During the Sixteenth century Bartolome de las Casas, a Bishop of Chiapas, was in New- Spain looking over the region. While there, he had noticed that innocent Native American men, women and children were murdered in mass quantities. Therefore, he exercised his opinions in a series of documents to show his point of view on what sins the Spaniards are committing on the Indigenous people. Bartolome de las Casas write gruesome seeing’s of plain out murder of Indigenous people in Chiapas. He states, “… the Christians have slain and destroyed so many and such infinite numbers of souls, has been simply to get, as their ultimate end, the Indians’ gold of them” (de las Casas A Short Account of the Destruction) Because of selfish reasons of receiving
the Spanish saw the natives abundance of gold and that they were not Christian, and they felt justified in mistreating them because they thought they were helping them religiously
In “The Brief Account of The Devastations of the Indies” Bartolome de Las Casa is an account that speaks on the unfair treatment that indian people went through and endured during the early parts of the conquest to the island of Hispaniola. The spaniards were treating the indians cruel and were receiving less of their basic human rights. The author’s opinion was able to shine most throughout this account not only because of the sacrifices he made in order to make a change but how heavily he was against some of the ways of the Spaniards. He felt that the behavior of the Spaniard christians was unfair and unacceptable. He spends time being very detailed about the loss of indies people on the islands.
Although still twisted and sadistic, what the white man did to the Native Americans was nothing new. He enslaved them to work both the cash crops fields and the silver mines. Theodore de Bry, a Protestant banished from the Catholic Spanish Netherlands, once deftly engraved the inhumanity forced upon the Native American peoples working the silver mines (Doc 5). Given his Protestant religion, de Bry could have perhaps illustrated the dehumanization of the natives not to deliver them, but to expose the evil of Spanish Catholicism. In layman's terms, he was ‘throwing shade’.
They often killed and robbed several natives for their gold, as Document Six tells us. They were incredibly greedy, and wanted wealth and riches, as opposed to friendship and peace. Their cruelty grew so terrible that the Native Americans they tormented became afraid of the word "Christian," as the Spanish plunderers called themselves as such. Document Six was written by a Spaniard calling for reform. Document Seven displays Native American life as if it were quaint and quiet.
Bartolome de Las Casas was born in 1848 in Spain. Las Casas was a Spanish historian and dominican missionary who objected the Spanish treatment of the Natives. Las Casas is known for his famous writings which weren’t published until many years after his death. Las Casas was not like any ordinary man in his time period. He opposed to several things the Spanish had against the Natives.
In document two, Bartolomé de las Casas is completely agaisnt and adressing the mistreatment under this system. He believes that the abuse that was begun by Cortés will ultimately not convince the Native’s to Christianize. He states that they were looked upon as the “dung and filth of the earth”. This in turn is the impetus of a new law. As shown in document three, Charles V creates new ordinances against the slavery and mistreatment of the Indians.
For countless years, the Natives suffered under the hands of the Spaniards. Slavery, abuse, war, theft, and much more were the result of Spain taking over the Natives homeland and the Native people themselves. In the year 1542, Bartoleme de Las Casas wrote a manuscript called “Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies”, which held a very detailed account of how the natives suffered, and the actions of the Spaniards. This paper will be a brief summary and analysis of the destruction of the Indies. The Indians were said to be very moral people.
