He later wrote of this in his log: "They... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned.... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."
"As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts."
He concluded his report by asking for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage "as much gold as they need . . . and as many slaves as they ask."
A young priest, Bartolome de las Casas, who was there and participated in the conquest of Cuba wrote about the acts committed against the Indians. For a time he owned a plantation on which Indian slaves worked, but he gave that up and became a vehement critic of Spanish cruelty. Excerpts from his history books...
In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, ..........But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death. The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed. Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead. ...............By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island.
the above is a small and milder part of what was done to the Indians. If you the stomach to learn what the real actions of a man we still celebrate - do the research. You can start with this site, which quotes from de las Casas, the eye witness.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/Columbus_PeoplesHx.html
Scroll down in the link and get educated.
Added to all that = Columbus didn't even 'discover' America. Many were here before him.
I hope America matures enough one day to stop 'celebrating' Columbus.
I'm not always too sure about the testimonies of Internet "eyewitnesses."
Ridiculous. None of those "many" managed to bring the Western Hemisphere to the attention of the Eastern Hemisphere. Columbus did. That makes him the literal discoverer of America: there is half a world of difference between finding something and un-covering it.
And, like it or not, Columbus's discovery remains one of the most important achievements--arguably the most important achievement--by any individual in any possible history of the world, regardless of what kind of person he was, and regardless of whether you like any particular result of that achievement.
And is mild compared to what the Indians were doing to themselves. Quoting other eyewitnesses:
"Every day they sacrificed before our eyes three, four, or five Indians, whose hearts were offered to those idols, and whose blood was plastered on the walls. The feet, arms, and legs of their victims were cut off and eaten, just as we eat beef from the butcher's in our country. I even believe that they sold it in the tianguez or markets."[Emperor Montezuma's servants prepared for their master] "more than thirty dishes cooked in their native style ... I have heard that they used to cook him the flesh of young boys. But as he had such a variety of dishes, made of so many different ingredients, we could not tell whether a dish was of human flesh or anything else ... I know for certain, however, that after our Captain spoke against the sacrifice of human beings and the eating of their flesh, Montezuma ordered that it should no longer be served to him."
" ... The manner of their [that is, the Aztecs'] sacrifices: They strike open the wretched Indian's chest with flint knives and hastily tear out the palpitating heart which, with the blood, they present to the idols in whose name they have performed the sacrifice. Then they cut off the arms, thighs, and head, eating the arms and thighs at their ceremonial banquets. The head they hang up on a beam, and the body of the sacrificed man is not eaten but given to the beasts of prey."
"... The great market of Tenochtitlan, and its dealers in gold, silver, and precious stones, feather, cloaks, and embroidered goods, and male and female slaves who are also sold there. They bring as many slaves to be sold in that market as the Portuguese bring Negroes from Guinea. Some are brought there attached to long poles by means of collars round their necks to prevent them from escaping, but others are left loose."
"Among these were three [Algonquin] women, of whom the narrator was one, who had each a child of a few weeks or months old. At the first halt, their captors [the Iroquois] took the infants from them, tied them to wooden spits, placed them to die slowly before a fire, and feasted on them before the eyes of the agonized mothers, whose shrieks, supplications, and frantic efforts to break the cords that bound them were met with mockery and laughter ..."
Give me a break. He was a man of his time. You can't go back and judge someone 500 years ago by todays morality.