Every elementary school child learns the story of the famous explorer Christopher Columbus who crossed the ocean in 1492 and discovered America. The children learn that he was a hero. Columbus even has an American holiday dedicated to him, the second Monday in October, to celebrate the anniversary of his arrival in the Americas. Columbus was born in 1451 in the Republic of Genoa, now northwest Italy. He eventually moved to Spain, where he convinced the Spanish monarchy to fund an expedition to find a new trade route to the Indies, what Europeans then called Asia. In 1492, he crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Spain with three ships: the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Niña. He landed on an island in the present-day Bahamas and established a colony there. He made a total of four voyages to the Caribbean and South America between 1492 and 1504. Columbus is widely credited with laying the foundation for European colonization of the Americas. One thing kids aren't taught in school is all the terrible things Columbus did on his voyages to the New World. Christopher Columbus was not a hero. Columbus never found a route to Asia, was not the first European to travel to the New World, and treated the natives of the places he explored horribly. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original EssayColumbus set sail on his first voyage to find a safe new route to China, India, Japan and the islands of spices, but I never found one. By the end of the 15th century, it was extremely difficult to reach Asia from Europe by land. Many Europeans wanted to travel to Asia because the region was said to be full of gold, silk and spices. It was difficult to avoid encountering hostile armies and the journey was long and difficult. The Portuguese had already solved this problem using the sea. They sailed south along the coast of West Africa and around the Cape of Good Hope. Columbus wanted to find another route to Asia by crossing the Atlantic to the west for a faster and safer journey. When Columbus set out in search of this new route, he ended up landing on an unknown island in the Bahamas that he called San Salvador. He believed he had succeeded and assumed he had reached an island far from China, but had landed in South America. Columbus called the indigenous peoples of the lands he explored “Indians” because he sincerely believed he had reached the Indies. For months, Columbus and his men continued their journey, visiting the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola. He believed that Cuba was mainland China and that Hispaniola could have been Japan. After establishing the colony of Villa de la Navidad in present-day Haiti, Columbus returned to Spain. He visited the Americas three times and never realized he was in the wrong place. Until his last day, he claimed to have reached Asia. Although most of the credit goes to him, Christopher Columbus was not the first European to set foot in America. Nordic explorer Leif Erikson is generally considered the first European to reach North America, approximately five hundred years before Columbus reached the Americas. The exact details of Leif Erikson's life remain unknown, but historians believe he was born in Iceland around 970 AD and raised in Greenland. Erikson sailed to Norway from Greenland around 1000 AD. There, King Olaf I of Tryggvason converted him from Norse paganism to Christianity. Olaf asked him to spread Christianity throughout theGreenland. One account of Erikson's life suggests that on the way back to Greenland, his ships drifted and ended up on the coast of North America, at a place he named Vinland. Another account writes that Erikson had heard of Vinland from another sailor named Bjarni Herjólfsson, who would be the first European to sight the eastern coast of North America. This account suggests that Erikson purposely sailed to North America and landed first in an icy, barren region he called Helluland, thought to be what is today the island of Baffin. Next, he traveled to an area he called Markland, which today would be central Labrador, Canada. Erikson left Markland and found Vinland and built houses there before returning to Greenland. For many years, the exact location of Vinland has been the subject of debate. In the 1960s, Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad and his wife Anne Stine discovered the remains of a Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, in the northern tip of the Newfoundland province of Canada. After a few years, the excavations turned what was largely fiction into reality. Not all historians agree that L'Anse aux Meadows is where Vinland was located, but the evidence there proves that the Vikings were the first Europeans to set foot in New World. One of the greatest controversies surrounding the life of Christopher Columbus lies in how he treated the indigenous people he encountered during his travels. Columbus first landed on an island in the Bahamas inhabited by natives of the Arawak tribe. When Columbus and his crew first landed, they were greeted with gifts. The Arawak people were very willing to trade with Europeans. He mistook their kindness for weakness and ignorance by forcibly taking away some of the natives to obtain information about the land. In exchange for funding his voyages, Columbus promised to bring gold and spices back to Spain. He was rewarded with ten percent of the profits, the governorship of the new lands, and a title of nobility. He used the natives to try to find gold and get rich. Columbus saw that the Arawaks were wearing small gold ornaments in their ears and took some of them aboard his ship as prisoners so that they could take them to the source of the gold. After sailing to Cuba and Hispaniola, he found pieces of gold in the rivers and received a gold mask from a local chief. This led Columbus to mistakenly believe that the New World contained deposits of gold. He will continue to use the natives to try to find gold throughout his journey. He returned to Spain after his first journey with native prisoners, but many of them died during the journey. Sailors left behind by Columbus at his fort, Villa de la Navidad, took women and children for sex and labor. On his next voyage, Columbus intended to obtain more slaves and find an abundance of gold. He traveled to Haiti and ordered everyone aged fourteen and over to collect a certain amount of gold every three months. They were given copper tokens to put around their necks when they collected the gold. Natives found without a token usually had their hands cut off and were left to bleed to death. After the Europeans realized there was no more gold to be found, they took the natives away as slaves. The natives worked so hard that thousands of them died within a few years. Columbus also forcibly converted the natives to Christianity. A.