Successes And Failures Of Christopher Columbus

In his search for the expected gold, Columbus first encounters the Arawaks who he describes as remarkable for their hospitality and then decides that they would make fine servants. However, due to the lack of gold, Columbus takes some of them as prisoners to lead them to Cuba, where he built the first European military base. Just as he had reported about the Arawaks, the indians in Cuba as well were naive and offered to share with anyone. Because of these successes, Columbus was later sent off with more ships and men. After learning that there was no more gold to be found, the only resort was to turn the natives into slaves. When this method as well showed no signs of improvement, the slaves were forced to supply a certain amount of gold, or they were subjected to death.

Zinn provides an ironic statement on how even though such bloodshed once occurred, the history of the United States never includes it, and instead celebrates Columbus for what he did. After presenting the cruelty inflicted upon Indians, Zinn takes a stand on how the history is just as much distorted by a historian to fit a necessity as a mapmaker distorting the shape of the earth to make a map. But for historians, however, it is more of an ideological choice. When presenting Columbus as a hero for his successes as a navigator and as a discoverer, one has to also deemphasize the deaths that he caused. In the same way, since most writings take the side of the heroes, Zinn states that he would like to take other side, the side of the victims, in order to surface the failures of the past which should not be committed in the future. Just like Columbus, ___ have killed innocent people for their same greed for gold, and land. A Powhatan accounts in his letter on how their people approached the killers unarmed, willing to provide anything they asked for, and in return, they are