalty, Ferdinand and Isabella, were very powerful. They were also brutal. The king and queen started the Spanish Inquisition in 1478. In the name of religion, they tortured and slaughtered anyone who seemed to somehow be un-Christian. 

Waterboarding, a creative means of torturing someone until they "talked" by half drowning them, was invented by the Spaniards during the reign of this unusual power couple. 

Many Americans know that Christopher Columbus, the man who piloted the boats for Spain across the Atlantic before bumping into an island off the coast of what would become "America," was an Italian. In many ways, that's interesting, but in some ways irrelevant.

Italy did not discover America. Columbus was just a paid employee; the Americas were discovered by and on behalf of Spain, which funded and launched the effort. 

Columbus was what we'd call an immigrant today. He was not a home-grown Spaniard. 

YEARS LATER, RUSSIA HIRED A DANE TO EXPLORE ALASKA 

In the days of sea travel in wooden boats, you got your captains where you could. If they weren't good enough at home, you searched another country for talent.

Here's a story about a hired foreign captain that came to the American continent (and Alaska) from a different direction – Russia, to the west. 

Vitus Bering – the man they named the Bering Strait after – is known today as a "Russian" explorer. But, like Columbus, Bering was also a hired hand, and an immigrant from another country. Vitus Bering was born in Denmark, and went to school at the University of Copenhagen.  

Even though he later sailed for the Russian Navy, Bering wasn't Russian.

Apparently, to help smooth this little problem over, Vitus Jonassen Bering adopted a second more Russian-sounding name: Ivan Ivanovich Bering. 

In 1741, Bering spotted a mountain in what is now Wrangell-St. Elias National Park: Mount Saint Elias. 

Mt. St. Elias in the Wrangells. (Wikipedia)

This sighting of that specific mountain, in the massive range that dominates the eastern edge of the Copper River Valley in Alaska, is known as the "discovery" of northwestern America. 

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Columbus Day & Indigenous People's Day 

Are Both Celebrated Together 

Meanwhile, of course, when both Columbus and Bering arrived to claim the land for their adopted countries, there were people living in the Americas. These widely scattered groups spoke many languages, had many lifestyles, and had lived in their regions for hundreds, even thousands of years.

Today, they are known as "indigenous" peoples. The word "indigenous" generally means that you didn't come from somewhere else. In America, indigenous people are also known as "Native Americans," and by identifying subcategories: Athabascan, Yupik, Ahtna, Navajo, Sioux and so on. 

Columbus Day is celebrated the second Monday in October. Many Americans, including indigenous peoples, enjoy also celebrating Columbus Day as Indigenous People's Day, in honor of the people who were here in the past. 

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BONUS FROM THE COUNTRY JOURNAL

 Read more about ship explorations, disasters and other well-known historic explorers who came to Prince William Sound 

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