Columbus
Read the following quotes from Columbus’s first and second letters. What has changed for Columbus and what, in his writing, lets you know this. Choose specific words and tell me their connotation (negative/positive).

Since I know that you will be pleased at the great victory with which Our Lord has crowned my voyage, I writ this to you, from which you will learn how in thirty-three days I passed from the Canary Islands to the Indies, with the fleet which the most illustrious king and queen, our sovereigns, gave to me. There I found very many islands, filled with people innumerable, and of them all I have taken possession for their highnesses, by proclamation made and with the royal standard unfurled, and no opposition was offered to me. (Columbus, LETTER OF COLUMBUS, DESCRIBING THE RESULTS OF HIS FIRST VOYAGE, pdf)

I did not sail upon this voyage to gain honour or wealth; this is certain, for already all hope of that was dead. I came to your highnesses with true devotion and with ready zeal, and I do not lie. I humbly pray your highnesses that if it please God to bring me forth from this place, that you will be pleased to permit me to go to Rome and to other places of pilgrimage. May the Holy Trinity preserve your life and high estate, and grant you increase of prosperity.. (Columbus, Columbus, Letter from the Fourth Voyage, pdf)

John Smith
In the following quote, John Smith is trying to persuade others to join him. This is a difficult passage. Choose a line or two and try to dissect it. He is clearly talking about how things are and how they can be. What exactly is he referring to?

Let this move you to embrace employment, for those whose educations, spirits and judgments want but your purses, not only to prudent such accustomed dangers, but also to gain more thereby then you have; and you fathers that are either so foolishly fond, or so miserably courteous, or so willfully ignorant, or so negligently careless, as that you will rather maintain your children in idle wantonness till they grow your masters, or become so basely unkinder that they wish nothing but your deaths, so that both sorts grow dissolute, and although you would wish them anywhere to escape the Gallows and ease your cares, though they spend you here one, two or three hundred pound a year, you would grudge to give half so much in adventure with them to obtain an estate, which in a small time, but with a little assistance of your providence, might be better than your own; but if an Angell should tell you any place yet unknown can afford such fortunes, you would not believe it, no more than Columbus was believed there was any such land, as is now the well known abounding America, much less such large Regions as are yet unknown, as well in America, as in Africa and Asia, and Terra incognita. (Smith, From The Description of New England pdf)

De La Casas

In the following passage, De La Vegas provides a vivid description of the acts of the Spaniards. Read through the passage and discuss 3 specific words that are used and how those words are used to make you feel a certain way. Why do you think he chose these words? What other words could he have chosen?

Which the Spaniards no sooner perceived, but they, mounted on generous Steeds, well weapon’d with Lances and Swords, begin to exercise their bloody Butcheries and Strategems, and overrunning their Cities and Towns, spar’d no Age, or Sex, nay not so much as Women with Child, but ripping up their Bellies, tore them alive in pieces. They laid Wagers among themselves, who should with a Sword at one blow cut, or divide a Man in two; or which of them should decollate or behead a Man, with the greatest dexterity; nay farther, which should sheath his Sword in the Bowels of a Man with the quickest dispatch and expedition. They snatcht young Babes from the Mothers Breasts, and then dasht out the brains of those innocents against the Rocks; others they cast into Rivers scoffing and jeering them, and call’d upon their Bodies when falling with derision, the true testimony of their Cruelty, to come to them, and inhumanely exposing others to their Merciless Swords, together with the Mothers that gave them Life. In his first later the focus by Columbus is how good his expedition was when he travelled
overseas. He explains how he went to a new land and did not get opposition. Columbus feels that
he needs… Here is the explanation for… View the full answer