Christopher Columbus is remembered as being the hero who found the New World. But what is almost always overlooked is what happened after the New World was discovered, genocide. Columbus was the leader in the mass murders of millions of Indians. When he arrived he traded with them, and noted their generosity and willingness to give them goods. But in return to their kindness he took fifteen of them back to Spain as slaves. In his second visit to the New World he demanded gold from the Indians, and when he could not find any he took nearly five hundred back to Europe as slaves, and almost two hundred died on the way over. On his next attempted conquest he demanded that the Indians find gold for him, and when they couldn’t he would have his men cut off their hands. As a result the Indians would flee to hiding, but when found they would be killed. As a result over half of what was 250,000 Indians on Haiti were killed in two years. Also, when Spaniards began to settle in the Americas they enslaved the Indians. Because of the oppressive rule of the Spanish settlers, the Indians were given much too little food, and many died of starvation, as well as the continued brutal nature of the Spanish. In addition, the Indians were not able to reproduce nearly as frequently as they did before the Spanish came, for the Spanish kept partners separated most of the time. And when they did have children most of them died because their mothers were too malnourished to provide milk, or the mother drowned them to save them from the cruel life ahead of them. As a result Bartolome de Las Casas, another Spanish conquistador, estimates that nearly three million Indians were killed, and this genocide was all because of Columbus. Adolf Hitler was responsible for the deaths of about six million Jews, and he is considered one of the evilest men ever. Why should Columbus not be near him in that category for being responsible for the death of three million Indians?
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