The second monday of october is when many celebrate Columbus Day. A holiday designed to honor Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer, who set foot in the new world on October 12, 1492, five hundred twenty five years ago. He intended to find a western sea route to China, India and Asia where gold was rumored to be found in abundance. Instead he landed in the bahamas. He didn’t realize until his third voyage that he didn't land in china but a land that the Europeans had no knowledge on. People have celebrated this day as early as the eighteenth century, but it did not become an official federal holiday until 1937. The holiday was made to celebrate the beginning of settlement in america by the europeans. People from all over the world may honor it many different ways such as a celebration of Italian-American heritage and to honor Native Americans. However many people do not celebrate this holiday inspired by the Italian explorer. They find hardship in celebrating the fact that he destroyed the native population, basically helped to start slavery in America and he was terrible to …show more content…
Just around when the international slave trade was starting to grow Columbus and his men captured many people from the west indies and subjected them through violence and cruelty. He forced thousands of people under his rule. Some of these people were sent away to be sold and many of them died on the way. Those who were not sold were forced to work in plantations and gold mines. On Christopher Columbus’s first day in the New World he picked and enslaved several Native americans to become his servants. He even wrote in his journals that he believed that they would be very fine servants. Within sixty years of Christopher Columbus’s arrival on the island of Hispaniola the population of Taino that lived there decreased from what may have been two hundred fifty thousand people to maybe a couple hundred of