American me Essay

Submitted By ivy_marie
Words: 484
Pages: 2

History
26 August 2014

DBQ
Columbus: Villain or Hero?

What do you consider evil? I think that killing millions of people is evil and taking someone’s land from them is evil. I feel that Christopher Columbus was a fraud and he was nothing but a cold-hearted evil man. His so-called “holiday” should be abolished and a new one called First Americans Day. I feel that if America wants to represent themself as a free country that Christopher Columbus should not be recognized as a hero.
I think that Christopher Columbus was not the man we learned about in elementary school and that we are taught to praise him when he was a fraud. I feel that we learn in a Euro-centric style and not from an American perspective (Document 2 ¶1). We hide the true history of Christopher Columbus because we do not want to tarnish this image that we have created for him (Document 2 ¶1). I think that we need to see from the eyes of the natives and find out and celebrate them because they were the first to discover America. I feel that Columbus was a perfect icon for the confusing days of the early nineteenth century (Document 4 ¶ 2). America as a young republic, found itself immediately in the middle of an identity crisis (Document 5 ¶1). Americans searched for a history and a hero and discovered Columbus (Document 5 ¶1). The human need to explain how and why America was formed created a vacuum, and it was slowly filled with the images of Christopher Columbus (Document 5 ¶ 2).
Christopher Columbus Day is the only national holiday to overtly insult millions of Americans (Document 2 ¶1). When we read the history book as children it tells nothing of the hardships and death Christopher had brought but only the heroic adventures he