Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus (1451 – 1506) was a navigator, colonizer, and explorer from Genoa, Italy, whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere. Over the course of four voyages of exploration and several attempts at establishing a settlement on the island of Hispaniola, he initiated the process of Spanish colonization which foreshadowed general European colonization of the "New World".
Although not the first to reach the Americas from Europe—he was preceded by at least one other group, the Norse, led by Leif Ericson, who built a temporary settlement 500 years earlier at L'Anse aux Meadows[5]— Columbus initiated widespread contact between Europeans and indigenous Americans.
It is believed that on one of these voyages Columbus' crew infected the Northern woodland Indian population with smallpox - most likely by accident, although Columbus was not above using such tactics as a form of warfare. The ensuing epidemic wiped out over 90% of the population of Northeast woodland Indians within a period of only a generation leaving them severly weakened and unable to repulse the colonial onslaught that would begin a century after Columbus' maiden voyage.

Columbus' Voyage
An Eyewitness Account of the Landing