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The sun is in the sky and no clouds can be found for miles. But where is everyone. Their all gathered at the dock today telling family and friends to stay safe on their travels. I scan the crowd of people. What i see is no different from other times i have sailed. There are crew members talking, women trying to let go of the husbands, and kids admiring the three boats. The last face i come upon is our captain.
A tall man with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a clear complexion. He holds his head up high like he is very proud of his accomplishments. Other then that there is nothing i can discribe about him When I notice he is coming my way I freak out. Did i do something wrong. Once he reached me I was able to start calming down. All he wanted was to introduce himself. During his talk I found out his name was Christopher Columbus and he seemed like a respectful man. An hour later we finally leave the dock and I look at the ship. The ship im on is a modest sized merchant vessel called the Santa Maria. It's about 19m in length, 5 to 5.7inches in width, and weighs between 100 and 150 tons. Its seems to be the slower than the other to vessels, the Nina and the Pinta. When I finished my assessments I started going back to work. I guess I would have to waIt a few more days for something more interesting to happen.
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I was walking by a group of crew members and I accidentally heard some of theIr conversation. It was about our captain Christopher Columbus. So instead of walking some more I stayed and eavesdropped. What I heard surprised me. They were planning to rebel. I guess they were not only homesick. They planned to face Columbus and tell him what was he doing. That surprised me because no one went to talk to him unless it was Important. All he did was stay cooped up in his cabin. So them saying they were going to face him made me curIous. But before I got caught I left so I wasn't able to hear
In Symcox and Sullivan’s Christopher Columbus and the Enterprise of the Indies, another side of not only Columbus but also his peers is brought to light. I have never read anything written by Columbus’s contemporaries before reading this book, so it gave me some refreshing insight as opposed to the repetitive glamorized content in high school textbooks. I also appreciate how legal documents such as the Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal are included because they give a sense of what else was going on during the time that Columbus was going on these voyages.
What he and his men did to the Indigenous people is told in horrifying detail by the Dominican priest Bartolome de Las Casas, “whose writings give the most thorough account of the Spanish-Indian encounter.” Las Casas witnessed firsthand Columbus’ soldiers stabbing Natives for sport, dashing babies’ heads on rocks, and sexually abusing Indigenous women. His testimony was corroborated by other eyewitnesses, such as a group of Dominican friars, who addressed the Spanish monarchy in 1519, hoping to bring an end to the atrocities. At the very least, Columbus was complicit in the actions of his men. He cared so little for the welfare of the Indigenous people that he let his soldiers commit reprehensible acts that would be considered crimes against humanity in the present day. Christopher Columbus’ actions suggest he had no issue with serving as an enabler of the horrifying actions committed by his men against the Indigenous
In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And, when he reached his destination he killed, raped and enslaved innocent natives. Was Columbus a villain? The answer to that question, in my opinion, would be yes. Christopher Columbus was a cruel, self-centered, delusional man who does not deserve to be praised for the discovery of America.
Christopher Columbus is a mythical hero or in other words, not a true hero. The story of Christopher Columbus is part of the many myths of Western civilization. Also the story of Christopher Columbus represents the power of those that are privileged and in most cases white European men that have written this mythical history. Zinn (2009 exposes the truth about Columbus through eyes of the people who were there when he had arrived which were the Native Indians (p.481). Columbus had kept a personal journal for his voyage to describe the people and the journey. What was evident throughout his journal was the Native Americans were very nice, gentle and kind hearted people (Zinn, 2009, 481). As Zinn suggests Columbus spoke of the Native Americans as” they are the best people in the world and
There it was; a large shining blue ship carrying loads and loads of cargo and supplies full with smiling sailors whose smiles turned into frowns as they saw our situation. I jumped up and down with delight but I realized that first our lighthouse men had to get out of this sea rat mess before getting on the boat. Le Gleo suddenly came up with an idea.
It is thought by many that Christopher Columbus was a skilled sailor on a mission of greed. Many think that he in fact did it all for the money, honor and the status that comes with an explorer, but this is not the case entirely. Columbus was an adventurer and was enthused by the thrill of the quest of the unknown. “Columbus had a firm religious faith and a scientific curiosity, a zest for life, the felling for beauty and the striving for novelty that we associate with the advancement of learning”. He had heard of the legendary Atlantic voyages and sailors reports of land to the west of Madeira and the Azores. He believed that Japan was about 4,800 km to the west of Portugal. In 1484, Columbus wanted support for an exploratory voyage from King John II of Portugal, but he was refused. In 1485, Columbus took his son Diego and went to Spain to get some help.
As part of an ever-developing endeavor to truly grasp Christopher Columbus, his character and his mission, it is crucial to find sources that lend an accurate portrayal and in-depth evaluation of his true disposition, his ambitious intentions, and the outcome of his success or failures in regards to those. To grasp the ensuing reverberations felt profoundly throughout the centuries due to his exploits, and the collateral damage caused thereby, one must first trace him back to his origins; and in so doing, follow him along through his quest for notoriety, power, wealth, and prestige. Columbus: the four voyages, by Laurence Bergreen, does all that and more.
