Edited on Tue Aug-21-07 04:37 PM by L. Coyote
Columbus (1493), in his letter to the Spanish monarchy, reported in part:
"Concerning the Islands Recently Discovered in the Indian Sea … Because my undertakings have attained success, I know that it will be pleasing to you: these I have determined to relate, so that you may be made acquainted with everything done and discovered in this our voyage. On the thirty-third day after I departed from Cadiz, I came to the Indian sea, where I found many islands inhabited by men without number, of all which I took possession for our most fortunate king, with proclaiming heralds and flying standards, no one objecting…."
Columbus continues,
"These people practice no kind of idolatry; on the contrary they firmly believe that all strength and power, and in fact all good things are in heaven, and that I had come down from thence with these ships and sailors; and in this belief I was received there after they had put aside fear. Nor are they slow or unskilled, but of excellent and acute understanding; and the men who have navigated that sea give an account of everything in an admirable manner; but they never saw people clothed, nor these kind of ships. As soon as I reached that sea, I seized by force several Indians on the first island, in order that they might learn from us, and in like manner tell us about those things in these lands of which they themselves had knowledge; and the plan succeeded, for in a short time we understood them and they us, sometimes by gestures and signs, sometimes by words; and it was a great advantage to us. They are coming with me now, yet always believing that I descended from heaven, although they have been living with us for a long time, and are living with us today. And these men were the first who announced it wherever we landed, continually proclaiming to the others in a loud voice, "Come, come, and you will see the celestial people."
"Truly great and wonderful is this, and not corresponding to our merits, but to the holy Christian religion, and to the piety and religion of our sovereigns, because what the human understanding could not attain, that the divine will has granted to human efforts. For God is wont to listen to his servants who love his precepts, even in impossibilities, as has happened to us on the present occasion, who have attained that which hitherto mortal men have never reached. For if anyone has written or said anything about these islands, it was all with obscurities and conjectures; no one claims that he had seen them; from which they seemed like fables. Therefore let the king and queen, the princes and their most fortunate kingdoms, and all other countries of Christendom give thanks to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who has bestowed upon us so great a victory and gift. Let religious processions be solemnized; let sacred festivals be given; let the churches be covered with festive garlands. Let Christ rejoice on earth, as he rejoices in heaven, when he foresees coming to salvation so many souls of people hitherto lost. Let us be glad also, as well on account of the exaltation of our faith, as on account of the increase of our temporal affairs, of which not only Spain, but universal Christendom will be partaker. These things that have been done are thus briefly related. Farewell."
Bernal Diaz del Castillo: True History of the Conquest of New Spain. On arriving in Cuba:
"On landing we went at once to pay our respects to the Governor, who was pleased at our coming, and promised to give us Indians as soon as there were any to spare."
About leaving Cuba in 1517, Diaz writes:
"In order that our voyage should proceed on right principles we wished to take with us a priest…. We also chose for the office of overseer (in His Majesty's name) a soldier ... so that if God willed that we should come on rich lands, or people who possessed gold or silver or pearls or any other kind of treasure, there should be a responsible person to guard the Royal Fifth."
Regarding the discovery of Yucatan, Diaz continues:
"When we had seen the gold and houses of masonry, we felt well content at having discovered such a country."
Regarding the second expedition from Cuba to Yucatan:
"As the report had spread that the lands were very rich, the soldiers and settlers who possessed no Indians in Cuba were greedily eager to go to the new land..."
On returning to Cuba:
"When the governor saw the gold we had brought ... amounted in all to twenty thousand dollars, he was well contented. Then the officers of the King took the Royal Fifth...." "When Governor Diego Velasquez understood how rich were these newly discovered lands, he ordered another fleet, much larger than the former one be sent off..."
These passages clearly relate the role of searching for riches. One form of wealth is certainly the possession of slaves, and this wealth is based on the ability to find slaves. Fundamental to enslavement is the concept of Other.
Of the expedition to Mexico:
"As soon as Hernando Cortes had been appointed General he began to search for all sorts of arms, guns, powder, and crossbows, and every kind of warlike stores which he could get together..."
