Colonial Expedition's Effect On The Indigenous People

Colonial Era During colonial times, people went out to explore and conquer new land. In history we often only get to see one side of the story, and do not get a chance to see the bad side of things. For example, many people view Christopher Columbus as a great hero who discovered the Americas and showed the native people new things. In reality Columbus's expedition hurt the indigenous people more than helped. Once the explorers got to the new land they saw it as an economic potential, a way to make money off the native people. This would be an easy task at first because of the technological advances and the superiority of these new people. The Europeans would use the natives as slaves to perform a variety of tasks. For example, they would be sold and traded to help build
their new colonies, and to cultivate tobacco. Christopher Columbus’s essentially found this new world, enslaved the people who lived there, and took their land.
He then used them to mine gold and others resources for economic gain. People saw him doing this and wanted in, so more and more Europeans began using natives as slaves to get rich. “....slavery developed quickly into a regular institution, into the normal labor relation of blacks to whites in the New World. With it developed that special racial feeling—whether hatred, or contempt, or pity, or patronization—that accompanied the inferior position of blacks in America for the next 350 years —that combination of inferior status and derogatory thought we call racism.” (Zinn 24). As the growing need in North America for labor became evident, the first enslaved Africans were brought to Jamestown, VA in 1619. They began bringing African slaves over and using them for forced labor. The progression of the slave trade increased gradually and by 1800, some estimates had 50 million Africans seized or killed by the European slave trade. Many of these same estimates calculate that only about 10 million Africans survived the horrors of the Middle Passage to the New World. Not only did Christopher Columbus essentially begin the use of slaves in the Americas, he brought disease. The deadliest of
them was smallpox. This was a European disease and something the indigenous people of the Americas have never come into contact with. As a result, millions of natives died too smallpox, and wiped out many populations of the natives. “If you were a colonist, you knew that your technology was superior to the Indians'. You knew that you were civilized, and they were savages... But your superior technology had proved insufficient to extract anything. The Indians, keeping to themselves, laughed at your superior methods and lived from the land more abundantly and with less labor than you did... And when your own people started deserting in order to live with them, it was too much... So you killed the Indians, tortured them, burned their villages, burned their cornfields. It proved your superiority, in spite of your failures. And you gave similar treatment to any of your own people who succumbed to their savage ways of life. But you still did not grow much corn…” (Zinn 25). The Europeans were somewhat jealous of the natives and to prove their superiority they would do horrible things to the natives. It shows all the horrible things the Europeans did to the natives, and how the natives were just trying to keep to themselves. In history Christopher Columbus is portrayed as a hero and someone who discovered a whole new world. But people rarely notice the other side of the story and realized what it was like on the receiving end of things. They do not get see all the horrible things the natives had to endure. In history the victors get to write the history from their perspective and would never mention the horrible things that might have happened to the others. History is all about perspective, it is all about what lens you look through.