Christopher Columbus Accounts His First Encounters With Native Americans

While each of the European nationalities had different viewpoints of the Indians, they shared common points of view on them as well. Each article, written at different time periods, focuses on different aspects of the Indians way of life. In the first article, “Christopher Columbus Recounts His First Encounter with Native People ,1493," he seemed to be quite intrigued by the Indians and their land. He notes how beautiful the mountains and fields are and how superb the land is for planting and building towns. It then goes onto talk about their way of living. He notices that the men and women live naked. Columbus says that the Native people are wonderfully timid and attributed that to why they don’t have any steel, iron, and weapons. The Natives were very friendly people, they would never say no. They’re always willing to help out their fellow people and be happy with whatever they got in return. He continues with the observations he made about the role of man and woman. He finds it strange that the woman do more work than the men. …show more content…
Finally, the article focuses on woman and how they are perceived in the Indian culture. First, they are viewed as equals to men, but women tend to be more loving and laborious than their husbands. They woman have to do to not only the cooking but also make sure it is presented in a satisfying way. And of course, they need wait until everyone else has eaten and then eat whatever is left. During the winter months, the woman becomes the man caretaker making sure he has warm and enough clothes to wear. Despite the woman doing all of these things and more the extent of the happiness is a simple smile. The English thought that the Indians should view their wives not as equals and lesser than men. Regardless of all of the work Indian women had to do, they were still happy and