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Christopher Columbus Controversy's A Collision Of Culture

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The Native Americans suffers hardship for being seen as a minority in the European-American society. Being forced into labor and acquiring diseases from the Europeans was only a few of the calamities they endured throughout the years. The indigenous people’s culture and religion diminishes as the Europeans settles in around them. The agony of seeing their own culture and religion yield to Europeans influences. The Europeans influences the indigenous people as they attain their lands and due to that, Native Americans has to adapt to their surroundings in order to survive. The Europeans arriving with “gifts” for the Native Americans, diseases. It’s seen in the text, “A Collision of Cultures”, the narrator informs that “a pandemic of diseases …show more content…

He lands in America, at first, focusing “on his mission to find riches and conquer new lands” (Columbus Controversy), then later, he and his men “enslaved many native inhabitants of the West Indies and subjected them to extreme violence and brutality (Columbus Controversy). One of the first calamities that Native Americans had suffer through was being forced into labor, because Columbus couldn’t find any gold for Spain, who was financing his journey. Columbus was a man that cared only for wealth and his own life. As he sets his eyes on the aboriginal people, he takes advantage of their kindness: “They willingly traded everything they owned...They would make fine servants...With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want” (Zinn). Columbus is perceived as a base person because he targets the Native Americans, one reason was being their weapons is not as advanced as the Europeans: “European rulers began to commission ever bigger guns and learned to mount them on ships” (Loewen 39). The guns symbolizes control and power over the Native Americans because with the weapon, the indigenous people would always lose to the Europeans. The indigenous people were soon separated from their family and tribes as result of being sold into slavery. The Native American were defenseless against the hulking bullies that stood as an

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He took two more Indian prisoners.” (Zinn 3) Columbus just assumed he could put his military base in Hispaniola, a land that was not his to take and in return of the Natives’ gracious greeting, he rudely took two of them as

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“Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress”, chapter one of “A People’s History of the United States”, written by professor and historian Howard Zinn, concentrates on a different perspective of major events in American history. It begins with the native Bahamian tribe of Arawaks welcoming the Spanish to their shores with gifts and kindness, only then for the reader to be disturbed by a log from Columbus himself – “They willingly traded everything they owned… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” (Zinn pg.1) In the work, Zinn continues explaining the unnecessary evils Columbus and his men committed unto the unsuspecting natives.

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Columbus has long since been renowned as a talented explorer that is graced with the recognition of discovering what we call America, however, deeper insights and research have proved him to be less than an entirely respectable man. Historians have since proven that not only did he never step foot on North American soil, gruesome atrocities have been committed in his name, the accounts of such being from his own writings. Contrary to popular belief, Columbus is not the explorer we, as children, have been taught he was. A common impression educators place upon children is that, not only is he a hero but that since he discovered these lands, of course he could not hurt people that were already there.

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Because he describes the natives as timid and cowardly, he thinks of the Spanish as brave and resilient. Columbus mentions how naked the natives are, how little they understand the value of different materials, and even goes so far as to forcefully take natives from their homes in order to teach them. This shows that Columbus thinks that as much as he the natives are children, he the Spanish are mature, educated, and understanding of the correct way to live. Columbus’ belief that the natives are innocent and naive shows that he thinks the Spanish are fully-aware, intelligent, and competent, in

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