Chapter 1 Summary for a People History of the United States
Francheska Rosado Chapter 1 , A people’s History of the United States Christopher Columbus came thinking he found Asia when in fact all he found was the Americas. The ship they were in was called Saint Maria. The first place they landed was Cuba. They were in search for gold mostly, which Columbus promised the king and queen in Spain. He took the Arawaks Indians as slaves when it was hard for him to find gold. When he arrived in Haiti he created the first military base called Navidad which means charismas.
Columbus then traveled to the Hispaniola and his thoughts was he arrived in China. He described the Indians as naive and willing to share. Indians did not believe in marriage. To them people may choose who are their mates and if they do not want to be with them they are allowed to leave their companion. The women are treated with respect there’s no whose more important among the Indians. All are generous and they do not believe in what’s called money that many greed for. They care about the nature and the environment. They are willing to trade and share.
In despite of that, tribes still have conflicts and battles between them , but it accords when its really important. As well as men fighting women do their share too. Their casualties are small meaning they rarely fight with each other. Christopher Columbus was so blinded from the rewards of the Spanish king and queen proposed to him that he enslaved and mass murder natives due to his ignorance. As time went by, Spaniard made natives work in mines for six to eight months. Mainly men worked in the mines. Women were overworked in the soil fields by farming.
Mates did not see each other for eight months. But when they did they were overly exhausted. They try to breed but it was impossible for the babies to stay alive because women were not able to produce milk and was to exhausted to nurse their newborns. In addition, Spaniards used Indians to test their blade. Test their blade? You ask, well for fun and humor they will behead natives for their enjoyment. Also, Spaniards rode them as if they were their horse when the Spaniards were tired. Natives were humiliated and dehumanized.
Spaniards did not see the huge genocide that was going on , they just saw the land they was stealing from the natives and the money they were getting out of it. Time past and more and more settled in what now is called the United States. The Englishmen have settled near the east coast when coming to the Americas. English settlements kept growing so they needed to wipe out the natives out to have the land. “Not able to enslave the Indians, and not able to live with them, the English decided to exterminate them” (page, 19). The Indians learned that Europeans were and will always be stronger than them.
They learned that European weapons will always be more powerful then whatever they made. Europeans had guns, Indians had spares. Europeans were devious and trick Indians to turn to each other. Tribes were tricked by these masterminds and started conflicted with each other and battles. The Europeans had mass murdered the native Americans with no sympathy. The native Americans could not do anything about it so they had to listen to the European due to the fact they were more powerful. As for the Englishmen they used any type of excuse to get into war.
Europeans called native Americans Indians because when Columbus arrived in America he believed that he was in India so he thought they were Indians, its in politically incorrect but calling them Indians is okay because they truly traveled from Asia to America many centuries ago. Indians knew how to grow food, knew to live the land, developed thousands of different languages but as soon as the steps of old world arrived everything that native Americans developed were quickly destroyed by greed, ambition, power, insensibility and a genocide. m
