What makes columbus a hero

Photo by Victoria Van. Story by Maddie Anderson , staff writer January 10, Each year, Christopher Columbus seems to be resurrected and spark the never ending debate: greatest explorer or indigenous destroyer? He was only a teenager when he began his first maritime expedition on a merchant ship where he remained until when the ship was attacked by Privateers.

As the boat sank, Columbus floated to the Portuguese shore where he started to design his plan for western domination. On Aug. Textbooks frequently credit Columbus with a glory not reasonably accepted as he only managed to find the Bahamas, not the continental U.

When he first arrived in Hispaniola, he was faced with the large indigenous population of the Taino peoples. These natives were kind to the travelers and freely traded jewelry, animals and food. They do not carry arms or know them … They should be good servants. Columbus forced the Tainos into slavery and punished them grotesquely if disobeyed, even resulting to murder as punishment.

The spread of European disease and brutality such as public executions, floggings and rape of Taino women further show the barbarity of Columbus and his men. Columbus set sail for the new world and brought about with him a new era of truth and lies. Despite his revolutionary discovery, we cannot forget the brutality and tragedy that Columbus and his men inflicted upon the indigenous people. His words and actions toward the Taino only reflected his sole intentions of economic gain— not knowledge or peace— regardless of any pre-existing societies and basic human rights.

Through his lust for money and glory, he managed to destroy the centuries old culture of the indigenous Americans. Recent interviews with CNN delve into the reasons for the change. Society still struggles in regards to the view of Columbus: hero or villain? An opportunist, he captured Indigenous people to show that they would make good enslaved workers. Years later, he would be devastated to learn that Queen Isabella had decided to declare the New World off-limits to enslavers.

Again, this one is half-true. At first, most observers in Spain considered his first voyage a total fiasco. He had not found a new trade route and the most valuable of his three ships, the Santa Maria, had sunk. Later, when people began to realize that the lands he had found were previously unknown, his stature grew and he was able to get funding for a second, much larger voyage of exploration and colonization.

But more than that, Columbus stubbornly stuck to his guns for the rest of his life. He always believed that the lands he found were the easternmost fringe of Asia and that the rich markets of Japan and India were just a little farther away. He even put forth his absurd pear-shaped Earth theory in order to make the facts fit his assumptions. He is vilified by Indigenous rights groups today, and rightly so, yet he was once seriously considered for sainthood.

Columbus may have been a talented sailor, navigator, and ship captain. He went west without a map, trusting his instincts and calculations, and was very loyal to his patrons, the king and queen of Spain. Because of it, they rewarded him by sending him to the New World a total of four times. And yet, while Columbus might have had some admirable qualities as an explorer, most popular accounts of him today fail to highlight the significance of his crimes against Indigenous peoples.

Columbus did not have an abundance of admirers during his time. Many of his contemporaries despised these actions. As governor of Santo Domingo in Hispaniola, he was a despot who kept all profits for himself and his brothers and was loathed by the colonists whose lives he controlled.

Attempts were made on his life and he was actually sent back to Spain in chains at one point after his third voyage. During his fourth voyage , he and his men were stranded in Jamaica for a year when his ships rotted. No one wanted to travel there from Hispaniola to save him. He was also dishonest and selfish. Those who voice disdain for anti-Columbus historians may feel like the explorer's legacy is shouldering the weight of crimes that not only he committed.

It is true that he was not the only person who enslaved or killed Indigenous peoples, and perhaps written histories should more explicitly acknowledge this fact. It was not with affection for Columbus himself, but with a disdain for England and the desire for a uniquely American hero. Norsemen reached North America centuries before Columbus. And even his contemporaries may have reached the new world first. In any event, Columbus never even set foot on the North American mainland, as John Cabot did in So how did Columbus become the idealized symbol of New World discovery?

It didn't happen right away. For several centuries after the voyages of discovery Columbus, Cabot and other explorers were mostly bypassed by history. Both of them were largely ignored within a decade or so of their deaths," says University of Bristol historian Evan Jones. Not as heroes. Schlereth's study in the Journal of American History.

It coincided with the th anniversary of the landing. What changed? American colonists needed a heroic symbol for their new, independent nation. Columbus, with some less-than-true narrative tweaks, fit the bill rather nicely. Cabot did not. This was despite the fact he was no Englishman, but an Italian like Columbus. But Cabot sailed under an inconvenient flag. He represents freedom, a guy who had turned his back on the Old World and sailed in the name of a monarch and then been treated very badly by that monarch.

Even if you were to overlook the not-so-minor fact that millions of people were already living in North America in , the fact is that Columbus never set foot on our shores. In fact, October 12 marks the day of his arrival to the Bahamas. While he did reach the coasts of what today are Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, as well as explore the Central and South American coasts, he never unfurled a Spanish flag in North America.

Leif Eriksson is the first European believed to have sailed to North America, having reached Canada years before Columbus set sail to the west.

He may never have reached Asia as planned, but one cannot discount the sheer will required to make his journey. At the age of 41, he defied naysayers across Europe and led four voyages across an uncharted ocean in wooden sailing ships that were not designed to take on the punishing waters of the Atlantic. By , most educated Europeans already believed the earth was round. Contrary to the popular myth, Columbus did not set out to prove that the world was round, but rather that it was possible to sail around it, a voyage the explorer drastically underestimated.

Columbus stood to gain significant wealth and power from his voyage, terms he negotiated with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. His contract with the monarchs, called The Capitulations of Santa Fe, named Columbus the admiral, viceroy, and governor of any land he discovered.