He forced most of the people he captured to collect gold for him, or die, and then, because he didn’t actually have the means to feed the people he enslaved, he forced them to live on grass. Most of them starved to death.
There are accounts of slavers beheading their exhausted slaves rather than go through the effort of releasing them from the chain around their neck.
No, Columbus was a fucking monster, but Italian Americans of the late 1800s to Early 20th century wanted a “hero” so that the racist assholes would stop being racist toward them. So they appropriated Columbus as an Italian and whitewashed his crimes against humanity.
Columbus was a slave trader up and down the African coastline before he was sponsored to make his voyage in 1492.
He then enslaved the natives. It was his first response to meeting them. That included child sex slaves. This is an account from Columbus himself talking about how 9 and 10 year old girls were “in high demand”
He forced most of the people he captured to collect gold for him, or die, and then, because he didn’t actually have the means to feed the people he enslaved, he forced them to live on grass. Most of them starved to death.
There are accounts of slavers beheading their exhausted slaves rather than go through the effort of releasing them from the chain around their neck.
No, Columbus was a fucking monster, but Italian Americans of the late 1800s to Early 20th century wanted a “hero” so that the racist assholes would stop being racist toward them. So they appropriated Columbus as an Italian and whitewashed his crimes against humanity.