Christopher Columbus: Is He a Hero or a Real Villain

From a young age children in America are taught that the great Christopher Coloumbus discovered the Americas and helped us become the nation that we are today. What we aren't taught is the atrocious things Columbus and his men did to the people of the land he “discovered.” So, is Christopher Columbus a hero or a villain? In this essay, I want to explain why he should not be praised as much as he is used to. At least Christopher Colobum wasn't even the first European to settle in America, the Vikings arrived in North America long before Columbus.

Christopher Columbus set sail on August 3rd, 1492 trying to arrive in China, Japan, or India because he wanted to find a cheaper route to get spices. Columbus never reached his intended destination, instead he arrived at a small island in the Carribean. Columbus soon realized that people lived on these islands and said that these people “Such an affectionate and generous people and so tractable that there are no better people or land in the world. They love their neighbours as themselves and their speech is the sweetest and gentlest in the world, and they always speak with a smile”. The spanish called these nice people ‘Tainos’ and they discovered another group of people whom they called the ‘Caribs’. The Spanish claimed the Caribs were cannibals which is how they justified their harsh treatment of them. Columbus's main goal was to gain more wealth by finding precious metal but he found little to none despite his disgusting treatment of the inhabitants of the island so he left in order to gain more support back in spain.

Columbus made another voyage in 1493 but this time he brought a much larger fleet and almost 1,500 settlers composed of peasants and labourers to work. Columbus established seven settlements across the island of Hispaniola and said that every ‘Indian’ ages 14 and up had to supply a certain number of gold every three months, and those who disagreed or could not meet their goal were to have their hands cut off and left to bleed to death. This rule Columbus made was hard for the ‘Indians’ to meet because no one had simply discovered that much gold on the islands, what he was asking of these people was an impossible task. The greedy Columbus couldn't accept his failure to not find wealth therefore he tried to gain wealth another way; by enslaving the people of the land though an encomienda system. This system eventually failed as well because many of the original inhabitants of the island died by the hands of the spanish directly or died indirectly from all the diseases they had, thus causing it to fail because the settlers had no one to work on their large lands.

Although what Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ changed the world forever I don't think anyone can deny that his methods were inhumane and I don’t believe he should be celebrated.