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Columbus, in spite of his many faults, was a man of character. His devout Catholicism informed his treatment of his fellow sailors, whom he enjoined in shipwide prayer every half-hour on the long journey from Spain to the New World. Even Bartolomé de las Casas, the “Defender and Apostle to the Indians” whose lurid, if hyperbolic, treatises on the treatment of Native peoples made him famous, spoke favorably of Columbus and his treatment of indigenous people. Columbus famously adopted a Native American boy and urged his fellow voyagers to exercise restraint and mercy toward the Natives, even, for instance, after they had burned down an entire Spanish settlement and killed all of the Spaniards in the area.Share
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