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In the year 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Consequently, over 80 million native peoples were slaughtered. Christopher Columbus made the greatest discoveries in American history, but the actions of Columbus and his men were far from great. Was he a great explorer? Yes, but can Columbus be considered a hero? Anyone that treated other people as brutal as Columbus can never be a hero.
Before Columbus could cross the Atlantic in hopes of locating a water route to Asia, he failed in convincing many rulers to fund his expedition. In Spain, he was able to persuade Queen Isabella to fund his kill-a-thon. He said that he would expand the Spanish empire with new territory, collect riches, and convert the natives to Christianity. What the Queen did not know, was the fact that all of this came with a much higher price, the loss of many human lives. As time played on, the killing, beatings, and enslavement ensued.
What the school books will not print are the horrifying ways that the Indians as a people were treated by the Spaniards and other Europeans. To gather the gold and silver that Columbus promised Isabella, Indian slaves were chained together at the neck and forced to work in local mines. If an Indian refused to work or was not moving to the Spaniards content, the slave was decapitated. The brutality did not stop there. Many of Columbus men made bets with each other, deadly bets. They would see who could cut a body in half with one swoop of their sword.
Womens breasts were severed and used as animal treats, even infants were fed to packs of wolves. Was any of this mentioned in Columbus initial statement to Isabella? However, it was not his crew that was only corrupt, Columbus was also sick in the head. Columbus played his games with the native people, games that certainly are not mentioned in any text books.
Columbus would pass the time by raping unarmed and innocent native women. Does this spell hero? It spells corruption and absolute power, traits of a mad man like Hitler, not the traits of a man that an entire nation that pays homage to every year. Under his rule of Espanola, 50, 000 natives were killed or died from diseases brought by the Europeans, which is roughly equivalent to 1. 5 million dead Americans today. After this period of genocide ended around 1535, the number of deaths surpassed that of any genocide against the Armenians, Jews, Gypsies, Ibos, Bengalis, Timorese, Cambodians, Ugandans and other ethnic groups.
Columbus expeditions should be honored for their purpose and influence of American history, but not Columbus the individual.
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Research essay sample on Christopher Columbus American History
