1. The man who was thought to be the discoverer of America was born in 1451 in Italy. He
became a sailor at an early age. Knowing that the earth was round, he decided to reach India by
sailing to the west. Portugal, Italy and England refused to support him. Christopher Columbus
asked the king of Spain to fit him out with a fleet of ships. He was able to set sail on the flagship
Santa Maria in 1492, on the 3d of August. Two other ships, the Nina and the Pinta, came with him.
The voyage was very dangerous and difficult. They soon met a northeastern wind that drove
them farther and farther southwest. His men insisted on returning home, they began a mutiny,
afraid that they would not be able to return home. But Columbus did everything he could to make
them continue their westward voyage. On the 12th of October, his ships reached land. Columbus
was certain that the lands he had discovered were the part of India and called these islands
the West Indies. But actually they were the Bahamas Islands. When they landed on the island that
is now Cuba, they thought they were in Japan.
Christopher Columbus made four voyages to America (1492-1502). He found a wealth of
plant and animal life unseen before by Europeans. His voyages introduced Europe to maize,
tobacco, sweet potatoes and other discoveries of the Native Americans.
In 1506 he died in Spain being sure that he had reached Asia and knowing nothing of his
great discovery of the New World. The continent was not even named after Columbus, but an
Italian explorer named Amerigo Vespucci. He was in Spain at the time of Columbus' first and
second voyages. In a letter, written in 1504 and printed in 1505, he claimed to have made four
voyages, on the first of which, in 1497, he explored the South American coast. This would make
him the first European to land on the American continent, for at that time Columbus had only
reached the outlying islands.
Only in 1792 a ceremony was held in New York honouring Columbus, and a monument was
dedicated to him. Soon after that, the city Washington was officially named the District of
Columbia and became the capital of the US. Out of pride for their native son, the Italian
population of New York City organized the first celebration of the discovery of America on
October 12, 1866. In 1837, then President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed every October 12 as
Columbus Day. Since 1971, it has been celebrated on the second Monday in October. 1992
marked the 500th anniversary of the Columbus discovery.
I. Ask your classmates why Columbus asked the king of Spain to give him a fleet
of ships; what he sought for; when he sailed off into the Atlantic Ocean; where the
northeastern wind drove the sailors; for how long they had been sailing; why the
sailors tried to make Columbus return home; why he called the islands they had
discovered the West Indies; who the land was named after; who Amerigo Vespucci
was.
II. Speak about the events described in the text on the part of:
C. Columbus; his wife; the member of his crew; the king of England.
Read the text and say what the positive and negative results of European colonization of
America were.
Columbus’s voyage had an enormous impact – the immigration of thousands of refugees,
pilgrims, missionaries, conquerors, opportunists, and people like our own ancestors who wanted a
better life for themselves and their children. As a result of his succeeding journeys, Europeans
encountered not only a new world, but also crops that radically altered their diets: potatoes,
tomatoes, corn, chocolate, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, squash, peanuts, pineapples, blueberries, and
sunflowers.
At the same time, he and those who followed him brought to the New World wheat ,
barley, onions, lettuce, citrus fruit, horses, dogs, cats, beef cattle, pigs, and chickens.
Colonization by the English, French, Spanish, and Dutch eventually led to the American
Revolution, and the founding of our republic…
Unfortunately, tragedy also accompanied these events as Old World diseases accompanied
the immigrants – diseases for which the New World had no natural immunity: smallpox, measles,
cholera, and whooping rough. There was also greed, cruelty, and racism. European colonization
was not an unalloyed triumph.
Leonard J. Arrington