How Did Christopher Columbus Influence American Culture

Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy in 1451. Columbus was a great navigator and he wanted fame, he was determined to find India by heading west on a water route. He did not successfully reach India but he accidentally ended up discovering a “New World”. During the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, Columbus’s discovery of America offered abundant resources and significantly influenced European’s view of Native Americans. Columbus and his crews organized three more voyages to America that opened Europe’s exploration and colonization to American territory. During these journeys, Christopher Columbus sent numerous reports and kept a diary to record his observation which marked Europeans first knowledge of these new peoples.

This is the first time Europeans saw Native Americans and Columbus recorded their appearances in his journal and brought it back to the Europe. In Columbus journal, he recorded the people he first encountered when he approached the land, he described that “They all quite naked as their mothers bore them…..All that I saw were young man … very well built, of very handsome bodies and very fine faces; the hair coarse, almost like the hair of a horse’s tail, and short, the hair they wear over their eyebrows, except for a hank behind that they wear long and never cut” (Columbus, P65). Columbus’s description of Native Americans exposed their nature, from his description of their coarse and short hair, it substantiated the fact that they are not very civilized that they do not dress nice and look neat like the Europeans did at that time period. Native American’s strong body and fine faces indicate that they are actually human but with less modern characteristics and they work to keep them survive. The Native American’s appearances were shown to Columbus and the Europe that their existence and they are less civilized traits. Columbus and his crew

When Columbus met the Native American at the Bahama during his first voyage, by observing their lifestyles and characteristics, he came up with a thought that “They ought to be good servants and of good skill, for I see that they repeat very quickly whatever was said to them. I believe that they would easily be made Christians, because it seemed to me that they belonged to no religion” (Columbus, P65). This quote reveals how Columbus thought about these Native American can be use as servants and they can make them to be Christian due to their capable of work, which shows Columbus’s inclination to dominate these domestic people to serve for Europe. Columbus decided to carry six of them at his departure to teach them how to speak and later came back to conquer the entire region. During Columbus’s second voyage, he conquered Española and forced to enslave people who resisted. Columbus proposed the idea to Ferdinand that “a regular transatlantic trade in Indian slaves be established. Meanwhile, however, they imposed a moratorium on Indian slavery and were angered when Columbus sent more than 500 Indian slaves to Spain in 1495” (Finkelman and Miller). The evidence shows that Columbus had an idea to enslave people and built up a slavery trade and he actually achieved it during his