Columbus Day Research Paper

Columbus Day has been celebrated in the US for generations, but it is not something America should be proud of. Christopher Columbus carried out a genocide, yet (inexplicably) this information is excluded from textbooks throughout elementary and some of middle school. Columbus Day should not be celebrated because it is glorifying the abuse of indigenous people and mistreatment of those who are different from oneself.

Christopher Columbus was born in 1451, claiming to be from Genoa (now Italy). However, there is evidence that he might not have been from there at all. Columbus could not write in Italian, and some historians such as Charles Garcia in Was Columbus Secretly A Jew? believe that he might have been a “converso” from Spain, which is a Jewish convert to Christianity in in order to escape religious persecution. Other historians claim he was from Corsica, Portugal, or somewhere else. In the 1470s, Columbus started to sail. He married but lost his wife to childbirth, and moved to Spain in 1485 with his son. During this time, the Age of

Even though the voyage was short (in order to bring news to the Spanish monarchs as soon as possible,) Columbus and his crew made landings in two different places. After planting a flag in San Salvador, Columbus noted that he did not observe any religion being practiced in Cuba, and the natives were very gentle and timid. The land was fertile, and overall Cuba seemed like a promising land. Columbus viewed this as an opportunity to bring in Spanish missionaries. After leaving Cuba, Columbus and his men “discovered” Haiti, which is a hot and fertile land. Columbus interacted with the Taìno Indians and used them as labor, which escalated to forcing the natives into slavery. Columbus brought twenty natives on his return to Spain in 1493, but only seven or eight survived because of the bad conditions on the