Zinn

Zinn
The article talks about Christopher Columbus and how
the Spanish are treating the native Americans that
they have encountered. The way that the article is
written is in a negative sense and only describes how
the natives are being mistreated. That is really the
main focus of the article. A background of the
situation. The Turks have taken control of eastern
Europe and most importantly the Eastern portion of the
Mediterranean Sea. This is preventing countries in
western Europe, such as Spain, England, and Portugal
from trading with countries in the far east. Portugal
has monopolized the trade route around Cape Horn in
South Africa, so Spain to get one up on the
Portuguese, has to find another route to the far east.
Italy is full of sailors with limited people to
sponsor them. This causes Christopher Columbus to
travel to Spain in search of someone to sponsor his
journey. Columbus hopes to travel west in order to go
east and reach Asia and the countries of India and
China. He meets with King Ferdinand and Queen
Isabella of Spain and convinces them that he is the
man for the mission. One of the probable reasons that
Columbus was chosen for the task over many others was
his charm and flirtatious abilities towards the Queen
of Spain, Isabella. Naturally, they granted him
permission and organized a fleet of three ships to
sail with him. On board his flag ship of the Santa Maria were thirty nine sailors. It was said that the
first man to sight land would receive a special
pension. However, the first man to actually sight
land was pushed aside by Columbus, who took the credit
for himself and in the end received the pension. This
act was taken more to impress the king and queen then
to receive the actual money in the pension. This I
believe ends up being Columbus's semi-downfall. Even
though Columbus never ended up in a poor state and
still receives honor and glory for his journey, he did
make some mistakes along the way. His major one was
trying to impress the king and queen too much and not
considering the effects of his actions. Many died as
a result of his actions to search for gold and when
none could be found the natives were taken as slaves,
where many of them died (about half) just on the
journey alone to Spain from the Carribean Sea. The
island of Hispanol, now Hatiti and the Dominican Republic consisted of give or take 250,000 natives at
the time Columbus landed there, when he left, they
were roughly extinct. The natives were eager to meet
with Columbus and would trade willingly, but they were
treated as less then animals. Always as inferior and
ignorant as one example was given, one of the natives
not sure what Columbus's sword was, grasped at it,
causing his hand to bleed. The Spanish saw this type
of action as inferior people and thought that they
could push them around because of there superior
technology and force. They made the natives take them
to gold and when they weren't taking them to the gold,
they were force to search for it themselves. When a
native returned without the gold, his/her arms were
cut off and then they bled to death. The treatment
was awful, it later turned into just mass killings of
natives where in the end the natives just started to
committe suicide instead of face death by the Spanish.
This part of history seems to get lost in the mixture
of things. We have to remember our past in order to
strive in our future.