Columbus and Genocide 2
Recently many American families came together to celebrate the Thanksgiving Holiday. Many Americans observe this holiday as a reminder of when Columbus discovered America. For centuries, Columbus has been hailed as a brave explorer whose daring, perseverance, and navigational knowledge led to the "discovery" of America. In grade schools across America children are taught that Columbus is a hero for discovering America. Although, what most schools in the past have not informed their students of, is the fact that Columbus did a great deal more that discover America. The fact is however that Columbus was no more the discoverer of America than Pocahontas was the discoverer of Great Britain. Native Americans had built great civilizations with many millions of people long before Columbus wandered lost into the Caribbean. Columbus never set foot on North America, nor did he open it to European trade. Scandinavian Vikings already had settlements here in the eleventh century. The first European explorer to thoroughly document his visit to North America was the Italian explorer Giovanni Caboto, who sailed for King Henry VII of England and became kn
After knowing all the thinks that happened to the Indians, I can't help but be in a state if pure disgust at how these people under Columbus' govern ship could split a man into, throw infants into the river, or burn the Indians alive. So now that you have heard all these terrible acts, I hope you agree with me that Columbus did indeed start a horrible genocide. The conquerors of the southern half of the New World were forerunners of those twentieth-century Germans who extinguished the lives of what they called "useless eaters" in the Nazi camps. In both cases, from the so-called silver mountain of Potosi in the sixteenth-century Andes to the synthetic rubber factory of Auschwitz in the 1940s, the slave drivers calculated that it was cheaper to work people to death by the tens of thousands and then replace them than it was to maintain and feed a permanent captive labor force (Stannard, 1992). The life expectancy of Indians forced to labor in the South American silver mines was, about the same as that of Jewish and other forced laborers at Auschwitz--three to four months. Nonetheless, after he failed to contact the emperor of China, the traders of India or the Bartolome De Las Casas, a skilled politician, wrote a passionate tract called "A Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies." In graphic and sometimes exaggerated detail, he recounted Spanish cruelties to the Indians, describing, in one instance, how Spaniards hanged natives in "Laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two. They took infants from their mothers and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter. They burned captives alive, and because on few and far between occasions, the Indians justifiably killed some Christians, the Spaniards made a rule among themselves that for every Christian slain, they would slay a hundred Indians." (Bartolome De Las Casas, 1992).
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Approximate Word count = 1992
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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