Some say Christopher Columbus was a hero because he was the explorer that discovered America. In reality, Christopher Columbus had an incredibly negative impact on the world because he enslaved the Native Americans, didn’t help the kind Natives when they got infected by diseases that the Spaniards had brought to America, and killed off most of the Native American population. The tactics he chose to use were violent and destructive by the standards back then and now.
First, Columbus treated the Native Americans like uncivilized people by enslaving them and forcing them to work for him although they greeted him and his crew peacefully. ”They could make fine servants,”(document 2) he wrote in his journal,”I took them by force.”(document 3)
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(document 12) The journey Columbus took spanned months so they almost certainly brought medicine. The reason Columbus didn’t help them was unknown but a known fact is that he didn’t bother to help them.
Finally, the native American population got decreased by more than 24 million because of Columbus’ actions. The graph in document 13 show a decrease in the Native American population by 24 million people. This resulted from the arrival of the Spaniards in 1492. In only 100 years, the Native American population was only about 750,000; 24 million less than the original 25,000,000 plus.
Christopher Columbus had an incredibly negative impact on the world because he enslaved the Native Americans, didn’t help the kind Natives when they got infected by diseases that the Spaniards had brought to America, and killed off most of the Native American population. The tactics he chose to use were violent and destructive by the standards back then and now prove he was a not a hero but a