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Freedom And Opportunity In The 1500s

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Freedom and opportunity from the 1500s to the 1700s meant very different things to each person. Even though, freedom and opportunity to some meant exploitation and to others persecution, there was always a good explanation as to why. There are several instances when it is clearly shown just how different freedom and opportunity are to every person. This essay is going to highlight some of those instances. Freedom, means the liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another (Webster, 2017). Freedom was something not many people were given. In 1528, Bartolome de Las Casas wrote about the history of the Indies. Las Casas was a priest who didn’t like how the Spanish Empire treated the Indians. He wrote about their history to show just how cruel the Spanish empire really was. One of the many things he wrote to describe what the conditions were of the the Indians was, “The Indians [of Hispaniola] were totally deprived of their freedom and were put in the harshest, fiercest, most horrible servitude and captivity which no one who has not seen it can understand” (Foner, 36). To the Indians, freedom was something they thought they could never …show more content…

There were many opportunities but not all of them were good and most of them weren’t for the Indians. On December 19, 1681, a man named Josephe, who was a Spanish-speaking Indian, was questioned by a royal attorney about the Pueblo Revolt. His answers to the questions was called the Declaration of Josephe. Josephe saw opportunity as an exploitation only because he was able to use the resources he had to give his opinion about the revolt and have it written out. When asked about the causes or motives of the Indians revolting, he replied, “...the causes they have were alleged ill treatment and injuries received from [Spanish authorities], because they beat them, took away what they had, and made them work without pay” (Foner,

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