Christopher Columbus

**Christopher Columbus** (1451-1506) was an Italian trader, explorer, and navigator. The consensus view is that he was born in Genoa in the year 1451, the son of a weaver named Domenico Colombo and a seamstress named Susanna Fontanarossa. Many alternative theories on his origins exist, but are dismissed by the majority of scholars. "Christopher Columbus" is the English version of Columbus's name.  His real name in Italian was **Cristoforo Colombo.**

In 1492 Columbus landed on an island of the Bahamas, the first European to do so. His initial goal was to find a quicker route to Asia from Europe. He is known as the person who discovered the New World because his voyage started the era of European colonialism in the Americas. This was an important moment in European history. While Leif Erikson was the first European to land on the soils of America, it was not well documented and did not lead to the later contact between Europe and the New World. The effects was the bringing over of livestock, disease, crops and slaves.

When the Spanish learned that Columbus had found a New World, many other people, called conquistadors, went there too.  This led to the Spanish colonization of the Americas.

Columbus died on 20 May 1506, in Valladolid, Spain.

## Discovery of America 
Columbus was the second European person to discover the Americas after Leif Erikson.

## Voyage in 1492 
Many people in Western Europe wanted to find a shorter way to get to Asia. Columbus thought he could get to Asia by sailing west. He did not know about the Western Hemisphere, so he did not realize it would block him from getting to Asia.

However, Columbus did not have enough money to pay for this voyage on his own. After defeating the Emirate of Granada, the rulers of Spain, Ferdinand II and Isabella I of Castile, agreed to pay for the voyage. He promised to bring back gold and spices for them.

The three ships were very small.  Historians think that the largest ship, the *Santa María*, was only about  long, and about 16 to 19&nbsp;feet (4.8 to 5.8&nbsp;metres) wide.

Columbus's other ships were even smaller.  Historians think they were about  long.

Columbus then sailed to what is now Cuba, then to Hispaniola.  On Hispaniola, Columbus built a fort.  This was one of the first European military bases in the Western Hemisphere.  He called it Navidad (Spanish for "Christmas").  He left thirty-nine crew members there, and ordered them to find and store the gold.

### Treatment of the indigenous people
On the day he landed in the Bahamas, Columbus wrote about the Arawaks and Taíno:

Columbus noticed that some of the Arawaks had gold earrings.  He took some of them as prisoners and ordered them to lead him to the gold.  However, they could not.

According to Encyclopædia Britannica:

File:Santa-Maria.jpg| of the *Santa Maria*
File:Landing of Columbus (2).jpg|Painting of Columbus landing in the New World
File:Columbus landing on Hispaniola.JPG|Drawing of Columbus landing on Hispaniola
File:Columbus1.PNG|Route of Columbus's first voyage
File:2.- DCVIII.0001.tif|Letter from Columbus (1493)

## Second voyage
On September 24, 1493, Columbus left Spain with enough ships, supplies, and men to invade and make Spanish colonies in the New World.  He had 17 ships and 1,200 men.  These men included soldiers and farmers.  There were also priests, whose job was to convert the locals to Christianity.

On this voyage, Columbus explored some of the islands of the Lesser Antilles.  He also sailed around most of Hispaniola and explored the sides of Jamaica and Cuba he had not seen on his first voyage.

Then he went back to the Navidad fort.  He found the fort burned down.  Eleven of the 37 soldiers Columbus left at the fort were buried there.  The rest had disappeared.  Historians think this happened because of disease and fights with the Arawak people.

Columbus had many rebellions on his hands. He fought with many local chiefs who saw him as an invader and an ally with Gracangari, the chief Columbus was friends with. They were quickly put to route by the Spaniards' inventions.

There was not much gold on the parts of the island Columbus took over. After a while he ordered the search for gold to be given up.

## Third voyage
Columbus went on another voyage in 1498.  King John II of Portugal had said there was a continent to the south-west of the Cape Verde islands.  On his third voyage, Columbus wanted to find this continent.  Before the voyage, Queen Isabella reminded Columbus that he should treat all of the local people well and make them into Christians.

On this voyage, Columbus sent three ships straight to the West Indies (the Caribbean).  He led another three ships: first to two Portuguese islands, then to the Canary Islands, then Cape Verde.  From Cape Verde, they sailed to the northern coast of South America and landed in Trinidad.  He also explored part of South America and the islands now called Tobago and Grenada.

On August 19, 1498, Columbus returned to Hispaniola.  He found that many of the Spanish settlers there were unhappy. They thought there would be more gold in the New World. Some of them had rebelled while he was gone. Columbus had five of the rebellion's leaders hanged.  He also tried to make the rest of the settlers happy by giving them land in Hispaniola. However, the settlers kept sending  to Spain.  In 1499, Queen Isabella sent a man named Francisco de Bobadilla to Hispaniola.  She gave him the power to do whatever he thought he should do.  When he arrived in 1500, the first thing he did was to have Columbus arrested and sent back to Spain in chains.

In 1485, while in Córdoba, Spain, Columbus met Beatriz Enríquez de Trasierra.  They lived together for a while. They had one child named Fernando.

## Columbus's goals 
Columbus had a few different goals for his journeys to the New World.  First, he believed he could find a shorter and easier route to Asia, which made things Europe did not. He believed he could find a shorter route to China.  Other people had called this belief .  Columbus wanted to prove these people wrong.

Second, Columbus wanted to find gold.  Gold was the main kind of money used in Columbus's times.  In his letter to Spain's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, Columbus wrote: "Gold is most excellent; gold is , and [the person] who [has] it does all he wishes to in this world."  This means that someone with gold can do anything he wants to do. Many historians believe that Columbus wanted to become a powerful person  and in order to become powerful, he needed to find gold.

## After Columbus
When the Spanish learned about the New World, many conquistadors, or conquerors, went there.  This led to the Spanish colonization of the Americas.

The Spanish conquistadors first settled on the islands of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti), Cuba, and Puerto Rico.  They grabbed as much gold as they could.  The Spanish also brought priests and forced the Native Americans to convert to Christianity.

## Legacy 
In the United States, Columbus Day is a holiday that celebrates Columbus's arrival in the New World on October 12, 1492.

The World's Columbian Exposition, which happened in 1893 in Chicago, Illinois, was held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus visiting the Americas.

Between 1492 and 1930, over 60 million Europeans migrated to the Americas. The peak of this migration was in the 19th and early 20th centuries. 

The mass migration of Europeans to the New World was one of the largest transfers of population in history.

He has been increasingly been looked at badly for the mistreatment and genocide of indigenous peoples.
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