{"id":6,"date":"2016-09-20T13:13:47","date_gmt":"2016-09-20T20:13:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/danitoro\/?p=6"},"modified":"2016-09-20T13:22:59","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T20:22:59","slug":"after-reading-the-voyage-of-christopher-columbus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/danitoro\/2016\/09\/20\/after-reading-the-voyage-of-christopher-columbus\/","title":{"rendered":"After Reading “The Voyage of Christopher Columbus”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading through Christopher’s entries, how the world looked like to him, his point of view on the natives, it was shocking to read through. I’ve always known a brief history of what had happened after he arrived, his diary entries bring a clear idea to how bias and Christopher Columbus was. Upon arrival as the natives come up to him and his crew, Christopher’s first few thoughts were associated with negative connotation such as how they appeared “to be very poor people in all respects,” (94). Reading through his however, Christopher describes his journey and his interactions with very little truth, almost “sugarcoating” behind what had happened.<\/p>\n

Through these passages, it seems like he had left out a lot of the terror, pain, and loss that had occurred as he was in the islands. As he sees the natives for the first time one of his thoughts were that “they must be good servants, and intelligent, for I see that they can quickly repeat everything said to them.” (94) Columbus did enslave a lot of natives, and they were treated with violence and brutality, but in these passages Columbus writes his thoughts as though he is doing a good thing for the natives, that he’s helping them. As he mentions how the natives in page 94, he says that through “Gods will” he will “take six of them” with him “for Your Majesties.”<\/p>\n

Clearly, you can’t just “take six of them” for someone else’s needs. He though doesn’t describe how the natives must have reacted through this, it’s dehumanizing. Another example is when he mentioned religion, though he doesn’t know if the natives do or do not have a religion, he immediately assumed they don’t since they “appear” to him “that they have no religion” and claims to covert them to Christianity.<\/p>\n

There is so much that had happened when Columbus landed on those Islands that he doesn’t fully mention, though perhaps in his mind he was doing certain actions for a good cause, in the end his actions were from his bias, selfishness, and his desires for gold.<\/p>\n