Christopher Columbus; Hero or Villain?

Christopher Columbus was a man known for his accomplishments with being one of the first to land in the Indies. After that, there was a day named after him and his accomplishment, but while being the first to land, he was also the first to conquer it as well. When conquering the land, he did horrible people to the natives there. So this leads to the question; is Christopher Columbus a hero or a villain?

When he made his first voyage and returned to Spain, he was seen as a hero. People found him to be a legend because he was the first to truly discover America and the people who inhabited it.  There were celebrations time after time when he went on his four voyages. Three centuries after the discovery, the Society of St. Tammany organized a ceremony in New York City to honor Christopher Columbus and the first landing. Then, on October 12, 1866, Italian-Americans in New York organized a ceremony about the discovery of America. Three years after, Italian-Americans in San Francisco organized a similar celebration and called it Columbus Day. People have been honoring him for the past six centuries for his discovery.

There is a completely different side to Columbus that, apparently, the people who came up with Columbus Day didn’t know. There was an evil part of the story as well. On his second voyage to the Indies, he brought soldiers carrying swords and other weaponry. On this voyage, he began his conquest to take over the Indies and do it even if it meant harming the natives if they got in his way. Columbus even wrote in his journal that he took some of the natives by force so that they might give him information. Off the bat, he shows signs of unnecessary aggression. Through the rest of his voyages there, the Indians were now becoming slaves to Columbus and the Spaniards and those who resisted were brutally murdered. In fact, a lot of the slaves died on the ship while travelling back to Spain.

Columbus’ first voyage was all about the discovery and he was honored and praised for it, but the last three voyages were all about conquering the Indies and enslaving or killing the natives. So, based on how he has been praised in the past, you could call him a hero, but from his final voyages, you could easily call him a villain. It’s hard to call him either. He is still a pioneer of America, but he shouldn’t be called a hero. He is praised too much as he did bad as well as good. To come to some sort of conclusion, he was in between both hero and villain. He was a neutral being.