Columbus Blog

      We all get a day off on October 12th. But have we ever stopped to wonder about the man behind the day? Have we ever stopped to wonder about Christopher Columbus? Christopher Columbus, the man who "sailed the ocean blue in 1492" and started the colonizing of the Americas was seen as both a hero and a villain. Many people see him as both, but, to a greater extent, he was seen as a villain because of what he did to the many natives that he encountered.
       Columbus, the man who gives his name to the October 12th day off; treated the natives in his area harshly. As he boarded the ship set for Asia, promising the King and Queen of Spain to bring back lots of gold. The way a wealthy nation was defined during that time period. The first place that Columbus landed was on the Bahama Island where he met the Arawak Indians. They gave him the gifts that they had to offer, but all he was looking for was gold. But, they had no gold to offer, he took some of them aboard as prisoners to lead him to the source of gold, as he saw some of the gold in the Indians' ears. He then sailed to Hispaniola, where he found small bits of gold in the river, but; the problem was that the gold was nowhere near enough to give to the King and Queen and the many people that financed his journey. Then, in 1495, one thousand five hundred Arawak Indians were rounded up, the five hundred best were taken to Spain and only three hundred of those lived. The cruelty that the Indians faced when Columbus landed from traveling the great ocean blue was indescribable.
       The cruelty didn't stop there either, during the two years that Columbus was in Haiti, his "home base" through murder, bleeding out to death, and suicide, only one-half of the original 250,000 inhabitants remained. After there was no more gold to be taken from  the area, Columbus helped create encomiendas. A fancy way of saying areas of slavery. The number of slaves kept decreasing, by 1515, there were only 50,000 slaves and by 1550, only five hundred remained. By 1650, none of the Indians were left on the island.
       Of course, Columbus had some good attributes as well, without him, the Americas as we know them, probably wouldn't have been discovered for another couple of years, shifting history as we know it. It was common practice during that time period to own slaves, even Thomas Jefferson, the writer of the Constitution, and George Washington owned slaves. This was common practice, and Columbus, like everyone else followed this practice.  So, really, we cant blame just Columbus for his inhumane treatment of the Natives.
       Columbus can be seen as both a hero and a villain, some seen him as more of a hero; and yet many others will see him as a villain. The truth of the matter is that he is both. He is hero and villain, it just depends on which way he is seen more of by a particular person. As one wise person once said, "It all depends on your Historiography, people will interpret history differently, and its based on their religion, environment, race, socioeconomic standing, and demography".


Source: Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York: HarperCollins,
     1999. Print.