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| Non-fiction and essays |
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| University essays |
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| History Dissertation |
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| ENCOUNTER IN THE NEW WORLD: SPANISH ATTITUDES AND ACTIONS TOWARDS INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, LATE 15TH TO EARLY 16TH CENTURY |
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| Chapter Seven: Conclusion Modern interpretations of the encounter in the New World have challenged our understanding of the significance of the conquistadores’ actions. Initial Spanish histories tended to focus on the heroic actions of the conquistadores, who brought civilisation and Christianity to a dark continent that had never heard the gospel. Elazar Barkan suggests, however, that ‘the more attention paid to the victims and their suffering, the less possible it is to merely focus on the heroic components of the encounter.’ According to Barkan, the emphasis must shift to ‘underscore the more genocidal components of colonialism. Such histories would challenge the complicity of the bystanders, as well as the responsibility of our generation, for the historical injustices.’# This changing approach can be linked to the study of indigenous sources, as well as the reinterpretation of the Spanish. Even sources which attempt to portray an Indian viewpoint are often Spanish translations of the original oral records. Such ideas must be taken into account when examining interpretations of the encounter more than five hundred years after it occurred. Bartolomé de Las Casas was at times a lone voice pleading the Indians’ case at the Spanish court. In a seemingly endless supply of polemical tracts, discourses and full length studies, he attempted to discredit the violent conquest of the indigenous peoples encountered by the conquistadores. Las Casas justified his authority through his first hand experience of the New World. As Anthony Pagden has noted, Las Casas claimed his testimony was the ‘only one that is true…not simply because it does not fudge the facts, but because it alone deals with the one feature of the Spanish settlement of America which matters: “the massacres of innocent people.”’# In the medieval mindset within which Las Casas and his contemporaries operated, there was always a difficulty in reconciling what they had witnessed in the New World with the received wisdom of the authoritative canon of texts. Whatever their response to the Indians and their ideas of how the conquest of the New World should progress, fifteenth- and sixteenth- century Spanish writers continually resorted to interpreting the unknown in their familiar European context. While Las Casas proclaimed the potential of the Indians, it was always potential to become more like Europeans. His predispositions towards the superiority of Christianity meant that as long as native peoples were not converted, they would never reach true equality with their Spanish counterparts. From the moment Columbus reached the New World, Spanish ideals of civilisation, culture and religion were transposed upon the fantastic and at times incomprehensible sights that met the Europeans. Not until the ‘gaze of Europeans’ was turned upon the New World, was the darkness lifted, and the New World could finally join the rest of the world in existence.# While some writers and thinkers could see the Indians as possessing some qualities of civilisation, others saw the native peoples of America as barbaric and inhuman. Yet the common theme that affected all Spanish thought concerning the Indians was a comparison with European and especially Spanish culture. Most writers could not accept the Indian civilisation as they found it; rather they could see the potential demonstrated by the Indians for advancement to a state of European civilisation. And as long as the Indians were not converted to the Christian faith, there was no hope for complete equality. This was the case even for Bartolomé de Las Casas, the champion of peaceful conversion. Conversion was still his ultimate goal, which in the end perhaps did not differ from the ambitions of most other Spaniards who considered the consequences of the conquest. Despite the general acceptance of the destructive impact the Spanish and other European nations had on the New World, there is conflict over whether the Spanish intended to bring about so much devastation. Richard Wright has suggested that ‘an entire vocabulary is tainted with prejudice and condescension: whites are soldiers, Indians are warriors; whites live in towns, Indians in villages; whites have kings and generals, Indians have chiefs; whites have states, Indians have tribes.’# The European-centred attitude that shaped considerations of the Indians in the sixteenth century has barely evolved and contempt for American Indian ‘civilisation’ remains impressed upon the psyche of the Western white population. Part of the reason for this is the disparity in Spanish sources and Indian sources, but also in the language employed during the conquest era. Native practices and religion were often described as barbaric and this reinforced notions of the superiority of Christian religion over Indian customs that shaped - and continue to shape - perceptions of the encounter. Christianising the natives was a key concern of contemporary Spanish writers, even if they differed in how such a process should be conducted. Whether Christianity was delivered by a priest to a congregation of Indians, at the death bed of a small-pox ridden native, or at the point of a sword, Spaniards united in the belief that such an act was in the Indians’ best interest. It is ironic that while many Spaniards did not believe the Indians to be capable of understanding and reasoning in the same degree as Europeans, they shared a common belief that Christianity was beneficial to the Indians’ spiritual salvation. As in the case of the conquest of Mexico, there were always two conflicting interpretations. On the one hand was the triumph of Spanish civilisation over the barbaric Indians which illustrated their divine right to ‘subdue and dispossess tribal society.’ Yet at the same time, the truth remained that: They had slaughtered probably half the population. They had reduced the most formidable military force in the Americas to a docile peasantry…the epitome of hopeless lassitude. Of all European confrontations with a tribal people, the Spanish destruction of the Mexica [Aztecs] seemed the least morally defensible. Far from advancing the cause of humanity, they had accomplished its opposite, assassinating an entire civilisation in its prime.# Whatever the justification for Spanish actions in the New World, whether they were in fact sanctified by their Christian God, the legacy of the encounter was the near-total destruction of indigenous culture, civilisation, and an untold number of human beings, because they could not be accommodated into the Eurocentric mindset of the sixteenth century. |
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