Christopher Columbus s The New World - 1619 Words

The Federal holiday of ‘Christopher Columbus Day’ is celebrated on the second Monday of October because of Columbus’s ‘discoveries’ of the Americas in the New World. What most people do not know is that Christopher Columbus’s intentions were only for the betterment of himself. Columbus was a devout Catholic and could have been looking to spread the word of God to the ‘Indies’, his main goal was to find a water route from Europe to the West Indies. How did Christopher Columbus’s motives impact the way he and other conquistadors viewed and treated the Indians? Columbus s desire for kind of wealth, especially gold in the New World strongly impacted the way he looked upon them. He saw that the Indians practiced no religion that he had seen†¦show more content†¦Columbus was amazed at how easy it was to trade with the Natives, in some scenarios he would not even have to trade with the Natives, in some scenarios he would n ot even have to trade the Natives would give him gold and other jewelry out of courtesy. â€Å"This day, he says, Martin Alonso Pinzon, because of greed and without the permission and will of the Admiral, departed with the caravel Pinta, thinking that an Indian whom the Admiral had ordered put on that caravel was going to give him much gold.† Columbus’s colleague, Pinzon was foolish in the eyes of Christopher, Pinzon, already had wealth secured for him by the Spanish Nobility. Christopher Columbus throughout various islands in search of sources of wealth, when he would come upon a native, Columbus would ask if there was any gold, he was told to keep going south. Columbus was sent by the Spanish nobility to find gold, if he could not complete his mission there was to be consequences. The natives in his mind should have been used to help him find the gold that they promised them was there to find. What Columbus did not know is that the gold they first took from the Nativ es was from many the findings of many generations. â€Å"So he ordered all Indians from the age of fourteen up, to collect a fixed amount of gold every three months. Each person who delivered his tribute of gold was given a copper