Devastation Of The Indies Analysis

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

and they were looking 3G’s (Gold, God, and Glory). Spanish were doing so greedy and tortured to Native but disease was the worst enemy and some of the survivors about 90-95%. In 1616, an epidemic were killed 90% of the coastal Indians.

Environment and Development There were many new world crops for the Spanish to cultivate, one being maize. This became a staple in their society. A century after Columbus had crossed the ocean; New Spain had become a strong empire. The access to furs had a strong influence on the New French way of life.

It raises the question of how the Spanish viewed the natives: as people standing in the way of their gold, or fascinating and interesting people with rich culture and

In the late 1400's, conquistadors started their first voyages to the “New World”. They sought gold, resources, and to convert any indigenous peoples they came across. The Spanish, the conquistadors were heroes for spreading Catholicism and returning new resources. Yet, from the point of view of the natives and Bartholome de Las Casas, they were villains. The conquistadors massacred the natives; enslaving those who escaped.

Very many died of it. They could not walk; they only lay in their resting places and beds.” The first and the second part are showing a huge contrast and the impact that the Age of Exploration had on the Native life, and how the Europeans negatively affected the Native Americans and Africans. Furthermore, document 3 talking about the Estimated Native American Population of Mexico (1518-1593) shows that in 1518 at the start of the Age of Exploration the population was 25 million, then in 1533 it was 17.5, next in 1548 when it was about 6, and then gradually decreased. The population started at 25 million and ended approximately at 2 million.

Juan de Solorzano y Pereyra says that the Indians practiced savage customs or they attempted to commit treason against the Spanish people. Bartolome de Las Casas says that the Indians were gentle sheep and the Spaniards rushed in like a bunch of starving wolves, tigers and lions ready to devour. The Spaniards slew the Indians as if their lives did not matter what so ever. All of this happened throughout Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica and Mexico (Hispaniola). Juan Gines de Sepulveda Sepulveda said that the Indians are a savage and cruel race and that the Spanish are a superior race that is why the Indians should be treated as if they are inferior.

Dear Bartolome de las Casas, I have read your The Devastation of the Indies, and I want you to know that I share the same sentiments with you. I am in deep sorrow because of the cruelty and violence directed to Indians, and such a behavior deserves nothing but condemnation and censure. I have devoted three years to the work of restoring Christianity in Western India, because I believe that people have to know about Christ (Knight, 2012). I support your claim that Natives are constantly cheated and betrayed by their conquerors (La Casas, 1552, p. 31). Further, I am greatly appalled with how families commit suicide together in despair because of the actions of the Spanish.

Conquerors also threatened the natives. It was required that the natives accept the Church as the “Ruler”, and if they didn’t, war would be made against them and their family would become enslaved (document 7). The natives in America suffered severely during this time. In Latin America, the Spanish conquerors overworked the Indian natives and treated them harshly. The Spaniards broke apart families and relationships so that they would have limited contact with each other and would be forced to give up their customs.

Las Cases begins his essay “Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indes” by giving a brief history of the discovery and an account of the characteristics of the ingenious peoples that lived there. Las Cases then goes on to describe the evils those people were subjected to, by the Spaniards, in the name of God and greed. “...they behaved with such temerity and shamelessness that the most powerful ruler of the islands had to see his own wide raped by a Christian officer.”, Las Cases writes. Las Cases' sympathizes with the native people, and his position in his writing appears to be to portray the Spanish as wholly evil, with no redeeming qualities.

After the Spanish made some fortunate discoveries in South America, the English were determined to strike gold in the north, however, they would soon find out that this “new country” was not so perfect. In the Spring of 1607, about 100 colonists sailed to North America and created an English settlement called Jamestown (Roden 49). Upon their arrival, they discovered that Jamestown was home to some 1500 Powhatan Indians, and, because the colonists didn’t bring the right people to defend themselves from Indian attacks, many people died (Roden 49). The colonist also didn’t bring enough people to ward off disease, drought, or famine.

Historians differ on what they think about the net result of the European arrival in the New World. Considering that the Columbian Exchange, which refers to “exchange of plants, animals, people, disease, and culture between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas after Columbus sailed to the Americas in 1492,” led to possibly tens of millions of deaths on the side of the American Indians, but also enabled agricultural and technological trade (Henretta et al. 42), I cannot help but reflect on whether the effects should be addressed as a historical or a moral question. The impact that European contact had on the indigenous populations of North America should be understood as a moral question because first, treating it as a historical question is difficult due to lack of reliable historical evidence; second, the meaning of compelling historical claims is contestable as the academic historian perspective tends to view the American Indian oral history as invalid; and finally, what happened to the native Indians is morally repulsive and must be discussed as such. The consequences of European contact should be answered as a moral question because historically, it is hard to be historically objective in the absence of valid and dependable historical evidence.

The Spanish superiority over the Indigenous people ended when they needed to travel along the coast by creating rafts for transportation, at the cost of their weapons. The way they interacted with the Indigenous people completely changed, instead of conquering they had to rely on them to survive. Eventually the castaways became traveling healers who passed from village to village using their skills and higher knowledge to cure the sick/ wounded. Before the castaways, their ways of healing comprised of mainly praying and blowing into the sick mouths of people, which we know doesn’t really work. Now that they were helping the indians instead of conquering them, they were treated with respect and were given shelter, food, and even gifts.

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.

In this report, the author claims that the Mexican population dropped from 30 million to 3 million due to the European colonization. It also states how this drop was mainly due to the spread of diseases like measles, smallpox, yellow fever, and many more. Because the native peoples had never been exposed to these diseases prior, the spread of them caused a devastating number of deaths. This report is written by a third-party author, causing it to have little bias. As well, the author does not exaggerate Europeans barbarianism, but rather disease, as the main cause of death during the colonization of the New