Photo by daryl_mitchell
Christopher Columbus was an Italian colonizer, navigator, and explorer. He worked under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, and completed 4 voyages across the Atlantic Ocean. On October 12th, 1492, Columbus landed on a small island in the Bahamas. At first he didn’t know that it was a continent previously unknown to Europeans, but soon he discovered the inhabitants and called them Indians, because he thought that he reached East India, where he had set out for.
Long before Christopher Columbus stumbled upon the American continent, there were people living in North America later known as American Indians. The American Indians, or the Native American people, had been living in North America for many years before the continent was discovered by Europeans. It was estimated that there were more than 10 million Native Americans already living in North America when Europeans arrived. The Native Americans had been living in North America far longer than most people actually think.
The documentation of their presence goes back to around 150.000 BC. That was the period when the Sandia Indians were first documented on the American continent. However, it is most likely that American Indians were on the American continent long before the actual documentation suggests. The Native American people had many languages. About 400 different languages were spoken in what is today northern Mexico, Canada, and the United States. At least 90 separate languages were spoken in one area, California.
Some of those languages were similar like Portuguese and Spanish, while others were dissimilar like German and Italian. When people from Europe came in North America things became far more different. During first contacts the Native Americans thought that these new arrivals are interesting and intriguing and they almost worshipped white men from Europe. However, over time, Native Americans started to realize that the people from Europe were cruel and greedy as well as very materialistic and violent.
Soon the Native Americans started to despise the people from Europe and hate the greedy and cruelness they had brought to their land. These new settlers from Europe did bring hate and greed but also a lot of diseases which the Native American people had never faced before. Since the Native Americans had no resistance to these new diseases, many of them were killed by them across the continent. Over the time, the plight of the American Indians grew worse each day.
Europeans forced them to leave their lands and pushed them further and further west. Europeans also promised many things to the Native Americans, but those promises were never kept. The Native Americans and Europeans had many conflicts which has arose and ended up starting the Indian Wars. During that period, there were wars, but there were also many massacres in which many of American Indians lost their lives.
The American Indians were soon left with some small reservations for their people. This was a huge difference from when the continent had been home of American Indians. The history of the Native Americans is a tragedy, and for that reason it is important to understand and acknowledge the history not only that the past can be solved, but also that in the future the same mistakes will not happen again.
