As I’m sure many of us are aware, Christopher Columbus is a famous Italian explorer who discovered the New World, which is also known as America, on an expedition sponsored by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, in 1492. Christopher Columbus was born in 1451 , near Genoa, in what is now Italy ( Roark et al, 36). Christopher first went to sea at the tender age of 14, and participated in several trading voyages in the Mediterranean sea ( “Christopher Columbus” ). He eventually met and married his wife Felipa Moniz in Lisbon. Through Felipa’s connections he was able to gain access to Prince Henrys collection of explorers’ maps, …show more content…
Here, he met islanders who called themselves the Tainos, which means “good” or “noble”. However, Christopher called them the Indians, assuming he and his crew had landed on Asia so therefore the Tainos were Asians ( Roark et al,37 ). Cristopher described the Indians to be very kind people who did not know evil nor greed. He believed that they had no religion ( which is not true since they worshipped ancestral spirits who inhabited natural objects) and thus could be converted to Christianity. He wrote about this on one of his reports to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain : These people in the Caribbean have no creed and they are not idolaters, but they are very gentle and do not know what it is to be wicked, or to kill others, or to steal.....and they are sure that we come from Heaven....So your Highnesses should resolve to make them Christians, for I believe that if you begin, in a little while you will achieve the conversion of a great number of peoples to our holy fait ( Digital History) . Christopher also described the Indians to be very timid as they did not even dare to use the sharpened stakes they had instead of steel and weapons. He believed the Indians could be bought under their rule with about 50 men or so as the Indians do not bear arms. All in all, the Indians were very friendly and they gladly traded everything they owned with the Europeans. Columbus’s interactions with the Native Americans started one of the very first interactions between the Europeans and the Native Americans, with many more to