Another Side of Christopher Columbus Essay

Christopher Columbus is famously known for the discovery of America. And who is famously known for the following saying" Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492". Christopher Columbus was born in the city of Genoa, Italy. Christopher was supposed to follow his father's footsteps and become a wool weaver. But instead, Columbus became interested in the sea. According to the book by Bonnie Bader, the Genoa port was a busy port on the Mediterranean Sea. Christopher grew up and became a strong and very skilled man, and who also became a map maker along with his brother Bartolome. one day while in the map store Christopher heard about finding new routes from Europe to Easter lands known as the indies. Their goal was to find spices such as pepper, ginger, cloves, cinnamon as well as precious metals such as gold. With this in mind finding a new route to India became his number one goal. But this goal became very hard to achieve due to the fact that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were not very convinced about Christopher's plan and

When Christopher Columbus sailed to America he was happy and proud of himself because he was the first to discover the land which is now named america, and he was also happy because he found out that there were a lot of resources found on that land which he found was necessary to take and use. According to the document A “Day after day they looked for land;They dreamed of trees and rocks and sand” this shows that the purposely are trying to find land for them to dock and discover. Additionally according to the document A “Columbus sailed on to find some gold To bring back home, as he'd been told.He made the trip again and again,Trading gold to bring to Spain” this shows that he was there not just to discover land but to make riches too and

Columbus was a very good speaker and very persuasive. He convinced the King and Queen of Spain to fund his expedition to “Asia” and he told about all the gold and spices that would be discovered there and how they would be wealthy.# Columbus told them his famous terms which stated that he would receive no less than one-tenth of all the wealth that would arrive from Asia

Columbus’s big plan for Hispaniola since the beginning was to take advantage of the natives and take their land, and the gold he believed was located there. He built the first fort in the Western Hemisphere, and left some of his men to find and store gold there. Columbus had to ask for a little more help from their majesties, he convinced them by saying he would take them “as much gold as they need ... and as many slaves as they ask” (Zinn,6 ) Columbus’s plans affected the natives, in many ways; first of all they were going to lose their land, and also they were going to be taken captive for slave labor.

The long history between Native American and Europeans are a strained and bloody one. For the time of Columbus’s subsequent visits to the new world, native culture has

Columbus was no exception. The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts.” (A People’s History By Howard Zinn). Columbus took some of the friendly natives by force just so that he might know where the treasure was hidden. He goes on to say, “I was very attentive to them, and strove to learn if they had any gold. I gathered from them by signs that... there would be found a king who possessed large vessels of gold, and in great quantities.” (-- Christopher Columbus (1492)) The Native’s strong belief in sharing, unfortunately, caused the Europeans to fall into greediness. They took advantage of their kindness beyond the limit. Furthermore, he came up with a cruel system. In this system “they ordered all persons to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Those without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death (-- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (1980)). “ Columbus and his crew went to an extreme here in order to

It is thought by many that Christopher Columbus was a skilled sailor on a mission of greed. Many think that he in fact did it all for the money, honor and the status that comes with an explorer, but this is not the case entirely. Columbus was an adventurer and was enthused by the thrill of the quest of the unknown. “Columbus had a firm religious faith and a scientific curiosity, a zest for life, the felling for beauty and the striving for novelty that we associate with the advancement of learning”. He had heard of the legendary Atlantic voyages and sailors reports of land to the west of Madeira and the Azores. He believed that Japan was about 4,800 km to the west of Portugal. In 1484, Columbus wanted support for an exploratory

The arrival of Columbus lead to the decline of the Arawaks because of many factors. Columbus took advantage of the Arawaks’ land, resources, and people. As Zinn mentioned, the Arawaks lived in Bahama Island (which Columbus arrived on) and they were known to be very kind and generous. The Arawaks had great agriculture and weaving skills; they had farms of corn, yams, cassava. But lacked on having working animals and iron. What intrigued Columbus the most was their gold earrings. With no iron and real tools of defense, the Arawaks became defenseless.

1). The Admiral and the crew offered tokens of small value, such as strings of beads (later in time, the same price as for the whole of Manhattan Island) – and received “parrots, balls of cotton thread, javelins, and many more such things” in return (Id.). Columbus remarked on the beauty and youth of the natives, noting they were unabashedly naked, “not with prominent bellies,” and seemingly none over the age of thirty (Id.). Yet, all of Columbus’ written remarks and observations were superficial. Not once did Columbus attempt to discern the true culture, society, indigenous faith(s), and/or rights of these native people to maintain their lives and ownership of the lands they occupied. They greeted Columbus in peace. Columbus came to

Columbus sold the natives of Arawak tribe from what now called Haiti when he and his crew member found that there was no gold to bring back to the king and queen. In Chapter 1 of Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progression by Zinn it states that “In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and

Christopher Columbus told us that we must give him a large hawk’s bell of gold or twenty-five pounds of cotton every three months or he would punish us by disfiguring us or even killing us. To stay alive, we would need to have a brass coin, brass coins show you have given payment. Many people in my village did not believe Christopher Columbus so they did not collect the gold dust. I believed that Christopher Columbus would hurt us and I was relieved, when my family decided we should be safe and collect gold dust. My parents would go off into the gold mines in the morning because they tired quickly and would often need breaks.

They were willing to trade everything they owned. They were will built, with good bodies and handsome features. They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want”. In this quote, Dr. Zinn gives what he believed to be another motivation of Columbus, which was the motivation to make the Indians into slaves for monetary gain. Dr. Zinn believed this to be the motivation of what he termed the “Europe of the Renaissance”. Dr Zinn states; “theses traits, speaking of the Arawak, did not stand in the Europe of the Renaissance, dominated as it was by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for the money that marketed Western civilization and its first messenger to the Americas, Christopher Columbus.

They offered him and his crew many things, which Columbus wrote about in his log, “They…brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things… They willingly traded everything they owned.” (Zinn, 1) They were welcoming to these strangers who appeared in the water, not knowing that they would soon take advantage of them. Columbus also admitted in his log that one of his first thoughts was that these people “would make fine servants…with fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” (Zinn, 1)

The story of Christopher Columbus begins in the city of Genoa in the year 1451. Columbus was the oldest of five children. He went to grammar school but left school at an early age and began sailing on Genoese ships in the Mediterranean. The sailing experience that Columbus gained

Columbus landed on an island in the Bahamas, which he mistook for Asia, and was warmly welcomed by the Arawak indians. At first sight, Columbus remarked how good of servants they could be, and as it turned out, would be. Like most explorers at the time, Columbus was looking for gold and capturing slaves on the behalf of his patron country, Spain. Columbus exaggerated to Spain the wealth of the land, telling them that there was an abundance of gold when all he really had to show were a few thousand slaves that very quickly fell sick and died. Not even capturing and forcing the indians to collect gold could bring forth the wealth of gold Columbus dreamed of.