Additional Sources

The following sources can be completed as part of a class lesson, individually or in groups. Or it can be used as part of the in-class essay assignment, so assess how individual students read and analyze sources.

Columbus reports on his voyage to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain:

These people in the Caribbean have no creed and they are not idolaters, but they are very gentle and do not know what it is to be wicked, or to kill others, or to steal...and they are sure that we come from Heaven....So your Highnesses should resolve to make them Christians, for I believe that if you begin, in a little while you will achieve the conversion of a great number of peoples to our holy faith, with the acquisition of great lordships and riches and all their inhabitants for Spain. For without doubt there is a very great amount of gold in these lands…. 

The people of this island [Hispaniola], and of all the others that I have found and seen, or not seen, all go naked, men and women, just as their mothers bring them forth; although some women cover a single place with the leaf of a plant, or a cotton something which they make for that purpose. They have no iron or steel, nor any weapons....They have no other weapons than the stems of reeds...on the end of which they fix little sharpened stakes. Even these they dare not use....they are incurably timid....

I have not found, nor had any information of monsters, except of an island which is here the second in the approach of the Indies, which is inhabited by a people whom, in all the islands, they regard as very ferocious, who eat human flesh….

1. How does Columbus describe the Indians?

2. Why, according to Columbus, should Spain be interested in colonizing the New World?

3. How accurate do you consider Columbus's description of the New World?

Bartolome de Las Casas - The Devastation of the Indies (1542)

(Las Casas was a Dominican priest who came to the New World a few years after Columbus, spent forty years on Hispaniola and nearby islands, and became the leading advocate in Spain for the rights of the natives.)

(1) God created these simple people without evil and without guile.  They are most obedient and faithful to their natural lords and to the Christians whom they serve.  They are most submissive, patient, peaceful and virtuous.  Nor are they quarrelsome, rancorous, querulous, or vengeful.  Moreover they are more delicate than princes and die easily from work or illness.  They neither possess nor desire to possess worldly wealth.  Surely these people would be the most blessed in the world if only they worshipped the true God. 

1. How does Las Casas describe/portray the Natives of the Caribbean? 

 (2)…of all the infinite universe of humanity, these people are the most guileless, the most devoid of wickedness and duplicity…yet into this sheepfold…there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening beasts…Their reason for killing and destroying…is that the Christians have an ultimate aim which is to acquire gold…

2. What is the reason for Spanish Cruelty according to Las Casas?

(3) First, barbarian in the loose and broad sense of the word means any cruel, inhuman, wild, and merciless man acting against human reason out of anger or native disposition, so that, putting aside decency, meekness, and humane moderation, he becomes hard, severe, quarrelsome, unbearable, cruel, and plunges blindly into crimes that only the wildest beasts of the forest would commit.

3. What is the definition of “barbaric” according to Las Casas? 

4. Why is the Spanish treatment of the Native Americans wrong, according to Las Casas? 

Juan Ginés de Supúlveda, The Second Democrats (1547)

(Sepúlveda, a philosopher and scholar, describes the Indians)

(1) Now compare the Spanish gifts of prudence, talent, magnanìrnìty, temperance, humanity, and religion with those men [the Indians] in whom you will  scarcely find traces of humanity, who not only lack culture but do not even  know how to write, who keep no records of their history except certain  obscure and vague rememberings of some things put down in certain pictures, and who do not have written laws but only barbarous institutions and customs. And don't think that before the arrival of the Christians they were living in quiet and . . . peace. On the contrary, they were making War continuously and ferociously against each other with rage.

1. How does Sepulveda compare the “Indians” to the Spanish?

The man rules over the woman, the adult over the child, the father over his  children . . . and so it is with the barbarous and inhumane peoples [Native Americans] who have no civil life and peaceful customs. lt will always be just and in accord with natural law that such people submit to the rule of more cultured and humane princes and nations. Thanks to their virtues and the practical Wisdom of their laws, the latter can destroy barbarism and educate these people to a more humane and virtuous life. And if the latter reject such rule, it can be imposed upon them by force of arms. Such a war will be just according to natural law. . . . [So] with perfect right the Spaniards rule over these barbarians of the New World… who in wisdom, intelligence, virtue, and humanity are as inferior to the Spaniards as infants to adults and women to men. There is as much difference between them as there is between cruel, wild peoples and the most merciful peoples , . .that is to say, between apes and men.

2. Why are Spanish actions justified according to Sepulveda?

Colombian History of the World - 1986

The determination of the Crown and the Church to Christianize the Indians, the need for labor to exploit the new lands, and the attempts of some Spaniards to protect the Indians, resulted in a very remarkable complex of customs, laws, and institutions which even today leads historians to contradictory conclusions about Spanish rule in America…. Academic disputes flourish on this debatable and in a sense insoluble question, but there is no doubt that cruelty, over-work and disease resulted in an appalling depopulation. There were, according to recent estimates, about 25 million Indians in Mexico in 1519, slightly more than 1 million in 1605.

1. Why, according to this passage, are there contradictions in the historical views of Spanish rule?