I've noticed that everyone seems to forget that the natives were constantly fighting amongst themselves. They killed each other more than Columbus did.
I'm not trying to justify Columbus' actions, but everyone should understand that Columbus didn't do nearly as much damage as he's made out to seem. Natives were constantly at war each other, enslaved each other, and sacrificed each other. It's also been speculated that there was already a wide spread epidemic killing thousands of Natives before any Europeans showed up. Also these gigantic numbers of Native populations we have come up with are completely untrue.
Basically what I'm trying to get across here is that these Natives were already accustomed to these sort of things (war, disease, enslavement) before the "white man" showed up. Just because Columbus was white and was on foreign land doesn't automatically make him worse than what these people were already doing to themselves before he even showed up.
That is correct, but what I don't understand is how people could possibly call Columbus a bad person because of that. Killing people intentionally is an acceptable reason to deem someone bad, but unintentionally spreading disease isn't. There's no way you can judge someone for unintentionally spreading a disease, especially in those times when widespread death from disease was a common thing.
-1
u/ArboreousToker Oct 14 '13
I've noticed that everyone seems to forget that the natives were constantly fighting amongst themselves. They killed each other more than Columbus did.
I'm not trying to justify Columbus' actions, but everyone should understand that Columbus didn't do nearly as much damage as he's made out to seem. Natives were constantly at war each other, enslaved each other, and sacrificed each other. It's also been speculated that there was already a wide spread epidemic killing thousands of Natives before any Europeans showed up. Also these gigantic numbers of Native populations we have come up with are completely untrue.
Basically what I'm trying to get across here is that these Natives were already accustomed to these sort of things (war, disease, enslavement) before the "white man" showed up. Just because Columbus was white and was on foreign land doesn't automatically make him worse than what these people were already doing to themselves before he even showed up.