What do you Really Know About Christopher Columbus?

By Kelsey Wilkins

            We all know they saying “Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492” BUT little did you know, Columbus actually took over land and enslaved people. In elementary schools all over the country, young children are learning about a man they think was a huge hero! A man that discovered the Americas and gave us a home! But these schools are leaving a little bit of history out of their curriculum. But I guess that makes sense, because if I were a parent, I wouldn’t want my children learning about the horrible things Christopher Columbus actually did, would you?

 So what actually happened on October 12^th, 1492? When Columbus’ ship docked on an island in the middle of nowhere, now known as the Bahamas, he met the Lucayans, Tainos and Arawaks. They were a friendly group of people and Columbus even wrote in his journal that they were nice, good looking and very intelligent people. They lived in a perfect area that had no criminals or danger or even prisoners. This sounds like the perfect place to live, right? Well it was until Columbus decided to claim the land as Spain’s and sent the Native Americans who once roamed free, to work in gold mines, which later killed about half of their population in a two-year time span.¹ This isn’t even the worst of it. I can understand why this isn’t in the curriculum, but I also don’t think we should be taught that Columbus was a hero! Yes, he did find the land we live on today, but everything else he did, kind of cancels that out. Columbus sold young girls into sexual slavery. Girls of all ages were included in these sales but the most sought after were around the age of nine and ten. This is a horrible thing that was happening, but these people were hopeless, they didn’t even have weapons to defend themselves and when Columbus came back the second time, he brought cannons and attack dogs. Little babies were even given to the dogs as food.² This is a little gruesome and shouldn’t be taught to kids in elementary school, but when you get to high school students should learn about this stuff because it is important in history and it is also very interesting. This is really interesting to me because I have never learned anything like this, ever in school, if I learned this stuff maybe I would think out history was a little bit more interesting then I though it was. The problem is that parents don’t want their children learning about this stuff because it leads to rape and has sexual content in it and that leads to things that apparently shouldn’t be taught in schools. I guess its because it leads to other questions about sexual acts and it might make people feel uncomfortable so they just leave it out all together. I have told my friends about this class that I am taking and I tell them about Christopher Columbus and they are shocked! They had no clue this happened and I didn’t know either before this class!  

There was a man named Bartolome De Las Casas who worked for Columbus. He was so horrified by what Columbus was doing to these Native Americans that he became a Catholic Priest. That is a dramatic change from a normal person, so the thing he saw must have been very mortifying. He witnessed murder, rape, suicides, etc. For the rest of his life, De Las Casas tried to protect the native people. Studies shows that after 50 years not a single original native inhabitant was alive.³ After all of the Native Americans were gone, African Americans were brought to the Americans to replace them, which also lead to many deaths, but that’s another story. It is crazy to think that this happened… In my opinion, like I said before, this is a little extreme for kids to learn in elementary and middle school, but by the time you are a junior or senior in high school, this could be and important thing to know. Our school system isn’t necessarily hiding this from us, but they aren’t telling us about it… Columbus day is a day that was made by the Knights of Columbus. They wanted someone that they could look up to, a hero, and they picked Columbus… But after hearing the truth, he doesn’t seem so heroic, does he?

1.     Eric, Kasum. Huffington Post, "Columbus Day? True Legacy: Cruelty and Slavery." Last modified February 23, 2014. Accessed February 25, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-kasum/columbus-day-a-bad-idea_b_742708.html?view=print&comm_ref=false.
2.     Eric, Kasum. Huffington Post, "Columbus Day? True Legacy: Cruelty and Slavery." Last modified February 23, 2014. Accessed February 25, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-kasum/columbus-day-a-bad-idea_b_742708.html?view=print&comm_ref=false.
3.     Eric, Kasum. Huffington Post, "Columbus Day? True Legacy: Cruelty and Slavery." Last modified February 23, 2014. Accessed February 25, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-kasum/columbus-day-a-bad-idea_b_742708.html?view=print&comm_ref=false.