Who was first?

We all remember learning in history class that Christopher Columbus set sail across the Atlantic ocean in 1492 with three ships to discover the new world. Contrary to popular belief, Columbus never set foot in what we call mainland North America. The explorer believed he had reached the East Indies. He was actually in the modern day Bahamas. Let’s remember that sailing vessels had been around for centuries along with explorers.
Leif Erikson was a Norse explorer from Iceland. His father, Eric The Red, had founded the first European settlement on what is now called Greenland in 980 A.D. Born in Iceland around 970 A.D., Erikson likely grew up in Greenland before sailing east to Norway when he was around 30 years of age.
It was here that King Olaf I Tryggvason converted him to Christianity, and inspired him to spread the faith to Greenland’s pagan settlers. But shortly thereafter, Erikson instead arrived in America around 1000 A.D. To this day, many believe that Leif Erikson is actually the man who discovered America first. There are varying historical accounts of his discovery of America.
One saga claims that Erikson sailed off course while he was returning to Greenland and happened upon North America by accident.
But then there’s another saga about him stating that the discovery was intentional- and that he heard about it from another Icelandic trader who spotted it but never set foot on the shores. Intent on going there. Erikson assembled a crew of thirty five men and set sail.
While these tales from the middle ages might appear to be mythical, archaeologists actually discovered tangible evidence supporting these sagas. Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad found remains of a Viking settlement in L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland in the 1960s- right where the Norse legend claimed Erikson had set up camp. Not only were the remains clearly of Norse origin, they were also dated back to Erikson’s lifetime thanks to radiocarbon analysis. And yet, many people still ask, “Did Christopher Columbus discover America?” While it appears Erikson had beat him, it was the Italians that accomplished something the Vikings could not: They opened a pathway from the Old World to the New.
Conquest and colonization were quick to follow the 1492 discovery of America, with life on both sides of the Atlantic forever changing. Columbus returned to Spain and was greeted as a hero. After being instructed to continue his work, Columbus returned to the Western Hemisphere across three more voyages until the early 1500s.
Throughout these expeditions, European settlers stole from the Indigenous people, abducting their wives, and seized them as captives to be taken to Spain. As the number of Spanish colonists increased, the Indigenous populations across the islands decreased. Countless Native people died from European diseases such as smallpox and measles, to which they had no immunity. Settlers often forced the islanders into forced labor in the fields.
Those resisting were either killed or sent to Spain as slaves. Though Columbus is generally hailed as the man who discovered America, he was plagued with ship troubles during his final trip back to Spain and was marooned in Jamaica for a year before being rescued in 1504. Columbus died two years later still incorrectly believing that he’d found a new way to Asia. Perhaps this is why America itself was named after Columbus and instead was named after a Florentine explorer named Amerigo Vespucci.
It was Vespucci who put forth the idea that Columbus landed on a different continent that was completely separate from Asia. Nonetheless, the Americas had been home to indigenous people for millennia before either of them had ever been born- with even other groups of Europeans preceding Columbus.
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