Blog Post 11

Despite everything that Columbus did to the Native Americans in Hispaniola, he did find (not discover) the America which opened a whole new set of resources and a plethora of knowledge up to the Europeans, as well as a new area of the world to expand into and eventually a little country called the United States of America. So, even though it is widely believed that Columbus did not do very many positive things in terms of finding Hispaniola, there were a few good things that came out of his voyage.

That being said, there is a lot to blame him for. He did still highly marginalize the indigenous people, bring disease from Europe and enslave the natives. He was sent to prison for the way he governed Hispaniola, and he started a trend of explorers dehumanizing the Natives in the areas they find. You could blame Columbus for a lot of things that happened to the Native Americans in Hispaniola.

At the same time, Columbus didn't influence or tell other explorers and conquistadors to treat the natives they encountered in the same way. Everything that happened to the Native Americans in the rest of the Americas was exactly the same as what happened to them in Hispaniola. So it is impossible to blame Columbus for everything that happened to the Native Americans, because it was not Columbus who told Cortez to conquer the Aztecs, or told the Continental and British armies in the American Revolution to have Native Americans fight for them and then kill them off.