Every elementary school child is taught the story of the famous explorer Christopher Columbus who crossed the ocean in 1492 and discovered America. Children are taught that he was a hero. An American holiday is even dedicated to Christopher Columbus which takes place on the second Monday of October to celebrate the anniversary of his arrival in the Americas. Columbus was born in 1451 in the Republic of Genoa, which is now northwestern Italy. He eventually moved to Spain, where he convinced the Spanish monarchy to finance an expedition to find a new trade route to the Indies, which is what Europeans then called Asia. In 1492 he crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Spain with three ships: the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Niña. He landed on an island in what is now the Bahamas and established a settlement there. He made a total of four voyages to the Caribbean and South America in the years 1492 to 1504. Columbus is widely credited with laying the foundation for European colonization of the Americas. Something kids aren't taught in school is about all the terrible things Columbus did during his voyages to the New World. Christopher Columbus was not a hero. Columbus never found a route to Asia, was not the first European to travel to the New World, and treated the natives of the places he explored horribly. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Columbus set sail on his first voyage in search of a new and safe route to China, India, Japan, and the Spice Islands, but he never managed to find one. At the end of the 15th century it was extremely difficult to reach Asia from Europe by traveling overland. Many Europeans wanted to reach Asia as it was said to be rich in gold, silk and spices. It was difficult to avoid encountering hostile armies and the route was long and demanding. The Portuguese had already solved this problem by exploiting the sea. They sailed south along the coast of West Africa and around the Cape of Good Hope. Columbus wanted to find another way to Asia by sailing west across the Atlantic for a quicker and safer journey. When Columbus set out to find this new route, he ended up landing on an unknown island in the Bahamas that he called San Salvador. He believed he had succeeded and thought he had arrived on an outlying island of China, but he landed in South America. Columbus called the indigenous people of the lands he explored “Indians” because he truly believed he had reached the Indies. For months Columbus and his men continued their journey visiting the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola. He thought Cuba was mainland China and Hispaniola might have been Japan. After founding the Villa de la Navidad settlement in present-day Haiti, Columbus returned to Spain. He visited the Americas three more times and never realized he had sailed to the wrong place. Until his death he claimed to have reached Asia. Although much of the credit goes to him, Christopher Columbus was not the first European to set foot in the Americas. Norwegian explorer Leif Erikson is generally considered the first European to reach North America, some five hundred years before Columbus reached the Americas. The exact details of Leif Erikson's life remain unknown, but historians believe he was born in Iceland around 970 AD and raised in Greenland. Erikson sailed to Norway from Greenland around 1000 AD There, King Olaf I of Tryggvason converted him from Norse paganism to Christianity. Olaf commissioned him to spread Christianity in Greenland. One account of Erikson's life suggests that on the way back to Greenland, his ships drifted and ended up on the coast of NorthAmerica in a place he called Vinland. Another account writes that Erikson had heard about Vinland from another sailor named Bjarni Herjólfsson, who is thought to have been the first European to sight the east coast of North America. This account suggests that Erikson purposely sailed to North America and landed first in a frozen, barren region he called Helluland, thought to be what is now Baffin Island. He later went to a region he called Markland, believed to be what is now central Labrador, Canada. Erikson left Markland and found Vinland and built homes there before returning to Greenland. For many years there has been debate over the exact location of Vinland. In the 1960s, Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad and his wife Anne Stine discovered the remains of a Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, on the northernmost tip of the province of Newfoundland in Canada. After a few years, excavations helped make what was largely fiction a reality. Not all historians agree that L'Anse aux Meadows is where Vinland was located, but evidence shows that the Vikings were the first Europeans to set foot in the New World. One of the greatest controversies surrounding Christopher Columbus' life is how he treated the natives he encountered during his travels. Columbus landed for the first time on an island in the Bahamas inhabited by natives of the Arawak tribe. When Columbus and his crew first landed, they were greeted with gifts. The Arawak people were very willing to trade with Europeans. He took their kindness for weakness and ignorance by forcefully taking some natives to get information about the land. In exchange for financing his voyages, Columbus promised to bring gold and spices back to Spain. He was rewarded ten percent of the profits, the governorship of the new lands, and a peerage. He used the natives to try to find gold and gain wealth. Columbus saw that the Arawaks were wearing small gold ornaments in their ears and took some aboard his ship as prisoners so they could take them to the source of the gold. After sailing to Cuba and Hispaniola, he found pieces of gold in the rivers, and a local chief gave him a gold mask. This led Columbus to mistakenly believe that the New World contained gold deposits. He would continue to use the natives in an attempt to find gold for the remainder of his travels. He returned to Spain from his first voyage with native prisoners, but many of them died on the journey. The sailors that Columbus left in his fort, Villa de la Navidad, took women and children for sex and labor. On his next voyage, Columbus intended to obtain more slaves and find plenty of gold. He went to Haiti and ordered everyone aged fourteen and older to collect a certain amount of gold every three months. They were given copper tokens to put around their necks when they collected gold. Natives found without a token usually had their hands cut off and left to bleed to death. When the Europeans realized there was no more gold to be found, they took the natives as slaves. The natives worked so hard that thousands of them died within a few years. Columbus also forcibly converted the natives to Christianity. Another negative consequence of Columbus's expeditions to the New World was the introduction of diseases such as smallpox, measles, typhus, and influenza among the indigenous populations living there. Europeans had already been introduced to these diseases and had developed immunity against them. Although the Europeans did not intend for this to happen, these diseases decimated the Native population. Even though the Columbus controversy is becoming more and more known, many people still see him as a hero. The.