Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress When Columbus first completed the journey across the Atlantic Ocean, he landed in what is now the Bahama Islands, being met be Arawak men in women who marveled by the sight of a white man. The Arawak ha an unrivaled sense of hospitality compared to the Europeans. They believed in sharing everything among the people of the tribe. Columbus, however, only cared about the small amount of gold that he saw on their ears, as that was why he was sent to what he thought was India. After seeing the gold he took some of the Indians aboard his ship to attempt to find more gold. Columbus guilt a fort for some of his crew to stay behind in, while he returned to Europe with the good news. Columbus exaggerated in his report to the King and Queen so he was met with seventeen ships and over twelve hundred men. When he returned to the Arawak he captured fifteen hundred Indians and brought back five hundred to Spain. Those who were not captured were required to mine massive quantities of gold or they would be killed. The amount of gold required was impossible for them to acquire so in two years, half of the original 250,000 were dead. Similar stories could be told about the Aztecs, Incas, and Indians of the eastern coast of North America, as they were all conquered in the same way. Indians were, at first, treated with respect, but then settlers took advantage of them to steal their resources and land. As a result wars occurred between the settlers and the natives, with a large number of natives also dying from the diseases that the Europeans brought with them. Large numbers of the tribes of America were wiped out as the settlers felt that they were inferior. In reality, their society was advancing at approximately the same timeline that the Europeans did, transitioning from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to setting up towns and villages. The Europeans, however, merely took advantage of a defenseless foe and conquered them with superior weaponry. Zinn’s viewpoint on telling history is contrary to the normal ideology in that he believes that history should be told not by the victor, but by disadvantaged. Zinn believes that telling the history through the eyes of the loser. He does not do this to sympathize with them, but to allow a better understanding of the material. He mentions that even when history is told accurately and all the facts are told, it is often still misleading because the authors merely skim over some parts and dwell on others for much longer periods of time. Even if an author mentions the cruelty of what Columbus did, it is important that they do not wash out the results with what they deem more important. Zinn also presents the history from a more personal point of view, using pronouns such as you or I. Zinn also emphasizes the importance of reading the material from the closest possible perspective, offering many passages from primary sources. I enjoyed Zinn’s narrative of the history as it provided a more personal and opinionated side of the history than other authors do. Zinn uses personal pronouns to truly tell the story from his point of view as opposed to the conventional method. The facts that I focused on most were the primary sources as they showed the language that was used at the time, as opposed to paraphrasing the documents as is done normally. I also focused on the section near the end where Zinn proves that the Indians were just as civilized as the Europeans were, with their own systems of living. They developed a written language, laws, poetry, and even kept history all while using a more complicated vocabulary than the Europeans did. They also developed a system of customs that was vastly different than the traditional European ones. Women were in charge of the villages while men hunted and fished, had control of the wars, and were seen as equals to men instead of being submissive to men as in European society. While the chapter was not as easy to follow as other sources, it provided an appreciated perspective that persuaded me.