Columbus: A Heroized Villian

Christopher Columbus is quite likely the reason America has become how and what it is today, for he brought European Culture to the West. He catalyzed the discovery of many other lands in the West, and was also one of the most successful sailors of his time. Columbus is the reason for the modernization of one of the most modern countries of this time, and this has all come with the cost of Indian culture. Columbus, a hero in the eyes of many, is also the reason that the once thriving Indian population of about 10 million was slaughtered until it was less than one tenth of its size.(Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States)

The genocide of Indians is one of the largest atrocities of history and is the reason I do not believe Columbus was a hero, for someone who can mindlessly slaughter and pillage an entire race without remorse should not be heroized by anyone. Columbus enforced some of the least humane tactics to exterminate this race, even targeting babies and throwing them in rivers while chanting "Boil there, you offspring of the devil!"(Bartolome de las Casas, A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies). These acts of Immorality against the native people of the Americas are certainly some of the least respectable tactics to claim wealth and power ever committed by mankind, for the perpetrators could have easily made peace with the welcoming Indian nations.

Columbus’s role in the destruction of America could certainly have been filled in by any other explorer, because Europeans would inevitably search to the West for resources. This does not mean that Columbus is in any way not responsible for the atrocious nature of America’s development, for he and his colleagues were the ones to dehumanize and continue to deplete the Indians and their societal structure. In the text “A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies”, Bartolome de las Casas tells that the Spaniards treated the Indians as they were less than beasts, or “like excrement on the public squares”. If a different, more moral approach was taken by a different explorer to begin the white man’s residence in America, we would have a stronger cultural relation to the Indians, and we could have developed to a much higher level than we are at today, and our society would be much stronger than many.