Reader About Their Views On Columbus example essay topic

"Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress", In the opening chapter, "Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress", in the book, A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn gives the reader a new way to look at America's history. He uses harsh tones and blunt statements about the cruelty towards the Indians to persuade the reader about their views on Columbus. Zinn then gives his reasons for retelling history the way he does. Zinn says, "I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves...

". (10). Howard Zinn Begins his retelling of Columbus's discovery with excerpts from Columbus's first letter to the King and Queen. He tells the reader that Columbus's main objective was gold and the idea that if he could prove it was there Ferdinand and Isabella would finance another trip back. When they finally found land the first people they saw had gold jewelry in their ears. Zinn believes", this was to have enormous consequences: it led Columbus to take some of them aboard ship as prisoners because he insisted that they guide him to the source of gold" (3).

Though all they found was little specs of gold in the rivers led the Spaniards "to wild visions of gold fields" (3). Though some of Columbus's descriptions in his letter were true, other parts were false; however, the king and queen had faith in him and gave him "seventeen ships and more then twelve hundred men" (3). This time the objective was to find more gold and bring back slaves. However, when they returned to the new land they found no gold, some of their men had been killed a battle with the Indians, and a large majority of other Indians had fled to escape the Spaniards. The first time to Spain they had no gold so they made up for it with slaves, yet most of them died en route. Zinn then goes on to talk of Columbus's desperation to pay back those people who had invested in him (4).

He travels back to the new world intent on finding gold this time. He forces the Indians to search and return with gold for him, but this is an unfeasible mission so the Indians flee the shores and head for the hills where they are found and killed. Zinn states quite bluntly that, "In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead" (4). After describing the mass murders that had taken place on this Zinn goes on to compare his writings of history to those of Samuel Morison who wrote, Christopher Columbus Mariner in 1954. Zinn refers to the idea how so many "history books given to children in the United States, it all starts with heroic adventure-there is no bloodshed- and Columbus Day is a celebration" (7).

He goes on to say that although Morison accounts the life of Columbus with out lying, he manages to downplay this mass murder by sticking it very briefly in the middle of a very long book, and focusing more on other topics. Zinn is very adamant about how history is told and discusses this before going on to talk more about Columbus. Zinn starts off his account of Columbus's discovery with his first letter back to the king and queen. This letter makes a good contradiction to Zinn's point that he is trying to form throughout his piece. He then uses the contradiction to make his point more clear about the way history is written and portrayed through out time. He tells his account of Columbus's discovery first because it helps lead into his point of the way history is retold.

Without telling his account of the discovery his point about history would not of had such an impact on the reader. Although Zinn's account of Columbus's discovery of the new land is unsympathetic and frank, I would rather feel as if I am being told the truth then being lied to. Morison downplays murder as if it was just a small casualty of finding this new land, which to me seems inhumane.