Columbus Blog #8

In my opinion Christopher Columbus would be considered as a villian. I believe this because once he landed in what he thought were the West Indies, in which he was VERY mistaken since he actually landed in the Caribbean, he basically demolished the Arawk, or mistakenly called Indians, population. These people did not know his intentions, mainly gold, glory, and God, and ran out to greet him with many gifts, mostly their possessions. These were very peaceful people and because of his thirst for gold he tortured and pretty much decimated their tribe when questioning about where the gold was. How could they have known that Columbus only wanted gold? Bits of gold were worn in the Arawaks ears, but there were no true "gold fields" that Columbus had fanatasized about (Zinn 3). Once the Arawak population was close to not being a population and Columbus could find no "gold field", instead of admitting defeat he relentlessly captured and tortured the rest of the Arawaks continuously looking for gold when there was none. He basically fasified his reports, some were true and some were not so true, because they were overly exaggerated. Since no gold was to be found and of course Columbus promised gold, there had to be some compensation. That compensation ended up being slaves. These slaves, Arawaks, were forcefully taken from their families and many died in captivity (Zinn 4). In a province in Haiti, Columbus had his men ordered all natives to collect gold if they were over the age of 14. They were responsible for collecting a certain amount of gold. However, Columbus' desperateness clouded the realization that there was NO gold. The natives who did not collect enough gold had their hands cut off and since there were no doctors proficient in sewing a hand back on or cauterizing a wound the natives would bleed to death. If they brought enough gold back they were given a copper token to wear around their necks (Zinn 4). Despite Columbus "finding the new world", even though Vikings actually discovered it first although there is no written record, he decimated a population of civil, more so than he was, and unselfish Arawak natives. He cut off their hands because they didn't give him gold, he left them to die because of his greed and selfishness. Columbus was not even right about the fact that he found the "West Indies". He found the Caribbean Islands and it seems odd that Columbus did not deduct that he was not in Asia considering there was no spices, silk, or people of Oriental descent living there, but then again he was probably in denial just like he was about the gold. For these reasons I think that Columbus should be considered a villian, despite his discovering America.