Reading the journal on Christopher Columbus was interesting because it was the first time that I was exposed to a journal written by historically famous person. The journal includes events that occurred to him and his crews from the beginning of sailing to return to Spain. Christopher Columbus is famous for discovering a new place in America, but at the same time he is also famous for murdering a large number of indigenous people. When he met them in the beginning, he stated that they are primitive and do not even possess proper weapons as Spanish. In addition, in the beginning of the journal, I found it surprising that he was communicating with indigenous people and having some respect toward them for helping him sail around that area. Moreover, he stated his journal that indigenous people are calm and pleasant and violence is not preferred to control them and since they are like that, they could easily become a Christian.

There were things that I did not know until I read the second assigned reading. It was surprising to me that there is an advertisement of existence of large amounts of gold. They said that indigenous people walk on gold road and have lots of them in their hands. This seemed to be the reason why people were confused and ended up having huge motivations to go there. I was also able to learn things about a battle against Inca led by Atagualpa. Don Francisco Pizarro and Don Diego de Almagro talked to Atagualpa through their interpreter, Felipe, that he should be their friends. However, Atagualpa refused and later ended up throwing their books down. Immediately after, they got angry and said that these Indians were their enemy and we needed to fight. Spanish troops killed a large number of them and captured Atagualpa as a prisoner. Even though Spanish soldiers justified themselves for killing Indians, it may be considered to be cruel because they did so because Indians had different religions.

Through reading the journal of Christopher Columbus and the second reading assignment, I was able to know more about Columbus’s voyage across the Atlantic, where he got to meet with Indians and had some admiration to an extent, how Inca was destroyed by the Spanish troops for having a different religion and reasons why people really wanted to go explore for gold based on lies that Columbus spread.