ARU Columbus Impact on the Natives Discussion Reply
please respond to Jessica with 150 words
When Columbus arrived in the new world, he and his men encountered many different issues. These men had no idea of how they would affect the natives. Some of these issues included the difference in culture, the introduction of unfamiliar diseases to the natives and the destruction of the natives. As we know, every Native Tribe had their own set of languages and customs. No two tribes were the same. This of course caused the Europeans to not be able to communicate with the Natives, and vice versa. Because of the lack of communication, Columbus would have to use force in order for the Natives to understand, “This was to have enormous consequences; it led Columbus to take some of them aboard ship as prisoners because he insisted that they guide him to the source of the gold” (Zinn p. 3) This later caused tensions between the Natives and the later settlers along the way.
After the Europeans began to spend more time near the natives, their germs spread like wildfire. We know that Europeans most likely came into contact with various diseases back in Europe. The natives, were not immune to these at all, “The early chronicles of America are full of reports of horrendous epidemics and steep population declines, confirmed in many cases by recent quantitative analyses of Spanish tribute records and other sources” (Crosby p. 3). As these new diseases kept spreading through the native population, many were dying left and right. Only a few survived. Smallpox proved to be the most lethal of all the diseases.
The natives then suffered a lot at the hands of the Spanish and other Europeans. They were enslaved, and they were separated. The men were sent to work in the mines and the women were sent to work in the fields. The husbands and wives would see each other very rarely, and they stopped procreating because of their depression and suffering. “As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no mild to nurse them…Some mothers drowned their babies from sheer desperation” (Zinn p.6). The mercy killing of the native children shows just how miserable the natives came to be. They no longer were able to survive, and many mothers chose to save their children from that kind of suffering.
Sources:
Crosby,Alfred. “Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America”, 25 October 2023
Zinn,Howard. “Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress”, 25 October 2023
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