Columbus wasn’t a nice guy. Downright dickhead. It’s also true that he enslaved a lot of locals
BUT
The context that is never explained is the natives were complete dicks too. Not just to Columbus, but to their own people as well. I’m going to give you a link, a few quotes, then some questions.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/human-sacrifice/
Sacrifices for the Aztecs were detailed rituals but perhaps what makes them truly stand out is the scale in which they were conducted. During the reign of their empire, it’s estimated that an average of 200,000 people were sacrificed a year. Many rituals surrounded the theme of mass sacrifice, such as the inauguration of their greatest pyramid, which is said to have claimed the lives of 84,000 over a period of only four days.
200k@year.. What was their population?
Tenochtitlan was one of the largest cities in the world by 1500. The city’s population was over 200,000 by the early 16th century – only Paris and Constantinople were bigger cities at the time.
Talk about a conundrum here. The Aztecs brutally murdered their own people, and when I say brutally, remember Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? Remember hearts being ripped from chests and being shown to the victim still beating? They murdered enough of them to wipe out their capitol city in one year.
A sacrificial knife was then used to cut into the victim’s chest, at which point a priest would pull out the heart and then show it to the surrounding crowd. After passing the heart to a priest known as the Chilan, blood would be smeared onto the image of a god and the lifeless body would be thrown down the pyramid steps. The sacrificed person’s hands and feet were left alone but the rest of their skin was worn by the Chilan as he performed a ritual dance of rebirth.
OK that’s the last quote.. Hopefully those reading have a better understanding of what Columbus ran into when he got here. Imagine Hillary and her buddies at Epstien Island had enough control over the world they could perform these things in public… In some ways this is a pretty good analogy to the Catholic/Christian conservatives that support Trump vs the hedonistic monsters from the left.
What Columbus and the Spanish conquistadors did by enslaving these folks was free them from ritualistic sacrifice. While the article goes on to say that a lot of these sacrifices were considered a high honor, I think that’s just putting ketchup on a shit sandwich. No way any parent would want this for their children.
So ya, Columbus was a jerk, but what he did was eliminate even bigger jerks from doing some really heinous things to other humans. If I had a choice of hard labor working fields and learning about Jesus, VS having my heart ripped out and skin worn by some jackass, someone hand me a shovel.
Happy Columbus day.