Examples Of Christopher Columbus A Hero

To many, Christopher Columbus was a very remarkable man of history. His many discoveries and conquests, despite all the hardships faced, have led others to believe that he is some sort of hero. But is that really what he is? A hero? In A people’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, he states, “To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to deemphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity, but an ideological choice”. This quote is true, in the sense that history is often told from a biased perspective due to being told or written by an objective historian that is able to prove their thoughts with details and information.

Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States describes Columbus’ arrival to the West Indies. The Arawak natives greeted Columbus and his men once they came ashore. Zinn states Columbus’ encounter with the Indians: “They would make fine servants….With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want (Zinn, 1)”. With that approach, it didn’t take time before enslavement, murders, and rape to begin. With the goal of bringing back gold for the royalty in Spain, Columbus and his men took slaves and forced them to find gold or they were to be murdered. By the end of the 16th century, the Arawak Indians became extinct due

He too had one obsessive goal which was to find gold. Cortes was deceptively regarded as a godly figure by the Aztecs. Soon the Aztecs realized that he wasn't who or that they thought him to be, so they rebelled. And due to their rebellion, “Cortes then began his march of death from town to town, using deception, turning Aztec against Aztec, killing with the kind of deliberateness that accompanies a strategy—to paralyze the will of the population by a sudden frightful deed (Zinn, 11)” and continued to massacre them until every human soul of the Aztec civilization was completely wiped