History Of American Holocaust: Columbus And The Conquest Of The New World
Kyle Jakubeck
8/18/14
AP US History
Dr. Dohle
American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World
Who was Christopher Columbus? Every educated person knows, he discovered America. Well according to history textbooks distributed at schools at least. Actually, America had been discovered by Native Americans thousands of years before. As a result of European colonization in the Americas after Columbus supposedly “founded America,” we lost the incredible variety of cultures and the impressive achievements Native Americans had developed throughout the millennia. When Columbus and a handful of Spanish sailors landed in the Caribbean, this was the beginning of “far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world” (pg. x), and cost more than a hundred million lives in five centuries. “To put this in a contemporary context, the ratio of native survivorship in the Americas following the European contact was less than half of what the human survivorship would be in the United States today if every single white person and every single black person died” (pg. x). …show more content…
This was not intentional, but it was, rather the start of “The American Holocaust.” The Native Americans, not being Christian and living off different standards than the Europeans, were automatically assumed as inferior. The Europeans forced them into slave labor, which killed off millions of them as they were treated like animals. Little did they know that along with these thought to be worthless people they were killing, they were also killing off many great traditions, cultures and
8/18/14
AP US History
Dr. Dohle
American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World
Who was Christopher Columbus? Every educated person knows, he discovered America. Well according to history textbooks distributed at schools at least. Actually, America had been discovered by Native Americans thousands of years before. As a result of European colonization in the Americas after Columbus supposedly “founded America,” we lost the incredible variety of cultures and the impressive achievements Native Americans had developed throughout the millennia. When Columbus and a handful of Spanish sailors landed in the Caribbean, this was the beginning of “far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world” (pg. x), and cost more than a hundred million lives in five centuries. “To put this in a contemporary context, the ratio of native survivorship in the Americas following the European contact was less than half of what the human survivorship would be in the United States today if every single white person and every single black person died” (pg. x). …show more content…
This was not intentional, but it was, rather the start of “The American Holocaust.” The Native Americans, not being Christian and living off different standards than the Europeans, were automatically assumed as inferior. The Europeans forced them into slave labor, which killed off millions of them as they were treated like animals. Little did they know that along with these thought to be worthless people they were killing, they were also killing off many great traditions, cultures and