Lies My Teacher Told Me by James
Loewen, 1995, Excerpts
When Columbus and his men returned to Haiti in 1493, they
demanded food, gold, spun cotton – whatever the Indians had that they wanted,
including sex with their women. To ensure cooperation, Columbus used punishment
by example. When an Indian committed even a minor offense, the Spanish cut off
his ears or nose. Disfigured, the person was sent back to his village as living
evidence or the brutality the Spaniards were capable of. After a while, the
Indians had had enough. At first their resistance was mostly passive. They
refused to plant food for the Spanish to take. They abandoned towns near
Spanish settlements. Finally, the Arawaks fought back.
The attempts at resistance gave Columbus an excuse to make
war. On March 24, 1495, he set out to conquer the Arawaks. Bartolome de Las
Casas described the force Columbus assembled to put down the rebellion. “Since
the Admiral perceived that the people of the land were taking up arms,
ridiculous weapons in reality, he hastened to proceed to the country and
disperse and subdue, by force of arms, the people of the entire island. For
this he chose 200 foot soldiers and 20 cavalry, with many crossbows and small
cannon, lances, and swords, and a still more terrible weapon against the
Indians: this was 20 hunting dogs, who were turned loose and immediately tore
the Indians apart.” Naturally, the Spanish won. “The soldiers mowed down dozens
with point-blank volleys, loosed the dogs to rip open limbs and bellies, chased
fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer them on sword and pike, and with God’s
aid soon gained a complete victory, killing many Indians and capturing others
who were also killed.”
In the words of Hans Koning, “There now began a reign of
terror in Hispaniola.” Spaniards hunted Indians for sport and murdered them for
dog food. Columbus, upset because he could not locate the gold he was certain
was on the island, set up a tribune system. Ferdinand Columbus described how it
worked: “the Indians all promised to pay tribute to the Catholic Sovereigns
every three months, as follows: In the Cibao, where the gold mines were, every
person of 14 years of age or upward was to pay a large hawk’s bell of gold
dust; all others were each to pay 25 pounds of cotton. Whenever an Indian
delivered his tribute, he was to receive a brass or copper token which he must
wear bout his neck as proof that he had made his payment. Any Indian found
without such a token was to be punished.” With a fresh token, an Indian was
safe for three months, much of which time would be devoted to collecting more
gold. Columbus’s son neglected to mention how the Spanish punished those whose
tokens had expired: they cut off their hands.
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