american-holocaust

88 AMERICAN HOLOCAUSTI would not condemn the employment of Indian carriers . . . but if a manhad need of one pig, he killed twenty; if four Indians were wanted, he tooka dozen • . . and there were many Spaniards who made the poor Indianscarry their whores in hammocks borne on their shoulders. Were one orderedto enumerate the great evils, injuries, robberies, oppression, and ill treatmentinflicted on the natives during these operations . . . there would be no endof it . . . for they thought no more of killing Indians than if they wereuseless beasts. 106But, like many others, Cieza de Leon's point is better made in incidentalsof detail than with grand pronouncements-as in the offhand reference,in his immediately succeeding sentence, to "a Portuguese named RoqueMartin, who had the quarters of Indians hanging on a porch to feed hisdogs with, as if they were wild beasts."Despite all the savage face-to-face cruelties, however, it was enslavementon the Spaniards' plantations and in their silver mines, in additionto the introduced diseases and starvation, that killed the most Indians directly.Immediately upon entering this region, the conquistadors laid wastethe Incas' roads and bridges, agricultural terraces, and canals. They lootedheavily stocked storehouses and granaries, and gratuitously slaughteredllamas by the thousands. "It is said," wrote one later Spanish official, "that[the soldiers] killed great numbers of llamas simply to eat the marrow-fat,and the rest [of the meat] was wasted." Others described the Spaniards'almost unbelievable destruction of agriculture and animal life, and "in thisway," wrote one, "all the food, the vegetables, llamas and alpacas thatwere in that valley and district were totally consumed." Added Pascual deAndagoya as early as 1539: "The Indians are being totally destroyed andlost. . . . They [beg] with a cross to be' given food for the love of God .. . . [The soldiers are] killing all the llamas they want for no greater needthan to make tallow candles. . . . The Indians are left with nothing toplant, and since they have no cattle and can never obtain any, they cannotfail to die of hunger." 107Believing that El 'Dorados existed in the Amazon, the conquistadorsdrove thousands of natives before them in their desperate searches for goldmines in the jungles. "Some two or three hundred Spaniards go on theseexpeditions," wrote Domingo de Santo Tomas, but "they take two or threethousand Indians to serve them and carry their food and fodder .... Fewor no Indians survive, because of lack of food, the immense hardships ofthe long journeys through wastelands, and from the loads themselves."Added Diego de Almagro-in an account that was typical of countlessothers-Hernando Pizarro would "take Indians in chains to carry what[the conquistadors] had pillaged. . . . When the Indians grew exhausted,they cut off their heads without untying them from the chains, leaving theroads full of dead bodies, with the utmost cruelty." Entire towns and provinceswere wiped out by these and similar practices. 108