Essay by spyder227A, May 2006

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Columbus, the man who discovered the new world. Some think of him as a brilliant explorer, the man who laid the path for who we are today. But his path is covered in blood, in order to celebrate his legacy is to celebrate a ruthless trail of greed, cruelty, slavery and genocide. One of which have rarely been seen even today. Columbus mistreated the native people, destroyed the land and introduced slavery to the world we once knew.

Columbus's arrival was detrimental to the aboriginals from the moment he stepped into the new world. Before his arrival Columbus was a slave trader for the Portuguese and he continued this ideology in the new world by enslaving Native Americans and Africans alike . Using the natives and Africans to greater their own personal wealth and self satisfaction by making them work in the plantations, raping their women and taking all their property.

Not only did Columbus and his men mistreat the Natives they brutalized the population, he saw them as lower beings, peoples whose like are only valued by how much they can benefit him. Through 1495 to 1500 Columbus instituted policies of slavery and the systematic murder and rape of the Taino people, it is estimated that over a twenty years period 8 million natives were killed making him somewhat responsible for the first mass genocide of indigenous peoples in history. Over the next generation his policies gave justification to the Europeans for the extermination of over 15 million native Americans . Las Casas, a Dominican priest and the first European historian in the new world recorded several brutalizing experiences he encountered while observing the mass murders of the aboriginal peoples, "The Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against...