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.
The Spanish were cruel, and crazed by the idea of finding treasure and conquering land and the peoples that inhabited them. Some 160,000 Spaniards, consisting mostly of men, subjugated millions of Indians. (textbook) Between slaughtering the Indians and infecting them with devastating diseases such as smallpox, the native population plummeted from over twenty million down to two million in less than a century. The Spaniards biggest problem was their thirst for gold and treasure. Many of the natives that they came across welcomed them wholeheartedly, until they abused the hospitality that was given to them and gave nothing in return.
Compare and Contrast Essay Christopher Columbus’s discoveries are a very controversial matter. Depending on different point of views from historians and readers, he is credited to be guilty for the massacre of many Native people, a famous explorer, as well as a very fake, religious man. All these reasons are examples of why Columbus is a very difficult character in history to tell the truth about because it comes from our opinions as well as our own interpretation of written documents and books. The difference between the three book excerpts is the different ways that Columbus was portrayed and identified; as a murderer, greedy explorer, and holy man. In the excerpt from People’s History of the United States, the author pinpoints a lot about the hostility and innocence of Indians and how the European Discovery ended up sabotaging their lives and forcing slavery upon on them.
John’s agenda was to find a shorter way to Asia for the trade industry. He wanted to be part of what the Spaniards had and that was finding the new world. His pre-conceived notion was that Columbus had found this place that was to be the new world and he wanted to be part of it. He was curious to what was out there. He had always wanted to sail the open seas and explore and he did in fact that.
Before the arrival of the Spanish, the Natives had their own indigenous beliefs and while some of them were easily converted, some resisted. In one such incident, a captured tribal chief who had a led a conquest against the Spanish was given the option of accepting Christianity or being burned alive. While the tribal chief refused to convert and preferred death instead, a lot of Native Americans surely converted when put under the sword. This mission to have the whole land converted to their form of Christianity was the main aim of such cruel behavior towards the Native Americans, according to
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.
In the story “Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress,” Columbus is seen as a murderer, a rapist, a slave trader, and a liar. He had an agenda and it was to find gold. He did everything he could to find it. Most history books seem to have omitted what type of person Columbus was. People are willing to look past murder and wrong doings for the sake of moving forward.
We are always taught that the white settlers came and took all the Indians’ land and killed many of them in doing so. Both of those are terrible things, but it is even more important to look more closely, and realize the smaller, just as important things that were ruined, like the incredible, self taught languages that they developed. Now, we can look back and appreciate the language for being so incredible, but we can also look back feeling shameful that something like that happened. It is such a shame that a sense of greed (land and expansion) on the settlers’ parts led to the destruction and near extinction of the people that were here
Was John really a bad king? Through out history King John has been portrayed as a villainous king for example in the legends of Robin Hood he is shown as a greedy and cruel ruler who treated his people unfairly. However this may not be an accurate picture of him as for example he fed hundreds of paupers on feast days and he was hard working, often travelling the country and sitting in on court cases. Many of the problems he faced in running the country were in fact caused by Richard 1 who had neglected England. Sources from the time of John describe John as a poor leader and that he was greedy for money.
The anniversary of the day, October 12, 1492, when Christopher Columbus landed in the San Salvador Islands is celebrated by many countries in the Americas. Columbus’ landing was not the very first in the Americas, but he was the first European to claim land for a European nation. Many people celebrate and praise the day as the beginning of a culture, but some are violently opposed to celebrating this man, who, to them, began a culture which continues to display many evils. In my opinion, although Columbus who brought home slaves himself, and treated natives brutally if they could not find gold for him, did not set a good example for settlers coming after him, such a huge transgression cannot be blamed on one man, when hundreds of men after him did not put a stop to these evils. “Columbus is responsible for the murder of millions of indigenous people,” says osia.org.