Christopher Columbus Documentary

    Christopher Columbus is known by most Americans as the hero who found the land we now call the United States but what is lesser known is the way he and his crew treated the Native American population. In the film they talk about how Columbus was intrigued by some of the weapons and tools they had but wouldn't give them credit for them. Columbus also took the Native Americans hostage in order to set sail again in hopes to find Japan but instead found Cuba. They also used religion as a way to expel Native Americans and used the fact they wouldn't convert as reasonable means to take their land and even kill the Native Americans. One of the worst things that Columbus and his crew did was bring diseases from Europe which the Native Americans had never seen before therefore had no way of treating the illness and in most cases they would die. Diseases were quickly spread as sanitation at the time was pretty sub par leaving the Native Americans helpless as they wiped out many tribes. In the documentary it talks about how Columbus would write in his journal and talk about how the Natives were demons and many other undesirable things and try to portray them in bad light as it made it seem as if they were doing a good deed by killing Natives and taking their land. All in all, most people today do not realize the horrible things the original explorers did to the Natives as the texts books do not show the bad parts of the exploration.