Letter from Cristopher Columbus, by him; non-fiction, pgs.1-4

This is a historical letter of the so called "New World", which is South America that he rediscovered from previous discoverers such as Amerigo Vespucci (the first one to explore South America), and Vasco Da Gama... The letter begins like this; "As I know, you will be rejoiced at the success that our Lord has given me in my voyage." Then it goes on to explain how many islands are uninhabited, and that he says that he discovered the "Indies", but he is actually at South America, he was off by 9,000 miles. Then he finds these people that are on the land, and calls them Indians, which they now call "Native Americans", It's what they really were. Later he finds 5 islands, and names them all, and once he came to what he thought was the mainland, he explored it, and found a settlement, where the people only fled, so he sent two men to find a city, but after searching for three days, they returned without finding anything. Then the letter leads into the sights of the land. the wonderful trees, mysterious plants, and most of all the gold! The letter said that there was tons of gold, when really there was not as much as he said, he mentioned how they wore it around their wrists, and that the land was just filled with gold. Really there was not much gold, but when the men found this, they traded, and they found that they were easily pleased with very small things like broken pieces of glass, and destroyed shoes. So, Columbus forbade this and said that they would have to do fair trade. Later they returned, and made three more trips there, which made four total. The reason he is so remembered now is that he thought he landed on the Indies, but found a huge, new chunk of land. Before he came, no body in Europe knew about America.

I think the weirdest part of this letter/ the most interesting part is how the Natives were so easily pleased, and would trade these ridiculous items for gold. I have however, seen people like this, and it was pretty unusual to me. People like this are usually tooken unfair advantage of. Eventually it led to slavery though... Now days people are a lot more picky, and expect a lot more. I don't really understand why the Natives would trade gold for such small things, maybe they were trying to avoid war or something, but that's just what I think. If I was a Native in that time, I probably would be like the rest, because that's just how they were. You can't really control how people are.

rejoiced: To feel joyful or delighted.