LAD #8: Columbus Blog

All Americans know the day of October 12, 1492 to be the very day the Christopher Columbus discovered America.  It is a national holiday and celebrated all over the country as one of the most important days in American history.  Everyone praises Columbus for this singular task and view him as a world renowned hero.  However, people seem to forget all of the atrocities and violence that was involved in his discovery and establishment.  When the Arawak people saw the foreign ship with "alien" people, they were more than generous and giving.  They shared everything that they could, and more, with Columbus and his men.  They provided food, shelter, water, gifts, and anything else that the Spaniards needed.  And how did Columbus react?  He completely annihilated the native population causing mass genocide, that's what.  He enslaved the Indians by the thousands, shipping them all back to Europe as slaves, promising more and more each time he came back to Spain with "Indians": which he called them because he was oblivious to the actual size of the Earth and miscalculated his journey.  The thing is, a considerable amount of the Indians would die on the journey overseas.  As Howard Zinn explains, one of the ships carried 500 of the strongest and best fit natives, and by the end of the journey 200 were dead.  Not only did the natives die from travel, but thousands were massacred in the Americas as well.  For all the Indians that did not cooperate with the Spanish rule, severe punishment -- that almost always resulted in death -- was imminent.  When the Spaniards bounced around the Caribbean islands, any native population that would not voluntarily listen to the Spanish demands were destroyed.  The biggest Spanish weapon that Columbus unleashed was disease.  Not only did the new European illnesses that Columbus as his men brought over instantly affect the immediate population, but over time 90% of the Native American population would fall to European disease.  Grant it, bringing disease and spreading death was not Columbus's primary goal for the Americas.  His intention was to find the wealth and riches of gold and glory.  He originally meant no harm to any native beings, he just greedily sought the power that he would gain through discovery, and the riches he would unleash.  Yet it was his greed that was his downfall.  No matter how innocent his original intentions may have been, nothing could be used to defend the atrocities that he and his men showed the Arawak Indians.  Even though that might have been the custom treatment at the time, the things that he and his men did to the Arawak people is inhumane and just plain old wrong.  Furthermore, Columbus's actions were mirrored by later adventurers (Cortes, Pizarro, and the English settlers), who ravaged violence and war instead of seeking peace and a sense of  respect.  It is as if he set a precedent for others to follow.  Being the first to settle in the Americas, he needed to set a good example for people to follow, but just as he was blinded by superiority and glory, future conquerors became entangled in war and strife between themselves and the natives.  So all in all, even though there are legitimate cases to portray Columbus as either a hero or a villain, my personal viewpoint stands that he is drastically more of a villain than the hero that people portray him to be.