Slaves? Gimme a fucking break. A hundred years from now, that generation of vacuous "liberals" will be shocked, SHOCKED that "we" were killing animals and eating them in the 2000's! You cannot superimpose today's sensitivities on persons and cultures of hundreds of years ago.
The fact is that Columbus, representing (in effect) Western Civilization, introduced the West to a whole new continent, which facilitated unimaginable benefits to humanity over the ensuing centuries. The existence on this continent of primitive, backward societies that hadn't even invented THE WHEEL to that time...who had no domesticated animals that could do work...who had no functional written language...who had no metallurgy and no ability to even make a durable blade...is no indictment of Columbus and the hordes of Europeans who followed him. These primitives were doomed by the march of history, regardless of what advanced society first made its way to the Americas.
The idiocy of indigenous defenders remains to this day. Those cultures deserved to die out, and those who fight to maintain those cultures, languages, etc., are - not to be unkind - fools. They are the cultural equivalent of a society that rejects modern medicine in favor of chants and spells.
