This resulted from the arrival of the Spaniards in 1492. In only 100 years, the Native American population was only about 750,000; 24 million less than the original 25,000,000 plus. Christopher Columbus had an incredibly negative impact on the world because he enslaved the Native Americans, didn’t help the kind Natives when they got infected by diseases that the Spaniards had brought to America, and killed off most of the Native American population. The tactics he chose to use were violent and destructive by the standards back then and now prove he was a not a hero but a
During this time period, Native Americans were being treated so poorly. They were very misunderstood, and white men didn 't even try to understand them. All they cared about was forcing the Indians off of "their" land. This is unfair in so many ways. One being that the Natives were actually there first.
America’s citizens are often very patriotic and love to celebrate those that have helped make their great nation, Columbus, supposedly, being one of these people. However, it is quite astonishing that Columbus Day is even celebrated as a patriotic holiday, considering all of the terrible things he did to the indigenous people of the New World. Citizens all over America express many different beliefs about the world, but the vast majority have a universal belief that murder and cruelty are wrong, so why celebrate a man who practically specialized in unnecessary, unprovoked cruelty. Many know the arrival of Europeans on American soil was terrible for the Native Americans, but few know the role Columbus himself played in the cruelty indigenous people
Christopher Columbus’s journal describes the Natives as having “marks of wounds on their bodies” and that they indicated the wounds are from “people from other adjacent islands came with the intention of seizing them, and that they defended themselves”. This is what many accuse Columbus of doing, and while he did seize natives, it was already happening before he got there. There we much worse occurrences, such as terrible acts of “sacrifice” done by the Aztecs. Schweikart and Allen said in the book A Patriot’s History of the United State that “A four-day sacrifice in 1487 by the Aztec king Ahuitzotl involved the butchery of 80,400 prisoners by shifts of priests working four at a time at convex killing tables who kicked lifeless, heartless bodies down the side of the pyramid temple. This worked out to a killing rate of fourteen victims a minute over the ninety-six-hour bloodbath”.
(Examining the Reputation). On top of killing one hundred thousand people in the time it takes to earn a diploma, Columbus stripped the natives of their liberty. The innocent were subjected to mining gold for the explorers. If they did not reach their quarterly quota, their hands were chopped off. (Discovering Columbus.)
Columbus had never seen people like those of the natives and the natives likewise so for both groups it was a new experience. Columbus took advantage of this and showed social oppression over the natives. He and his men murdered many natives and enslaved even more and forced them to adopt their culture. The natives were tortured, their resources were taken, they were raped and slaughtered all for Columbus’s gain. He made the natives think that he was a friendly face from a foreign land but in reality he only wished to use the intermingling of the two cultures to obtain personal goals.
As Arthur M. Schlesinger said in Columbus on Trial, European culture has "its share of monsters and atrocities" and that civilizations who had many conquests "did not show anything like concern for moral behavior and treatment of others" (Document 6). Ultimately, European explorers, conquistadors, and settlers from the Age of Exploration should not still be glorified and celebrated because they caused more harm than good, and tore apart others just to make a name for
Native Americans were greatly affected by the expansion of the United States during the 1800s. As the U.S. moved west, they stole large amounts of Native American land by settling the land and killing the Natives who once lived there. Also during this time, their culture was being taken from them due to assimilation. While United States citizens were expanding into the west, many Native American lives were lost. They were also responsible for destroying a major food and supply source for Native Americans.
However, it still happened and destroyed a whole population. The Columbian Exchange shows the arrival diseases like whooping cough and many others to the new world ( Document 6). As said, a mass extinction happened. We still should not praise Columbus as a hero because just one thing he did to the natives was “unintentional”. That one “unintentional” thing still doesn't make up for the numerous other accounts of crimes, torture and slavery on the
Historians differ on what they think about the net result of the European arrival in the New World. Considering that the Columbian Exchange, which refers to “exchange of plants, animals, people, disease, and culture between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas after Columbus sailed to the Americas in 1492,” led to possibly tens of millions of deaths on the side of the American Indians, but also enabled agricultural and technological trade (Henretta et al. 42), I cannot help but reflect on whether the effects should be addressed as a historical or a moral question. The impact that European contact had on the indigenous populations of North America should be understood as a moral question because first, treating it as a historical question is difficult due to lack of reliable historical evidence; second, the meaning of compelling historical claims is contestable as the academic historian perspective tends to view the American Indian oral history as invalid; and finally, what happened to the native Indians is morally repulsive and must be discussed as such. The consequences of European contact should be answered as a moral question because historically, it is hard to be historically objective in the absence of valid and dependable historical evidence.
When the Europeans began colonizing the New World, they had a problematic relationship with the Native Americans. The Europeans sought to control a land that the Natives inhabited all their lives. They came and decided to take whatever they wanted regardless of how it affected the Native Americans. They legislated several laws, such as the Indian Removal Act, to establish their authority. The Indian Removal Act had a negative impact on the Native Americans because they were driven away from their ancestral homes, forced to adopt a different lifestyle, and their journey westwards caused the deaths of many Native Americans.
Europeans that migrated to the Americas had few positive effects on native populations. The Indians' contact with settlers led to their death from diseases and warfare. These negative consequences were more effective than the Europeans' good intentions, which included wanting to Christianize and educate the Native Americans. According to http://classroom.synonym.com/did-european-migration-affect-native-populations-7034.httm, researchers estimate that the native population in America decreased by nearly 50% with disease only, beginning with the natives' first contact with European explorers in the 16th century. Most Native Americans were exposed to new diseases which their bodies and immune systems couldn’t fight.
The gap between the rich and the poor widened and not everyone prospered. Many people were taken advantage of and maltreated, including particularly Native Americans and African Americans. European Conquistadors conquered Native Americans and their territory and in the process committed genocide. Roughly ninety percent of the Native American population died due to the Europeans’ arrival. If they were not killed, they would be bound to a contract such as the Requerimiento which blackmailed them into obeying the European rulers.
Imagine everything about where you lived changed completely. Sadly on December 29,1890 this happened to the Native Americans. They were living their life calmly and normal until a tangle of events started to happen that led to the death of possibly three hundred Native Americans. The death were of innocent people and some that weren't even fighting back upsettingly these death also included women and children.
Almost every single person from the New World, whether a slave or not, was seriously impacted by the spread of diseases. Furthermore,