Christopher Columbus Hero

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Christopher Columbus, an American hero. He discovered America and helped form a new civilization. Or did he? Christopher Columbus is a villain because he killed thousands, manipulated many, and is currently looked down upon in many American cities.

Christopher Columbus murdered thousands.On his journey for gold, Columbus caused a lot of collateral damage. He brought diseases like smallpox to the healthy Natives and also brought starvation by consuming all of their food (History.com Staff). Howard Schuman, Barry Schwartz, and Hannah D’Arcy bring this up in their article by saying “(Christopher Columbus) brought slavery, disease, and death to America’s indigenous peoples.” This had a huge impact on the Native American population, leading to
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More and more cities across the nation are starting to get rid of Columbus Day as their holiday for the amount of chaos he caused in the new world. The holiday is being replaced by Indigenous People’s Day in celebration of the real first inhabitants of this country (Wright). Cities like Seattle, Minneapolis, Spokane, Boulder, Albuquerque, Portland, St. Paul, and Olympia have already accepted Indigenous People’s Day as a holiday instead of Columbus day (Guerra).This event is meant to take attention away from the murderer and appreciate the origins of our country. However, even with this event there are still many cities that celebrate Columbus day strongly. There are also many elementary school textbooks that display Columbus as a hero.

Murder, manipulation, and disapproval are all things that make Columbus a villain today. Overall Christopher Columbus came onto their land, accepted the Native’s help, and then enslaved and killed thousands of them. Columbus also almost starved his whole crew on a miscalculation, got shipwrecked, and go multiple people killed on bad decision making. Not only did he do all this, he also received all the credit for being the first to discover America. So the next time you go off to celebrate Columbus Day, you might want to think about all of the murders and killings of the Native