Zinn

In the article “Columbus, the Indians, and Human progress”, by Howard Zinn, Christopher Columbus is emphasized as this victorious explorer who discovered America. History shouldn’t focus all the attention on the glorious aspects of wars and the courageous people who truly made a difference. People like to focus their attention on who won the battle or the war. What we really aren’t focusing on are the people that were slaughtered or people that also tried to make a difference but weren’t as well known as Christopher Columbus. Christopher Columbus was the one who first “discovered” the Americas, but I all actuality all he contributed to was the killing of thousands of people. There is no reason why his encounter with the Arawak Indians should be ignored.
In 1492 Columbus supposedly found the Americas after trying to make a voyage to Asia. Columbus was in search of gold and apparently he wanted nothing to stop him in his path. Once his ship reached the Americas he saw the Indians wearing gold earrings. Columbus could have easily searched the land himself for the gold but instead he took the Arawaks as prisoners and as things got out of hand, one by one the Arawks were murdered. Soon enough they were taken as prisoners and were being sold as slaves. The entire Arawak tribe was killed all for the love of gold and Christopher Columbus’s greed. Yet history doesn’t tell the story in such a manner. How the history books are written today, the story of the Arawak Indians would be considered such a minuscule story considering they are not credited for being the ones who truly found the Americas first.
I agree with Zinn’s argument and I feel that so many issues and stories are covered up in history all because someone feels it may not be important to know or learn. The Arawak Indians didn’t even get credit for living on the land first. Christopher Columbus took all the credit just because he didn’t want to disappoint his king and queen because they funded his expeditions. Reading like this make me upset when people succumb to genocide all because of wealth, greed, or power. When will people learn that money or power is not worth taking someone’s life? Even though history puts more emphasis on such wars and powerful movements, we still should not forget about the people who made somewhat of a difference and didn’t sit around waiting for change.