![]() ![]() By this means a great nombre of them (not used to such pains) died, and a great number of them (seeing themselves brought from so quiet a life to such misery and slavery) of desperation killed themselves. How might these writings have been used to promote the “Black Legend” against Spain as well as subsequent English exploration and colonization?Īn English writer explained that the Indians “were simple and plain men, and lived without great labour,” but in their lust for gold the Spaniards “forced the people (that were not used to labour) to stand all the daie in the hot sun gathering gold in the sand of the rivers. The other-after having slain all those who might yearn toward or suspire after or think of freedom, or consider escaping from the torments that they are made to suffer, by which I mean all the native-born lords and adult males, for it is the Spaniards’ custom in their wars to allow only young boys and females to live-being to oppress them with the hardest, harshest, and most heinous bondage to which men or beasts might ever be bound into. ![]() ![]() The first being unjust, cruel, bloody, and tyrannical warfare. Two principal and general customs have been employed by those, calling themselves Christians, who have passed this way, in extirpating and striking from the face of the earth those suffering nations. And no other thing have they done for forty years until this day, and still today see fit to do, but dismember, slay, perturb, afflict, torment, and destroy the Indians by all manner of cruelty-new and divers and most singular manners such as never before seen or read or heard of-some few of which shall be recounted below, and they do this to such a degree that on the Island of Hispaniola, of the above three millions souls that we once saw, today there be no more than two hundred of those native people remaining. Into and among these gentle sheep, endowed by their Maker and Creator with all the qualities aforesaid, did creep the Spaniards, who no sooner had knowledge of these people than they became like fierce wolves and tigers and lions who have gone many days without food or nourishment. He lobbied for new legislation, eventually known as the New Laws, which would eliminate Indian slavery and the encomienda system in 1542. In 1515, Las Casas released his enslaved Indians, gave up his encomienda, and began to advocate for humane treatment of Native peoples. However, after witnessing the savagery with which encomenderos (recipients of encomiendas) treated the Native people, he reversed his views. In his early life in the Americas, he owned enslaved Indians and was the recipient of an encomienda. A Dominican friar, Las Casas had been one of the earliest Spanish settlers in the Spanish West Indies. One Spaniard, Bartolomé de Las Casas, denounced the brutality of Spanish rule. The system of encomiendas was accompanied by a great deal of violence. An English reprint of the writings of Bartolomé de las Casas bore the sensational title: “Popery Truly Display’d in its Bloody Colours: Or, a Faithful Narrative of the Horrid and Unexampled Massacres, Butcheries, and all manners of Cruelties that Hell and Malice could invent, committed by the Popish Spanish.” Reports of Spanish atrocities spread throughout Europe and provided a humanitarian justification for European colonization. ![]() The Spanish exploitation of New Spain’s riches (in present-day Mexico) inspired European monarchs to invest in exploration and conquest. As the violence diminished in Europe, however, religious and political rivalries continued in the New World. Millions died from religious violence in France alone. Long and expensive conflicts drained time, resources, and lives. The Reformation threw England and France, the two European powers capable of contesting Spain, into turmoil. While Spain plundered the New World, unrest plagued Europe. The drawing was part of a complaint about Spanish abuses of their encomiendas. In this startling image from the Kingsborough Codex (a book written and drawn by Native Mesoamericans), a well-dressed Spaniard is shown pulling the hair of a bleeding, severely injured Native man. ![]()
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