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We all learned that Columbus sailed the ocean wild blue yonder … and then American history gets very mirky .
Though much encounter before Christopher Columbus ' celebrated journeying ( such as Leif Ericsson ’s landing in North America about five centuries prior ) , it remain a substantial issue in history and is generally take for by historians as the showtime of the Colonial Period ( 1492 - 1763 ) .
Some people still like to debate who discovered the Americas.
The epic journeying was not exactly without its problems .
Related : Columbus ' disclose ' the New World … so why is n’t America named after him ?
Early in the morning time on Oct. 12 , 1492 , a Panama hat looked out to the purview from the bow of Columbus ' ship , the Pinta , and saw Edwin Herbert Land . After 10 weeks at ocean , from the port of Palos , Spain , Columbus and his crew had arrived … somewhere .
Some people still like to debate who discovered the Americas.
Columbus recollect he ’d found the East Indies . Truth was , he was in the Bahamas . He did a little more exploring and then returned to Spain , possiblytaking syphiliswith him .
By 1502 , the Florentine merchandiser and explorerAmerigo Vespuccihad figure out that Columbus was wrong , and word of a New World had spread throughout Europe . America was afterwards name for Vespucci .
And , as researchers now acknowledge , neither man was actually the first todiscover the Americas . There were , of course , the natives already here . There was Ericsson . And there were others . Even theChinese lay claimto sailing to the New World first .
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Columbusiscredited with jumpstarting Spanish colonization that antedate the broad European settlement of the New World . In his journal , he noted that the native " must be good retainer and very reasoning , because I see they repeat very chop-chop what I secernate them . " And so he enslaved them to help in his seeking for gold and spice . Neither speculation panned out , but in subsequent voyages chiliad of aboriginal kick the bucket , and Columbus managed to flow some of his own colonist who defied his authority .
His arrival " marked the beginning of one of the cruelest episode in human history , " as historian Kenneth C. Davis assign it .
More than a century would go by before colonization got serious . The first lasting dependency was founded atJamestown , Virginia , in 1607 . The Pilgrims , founders of Plymouth , Massachusetts , did not go far until 1620 .
Originally published on Live Science .
