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Advanced Homework # 3 Christopher Columbus: Hero or Villain?

Instructions:
1. Read the background essay and documents
2. Answer the questions that follow each, including TACOS charts
3. Fill in the chart and answer questions at the end in preparation for our next Socratic Seminar
Background Essay:
Columbus led his three ships - the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria - out of the Spanish port of Palos
on August 3, 1492. His goal was to sail west until he reached Asia (the Indies) where the riches of gold,
pearls and spice awaited.
Once his journey had begun, Columbus benefited from calm seas and steady winds that pushed him
steadily westward. However, the trip was long, longer than anticipated by either Columbus or his crew.
In order to calm his crew's fears, Columbus kept two sets of logs: one showing the true distance traveled
each day and one showing a lesser distance. The first log was kept secret. The other log quieted the
crew's anxiety by under-reporting the true distance they had traveled from their homeland.
This deception only worked for a little while; by October 10 the crew's apprehension had increased to
the point of near mutiny. Columbus headed off disaster by promising his crew that if land was not
sighted in two days, they would return home. The next day land was discovered.
Columbus's journal of his first voyage to America has been lost. However, we do have an accurate
abridgment 1of the journal written by Bartolome de las Casas in the 1530s. Las Casas was an historian
and Columbus's biographer who had access to the original journal of the voyage (part of this abridged
journal is found in Document A).
After Columbus, many other European explorers arrived in the Americas. There were many benefits and
many drawbacks to the contact between Indians and Europeans between 1492 and 1673. Exploration
led to contact between people who had previously been unaware of each other's existence. This
exchange resulted in many benefits and drawbacks depending on one's point of view.
Contact with the Europeans introduced the Indians to a variety of livestock, many plants, and new
technology. One of the most important animals was the horse. As a result of this import, the Great
Plains Indians no longer had to hunt buffalo and game on foot. This gave them the freedom to travel
greater distances in a shorter period of time. Tribes from Minnesota and Missouri who had existed
primarily on nuts and small game moved west to the plains to hunt buffalo. The horse helped the
Indians to improve their diets, their hunting skills, and to make their lives a little easier. Later, cows, pigs,
chickens, and sheep were also used by the Indians.

abridgment = shortened version

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Many grains, such as wheat, rice, and barley along with citrus fruit trees, plants, and bananas were
brought from Europe. Indians adopted some of the European technology such as the plow. Various traps,
axe heads, knives, ice chisels, and muskets helped the Indians improve their hunting. As a result of this
new technology, the Indians in North America were able to get more furs and improve their trading
opportunities with the Europeans.
Contact with the New World introduced Europeans to a variety of new plants and animals. Gradually
these resources became more important to Europe than the treasures of silver and gold. Two of the
most important crops were corn and potatoes. Corn was brought to Africa and became a staple product
surviving where wheat and rice could not. This proved to be a mixed blessing since it helped the
population to grow and this in turn kept the slave trade profitable. Corn was also found to be useful as
food for animals, and this boosted Europe's supply of meat and dairy products. The potato proved to be
ideal for northern Europe's soil and climate. Potatoes became a staple food in Ireland and helped save
the Irish from starvation. Other crops such as beans, squash, tomatoes, and chili peppers provided
variety to European diets. Thousands of medicinal plants were sent to Europe as Indians shared their
knowledge of healing. Quinine, derived from a Peruvian bark, eased malaria. Turkeys were domesticated
by the Aztecs and became widespread in Europe. People in Europe, Asia, and Africa got plenty of new
goods from the Americas.
Some of the drawbacks of contact with the Europeans were disease, slavery, and looting of treasures
and cities. Many European conquistadors wanted to get as much wealth as possible from the New
World and convert the Indians to Christianity. The Spaniards sought gold more than anything else.
Explorers found much wealth in the New World. For instance, Spain became rich on the silver and gold
taken from the Aztecs and Incas. The Indians were often forced to work as slaves in order to mine the
precious metals. Coins minted in the Americas stimulated commerce in Europe. The Spaniards had the
advantages of steel weapons, gunpowder, guns, armor, as well as horses. One of the most daring and
scheming conquistadors was Hernando Cortes. In 1519, he invaded the Aztecs of Mexico and took their
Emperor, Montezuma prisoner. Cortes and his men took many Indian treasures and jewels.
In addition to a passion for gold, the Spanish savored sugar. The Europeans learned that sugarcane
flourished in the Caribbean climate. Many tropical forests were destroyed and replaced with sugar
plantations. They also found that the growing and selling of tobacco, a plant native to America, could
result in fortunes. Huge plantations were also established for growing tobacco and other plants. Labor
was needed for the plantations, so many Indians were forced to work in the fields.
They had no natural defenses against the diseases brought by the Europeans. Smallpox, typhus, measles,
diphtheria, and whooping cough devastated the Indians. Between 50 and 90 percent of the native
population died. To get the labor necessary to run the plantations, the Europeans turned to Africa for
the workers they needed. This trade of human beings started a triangle of cruelty. Slavery linked Europe
(slave dealers), Africa (slaves), and the Americas (where the labor was needed). Nearly 10 million slaves
reached the Americas and were forced to do backbreaking labor on the plantations. The slave-based
plantation system that started with sugar spread as crops of tobacco, rice, indigo, and cotton became
valuable sources of income as a result of contact between the Indians and Europeans.

