The Native Americans By Howard Zinn And Arthur Schlesinger

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue is a nursery rhyme that can be heard repeated incessantly by elementary school students in America. It is used to help them remember when Christopher Columbus made his journey to the New World. Something that is conveniently left out of this nursery rhyme is how Columbus lead to the genocide of over a million Native Americans. Columbus is a villain that lead to the genocide of so many Native Americans. Howard Zinn and Arthur Schlesinger both evaluate Columbus’s role in the genocide of the Native Americans, however Zinn provides much better evidence, thus making his article the better of the two. In his article Was America a Mistake, Arthur Schlesinger begins by addressing the view of Columbus and how it has drastically changed between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. People went from viewing Columbus as a hero, to viewing him as the biggest villain in American history. It is made very clear throughout Schlesinger s article that he believes it is unnecessary to label Columbus as a villain, due to the good that he brought to the New World. He makes it known when he describes an exchange he had with the former prime minister of Cuba Fidel Castro, â€Å"I asked Fidel Castro how he looks on the impending quincentennial. He replied, ‘We are critical. Columbus brought many bad things.’ I said ‘If it weren t for Columbus, you wouldn t be here.’ Castro said ‘Well, Columbus brought good things as well as bad’† (Schlesinger) This