Chapter 1 Chapter 1, entitled Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress depicts the Europeans’ initial encounter with the Arawak Indians of the West Indies . The Arawaks greeted Columbus and his crew with hospitality, but little did they know they would soon be taken advantage of and have their culture virtually destroyed. Columbus’s journal entries about this first meeting indicate his feelings of superiority to the Arawaks, which led to enslavement, murder, and rape. The Arawaks were forced to work in gold mines and were killed at the will of the Europeans. Millions of natives were killed in slavery, war, and, mining.
These pioneers shared the same goals of Columbus, greed. They would go out and load ships with slaves, merchandise, spices and just about everything else that they could find to satisfy their needs. Beginning the of excerpt, “God, glory, and gold--not necessarily in that order--took post-Renaissance Europeans to parts of the globe they had never before seen” (1). This quote is a perfect example of religion also taking part in greedy necessities. During these arrival of European explorers, they began a new era of disease within the villages and caused the death of hundreds and hundreds of Natives.
Columbus’s exploration of the New World ended lives and heritage of many people. The Discovery of the New world was later on followed by series of minor developments in navigation, geography, astronomy and economy through the Atlantic circuit but in contrast it even these minor devalopments were ”Not..worth price of human lives.”(Sale 188). Additionally Europeans imposed and substituted their institutions, ideas,languages, cultures, technologies and economy for the New World’s original heritage and language. Also” it gave birth to the most infamous and the most atrocious of all traffics, that of slave, the most execrable of crimes against nature (Reynal /190)”. Ships of African slaves crossed the Atlantic to the Americas to work on European sugar and tobacco plantations under the harshest conditions, which led to an end of many slaves’ lives.
Christopher Columbus story educates us to tell us how our land today was found. We think Christopher Columbus is a hero, but is he really? Due to the difficulty of persuading men to go on what seemed to them to be a dangerous and a likely useless journey, Christopher Columbus had a difficult time persuading people to join his voyage. Thus the men that would volunteer to go were men that had a reason to leave, mainly criminals. So when he landed his men, who were on the verge of revolt, proceeded to rape pillage and destroy the Natives, quite literally killing and torturing thousands.
When Columbus stumbled upon the “New World” in 1492, he unwittingly initiated one of the most profound transformations in world history; a transformation that continues to shape the world in which we live today. The conquest of the Americas is known to being a brutal and vicious tragedy. While the newcomers cherished their new findings of spices, sugar, tobacco, coffee, gold, forest and fertile lands, the indigenous people were attacked with diseases, humiliation, destruction of culture and living conditions, and mass death. Since the conquest, historians have puzzled over one question in particular. How did so few Spanish manage to conquer such huge territories and the population taking up those lands?
When Columbus sailed to America, a reward was offered to the first sailor to see land. Juan Rodriguez Bermejo was the first to see land on October 12th, but Columbus had claimed he saw the land the night before to claim the reward for himself. Columbus also was a cruel man when he settled in the Bahamas. He treated the “Indians”, Native Americans, horribly. Columbus enslaved the people, demanded every adult Taino to bring gold to him every three months, and forced Christianity.
- Acts of intimidation against Native American's in Pennsylvania- the Paxton Boys. They were like a vigilante group. Led to massacres, about 50 of them and just attacked Indian villages. - The English also had huge debt from the result of the
Western Civilization leads in categories of politics, economics, science and technology and in each category the West gained efficiency and effectiveness. It is seen by many people that Columbus used his power to conquer the people of the new world and commit genocide and slavery but at the same time Columbus brought knowledge to these people and enabled them to become as powerful as Western Civilization. Over time, Western Civilization has faced adversity but like Columbus, they have done whatever was necessary to keep expanding Western influence. The article also clarifies the debate over Columbus because it shows that Columbus cannot be looked at as good or bad; Columbus has to be looked at as an admiral, who took necessary action in the new world to keep Western Civilization on top. If Columbus had not taken the actions that he did, the people of the new world may have overthrown him and the western influence and that could have changed the world as we know it forever.
In the United States, Christopher Columbus is known for sailing the ocean blue in 1492 and thus discovering the Americas and leading the way for other Europeans to follow. He is the great intellectual that first thought of the world as being round instead of flat and was courageous enough to prove it. All this and much more, but, in reality Columbus was just another simple explorer out of Europe, trying to make some money by finding a new route to India. The man is painted as a hero and is given a national holiday even though he is responsible for the murder and enslavement of many Native Americans. In truth, a lot of what we know about Columbus is untrustworthy; some of it may be correct but a lot of it is just lies.
Millions of natives in the New World died due to European illness making it easier for the Spanish Conquistadors to move in and take over much of the Americas. Balboa in 1513 discovers the Ithsmas of Panama and becomes the first European to set eyes on the Pacific Ocean from the east. The explorations to the new world continued and 1519-1522- Magellan sailed around the world proving that Columbus did not find