Christopher Columbus is known as one of the biggest explorers and historical figures with a huge influence because of his world-changing discoveries. He sailed many times with his ships to different parts of the world and connected the old world with the new world.
First off, Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, as Cristoforo Colombo, approximately in 1451. He was the son of a woolweaver, and when he was young, he worked on multiple ships to earn money for a living. When he got older, he developed a strong interest in sailing and exploring different countries. He studied a lot of maps, travel reports, and tellings. That is why he sailed from Spain until the end of the then-known world, the Canary Islands. Also, the reports of Marco Polo inspired and encouraged his dreams of exploring a new route to India.
Before he started his journey, he submitted his plan and idea of discovering India to the Portuguese monarch in 1484 and then to the Spanish royalty, but he was only confronted with rejections. His travel plan has significant errors, according to experts.
Then, in 1492, Columbus gets hired by the Spanish king because Spain is in competition with Portugal, which just obtained gold in Africa. That is why Spain is in desperate search of new resources and treasures on the Asian continent.
So, Columbus starts his journey with three sailing ships going to sea in the Atlantic Ocean. After more than one month of sailing, he and his ships reach an island that he will call San Salvador in the future. He discovers many more islands on behalf of the Spanish crown after that.
Believing he had discovered East Asia, he conquered many more western islands. The measures he used were extremely brutal and violent.
Native Americans formerly saw white people as friends, but that changed when hundreds of thousands of the 50 million indigenous people died at the hands of the Europeans. For Latin Americans, 300 years under the reign of the Spanish kingdom began in 1492.
The Spanish, however, were unable to find treasures of value like gold or diamonds. Their mood was tensed, and Columbus wrestled down the riots, which caused the Spanish royal house to order him back to Europe.
In the meantime, many people around Europe had the theory that Asia was not behind the Atlantic Ocean but somewhere entirely new and different. Columbus still refused to believe that. He died in the year 1506 in the belief that he discovered India, which was actually North America.
Columbus was the reason the term “Indios” spread, which means “people from the valley”.
In fact, it is important to notice that Christopher Columbus was not the first person to discover the North American continent. Before him, there were the Vikings, with Leif Erikson as their leader in the 10th century, who discovered it. They stayed a few years there since the land was very fertile. But due to bad relationships with the Native Americans, they returned to Greenland. Other than that, Christoph Columbus gets credited with the discovery because he was the first one to open the new world of America to the European continent.
https://klexikon.zum.de/wiki/Christoph_Kolumbus
https://www.planet-wissen.de/geschichte/neuzeit/entdeckung_amerikas/index.html#Kolumbus
https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/christopher-columbus#:~:text=What%20did%20Columbus%20aim%20to,cargoes%20of%20silks%20and%20spices.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tribal-Nomenclature-American-Indian-Native-American-and-First-Nation-1386025#:~:text=The%20word%20Indian%20came%20to,the%20so%2Dcalled%20New%20World.
https://www.npr.org/2007/10/08/15040888/coming-to-america-who-was-first#:~:text=10th%20Century%20%E2%80%94%20The%20Vikings%3A%20The,the%20Canadian%20province%20of%20Newfoundland.