Destruction Of The Indies By Bartolome De Las Casas

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Columbus discovery of the Americas was very profitable for the Spanish Empire, but devastating to the Native Americans already living there for thousands of years. This is conveyed in “a Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies” by Bartolomé de Las Casas. The main goal of Las Casas was to inform the Spanish King about the atrocities committed by the Conquistadors to the Indian people and their land. From the beginning the rules were that the Spanish were to convert the Indians to Christianity and help them achieve heaven. On the other hand, the Conquistadors did not follow the rules and instead murdered millions of Natives for their riches. Unfortunately to the Indians, the arrival of the Spaniards brought them total destruction. The Europeans took advantage of the Indians’ submissiveness and used mass murder (of men, women, children and elder), rape, and torture to get what they wanted, and those who survived were turned into slaves working under very harsh conditions. The Spaniards took advantage of the Natives’ hospitality and docility and used it to make their way into their cities, to then, destroy them. The Spanish were faced with little to no opposition from the Indians. The Native Americans welcomed the Europeans with open arms as if they were divine, “Once it so happened, that the citizens of a famous city, distant ten miles from the place where we then resided, came to meet us with a splendid retinue, to render their visit more honorable, bringing with them delicious viands, and such kind of dainties, with as great a quantity of fish as they could possibly procure, and distributing them among us; but behold on a sudden, some wicked devil possessing the minds of the Spaniards, agitated them with great fury, that I b... ... middle of paper ... ... only giving him a small amount, he made his agenda to prosecute the soldiers responsible, but never cross his mind to help the Natives. No Native American was spared from the massacres that the Spanish were committing. Even the Indian nobles from Hispaniola that were incredibly loyal to the Spanish Crown were not left alive. They were burned alive or hung, while others were drowned to death, cut into pieces, or fed to wild dogs. Indians perished in the millions because the Spaniards wanted their riches and used any means to acquire all of it, including mass murder, rape and torture. Those fortunate (or unfortunate depending on who you ask) enough to survive were used as slaves to work hard labor, and eventually starve to death. The Native Americans were taken advantage of because of their passive culture by the Spanish who murder them and destroyed their lands.

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