in the new land and that Columbus treated them well (Sherwood 253).
It is crucial to the argument that Columbus "discovered America" that the context be established first in which the beings which inhabited that land are thoroughly dehumanized. The more that dehumanization process can be carried out, the more easily Columbus and his fellow Europeans and descendants can argue that there were no truly human beings when Columbus arrived and therefore it has to be said that he did indeed "discover" that land. The more one sees the natives as animals, as savages with no concept of God, the more one can argue that Columbus discovered the land on which they live. Accordingly, whether the Europeans brutalized the natives of the "New World" or treated them well though condescendingly, in their own minds and to one another the Europeans in general sought to portray the natives as less than human.
Columbus took the point of view that he and his men owned all they "discovered" in the name of Spain and Europe and Christianity. He and his men did not want to learn about or value anything having to do with the people in the land, but instead thought only about how they could conquer them and use them. Columbus himself wrote that "All the inhabitants could be taken away to [Spain], or made slaves on the island. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want" (Bigelow 256).
Clearly, from the perspective of a European who sees power as a m
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