Christopher Columbus Hispaniola Analysis

Throughout the years of the European colonization of the Americas, there were many different experiences in settling these areas. In colonizing the “New World,” the Europeans faced numerous challenges in doing so; including little knowledge of the area they were pressing into, a lack of preparation and supplies, and conflicts with the people already living in these inhabited spaces. In the colonizers’ perspective, it was a large gamble and risk to develop their spheres of influences, or even settlements in those areas. While the incentive and motivations were quite evident among these people, there was also much anxiety associated with it. Would they have enough supplies and food? Would they get enough funding for these certain voyages? How …show more content…
Even in the first sentence of his letter, he said, “As I know you will be rejoiced at the glorious success that our Lord has given me in my voyage” (Columbus 1). Already, this voyage has been deemed like the Christian God has simply led Columbus ‘great destiny’ to “discover” this land that can be used. Divine intervention then, especially common for the Spanish, was used as a reason and motivator for many parts of conquering and colonizing lands. It was because of God’s grace that the New World was discovered allowing the Europeans to use its resources to their advantage. Suddenly, this large space, in their opinion, was a blank slate; a perfect place for spreading religion, gaining wealth and prosperity, and also placing its own citizens in new settlements. In regards to the Spanish, conversion of native people’s went hand-and-hand with this assumed destiny and good fortune from divinity. In his first-ever voyage to America, he stated this in his letter:
“I forbade it, and gave a thousand good and pretty things that I had to win their love and to induce them to become Christians, and to love and serve their Highnesses and the whole Castilian nation, and help to get for us things they have in abundance, which are necessary to us. (Columbus …show more content…
Throughout his letter, he remarked being treated like he and his men came from heaven; given gifts and hosted by the native people. He described them as “a hopelessly timid people” who fled from him and his crew often in the beginning. He also stated, “They have no iron, nor steel, nor weapons, nor are they fit for them...” (Columbus 2). At this point of the letter, Columbus was starting to discuss his observations of the people he encountered, and did his best to represent them as not a threat by any means; simple people, but yet, ingenious in other ways that could help aid the empire’s expansion and knowledge of the land. Columbus then, also mentioned in passing how he “…took by force some of the natives,” (Columbus 3), a sign that already the indigenous people were being treated as inferior, and as a lesser human than