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The Treatment of African and Native Slaves:
Through the Accounts of Bartolome de las and Olaudah Equiano
Slavery will forever remain a tragically horrific stain in American history not only because of the actual act of enslavement, but the treatment of the salves. Slaves were largely of Native American and African descent. The accounts of Bartolome de las Casas and Olaudah Equiano provide two uniquely different viewpoints on their experience of slavery. Defeated, displaced, and tortured, the natives and African people were involuntarily separated from their families and homes to be put in such conditions.
Bartolome de las Casas is a Spanish priest who traveled to the Americas in the early 1500s and wrote of his experiences with the natives. Originally, he was full of moral neglect and too took advantage of the natives. However, once he became a priest, he saw that these actions went against Christian teachings. He then renounced slavery and even protested the notion. His actions resulted in Casas being hailed as the “protector of the Indies” (p.39) by the Spanish government. In The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies, he used of the title “Christians” when referring to the native captors, as if to add emphasis of shame and disbelief on the severity of their transgressions. Initially, the Europeans travelers were given a non-confrontational greeting of food as the natives were mystified by their arrival. Soon after, the opportunity provided to be too great to pass and the Christians to capitalized in excess.
They began to attack the natives as if without a conscious, forcing them to flee to the mountains. Those could not escape were mortally wounded and released to be an example. As Casas stated, “they behaved...
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...rtolome de las Casas and Olaudah Equiano painted a vibrant picture on the conditions of slavery from a captor and the captive’s perspective. Although separated by time, their words evoke the same atmosphere.
Works Cited
"Bartoleme De Las Casas, Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies." Bartoleme De Las Casas, Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies. Swarthmore College, n.d. Web. 02 Feb. 2014.
Baym, Nina, Philip F. Cura, Wayne Franklin, Jerome Klinkowitz, Arnold Krupat, Robert S. Levine, Mary Loeffelholz, Jeanne Campbell Reesman, and Patricia B. Wallace. “Bartolome De Las Casas (1474-1566).” ”Olaudah Equino (1745?-1797).” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York, NY: Norton, 2012. 38-42,687-721. Print.
Groleau, Rick, Linda Mizzel, and Catherine Benedict, comps. Africans in America. PBS.org. WGBH Interactive, n.d. Web. 02 Feb. 2014.
The origin tale of the African American population in the American soil reveals a narrative of a diasporic faction that endeavored brutal sufferings to attain fundamental human rights. Captured and forcefully transported in unbearable conditions over the Atlantic Ocean to the New World, a staggering number of Africans were destined to barbaric slavery as a result of the increasing demand of labor in Brazil and the Caribbean. African slaves endured abominable conditions, merged various cultures to construct a blended society that pillared them through the physical and psychological hardships, and hungered for their freedom and recognition.
10. Richmond, Douglas. “The Legacy of African Slavery in Colonial Mexico, 1519-1810.” Journal of Popular Culture 35, no. 2 (2001): 1-17.
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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.
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According to the Spanish King's letter to the Viceroy of New Spain, and in Document Number 6, it says "The Spaniards entered like starving wolves, tigers and lions. For the last forty years the Spaniards have done nothing but slay, torment and destroy the Indians with strange and new kinds of cruelty never before seen or heard of." According to Bartolome de Las Casas (Catholic Priest and Missionary in New Spain), this means that the Spanish are forcing the Indies to do things against their will, and now they have to do everything the Spanish tell them to
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the physical burdens of slavery that he faced on a daily basis, it was the psychological effects that caused him the greatest amount of detriment during his twenty-year enslavement. In the same regard, Douglass is able to profess that it was not only the slaves who incurred the damaging effects of slavery, but also the slaveholders. Slavery, in essence, is a destructive force that collectively corrupts the minds of slaveholders and weakens slaves’ intellects.
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