The Europeans also noticed bits of gold the natives wore for adornment. Columbus and his men continued their journey, visiting the islands of Cuba which he thought was mainland China and Hispaniola now Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which Columbus thought might be Japan and meeting with the leaders of the native population.
During this time, the Santa Maria was wrecked on a reef off the coast of Hispaniola. With the help of some islanders, Columbus' men salvaged what they could and built the settlement Villa de la Navidad "Christmas Town" with lumber from the ship. Thirty-nine men stayed behind to occupy the settlement. Convinced his exploration had reached Asia, he set sail for home with the two remaining ships. Returning to Spain in , Columbus gave a glowing, somewhat exaggerated report and was warmly received by the royal court.
In , Columbus took to the seas on his second expedition and explored more islands in the Caribbean Ocean. Upon arrival at Hispaniola, Columbus and his crew discovered the Navidad settlement had been destroyed with all the sailors massacred. Spurning the wishes of the local queen, who found slavery offensive, Columbus established a forced labor policy over the native population to rebuild the settlement and explore for gold, believing it would prove to be profitable.
His efforts produced small amounts of gold and great hatred among the native population. Before returning to Spain, Columbus left his brothers Bartholomew and Diego to govern the settlement on Hispaniola and sailed briefly around the larger Caribbean islands further convincing himself he had discovered the outer islands of China. It wasn't until his third voyage that Columbus actually reached the mainland, exploring the Orinoco River in present-day Venezuela.
Unfortunately, conditions at the Hispaniola settlement had deteriorated to the point of near-mutiny, with settlers claiming they had been misled by Columbus' claims of riches and complaining about the poor management of his brothers.
The Spanish Crown sent a royal official who arrested Columbus and stripped him of his authority. He returned to Spain in chains to face the royal court. The charges were later dropped, but Columbus lost his titles as governor of the Indies and, for a time, much of the riches made during his voyages. After convincing King Ferdinand that one more voyage would bring the abundant riches promised, Columbus went on what would be his last voyage in , traveling along the eastern coast of Central America in an unsuccessful search for a route to the Indian Ocean.
A storm wrecked one of his ships, stranding the captain and his sailors on the island of Cuba. During this time, local islanders, tired of the Spaniards' poor treatment and obsession with gold, refused to give them food. In a spark of inspiration, Columbus consulted an almanac and devised a plan to "punish" the islanders by taking away the moon.
On February 29, , a lunar eclipse alarmed the natives enough to re-establish trade with the Spaniards. A rescue party finally arrived, sent by the royal governor of Hispaniola in July, and Columbus and his men were taken back to Spain in November of In the two remaining years of his life following his last voyage to the Americas, Columbus struggled to recover his lost titles.
Although he did regain some of his riches in May , his titles were never returned. Columbus probably died of severe arthritis following an infection on May 20, , still believing he had discovered a shorter route to Asia. Columbus has been credited for opening up the Americas to European colonization - as well as blamed for the destruction of the native peoples of the islands he explored. However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration and exploitation on the American continents.
The Columbian Exchange transferred people, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an American food staple. African coffee and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin America, while American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced into European diets.
Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy —he is remembered as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually devastate the native populations he and his fellow explorers encountered.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Columbus Day is a U. It was unofficially celebrated in a number of cities and states as early as the 18th century, but did not become a More than years after he "discovered" the New World—kicking off centuries of exploration and colonization of the Americas—Christopher Columbus is honored with a federal holiday on the second Monday of every October.
However, as historians have continued to dig into the life Christopher Columbus has long been exalted as a heroic figure in American history: the first explorer to establish a European presence in the New World. Americans have celebrated his arrival as far back as , the th anniversary of his landing. But it would take almost Forget those myths perpetuated by everyone from Washington Irving to Bugs Bunny.
There was no need for Columbus to debunk the flat-earthers—the ancient Greeks had already done so. As early as the sixth century B. In search of fame and fortune, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan c. En route he discovered what is now known as the Strait of Magellan and became the The story of North American exploration spans an entire millennium and involves a wide array of European powers and uniquely American characters.
A decade later, he was serving as governor of the eastern province of Hispaniola when he decided to explore a nearby island, which became John Cabot or Giovanni Caboto, as he was known in Italian was an Italian explorer and navigator who may have developed the idea of sailing westward to reach the riches of Asia while working for a Venetian merchant.
Though the exact details of his life and expeditions are the According to the U. National Park Service, "the land bridge played a vital role in the spread of plant and animal life between the continents. Many species of animals - the woolly mammoth, mastodon, scimitar cat, Arctic camel, brown bear, moose, muskox, and horse — to name a few — moved from one continent to the other across the Bering land bridge.
Birds, fish, and marine mammals established migration patterns that continue to this day. And archaeologists say that humans followed, in a never-ending hunt for food, water and shelter. Once here, humans dispersed all across North and eventually Central and South America. Up until the s, these first Americans had a name: the Clovis peoples.
They get their name from an ancient settlement discovered near Clovis, New Mexico, dated to over 11, years ago. And DNA suggests they are the direct ancestors of nearly 80 percent of all indigenous people in the Americas.
But there's more. Today, it's widely believed that before the Clovis people, there were others, and as Bawaya says, "they haven't really been identified. We call them, for lack of a better name, the Pre-Clovis people. And to make things more complicated, recent discoveries are threatening to push back the arrival of humans in North America even further back in time.
Perhaps as far back as 20, years or more. But the science on this is far from settled. So for now, the Clovis and the Pre-Clovis peoples, long disappeared but still existent in the genetic code of nearly all native Americans, deserve the credit for discovering America.
But those people arrived on the western coast. What about arrivals from the east? Was Columbus the first European to glimpse the untamed, verdant paradise that America must have been centuries ago? There is proof that Europeans visited what is now Canada about years before Columbus set sail.
They were Vikings, and evidence of their presence can be found on the Canadian island of Newfoundland at a place called l'Anse Aux Meadows. Today the area is barren, but a thousand years ago there were trees everywhere and the area likely was used as winter stopover point, where Vikings repaired their boats and sat out bad weather.
It's not quite clear if the area was a permanent settlement, but it is clear that the expansion-minded Norsemen were here long before Columbus. And to add one fascinating wrinkle to the story of America's discover, consider the Sweet Potato.
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