Columbus and his men would trade a lot with the Indians and they all lived happily ever after. That's pretty much where our textbook stopped. I have never learned anything else about Columbus until now. There is so much that my third grade teacher left out and didn't explain. .
Columbus gets a lot of credit for "discovering" land that already had people living on it, a land that has already been encountered by other people way before Columbus was even born. In 70,000 to 12,000 B.C. Siberia explorers sailed to Alaska. In 10,000-600 B.C., Siberians also went to Canada and the state we now call New Mexico. A little more recently the Vikings in 1000-1350 came from Greenland and Iceland. They traveled to Labrado, Baffin Land, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Cape Cod and further south. Around 1311 and 1460 explorers from West Africa came across to Haiti, Panama, and Brazil (Loewen 48). These were only a few of the many encounters of the Americas. A result of these explorations was the establishment of Indian villages and the life they began to lead.
The fact that Columbus didn't actually "discover" America isn't the idea that is most disturbing when considering misleading history that children are taught. It is the information that was kept from us while younger that now should be revealed, since we are at the age that we can comprehend and understand the significance of the information that was withheld from us. Christopher Columbus is said to be born and raised in Italy, yet he could not write in Italian. There is evidence that says he was Jewish and that he converted to Christianity, most likely in Spain. .
He wanted to grow up and become and explorer, that he did. He believed the world was round and wanted to prove it because no one believed him, not true. He knew the world was round, as well as most of the other people at that time. Columbus actually wanted to set sail to find gold and to convert the people of India to Christianity.