Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [213]
Las Casas championed the nearly extinct victims of this outrage—“the simplest people in the world,” he wrote of the Taíno Indians, “long suffering, unassertive, and submissive, . . . without malice or guile, utterly faithful and obedient”—in short, the kind of subjects the Spanish crown would want to have. Yet instead of cultivating these gentle and intelligent people, “we know for sure our fellow-countrymen have, through their cruelty and wickedness, depopulated and laid waste an area which boasted more than ten kingdoms, each of them larger than the Iberian Peninsula.” They slaughtered their children, “on occasion running through a mother and her baby with a single thrust of their swords.” The Spaniards were even more brutal with the Indians’ leaders, whom they lashed to a “griddle consisting of sticks resting on pitchforks driven into the ground and then grill[ed] them over a slow fire, with the result that they howled in agony and despair as they died a lingering death.”
All this Las Casas witnessed. He estimated that “the despotic and diabolical behavior of the Christians has, over the last forty years, led to the unjust and totally unwarranted deaths of more than twelve million souls, women and children among them.” Indeed, he believed fifteen million to be a more accurate tally of deaths caused by Christians resorting to torture, wholesale slaughter, and “the harshest and most iniquitous and brutal slavery that man has ever devised for his fellow men.” Las Casas’s figures have long been debated, but even conservative estimates are stark: of 250,000 Indians under Spanish rule, only 40,000 survived after fifteen years. After a few decades, only a few hundred survived. Many died from infectious diseases caused by exposure to germs borne by the Europeans or their livestock, against which the inhabitants of the New World were defenseless.
And the reason for this tragedy? In his words, “Purely and simply greed.”
Las Casas’s indictment found a receptive audience in Spain’s nascent rival, England, where it took root as the Spanish “Black Legend.” For centuries thereafter, Spain and the explorers who sailed under the Spanish flag were widely condemned as murderers and thieves. The shadow of the Black Legend hung over Columbus as it did over other explorers from Spain. Explorers who sailed under the Spanish flag were widely condemned as murderers and thieves who habitually resorted to inhuman extremes of cruelty. Without meaning to, Las Casas’s account served as a call to arms for Spain’s mostly Protestant rivals to save the New World from further horrors. The surviving Indians became pawns in a geopolitical struggle beyond their comprehension. Even religion offered little guidance concerning the explorers’ deeds and the acquisition of empire. Both Las Casas and Spain’s pious rulers believed God was on their side, as did England.
In 1510, eight years after arriving in Hispaniola, Las Casas became a missionary to the Taínos of Cuba. For a time he exploited Indian labor, then renounced the practice, and by 1514 declared his opposition to the Spanish Enterprise of the Indies, even while encouraging the conversion of the Indians to Christianity. In his later years, he formulated the Doctrine of Self-Determination. It stated, simply, that all power derives from the people, that the people delegate power to rulers to serve the interests of their people, and that significant government deeds require popular approval. “No state, king, or emperor can alienate territories, or change their political system without the express approval of their inhabitants,” he affirmed. Las Casas lived on until July 17, 1566, and died at age ninety-two.
Not everyone was hostile to Columbus or indifferent to his suffering and accomplishments. His loyal friend Diego Méndez always considered his desperate rescue mission in a modified canoe across the open sea to Hispaniola as his life’s great adventure. In his will, dated June 19, 1536, he directed his executors