During the whole course of the letter, Columbus beat around the bush and was not upfront with their true intentions of the voyage. He speaks of gold, he speaks of quarreling, but whenever these subjects came up, Columbus quickly changes the subject to a lighter matter. Based on much of the fine print, much of the things that he did not realize what he was writing, and by reading in between the lines of this letter, I saw much more than what was just written. The strayed away from the fact that he was tyrannically taking over the indigenous peoples of this land, even though it was so apparent that he in fact was. Because of this information that we now know about Columbus’s tyrannical ways, was hard for me to read this letter and still believe in Columbus’s integrity as an eyewitness for describing the events on at this New World.
In 1492, an event took place that would change forever the way the world is viewed, and the way people viewed themselves. When Columbus set foot on that Caribbean island on an August morning over five hundred years ago, he set in motion one of the greatest migrations the world has ever seen. Two separate and distinct worlds met that day, even though both had populated their separate continents. One world, the old world, was made up of Europeans looking for fame and fortune, not necessarily for new and uncharted lands. Divine supports this idea by stating, “They (explorers) came not as colonists but as fortune hunters seeking instant wealth, preferably gold, and they were not squeamish about the means they used to obtain it” (Divine, p.9). The other world, the new world, was made up of “Indians”, or the people native to this newly found hemisphere. They had their own cultures, and treated the newcomers like Gods, not knowing who or what they were. In document two of Gorn, Columbus supports this by saying, “ …and others in loud voices called to all the men and women: Come see the men who cane from the heavens” (Gorn, p.9). The opportunistic and power hungry old worlders took quick advantage of this, eventually either subjugating or outright slaughtering these unsuspecting natives. In document two, Bartlolme de Las Casas states, “And they (Spaniards) committed other acts of force and violence and oppression which made the Indians realize that these men had not come from Heaven” (Gorn, p.13). Why did these adventurers choose to take advantage of the natives they encountered, rather than try to peacefully coincide and cooperate with them? I will try to answer this troubling question while chronicling the documents of Columb...
During 1492, Christopher Columbus in opposed to what everyone says, is determined to find a new route to India from Spain. Although the councillors, government, and geographers thought Columbus plan was absurd, Queen Isabella I allows the expedition. Columbus believes he will find buildings covered in gold, and riches all around. Contrary to what Marco Polo claimed, Columbus would rather find himself in the North America, where his dreams don't quite fit in with reality. The journey is rather rough, and when the ships finally arrive, one of the men, Adrian De Moxica, and several others don't trust the natives, referring to them as “savages, and monkeys”. Eventually, they befriend the natives, and even teach one therefore they can communicate and translate.
Some of the problems when studying history are the texts and documents that have been discovered are only from perspective. Furthermore, on occasion that one perspective is all there may be for historians to study. A good example of this textual imbalance can be found from the texts about the discovery of the New World; more specifically, the letters of Christopher Columbus and Pêro Vaz de Caminha during their voyages to the New World. Plenty of the text from this time is written from the perspective of the Europeans, as the Indigenous population did not have any written text. What this means is that it provided only one perspective, which can drastically hinder how history is interpreted. Columbus’s letter of his first voyage to the Caribbean
Christopher Columbus is a name known to nearly every American that has ever had an elementary education. He is imagined as the brave explorer that against all odds prevailed in his belief of a round earth. Credited with the discovery of America, Columbus has a holiday and even the Nation’s capitol and a powerful Catholic service organization are named after him. What isn’t as well known is the dark side of his arrival to the New World. Though he did make the first steps in founding modern America, these steps came at the cost of thousands of lives. Columbus enslaved the natives he came across and ruled the Caribbean with an iron fist. He killed thousands in a relentless pursuit to find gold and used Christianity to justify the destruction of entire cultures. Yet the true much less favoring story is pushed aside by the romanticized tale of the great Christopher Columbus. The graphic and sad nature of the truth make the myth a much better story; a story that eclipsed reality. Vestiges of the belief in White superiority perpetuated the belief that Columbus was more of a hero th...
That was something, I just feel off the boat. Lightly, I drift along water. I see a few of my brothers and sisters, but I am very far away from them.
We then got into our room, and a sudden noise of the ship’s horn blasted with a loud “HOOONK!” ,which meant that the ship was about to depart. Hours later we arrived at our destination. We soon hurried to evacuate the ship and started to explore the scenic, alluring places. Then along the coastline we initiated our way to the beach to find seashells, but I didn’t want to leave.I just stayed there enjoying myself telling my parents”I will come!” Well, I didn’t go.
According to the Columbus diary dated 12 October 1942, his first contact with the natives made him perceive them as good servants. Hence, he pledged to carry six natives as presents for the King and upon return to Spain, the natives were paraded in the streets for marketing. From the first day he had contact with the Native Americans, he perceived himself as a dominant person over them. In fact, he argued that he