Bartolome de las casas: “In Defense of the Indians”(c.1550). Bartolome de Las Casas describes the treatment of Native Americans during the early settlement of the first thirteen colonies. Bartolome de las casas was a spanish historian, who in the 16th century was given the title of Protector of the Indians and sat at the Council of the Indies.Bartolome de las casas had the “intent to reveal to Spain that...its colonial rule would lead to… punishment at God 's hand” (LUNENFELD 6)This text was created to bring to light the hardship Natives went through during the Age of Exploration. Natives were badly hurt by the inflow of Europeans, and due to this faced many hardships such as disease, war, and disrupt to their way of life.In other words their
From this short blurbs of what is said about the west they make inferences of what it is like, and how can it be possible for another land mass to be unknown to many for so long. But for those who do know what is past the Atlantic know that this Agenda of the King and Queen must be fulfilled and to do so would be to claim land for Spain for it to be settled upon. On top of that is to further collect riches of the Americas to benefit Spain in conquest of the Americas. Bartolome de las casas had hoped to prevent further harm to Indians, and clarify that they were not barbarians. Of the text named Bartolome de las casas: In Defense of the Indians(c.1550) it covers what is to be the Spanish Conquistadores, and talks of the natives to which at the time seen by many are barbaric, ignorant, incapable of learning, just another group of people to be conquered. But to the Catholic missionaries they see the Natives as new people to influence and enlighten. But if at any time the person drops the belief of Christianity they would use deadly force against the person or family. Adding to that Hernán comments that their cities are “ worth of admiration because of its building, which are like those of Venice”(Poole 4). While the argument remain if really would the Natives had stood a chance what
Anais Nin once said that “we write to taste life twice: in the moment and in retrospection.” In his book, Seven Myths of Spanish Conquest, Matthew Restall tries to change our perception of the past in other to open our eyes to what life was really like during the colonial period. As Restall puts it, the main propose of the book is to “illustrate the degree to which the Conquest was a far more complex and protracted affair” (p.154) than what was supposed in the latters and chronicles left by the conquistadores. Each one of Restall’s chapters examines one of seven myths regarding the mystery behind the conquest. By doing so, Matthew Restall forces us to look back at the Spanish conquest and question
The source of the first passage that I read was History of the Indies written by Bartolome de Las Casas written in 1528. Bartolome was a 16th century Spanish historian, social reformer and Dominican friar/priest, who condemned the treatment of Indians in the Spanish empire. Bartolome widely disseminated History of the Indies and helped to establish the Black Legend of Spanish cruelty (Give Me Liberty, 28). The source of the second passage that I read was the “Declaration of Josephe” which was created by Josephe on December 19, 1681, and Josephe was a Spanish-speaking Indian questioned by a royal attorney in Mexico City investigating the Pueblo Revolt, which is the revolt of the indian population, in 1680, which temporarily drove Spanish settlers out of present day New Mexico
This assignment examines the document entitled “Bartolomé de las Casas, from Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies.” Bartolomé de las Casas, who spent most of his time in the New World protecting the native people that lived there, authored the document in 1542. In this document Bartolome de Las Casas gives a detailed but horrific account of the atrocious behavior of the spaniards against the native people of the indies.He vividly describes the brutality brought on the natives by europeans all in the name of proclaiming and spreading Christianity.This document was originally intended for Charles I of Spain and one
Zinn’s viewpoint of Bartolome de las Casas is that Bartolome wants to spread the Christian faith to Indians in America. He does not want to own land and make Indian people his slaves. Bartolome somehow admired the Indians because Indians have a lot of living skills and are capable to do many things to protect their home from other tribes.
In Matthew Restall’s book The Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, he argues that many of the widely accepted modern beliefs about the Spanish Conquest are misguided or skewed. These myths more importantly show how dependent history is on the perspective of the one who is writing it, and how the writer perceives the events happening around them. One example, is the myth of white Spaniards going to a foreign land on the decree of a king and finding barbarous natives who are inferior to these so-called great men. Using documentation written from both sides, and taking into account the context of the time period, Restall explores the myths of the Spanish Conquest in order to frame a less romanticized, well-rounded view of what actually happened
The discovery and conquest of American Indians inspired efforts to develop an ideology that could justify why they needed to enslave the Indians. The Spanish monarch wanted an ideal empire. "A universal empire, of which all their subjects were but servants. Charles V remained for them the dominus mundi, the legitimate and God-ordained lord of the world." (Weckmann, The Transit of Civilization, 23) Gold and religious conversion was the two most important inspirations for conquistadors in conquering America. Father Bartolome De Las Casas was a Dominican priest who came to the New World to convert the Indians to become Christians. He spent forty years on Hispanolia and nearby islands, and saw how the Spaniards brutally treated the Indians and sympathized with them. The Devastation of the Indies was an actual eyewitness account of the genocide by Las Casas, and his group of Dominican friars in which he demonizes the Spanish colonists and praises the Indians. Father Las Casas returned to Seville, where he published his book that caused an on going debate on whether the suppression of the Indians corrupted the Spaniards' values. What Las Casas was trying to achieve was the notion of human rights, that human beings are free and cogent by nature without the interference of others.
