Why Is Christopher Columbus Cruel

The Spaniards were beyond cruel, they were barbarous. Columbus and his men committed countless inhumane acts to torture and destroy the Native Americans. One aggression committed by Columbus was he would cut off the natives’ arms, noses or ears when “even a minor offense” (Loewen 17) was committed. He would demand the “natives to find a certain amount of gold within a certain period of time” (Zinn 12-13). “If they did not meet their quota, their arms were hacked off” (Zinn 13). The victim would be “sent back to his village as living evidence of the brutality the Spaniards were capable of” (Loewen 17). Another horrifying and graphic act the Spaniards committed is they would hang Native Americans in groups of thirteen on gallows. The “victim’s feet almost touched the ground” (Las Casas 10). The Spaniards would “set burning wood at their feet” (Las Casas 10), which “burned them alive” (Las Casas 10). The Spaniards would also attach “straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and set them afire” (Las Casas 10). …show more content…
Columbus was responsible for the deaths of millions of Native American men, women, and children. Babies were taken from their mothers. The Spaniards would grasp the baby by their legs and throw “them headfirst against the crags” (Las Casas 9). Other infants would be thrown “into the rivers” (Las Casas 9). 500 Indians were selected to be sent to Spain since Columbus didn’t have enough gold to “impress the King and Queen and his Spanish financiers” (Zinn 13). 200 of those 500 Indians died “on the voyage across the Atlantic...of cold, of sickness” (Zinn 13). Men and women were forced into hard labor which caused great sickness, starvation, and