How Did Christopher Columbus Change Indian Culture

Columbus never even walked on what we now call the United States of America. Where ever he did land, he was motivated only by his own greed. Columbus came for the gold, spices, and slaves. In his diary, he mentioned gold 75 times just in the first two weeks, alone (Katz 13). Indians who weren’t able to find gold, were punished by having their hands cut off. Most slaves died en route to Spain. Many Indian females were taken as sex slaves, some as young as nine and ten years old. Columbus forced cooperation from the Indians by disfiguring them and using them as examples. Even worse, he used hunting dogs to tear the Indians apart. Many natives committed suicide, and murdered their own children to save them from such a horrible life. Those who survived the voyage were worked to death. Still, another huge portion of these Indians died from disease brought over by Columbus and his

Samuel Eliot Morison- A Harvard historian, most distinguished writer on Columbus, the author of a multivolume biography Christopher Columbus, Mariner, and was himself a sailor, retraced Columbus 's route across the Atlantic and tells about the enslavement and the mass genocide of the natives

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

Zinn argues that the perspective of indigenous people should not be omitted and argues that their perspectives are as significant as any other. He provides insight and perspectives of the Indians to describe how the heinous acts of the Europeans were unjustified. He also discusses that the Europeans had a continual motive of exploring during that time which was to increase the power/authority of the Spanish Crown by whatever means necessary, usually leading to violent wars.

Indigenous: originating or occurring naturally in a particular place. In the United States, Christopher Columbus is honored as a hero who discovered this country, but he should be seen as a invader who enslaved and seized the native people. California undoubtedly made the appropriate decision to change Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day because how can America say Columbus discovered the United States when the Native Americans originated and inhabited the land first? The world continues to observe invaders as brave conquerors. The hidden truth is, the world honors those with fair skin as the heroes while the people with dark skin are seen and treated as less than human. Columbus Day was invented by the Knights of Columbus so their kids have a Catholic hero to look up to. Due to lobbying, Franklin Roosevelt signed Columbus Day as a federal holiday. The notion of Christopher Columbus discovering America is arrogant because Native Americans inhabited the land thousands of years before Columbus was even born. DNA evidence even suggests that the first settlers of South America were of Polynesian decent before the Vikings. On October 12th, 1492 Columbus arrived in the Bahamas which was occupied by the kind people of Lucayans, Taínos and Arawaks. In his diary, Columbus noted how friendly these people were. Seeing this as an advantage, he enslaved them to work in his gold mines. Half of the Native population died after only two years. If the Natives did not meet the working

Native Americans were affected negatively in the United States Western Expansion. The Americans stripped the Natives from their culture, land, and the buffalo. From all that Native Americans onced lived all over the West were now living on reservations. The Natives suffered at the Sand Creek massacre, which killed over 200 Native Americans. Also another battle that affected the Native Americans negatively was the Battle of Little Bighorn. The battle was over the Sioux’s right to Sioux land with Sitting Bull as the Sioux war chief and spiritual leader and George A. Cluster as the commander of U.S troops. It wasn’t just land that affected the Natives it was also their culture. Natives boys had their culture stripped away. There clothes,

Without Christopher Columbus the people of the world wouldn’t be able to enjoy a lot of the things they can today. Christopher Columbus was a famous navigator and explorer who discovered an island back in October 12, 1492 and is called the Americas. Many people disagree that Columbus had an impact on the New World, but some people do. Columbus had a big impact when he discovered the New World. Columbus broke the isolation between the Americas and Europe. He introduced new ideas and goods such as textiles. If he didn’t do these things who knows how the world would be today.

There were various reasons why the apocalyptic beliefs in Europe influenced the first European voyages of exploration. First, the failure to reconquer Jerusalem from Mamluks did not deter Europeans from having a spiritual revival, especially within the monks of the Franciscan and military orders of Iberia who were believers in the revelations (von Sivers, Desnoyers, and Stow 464-466). Second, since the second coming of Christ could only occur in Jerusalem, Christians had a sense of urgency to reconquer the holy city (von Sivers, Desnoyers, and Stow 466). The training and education Christopher Columbus received influenced influenced and prepared him for his voyages. As von Sivers, Desnoyers, and Stow infer that Columbus obtained substantial

In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in the new world; the Native Americans lives were altered through the introduction of the Columbian Exchange, Cultural changes and loss of their homeland. Columbus's discovery of the new world sparked colonization of the Americas. There was an ample amount of vast, arable land thus creating economic opportunity for the wealthy and the common-man. The people longing for this opportunity intruded on the Native American's land and completely changed their way of life.

Prior to the American Revolution, there were inhabitants of the land, Indians, present upon the arrival of Columbus as well as years before his arrival. These natives had constructed a way of life that provided to their basic needs, all the while living in prosperity relative to their standards. Native tribes, such as the Arawaks and Pequots, lived in harmony within their environment. Before them, the Clovis also improved their lifestyle with the abundance of resources present in the Americas. The former, however, were greatly disrupted by the oppression of Spaniards who seeked a phantasmal amount of gold. The Arawaks and many other Indians were subjected to harsh treatment which included overworking, starvation, slavery, and massacres. Due

5. In tradtional history books, according to Zinn, Christopher Columbus' story is portrayed as an adventure rather than a bloodshed tragedy. Children are taught that he sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and discovered America. However, they are not taught about the many lives destroyed by Columbus and his men when they realized the many advantages they had against the natives.

The European conquests mostly had a negative effect on the Native American culture and population in general. Diseases that the Europeans brought over inadvertently helped wipe out a majority of the Native population. They were forced to move off their lands and totally change their way of life. I am sure the conquests brought some modernization to the Native American culture and life that could have made things better for them. Though the disease, loss of land and loss of life far out weighed any good they brought over. The European explorers also felt they could exploit the Indians for labor to aid them in developing these new lands. The Catholic Church also made it a priority to convert them to Christianity and try to “civilize” them.

Whose land is whose? October 12, 1492 in Salvador Bahamas Columbus interacted with natives. Who were expanding from South America across the coast. They were Taino, Arawakas these natives migrated from Jamaica, Cuba and Puerto Rico. These individuals were in vas numbers living in the West Indies in South, North, and Central America. I will be expressing some entries from Christopher Columbus personal journal.

Dor-Ner, Zvi, Columbus and the age of discovery. New York, William Morrow and company, 1991

            Indians had their own way of life and culture before the Spaniards came and started to change things. Native Americans had their own land and lived very different lifestyle than the settlers that came from Europe. The settlers did not approve of the ways of life of the Native Americans as they saw the Native American as wild savages. One viewpoint of the settlers from Dr. Gayle lesson states “As the Puritan minister Cotton Mather wrote, "probably the Devil" had delivered these "miserable savages" to America, "in hopes that the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ would never come here to destroy or disturb his absolute empire over them."” The Native Americas were not respected by the settlers. Their ways, cultures, and religion were not accepted they did know their lives were going to be changed drastically.