Document A
These people in the Caribbean have no creed and they are not idolaters, but they are very gentle and do
not know what it is to be wicked, or to kill others, or to steal...and they are sure that we come from
Heaven....So your Highnesses should resolve to make them Christians, for I believe that if you begin, in a
little while you will achieve the conversion of a great number of peoples to our holy faith, with the
acquisition of great lordships and riches and all their inhabitants for Spain. For without doubt there is a
very great amount of gold in these lands....
The people of this island [Hispaniola], and of all the others that I have found and seen, or not seen, all go
naked, men and women, just as their mothers bring them forth; although some women cover a single
place with the leaf of a plant, or a cotton something which they make for that purpose. They have no
iron or steel, nor any weapons....They have no other weapons than the stems of reeds...on the end of
which they fix little sharpened stakes. Even these they dare not use....they are incurably timid....
They brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for
the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned. They do not bear arms,
and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of
ignorance. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.
Source: Christopher Columbus, Letter to the Spanish King and Queen
Pre-Analysis:
1. What does the word subjugate mean?

T
A
C
O
S

What is the title?

Who is the author?

Who is the audience?

Content: What is it about? (Summarize the text in 1-2 sentences)

Occasion: Why was it written?

Significance: Why do we care? What do we learn from it?

Document B
The principal thing which you must do is to take much care of the Indians, that no ill nor harm may be
done them, nor anything taken from them against their will, but rather that they be honored and feel
secure and so should have no cause to rebel.
Source: Columbus, Letter to his first deputy

T
A
C
O
S

What is the title?

Who is the author?

Who is the audience?

Content: What is it about? (Summarize the text in 1-2 sentences)

Occasion: Why was it written?

Significance: Why do we care? What do we learn from it?

Answer the following questions in complete sentences.

1. How did Columbus describe the American Indians he met in his letter to King Ferdinand and
Queen Isabella (Document A)?

2. How did Columbus tell his first deputy to treat the Indians (Document B)?

3. Why do you think Columbus gave his first deputy the instructions he did (Document B)?

4. Based on the information in Documents A and B, how do you think Columbus felt about the
American Indians?

Document C

Document D

Document E
Above all, it leaves out the fact that this encounter was inevitable. This is not simply to state the obvious:
that if Columbus hadn't set sail in 1492, some other European voyager would have made the trip soon
afterward. The key point is that whoever made the first crossing and whenever it occurred, the
consequences for the people of the Western Hemisphere would not have been much different. To
expect otherwise is to ask that history be rolled back long before 1492 and that its course be plotted
along other lines entirely. In particular, European civilization would have to be recast. What drove
Columbus westward was not just a search for a lucrative new trade route to Asia. It is too simplistic to
picture him and the other European explorers as mere money- grubbers, early real-estate developers
who lucked into an entire continent to subdivide. Money was obviously important to them, but they
were also animated by a certain restlessness and curiosity. The voyage into the unknown, after all, had
been part of European culture since the days of Odysseus. To some degree this questing instinct was
bound up with religious zeal: look, for example, at the search for the Holy Grail and the history of the
Crusades. On a more mundane level, it was often a social necessity: families were large, houses were
small, land was scarce, and so young people were encouraged to leave home and seek their fortune.
Missionaries set out to preach the Gospel. Merchants set out to find new goods and new markets to sell
them in. Armies sometimes led this process, sometimes followed. The spread of Western civilization was
built on intrusion.
Source: Kenneth Auchincloss, When Worlds Collide Newsweek Magazine, Fall/Winter 1991

T
A
C
O
S

What is the title?

Who is the author?

Who is the audience?

Content: What is it about? (Summarize the text in 1-2 sentences)

Occasion: Why was it written?

Significance: Why do we care? What do we learn from it?

1. Why does Auchincloss say this encounter was inevitable?

Document F
The charge of genocide is largely sustained by figures showing the precipitous decline of the Indian
population. Although scholars debate the exact numbers, in Alvin Josephy's estimate, the Indian
population fell from between fifteen and twenty million when the white man first arrived to a fraction of
that 150 years later. Undoubtedly the Indians perished in great numbers. Yet although European
enslavement of Indians and the Spanish forced labor system extracted a heavy toll in lives, the vast
majority of Indian casualties occurred not as a result of hard labor or deliberate destruction but because
of contagious diseases that the Europeans transmitted to the Indians. The spread of infection and
unhealthy patterns of behavior was also reciprocal. From the Indians the Europeans contracted syphilis.
The Indians also taught the white man about tobacco and cocaine, which would extract an incalculable
human toll over the next several centuries. The Europeans, for their part, gave the Indians measles and
smallpox. (Recent research has shown that tuberculosis predated the European arrival in the new world.)
Since the Indians had not developed any resistance or immunity to these unfamiliar ailments, they
perished in catastrophic numbers.
Source: The Crimes of Christopher Columbus Dinesh D'Souza
Pre-Analysis:
1. What is a genocide?
2. What does perish mean?

T
A
C
O
S

What is the title?

Who is the author?

Who is the audience?

Content: What is it about? (Summarize the text in 1-2 sentences)

Occasion: Why was it written?

Significance: Why do we care? What do we learn from it?

Instructions: Using Documents A-F, find arguments to support the two sides of our Socratic Seminar. Fill
in both tables (one for each side of the argument)! An example has been provided for you in the first
line of the first table.
Was Christopher Columbus a hero or a villain?
1. Columbus was a hero
Document
Letter
A

Supports this argument because .

2. Columbus was a villain

Document
Letter

Supports this argument because .

Your Opinion:
Was Columbus a hero or a villain? Answer the question in a paragraph, using at least 3 of the
documents to support your answer.

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