Lies My Teacher Told Me by James
Loewen, 1995, Excerpts
Christopher Columbus introduced two phenomena that
revolutionized race relations and transformed the modern world: the taking of
land, wealth, and labor from indigenous peoples, leading to their near
extermination, and the transatlantic slave trade, which created a racial
underclass.
Amassing wealth and dominating other people came to be
positively valued as the key means of winning esteem on earth and salvation in
the hereafter. Merchants and rulers collaborated to finance and authorize them.
As Columbus put it, “Gold is most excellent; gold constitutes treasure; and he
who has it does all he wants in the world, and can even lift souls up to
Paradise.”
Typically after “discovering” an island and encountering a
tribe of Indians new to them, the Spaniards would read aloud [in Spanish] what
came to be called “the Requirement.” Here is one version:
“I implore you to recognize the Church as a lady and in the
name of the Pope take the King as lord of this land and obey his mandates. If
you do not do it, I tell you that with the help of God I will inter powerfully
against you all. I will make war everywhere and every way that I can. I will
subject you to the yoke and obedience to the Church and to his majesty. I will
take your women and children and make them slaves. The deaths and injuries that
you will receive from here on will be your own fault and not that of his
majesty nor of the gentlemen that accompany me.”
Having thus satisfied their consciences by offering the
Indians a chance to convert to Christianity, the Spaniards then felt free to do
whatever they wanted with the people they had just “discovered.”
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