Lies My Teacher Told Me by James
Loewen, 1995, Excerpts
In 1499 Columbus made a major gold strike in Haiti, and Spain
became the envy of Europe. Columbus and his successors forced hundreds of
thousands of Indians to mine the gold for them, raise Spanish food, and even
carry them everywhere they went. The Indians couldn’t stand it. Pedro de
Cordoba wrote a letter to King Ferdinand in 1517, “As a result of the
sufferings and hard labor they endured, the Indians choose and have chosen
suicide. Occasionally a hundred have committed mass suicide. The women,
exhausted by labor, have shunned conception and childbirth. Many, when
pregnant, have taken something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery
have killed their children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in
such oppressive slavery.”
Beyond facts of cruelty, the Spanish disrupted the Indian
ecosystem and culture. Forcing Indians to work in mines rather than in their
gardens led to widespread malnutrition. The intrusion of rabbits and livestock
caused further ecological disaster. Diseases new to the Indians played a role.
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