american-holocaust

SEX, RACE AND HOLY WAR 217century Frenchman Henri de Ia Popeliniere wrote with dry understatement,"that if the Spaniard had not sent to the Indies discovered by Columbusall the rogues in his realm, and especially those who refused toreturn to their ordinary employment after the wars of Granada against theMoors, these would have stirred up the country or given rise to certainnovelties in Spain." 59To the front-line Spanish troops, then, once they had conquered andstolen from the Indians all the treasure the natives had accumulated forthemselves, the remaining indigenous population represented only an immenseand bestial labor force to be used by the Christians to pry gold andsilver from the earth. Moreover, so enormous was the native populationatleast during the early years of each successive stage in the overall conquest-thatthe terrorism of torture, mutilation, and mass murder was thesimplest means for motivating the Indians to work; and for the same reason-theseemingly endless supply of otherwise superfluous populationthecheapest way of maximizing their profits was for the conquistadors towork their Indian slaves until they dropped. Replacing the dead with newcaptives, who themselves could be worked to death, was far cheaper thanfeeding and caring for a long-term resident slave population.To be sure, there were those who protested this monstrous treatmentof the native people. Las Casas was the most outspoken, the most vigorous,and the most famous, although he was not alone in his efforts. However,he and his supporters were far from a majority, even within the religiousfellowship. Here, for example, is what the pious Dominican TomasOrtiz wrote to the Council of the Indies early in the sixteenth centuryregarding the New World's peoples:On the mainland they eat human flesh. They are more given to sodomy thanany other nation. There is no justice among them. They go naked. They haveno respect either for love or for virginity. They are stupid and silly. Theyhave no respect for truth, save when it is to their advantage. They are unstable.They have no knowledge of what foresight means. They are ungratefuland changeable. . . . They are brutal. They delight in exaggerating theirdefects. There is no obedience among them, or deference on the part of theyoung for the old, nor of the son for the father. They are incapable of learning.Punishments have no effect on them. . . . They eat fleas, spiders, andworms raw, whenever they find them. They exercise none of the human artsor industries. When taught the mysteries of our religion, they say that thesethings may suit Castilians, but not them, and they do not wish to changetheir customs. . . . I may therefore affirm that God has never created a racemore full of vice and composed without the least mixture of kindness orculture. . . . The Indians are more stupid than asses, and refuse to improvein anything. 60The only thing demonstrably true in this litany of Christian hate wasthat the Indians often were understandably reluctant to give up the faiths