All the Spaniards had done was killing of innocent lives for personal greed and acquiring as much goods as they could for their Majesty, doing so for the money was their justifications for killing the natives. Then we have Cortes, who instead of killing off the Natives of Tenochtitlan, he opened their eyes to the horrors of their religious ways and gave them the revelation of Christianity. Cortes didn’t mention any genocide of the natives, he spoke about the geography and religious views of the natives. He stated, “I will simply say that the manner of living among the people is very similar to that of Spain, and considering that this is a barbarous nation shut off from a knowledge of true God or communication with enlightened nations, one may well marvel at the orderliness and good government which is everywhere mentioned” (SB, 8). Cortes is only praising the natives and their life style because he feels the people have everything figured out in terms of being dominant and true government but, lacked in religion which he left them
In the 16th Century, Spain became one of the European forces to reckon with. To expand even further globally, Spanish conquistadors were sent abroad to discover lands, riches, and North America and its civilizations. When the Spanish and Native American groups met one another, they judged each other, as they were both unfamiliar with the people that stood before them. The Native American and Spanish views and opinions of one another are more similar than different because when meeting and getting to know each other, neither the Spaniards nor the Native Americans saw the other group of people as human. Both groups of people thought of one another as barbaric monsters and were confused and amazed by each other’s cultures.
The Catholic Church and Latin America The Catholic Church was a great power ruling many civilizations in Europe during the period between 1492 and 1830. Therefore, the role of the Catholic Church was of utmost importance to the colonization and development of Latin America as it was a great force in Spain and Portugal. Despite the peaceful teachings of the Church, greed and a hunger for power led them to make decisions harming Latin America and Christianity, rather than thriving it. In this paper, I will show that the Catholic Church is significantly responsible for the colonization and development of Latin America through, the Christianizing mission, the Treaty of Tordesillas, and the Spanish Inquisition.
This power imbalance and these payments are key in the subjugation of the natives. Furthermore, the paternalism of the Spanish toward the Indigenous peoples is obvious: “Captain [Cortes] stared at him [Cuauhtemoc]…then patted him on the head” (p.117). Post-conquest, and still today, “difficult relations” between the descendants of the Indigenous peoples and the “others” (p.117) still exist. The European view of the natives “as idolatrous savages” or, on the contrary, as “models of natural virtue” (p.175) demonstrate the versatile and often contradictory views held. Similarly, the Aztecs at times saw the Spaniards as gods, and other times as gold-hungry savages who “fingered it like monkeys” (p.51).
General • First Name: Bartolomé • Last Name: de Las Casas • Middle Name: X • Birth Date: 11 November 1481 • Gender: Male • Ethnicity/Nationality: Spanish General Info: Bartolomé de Las Casas lived during the 16th century. He was one of the first people to settle in the New World. He is most famous for being a social reformer who indeed introduced many social reforms to the world never seen before.
of schedule Spanish conquistadors, numerous evangelists considered themselves to be siding empathetically and defensively with the indigenous people groups. In 1537, Pope Paul III pronounced that Indians were not mammoths to be slaughtered or oppressed, but rather people with souls fit for salvation. At the time, this was comprehended to be an edified perspective of indigenous individuals, and one that good natured teachers tried to empower. Letters from ministers who lived among the Indians give us a feeling of the worries numerous held for the welfare of tribal people groups. A letter by Franciscan monk Juan de Escalona reprimands the "shocks against the Indians" conferred by a Spanish legislative head of what is presently New Mexico.
The Aztecs were constantly launching raids to capture prisoners for the enormous number of human sacrifices they conducted. There is important archeological evidence showing that several Indian civilizations suffered violent ends at the hands of other Indian cultures long before the arrival of the Europeans in America. • In effect, the Spanish employed a colonization strategy of "gold and souls. " Converting the native population to Catholicism not only spread the doctrines of the Catholic Church, then under threat in Europe, but could, it was believed, further the control of Indian behavior in the mines and on the plantations.
Before the Spanish ship that changed it all, which arrived in the “New World” in 1492, thriving organized communities of native people had centuries of history on the land. That ship, skippered by Christopher Columbus, altered the course of both Native American and European history. 1492 sparked the fire of cultural diffusion in the New World which profoundly impacted the Native American peoples and the European settlers. Prior to European contact, Native Americans lived as hunter-gatherers, living and traveling in groups of typically less than 300 people. These Native Americans spoke over 400 languages and practiced a myriad of different religions (The American Pageant).