Acosta And The Barbarians Of The Indians

At first, the Spaniards used appeased techniques in order to convert the Indians but when those efforts didn’t work, they started to use violent and brutal techniques. According to Jose de Acosta, a Spanish clergyman, the wildest barbarians of the Indians were the ones that would need force to convert because they were rejecting the believes in violent ways such as killing missionaries. For Acosta, the literate and semi-civilized Indians were easier to evangelize because they were more like the Roman and Greeks. This demonstrates that Acosta saw the Indians different from each other and it was the literate Indians, the ones that were looked as better and easier to control because of their level of education which open their minds to new ideas. In contrast, the barbarian Indians required more work because of their savage mentality that they possed. The comparison that Acosta makes between the literate and barbarians to the Greeks and Romans suggest a type of hierarchy between the Romans and Greeks and the rest of the great empires that existed. The Roman and Greeks were the best because of their contribution to society but in believing so, it diminishes the rest of the other empires just like he diminishes the Indians that were barbarians. This was a common mentality throughout the conversion process as it was seen that the uncivilized Indians were savages just like their religion therefore, the methods used over them required more force and as a consequence it was going to be harder for them to convert.

The Spaniards methods and strategies to convert Indians to Christianity moved from a pacified one more brutal and violent. Since the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the New World, it was clear that the mission of the Spaniard...

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...pt of living had to be reconstructed. This attempt supported even more the Indians believed that the Spaniards were harsh individuals.

Franciscans efforts to Christianized the indigenous population became a problem for other Dominican missionaries because they believed that Christianization of the Indians was only a superficial conversion and that Indians were secretly committing religious acts that were not Christians. Their attempts to evangelize natives were not convincing to other people that believe that their approach was too pacified and a stronger enforcement had to be implemented in order to convert Indians fully . Some even suggested that the Indians were not capable enough to convert. Even though clergyman Acosta did believed so suggesting that the “Indians’ bad customs were a caused of nurture more then by nature and they were capable of understanding