Bartolomé de Las Casas was born in 1484 AD in Seville and died in 1566 in Madrid. In the ending of the 15th century and the beginning of 16th, he came to America and become a “protector of Indian”. In 1542, most based on his effort, Spain has passed the New Law, which prohibit slaving Indians (Foner, p. 7). In 1552, he published the book A Short Account of the Destruction of The Indies.
Las Casas emphasizes on three main issues throughout his account. First, in almost each chapter, Las Casas writes about the luscious qualities of the land and the different indigenous peoples that inhabit them. Second, he explains and describes in detail how the natives were rapidly being massacred by the invading Christian Europeans. Finally, Las Casas discusses how God had brought justice to the Europeans for their diabolical acts upon the natives. Las Casas, a former slave owner himself, realized that those whom he previously enslaved were just as much human and capable of learning and practicing the Christian faith as he was. As a bishop, he realized he could do little for the Natives except document his experiences (in as much detail as possible) and hope that the royal administration would have sympathy for the Natives and establish laws to protect them from the Europeans.
If Native Americans were able to sail across the Atlantic Ocean in the time shortly before Christopher Columbus, would they have been able to conquer and colonize countries like Spain or Portugal? Assuming this were even possible, there are a significant factor that would have given the old world an upper hand in such a scenario. This paper will show that even if the Native Americans would have been the first to reach out and make contact, history would have still favored the Iberians.
Cabeza de Vaca, like many other Spaniards, wanted to seek fortune in the new world, but things did not go as planned, and he eventually lost everything. Although he came to conquer in the name of Spain, he ended up living amongst the Native Americans in need for survival and became very close to them. Although originally the Spaniards were very narrow minded and believed the Indians were uncivilized and barbaric, Cabeza de Vaca shortly found out that they were not uncivilized, but quite the opposite. He saw that they were just as human as the Spaniards were and were no less than they were. His perception of humanity altered as a result of living with “the others.”
The Black Legend and White Legend: Relationship Between the Spanish and Indians in the New World
The arguments presented by Las Casas is in defense of the natives stating that if he can convince the king of the wrongful doings of the Spaniards that they would pay for what they've done. The doings of the Spaniards was a shock to Las Casas making him want to spend as long as he could defending them. In the great kingdom and provinces of Peru, Las Casas states "the way the Spanish have behaved has been an offence to God and a disservice to the Crown; the Treasury has been defrauded and, in my opinion, it will be long and a costly business to recover for the Crown this territory which could easily have provided sufficient food to support the entire population of Spain." Just a short example of how Las Casas feels about how the natives are being treated and how he feels about the land bei...
In A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, by Bartolome de Las Casas, he graphically details the ruthless behavior by the Europeans on the indigenous societies in the Americas for the principal intent of spreading the Christian faith. Bartolome de Las Casas wrote this account in the year 1542 and published the account ten years later in 1552 (Casas 9). Bartolome de Las Casas was born in 1484 in a large Spanish city called Seville. His father was a merchant from Tarifa and his mother died when he was still in his childhood. Bartolome de Las Casas later entered the order of the Dominicans and became a friar leading to his ordination as bishop of Chiapas. Bartolome de Las Casas was writing from his own personal experiences of all the
There are several reasons why Spain wanted to colonize what later became the American Southwest. One reason is due to Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca stating on his reports about a seven cities of Gold or “Cibola” that contain rich resources. This brought the attention of Spain which made further explorations to the vast landscape. The Southwest exploration ended in disaster due to the lack of discovery for precious metals, so Spain turned their attention to international rivalry that led Spain’s settlement in the northern frontier. One settlement in particular was Albuquerque in 1706, with its rich resources, Spain required labor workers and this was a reason the Indians were valuable to them (Meier and Ribera, 20). Indians who
One of the biggest intuitions the Spanish created were the missions for the thousands of native people. Father Junipero Sierra help establish missions all along the California coast with the first being in San Diego becoming a spiritual leader of the Scared Expedition. The mission was spaced out to be a day’s ride apart. While the missions did a lot of good they also were also atrocious towards many of the native people occupying the land. The Spanish’s goal was to convert the native people to Christianity by any force necessary. They wanted to assimilate the Indian people into their culture to be loyal to Spain all the while turning them into