Christopher Columbus example essay topic

Through time many people blindly agreed to the "facts" that Christopher Columbus was a respectable person, the first to discover the Americas, and a faithful person to everyone, especially his King and Queen. Evidence from Lies My Teacher Told Me and The Diary of Columbus clarify that those "facts" are nothing but lies. A variety of stories have been told about how Columbus was like, but the truth has to be told. To begin with, Christopher Columbus was always a well thought of person, who was kind to the Indians. But the reality was that he cruelly treated the Indians as slaves, and mercilessly punished them. It states in Lies My Teacher Told Me "He ended his description with these menacing words: I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men and govern them as I pleased...

". Moreover, the Spanish punished the Indians in inhuman ways. The book states "Columbus's un neglected to mention how the Spanish punished those whose tokens had expired: they cut off their hands... ". To add to this, the Spanish treated the inhabitants as insignificant people.

"Spaniards hunted Indians for sport and murdered them for dog food... ". Another contradiction is the belief that Christopher Columbus was the first person to discover the Americas, but the reality is others came before him. Lies My Teacher Told Me says. ".. people had lived in the Americas for thousands of years. The Americas were new only to Europeans. The word discover is another part of the problem, for how can one person discover what another already knows and owns...

". Therefore, Columbus was not actually the first to discover the Americas; he was just the one to claim it. "Columbus did not really 'discover' America. When he arrived on this side of the Atlantic there were perhaps 20 or more million people already there... ".

Lastly, it is believed that Christopher Columbus was a trustworthy person to the King and Queen of Spain and was on his way to spread their holy faith as said in his diary. .".. they could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means more than by force... ". The truth is, the Spaniards were greedily after gold. .".. the Spanish sought gold, that they killed Indians, that Indians fled and resisted... ". Also, Columbus lied to others in order to confuse them on where the Americas were located. "Columbus confided in his journal the real reason for the false log entries: he wanted to keep the route to the Indies secret... he pretended to have gone a greater distance in order to confound the pilots and sailors who did the charts, that he might remain master of that route to the Indies...

". Eventually, people will see through the false stories that are told about Christopher Columbus. While others believe that he is a respectable person, who first discovered the Americas, and a trustworthy person to everyone, the facts will tell the opposite. Furthermore, the truth will show the surprising facts of the real Columbus. After reading all of the honest facts, it will be clear that Christopher Columbus was a selfish, cold-blooded human..