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In Reply to: Re: Renaissance Humanism and Manifest Destiny? posted by Shane Courtland on February 10, 1999 at 19:46:08:

I definitely agree with both of you in that the Renaissance was a time of exploration and discovery and that whenever anyone was discovering "new land" the individuals living there were forced into vile submissions of their own cultures. Many cultures lost their identity when they were forced to convert or placed into slavery. In high school English we once discussed whether or not Columbus should be considered a hero or not, in the beginning I thought that he was a hero, afterall I've been celebrating Columbus' success since gradeschool but it came to my attention that Columbus wasn't exactly a "hero" or even someone to admire. Sure he went on a bold adventure to discover lands previously unknown lands, but once he was there he basically tortured native peoples for all the riches that they could relinquish to him. I'd always previously wondered why native americans were against Columbus, but now I know. He went into a land (this is from some of the reading that I did in high school) and he made each of the natives, women, men, and children pay him a set level of gold, when the natives couldn't pay he had them hunted down, the soldiers would cut of the natives' hands and feet if they couldn't come up with the payment. Little did Columbus know that the land he'd found wasn't all that rich in gold, after a short period of time the natives had mined all of the gold available, they just couldn't come up with the necessary payments. Columbus wasn't very open-minded about this, he thought that the gold could be had at any time, the natives would just have to try harder and when they couldn't make their payments he tortured and killed. The Renaissance was a time of discovery but also a time of cruelty, it is now my opinion that Columbus was indeed no hero but merely a murderer of men, women, children, and basically culture of many people.

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: I definitely agree with both of you in that the Renaissance was a time of exploration and discovery and that whenever anyone was discovering "new land" the individuals living there were forced into vile submissions of their own cultures. Many cultures lost their identity when they were forced to convert or placed into slavery. In high school English we once discussed whether or not Columbus should be considered a hero or not, in the beginning I thought that he was a hero, afterall I've been celebrating Columbus' success since gradeschool but it came to my attention that Columbus wasn't exactly a "hero" or even someone to admire. Sure he went on a bold adventure to discover lands previously unknown lands, but once he was there he basically tortured native peoples for all the riches that they could relinquish to him. I'd always previously wondered why native americans were against Columbus, but now I know. He went into a land (this is from some of the reading that I did in high school) and he made each of the natives, women, men, and children pay him a set level of gold, when the natives couldn't pay he had them hunted down, the soldiers would cut of the natives' hands and feet if they couldn't come up with the payment. Little did Columbus know that the land he'd found wasn't all that rich in gold, after a short period of time the natives had mined all of the gold available, they just couldn't come up with the necessary payments. Columbus wasn't very open-minded about this, he thought that the gold could be had at any time, the natives would just have to try harder and when they couldn't make their payments he tortured and killed. The Renaissance was a time of discovery but also a time of cruelty, it is now my opinion that Columbus was indeed no hero but merely a murderer of men, women, children, and basically culture of many people.

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