Questions and Comments on Bartolome de las Casas

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Question #1: In chapter one, does Zinn portray Bartolome de las Casas as an adversary of Indians?
Answer: No, Zinn does not portray Bartolome de las Casas as an adversary of Indians.
Zinn’s viewpoint of Bartolome de las Casas is that Bartolome wants to spread the Christian faith to Indians in America. He does not want to own land and make Indian people his slaves. Bartolome somehow admired the Indians because Indians have a lot of living skills and are capable to do many things to protect their home from other tribes.
In addition, from Zinn’s analysis, Bartolome thinks Indian people are living in a society which goes by natural economy, they don’t know how to trade with other people because they are very willing to both give their properties to others and take other people’s wealth. Once alien invaders come to their tribe, Indian people were treated as slaves by these alien invaders. On the other hand, Indian people don’t have human rights anymore; alien invaders use them to do dangerous work, such as dug up the hill to look for gold and mineral, and this is labor abuses. Therefore, Bartolome feels it is not right to treat Indians in these ways not only based on Christian religions, but also human’s basic rights.
Zinn also exposes that Bartolome has always been devoting his life to help the Indians to get rid of tyranny from alien invaders like Spain. He thinks tyranny is unjust and cruel to Indian people, and they should not deserve it.
Moreover, Zinn points out under tyranny, Indian people overworked and ravenous. Many of them died, and the number of Indians population is decreasing quickly. For that reason, Zinn thinks Bartolome is indignant about the tyranny to Indian people. Bartolome believes because of Spain’s greed an...

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... looking for a government which can devote God in coordination with the dictates of their own morality.
From the book, Roger Williams stays on his belief and dissent position in truthfulness. Therefore, no citizen was physically abused for holding and committing dissenting views in religious substances finally by giving a concrete example of a free church in a free state. Roger Williams never gives up on his idea of separating the religious from the state, and eventually builds a new land where complete religious liberty is developed.
According to Zinn, Roger Williams believes that government should not enforce any religious tyranny, and take the neutral position upon all religious problems, also give religious enough dissent space that everyone can hold their dissent. Williams hold the idea that he could be argued by any other dissenters in religious substances.

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