As the song goes, in Fourteen-hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He came with three ships: the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.
Zinn states “(Columbus) set out with three sailing ships, the largest of which was the Santa Maria… 1492.” (Zinn 2) This is exactly what I thought. The book later mentions the Nina and the Pinta. Columbus wasn’t actually the first person to discover America; the Vikings, led by Leif Erickson, were the first foreigners to find it.
The book never alludes to any explorers in the Americas before Christopher Columbus, but it says “a sailor called Rodrigo saw the early morning moon shining on white sands.” (Zinn 3) Therefore, Columbus was not technically the first to discover America.
Although
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One thing that led to this was Columbus’s reports back to Spain which “were part fact, part fiction… ‘There are many spices, and great mines of gold and other metals.’” (Zinn 3) These reports led to the Spanish royalty expecting more riches from the land; however, it was not as bountiful as Columbus made it seem, so he set the Indians to work in search of gold. Along with gold, Indians were sent to Europe, just as Columbus had promised. Many Indians died while laboring or being shipped to Europe; some even committed suicide or killed their children to get away from the European’s …show more content…
Columbus was very fortunate to have stumbled upon the Americas, as he would have died without doing so, but his good fortune led to much misfortune with the natives.
“The first man to sight land was supposed to get a yearly pension ... but Rodrigo never got it. Columbus claimed he had seen a light the evening before. He got the reward.”(Zinn 3) This really highlights Columbus’s greedy personality. Even though he was already promised riches, Columbus was not satisfied; thus he took a sailor’s stipend, just as he will steal the Indian’s land. It is no surprise after knowing Columbus claimed someone else’s money that he would remorselessly conquer another people’s land.
“On Hispaniola… Columbus built a fort, the first European military base in the Western Hemisphere… 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