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| Columbus making landfall 1492 |
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Trail of Tears under Andrew Jackson forced
Native Americans to move from their homes
and march along the cruel wilderness, killing
many in the tribes
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Was Columbus a hero or villain?
Though Christopher Columbus is portrayed as a hero, he was nothing other than a cruel man and villain to the Indians. In his log, he wrote that they would be perfect servants to the Spaniards. Even with Queen Isabella's objection to enslaving any native people Columbus found, he explicitly ignored her instructions and went ahead with his ideas. Also, Columbus was a greedy man who took gold and money from others without a thought. He captured multiple natives to question them about gold and when one of his men spotted land, he took the reward from that too. On Columbus' orders, his men began raiding villages on the coasts of islands, taking slaves for sex and work. Eventually, the natives figured it out and began to abandon their villages to avoid the Spaniards. Plus, he gave the Indians a quota for finding gold. If they could not make this quota, their hands would be cut off and they would bleed out. Many tried to run away from this impossible task, but they were hunted and killed. Furthermore, the natives could not stand being held in captivity. They began to die off in waves, once exposed to new, European diseases. Besides being mutilated, hunted, or killed by disease, the Indians started to commit mass suicides with poison and smothered their infants to protect them from the Spanish. They were willing to die and kill each other instead of surrendering to the cruel sufferings of enslavement. All of this happened under Christopher Columbus' watchful eye, showing how cruel and how much of a villain he was.
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