The Truth About Christopher Columbus

By Pratiksha Singh

The fact that Christopher Columbus is not the man he was portrayed to be all throughout elementary school, middle school and high school is pretty disappointing. When I found out who he really was and the things he did I was appalled. In school, the teacher taught you that Christopher Columbus is a good, innocent man that discovered America. When in reality, Christopher Columbus wasn’t even the first European person to discover America, Leif Ericson was. [1] Christopher Columbus did make friends with the Native Americans but he also enslaved a lot of them.[2] When Columbus got to the Bahamas on October 12, 1492 he discovered that there were 3 different Native American tribes Columbus said they were the nicest people he has ever met and the next thing you know he had these people enslaved to work in his gold mines. Within 2 years half of the native population was dead. [1] The fact that we only learn the good things about Christopher Columbus and a lot of other historical figures in school really bothers me. I feel like teachers should be teaching about the truth instead of just making everyone in American history look good. They might as well not teach us about them if they’re not going to tell us the whole truth about what went on. A lot of people are unaware that these things even happened in the first place. Christopher Columbus not only enslaved and killed many Natives, he also sold young native girls into sexual slavery. Columbus was so cruel that he caused the Native Americans to commit suicide. Christopher Columbus was a disgusting man and had no conscience. If a Native resisted slavery he would cut parts of their bodies off and if they tried to escape he would send dogs after them and they would decapitate parts of their bodies. [1] He was so cruel that he would feed Native American babies to his dogs when they didn’t have enough meat left. [1] Christopher Columbus should not be honored and the truth about his actions and his cruel personality should be taught in schools. The problem with teaching the truth about Christopher Columbus in schools is that most teachers probably don’t even know about the horrible things that he has done. They were never taught about them when they were in school so they only teach what was been taught to them. Somehow or another people should start being taught the truth about historical figures, not only Christopher Columbus but many other important people in history too.

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[1] Kasum, Eric. Huffington Post, "Columbus Day? True Legacy: Cruelty and Slavery." Last modified October 11, 2010. Accessed February 18, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-kasum/columbus-day-a-bad-idea_b_742708.html.

[2] Minster, Christopher. About.com, "The Truth About Christopher Columbus." Accessed February 18, 2014. http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/thevoyagesofcolumbus/a/09columbustruth.htm.