In Search of Better Stories

Not Everyone Thought Genocide Was A Good Idea

Spain was at one time a global superpower. Their time to shine was from 1519-1682. They shined especially brightly because they tapped into a funding source that was without equal. The Indigenous people of the Americas were loaded down with incalculable amounts of gold, silver, and precious gems. All one needed to do was vanquish these people and take their stuff.

The slaughter of indigenous people by European colonizers is well documented; what isn’t is the small but consistently outspoken and activist resistance movement against such atrocities led by committed Christians. For example, in 1542, Dominican Friar Bartolome de Las Casas wrote a book full of withering criticism for the butchery he witnessed in the new world. He returned to Spain and battled all the way up the food chain until he had an audience with King Charles and his ministers. To them, he complained that Spain had “waged unjust and cruel wars against Indians who were no danger to anyone.”  Las Casas was vicious in his criticism that Spanish overlords had enslaved them and “forced them into mines where in the end they all die because of the incredible toil involved in extracting the gold.” Las Casas told King Charles it was his moral responsibility to free the Indians from Spanish bondage, which was “worse than what was imposed upon the Israelites by Pharaoh.” Another new world preacher by the name of Montesino’s thundered forth his message:

By what law do you hold these Indians in such horrible and inhuman slavery? By what authority have you waged such a detestable war against people who lived peacefully and quietly? Why do you murder them in order to acquire ever more gold? Be sure, like the Moors and Turks who are without the faith of Jesus Christ; you can never save your souls! p16

Support for these frontier preachers already had a ready ally in the Vatican. In 1537 Pope Paul III issued the Papal Bull Sublimus Deus, Which declared that “It is the work of the devil to suggest the Indians were dumb brutes created for our service” instead, they must be allowed to “freely and legitimately enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property nor should they be in any way enslaved” p.99 

Not everybody was thrilled with the opinions of these religious radicals from the frontier or their backers from the Vatican. But Las Casas, ever the indomitable force, would not be denied until the issue was front and centre among the Spanish empire’s power brokers. The opinions of Aristotle, that ancient luminary of philosophy, were inserted into the debate. He taught that humanity was divided into natural masters and natural slaves. The people of the new world were natural slaves; therefore, the humane thing would be to subjugate them so they could live according to their natural standing. 

The argument faltered when it was pointed out that new world people had intelligent leaders, developed cities, complex infrastructure and well-developed civilizations. So the argument turned in a new direction led by a man named Vitoria. He agreed that Spanish expansion and exploitation were bad unless the cultures it encountered were decidedly evil. In this case, it would be necessary to subjugate them so they could be properly civilized. Vitoria was ready with examples of indigenous tyrants and stories of child sacrifice and cannibalism. The culture of the indigenous peoples of the new world was reprehensible, so it was just to wage war against it.

Finally, Sepulveda put a potentially lethal combination of these two lines of argumentation before the king.

“These are sub men with scarcely a trace of humanity, who, with their savage customs, not only lack culture but neither have writing nor conserve their history. What can we expect from people so given to every kind of passion and buggery, many of whom eat human flesh? They are as inferior to the Spaniards as children to adults, women to men…almost…as monkeys are to men” 104

Las Casas was not intimidated at all. He argued against Aristotelian ideas and for the concept that all people, in the eyes of a loving God, were created equal. Las Casas was the first in modern history to espouse a basic concept of universal human rights. Las Casas gave no quarter to those who argued for the destruction of a corrupt society so that it could be remoulded into a better Christian one. He fired off his retort against such lunacy.

If we send an armed phalanx of Christians shooting rifles and cannon with their flashes of light and terrible thunder if pottery shakes and the earth trembles, the sky is hidden in heavy darkness, the old, the young, and women are killed, homes are destroyed, and everything resounds with warlike fury… What will the Indians think about our religion? 106

Las Casas was incredulous that some would think that through war and massacre, the good news of Jesus might come to the heathen. For Las Casas, the gospel of Jesus could only be served on a platter of peace and freedom.

Las Casas won the years-long debate. First, in 1542 Kind Charles ordered an end to the enslavement of new world peoples by Spanish overlords, and in April of 1550, King Charles ordered the suspension of all conquests in the New World.

Sadly, the efforts of Las Casas and his supporters did little to relieve the suffering of the first peoples of the Americas. When the new laws made there way to the Americas, the colonists revolted, killing crown leaders and religious people alike. The Conquistadors and their offspring were not about to relinquish the power and wealth they had built into their society based on the words of a few religious quacks and a monarch with an oversensitive conscience half a world away. Enforcement became a significant problem, and in the end, all these efforts did little to prevent the destruction of the new world’s native population.

Robert Goodwin concludes with a sobering summary of that “perfect storm” that decimated native peoples within Spanish dominions:

Indigenous American (Populations) collapsed by 95% in the first century or two after Columbus. Many were worked to death in the silver mines and sugar mills. With their traditions and culture terribly crippled, many lost the will to procreate; many died of despair or alcoholism and suicide. Some must have fled to areas not controlled by Spaniards, others had children by Europeans or Africans, so their descendants became part of the casta society. But the vast majority were slaughtered by European diseases such as smallpox, measles, typhus, plague and influenza, to which they had no natural immunity, while mumps may have made as much as a third of the adult male populations sterile. p. 258

Greed and the quest for power are titanic forces that control men and destroy what’s good in the world. Historically, there is only one predominant counterweight to these natural forces—the message of peace and freedom found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Vatican of the 16th century understood this, and so did a handful of frontier preachers. Sadly, this good message did not overcome its towering opposite in the New World, and the gruesome end of entire civilizations resulted.

Subscribe to my blog

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 200 other subscribers

One Response

  1. Wow. What a powerful chapter of the story I didn’t know about until now. Thank you for sharing this.

Leave a Reply

Other Posts That Might Interest You

Becoming

I’ve read biographies of such giants as U.S. Grant, Genghis Khan, and Napoleon. But now it’s on to even higher peaks: Michelle Obama. Wait, what?

Drink

     I read Chasing the Scream and learned all about the history of drugs, and then I read a book on the history of

Long Walk To Freedom (Book Review)

Separate toilets, separate buses, separate stores, separate everything! – Why? All because black skin meant inferior & white skin meant superior. Of course at times

%d bloggers like this: