Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Columbus Sailed the Ocean Blue

Christopher Columbus, at first, may seem like the person we all think we know him to have been; the wonderful explorer who discovered the new world, known as America, that we live in today. However, that was not the case whatsoever. Columbus, while he was an explorer, did not intend to discover America, nor did he name it America. Columbus thought he had landed in the continent near India, and that the Natives living there were, in fact, Indians. His objective was to find gold, and he did whatever he had to in order to achieve that goal. He enslaved the Native people against their will, forced them to do hard labor, and killed them for sport, when they had been so nice to him and had saved him. He was brutal, and was hungry and desperate to bring gold back to the king and queen of Spain.

I believed people should not continue to celebrate a holiday in his name anymore. He was not at all how our teachers said he was. He was a brute, and did whatever he wanted to achieve his goal of finding gold. He enslaved, beat, possibly tortured, and killed the Natives for sport. He not only unintentionally found the Americas, but they were not named after him in any way. He was not even the first explorer to land on the supposed “New World”. His intentions were for the greed of his own personal gain, and not to benefit the knowledge of the world of any of those around him. For those reasons, I believe Christopher Columbus day is a lie and should not be celebrated anymore.

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