Christopher in some ways heroic, but in more ways villainous. Just because a person discovers a new part of the world does not make them a hero. Someone would have discovered it sooner or later had he not. However, it is what the explorer does with the land that he discovers that makes them a hero or not. First of all, he did not even find the land that he was originally looking for, India. Because of this, he called the native people "Indians," a term which is now deemed politically incorrect and offends people of Native American heritage. While he did make friends with the Natives to some extent, he was mainly interested in Europeanizing the people of the Americas. He brutally attempted to weaken the Native culture. Furthermore, he tried to enslave the people who were currently living on the land that he came into and claimed. He and his people were the cause of a great amount of death in the indigenous population because they widely spread diseases from Europe and killed many of the natives themselves. Overall, the few good things he did for his country are undermined greatly by the massive amount of bad things he did to the native people of the New World.
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