"Then he ordered two standards and banners to be made, worked in gold with the royal arms and the cross on each side with a legend which said, 'Comrades, let us follow the sign of the Holy Cross with true faith, and through it we shall conquer.' …"
"Juan Sedeno passed for the richest soldier in the fleet, for he came in his own ship with the mare, and a negro and a store of cassava bread and salt pork, and at that time horses and negroes were worth their weight in gold…."
Regarding the first battle fought under Cortes in the New World, against the people of Tabasco, Diaz writes:
"... we doctored the horses by searing their wounds with the fat from the body of a dead Indian which we cut up to get out the fat, and we went to look at the dead lying on the plain and there were more than eight hundred of them, the greater number killed by thrusts, the others by cannon, muskets and crossbows, and many were stretched on the ground half dead…. The battle lasted over an hour ... we buried the two soldiers that had been killed ... we seared the wounds of the others and of the horses with the fat of the Indian, and after posting sentinels and guards, we had supper and rested."
"... These were the first vassals to render submission to His Majesty in New Spain."
Las Casas' writing provides a perspective on the activities and mind-set of the conquerors not typically found in ethnohistorical materials, a reminder that diverse perspectives on the conquest prevailed. Las Casas writes:
"…forty-nine years have passed since the first settlers penetrated the land, the first so claimed being the large and most happy isle called Hispaniola, … This large island was perhaps the most densely populated place in the world … all the land so far discovered is a beehive of people; it is as though God had crowded into these lands the great majority of mankind."
"And of all the infinite universe of humanity, these people are the most guileless, the most devoid of wickedness and duplicity, the most obedient and faithful to their native masters and to the Spanish Christians whom they serve. They are by nature the most humble, patient, and peaceable, holding no grudges, free from embroilments, neither excitable nor quarrelsome. These people are the most devoid of rancors, hatreds, or desire for vengeance of any people in the world … they not only possess little but have no desire to possess worldly goods. For this reason they are not arrogant, embittered, or greedy.… They are very clean in their persons, with alert, intelligent minds, docile and open to doctrine, very apt to receive our holy Catholic faith, to be endowed with virtuous customs, and to behave in a godly fashion."
While lobbying for the indigenous population, Las Casas nonetheless reveals the Otherness concept, when stating that the non-Christian natives serve the Spanish Christians. He also portrays them in relation to their receptivity to religious indoctrination. His guileless, peaceable people are not recognizable as the cannibals depicted by other authors. Las Casas continues:
"…into this land of meek outcasts there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved for many days. And Spaniards have behaved in no other way during the past forty years, down to the present time, for they are still acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola once so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred persons."
"The island of Cuba is… now almost completely depopulated. San Juan
and Jamaica are two of the largest, most productive and attractive islands; both are now deserted and devastated. On the northern side of Cuba and Hispaniola the neighboring Lucayos comprising more than sixty islands … have the healthiest lands in the world, where lived more than five hundred thousand souls; they are now deserted, inhabited by not a single living creature. All the people were slain or died after being taken into captivity and brought to the Island of Hispaniola to be sold as slaves. When the Spaniards saw that some of these had escaped, they sent a ship to find them, and it voyaged for three years among the islands searching for those who had escaped being slaughtered…"
"More than thirty other islands in the vicinity of San Juan are for the most part and for the same reason depopulated…"
"As for the vast mainland, which is ten times larger than all Spain, … we are sure that our Spaniards, with their cruel and abominable acts, have devastated the land and exterminated the rational people who fully inhabited it. We can estimate very surely and truthfully that in the forty years that have passed, with the infernal actions of the Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men, women, and children. In truth, I believe without trying to deceive myself that the number of the slain is more like fifteen million."
"Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire gold, and to swell themselves with riches in a very brief time…"
"… the Indians began to seek ways to throw the Christians out of their lands.… And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers' breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, 'Boil there, you offspring of the devil!' Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby. They made some low wide gallows on which they hanged victim's feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive. To others they attached straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and set them afire. With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim's neck, saying, 'Go now, carry the message,' meaning, Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains. … survivors were distributed among the Christians to be slaves."
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