Today in class we talked a little bit about things that we were lied to about in school. One of the topics we talked about was how we were all taught that Christopher Columbas was a great person, and how he discovered America and many other good things about him. In reality, he was a terrible person. Almost everyone learned when they were in kindergarten that in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue to discover America and then the pilgrims came over much later and the Native Americans and pilgrims ate the first Thanksgiving together and everyone was happy. This is not true at all. First of all, Columbus did not even come close to being the first person to discover America. I won't go into large detail, but here is a list of people who are believed to have discovered the Americas first, although some of these are just theories, some are definitely true: Lehi (this is based on the Morman religion so this may not be accurate), Saint Brendan, Bjarni Herjólfsso (Viking), Leif Erikson (Viking), Madoc, Abu Bakr II, Henry I Sinclair, and Zheng He. These people were all explorers, but obviously, the Native Americans were the very first Americans. Next, Columbus actually arrived in the Caribbean, not even in North America. When he arrived, he was shocked at how different the culture was. The people at these islands were not aware of how much their earthly possessions were worth and gladly gave these items to Columbus and his crew. He saw this and used it as an opportunity to take advantage of these people. The next reason why he was a bad person is that he kidnapped, enslaved, and killed thousands of people twice. In his first exploration, he tried to bring back 1,150 "specimen" back to Spain as proof that he actually discovered people. None of these people survived the trip back to Spain, so he turned around and went out again to collect more people. He ended up stealing from and torturing the people of the town that he went back out to and eventually burned the town down. Those are just a couple of reasons why I don't think Christopher Columbus was a hero and I believe we should celebrate Indigenous people the day instead of Columbus Day. This kind of turned into a rant, so sorry about that.
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