WEBVTT

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Brings me to the
matter of the schools

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and what kids are getting
in the schools this year,

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of course, is Columbus.

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Let's do Columbus.

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[EXASPERATED HISS] Don't worry,
I'm going to take care of it.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I decided, since I was traveling
all over the country this year,

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being confronted with this
question, to do some research.

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And I owe a particular debt
to a book called The Conquest

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of Paradise, by
Kirkpatrick Sale, S-A-L-E.

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There's another excellent
book called, Columbus--

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His Enterprise, by Hans Koning.

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Check them out.

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In any case, this poem is
called "The Hidalgo's Hat

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and a Hawk's Bell of Gold."

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And again, there is some
Spanish in the poem,

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which I will translate.

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Hidalgos were the lesser
Spanish nobility, many of whom

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followed Columbus to the New
World in search of riches.

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I refer also to Indio,
which, of course, was

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the mistaken nomenclature
applied to the locals--

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Indian.

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Española-- the island we now
know today as the Dominican

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Republic and Haiti.

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Columbus was the governor of
that island from 1494 to 1500.

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Most people are
not aware of that.

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They think of him only as
the admiral on the ocean sea.

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But indeed, he was
there as governor.

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And while there, he
instituted a tribute system,

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so that the Indians
could pay him gold.

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And that is at the
center of this poem.

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I mention also Caciques, The
Caciques were the leaders

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of the Indigenous
people, the Taínos.

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And I refer as well to Isabella.

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Isabella was, of course,
the queen at that time,

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but also the name for an
early capital of Española,

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which was quickly abandoned a
few years after its founding,

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and then became the source
for many a ghost story,

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which also turns up here.

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Again the title, "The Hidalgo's
Hat and a Hawk's Bell of Gold."

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"Columbus hallucinated
gold wherever sunlight

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darted from rock to water.

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Spelled the word
slowly in his logbook,

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so that the Lord might
see, and blow his ship

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into a storm of gleaming dust.

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When god would not puff his
cheeks for trade winds of gold,

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the Admiral flourished
a decree on parchment.

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A hawk's bell full of gold
from every Indio where

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the river's gilded
the soil of Española--

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1495.

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The Indios could only load the
bells with mirrored sunlight.

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For bells without
gold, the hands

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are pressed together as if in
prayer, gripped on the block.

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Then the knobs of
wrists were splintered

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by a bright and heavy sword.

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Their stumps became torches,
seething flames of blood.

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The vowels of their
language lamentations

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flattening the tongue.

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While the Admiral slept in
the exhaustion of dysentery,

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or amused the queen with his
zoo of shackled Caciques,

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the town he named Isabella
dissolved into the stones,

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like a rumor of gold,
deserted swamp crowned.

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There is a spirit
legend that the moans

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of men in rusting helmets
would radiate from the vine

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matted walls, starved
with a mouthful of bark,

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a man with a brain
soaking in syphilis,

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or digging an arrowhead from
the eye fired by an Indio

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with two hands.

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Someone saw the Hidalgos there.

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Ghosts of noblemen, bowing in a
row, a swirl of velvet cloaks.

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As each swept off his
feathered hat in greeting,

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his head unscrewed from the
hollow between caped shoulders,

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swinging in the hat like
a cannonball in a sack."

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So Columbus [? se acabó ?].

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