Dudethis guy was bad--like BEYOND bad. Columbus led us into a world of slavery, killing, raping and enslaving innocent natives; nearly wiping out whole populations of people. Columbus "oversaw the killings of some (Natives) and ordered the enslavement of others." So it isn't surprising that he didn't prevent his crewmen from raping the innocent natives. Even he raped a Native American woman himself after beating her "with a piece of rope". If these actions don't scream villainy, I don't know what does. Honestly, it burns me up that people put this piece of garbage on a pedestal and call him a hero when he didn't do squat. We could have done just fine without him. Someone else would have discovered the New World within 10 years (according to historians). Also, something that history textbooks seem to get wrong is that he wasn't the only one who believed that the earth was round. Plenty of people had proposed ideas of similar voyages to Columbus, but of course, teachers don't bother to tell us that. On his second trip to the New World, Columbus brought cannons and attack dogs. If a native resisted slavery, he would cut off a nose or an ear. If slaves tried to escape, Columbus had them burned alive. Other times, he sent attack dogs to hunt them down, and the dogs would tear off the arms and legs of the screaming natives while they were still alive. If the Spaniards ran short of meat to feed the dogs, Arawak babies were killed for dog food. Columbus' acts of cruelty were so unspeakable and so legendary - even in his own day - that Governor Francisco De Bobadilla arrested Columbus and his two brothers, slapped them into chains, and shipped them off to Spain to answer for their crimes against the Arawaks. But the King and Queen of Spain, their treasury filling up with gold, pardoned Columbus and let him go free. One of Columbus' men, Bartolome De Las Casas, was so mortified by Columbus' brutal atrocities against the native peoples, that he quit working for Columbus and became a Catholic priest. He described how the Spaniards under Columbus' command cut off the legs of children who ran from them, to test the sharpness of their blades. According to De Las Casas, the men made bets as to who, with one sweep of his sword, could cut a person in half. He says that Columbus' men poured people full of boiling soap. In a single day, De Las Casas was an eyewitness as the Spanish soldiers dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 native people. "Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight as no age can parallel," De Las Casas wrote. "My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature that now I tremble as I write."
