The Destruction of the Indies and the Middle Passage Essay Example for Free

The Destruction of the In break-dances and the Middle line of achievement EssayBartolom de las Casas was ace of the first proponents of Indian rights in the New World. A priest and historian of his solar day, obligated for preserving Christopher Columbuss journals, de las Casas also wrote works such as The Devastation of the Indies and Apologetic History of the Indies. Labeled a dissenter and traitor, de las Casas documented the war on the Indians by the Spaniards and argued the Indians cause, at great personal risk, brieflyer the Spanish court. The pas meter account gives a sympathetic exposition of the natives, bug outlines the Spanish lust for gold, and details a nearly dumbfounding torture of several Indians. SOURCE From The Devastation of the Indies by Bartolom de las Casas. English Translation Copyright 1974 by The intersection Publishing Company. Reprinted by permission of The Crossroad Publishing Company.And of each the absolute universe of humanity, these battalion ar the most guileless, the most devoid of wickedness and duplicity, the most obedient and faithful to their native masters and to the Spanish Christians whom they serve. They are by nature the most humble, patient, and peaceable, holding no grudges, free from embroilments, neither excitable nor quarrelsome(a). These people are the most devoid of rancors, hatreds, or desire for vengeance of any people in the world. And because they are so weak and complaisant, they are less able to endure heavy labor and soon die of no matter what malady. The sons of nobles among us, brought up in the enjoyments of lifes refinements, are no more(prenominal) delicate than are these Indians, sluice those among them who are of the lowest rank of laborers. They are also scant(p) people, for they non only possess littler and have no desire to possess worldly goods. For this reason they are non arrogant, embittered, or greedy. Their repasts are such that the food of the holy fathers i n the desert can scarcely be more parsimonious, scanty, and poor.As to their dress, they are generally naked, with only their pudenda covered somewhat. And when they cover their shoulders it is with a square cloth no more than two varas in size. They have no beds, provided sleep on a patient of of matting or else in a kind of suspended net called hamacas. They are very moderately in their persons, with alert, intelligent minds, docile and open to doctrine, very apt to receive our holyCatholic faith, to be endowed with virtuous customs, and to behave in a godly fashion. And once they begin to hear the discussion of the Faith, they are so insistent on k presentlying more and on taking the sacraments of the Church and on observing the divine cult that, truly, the missionaries who are hither need to be endowed by god with great patience in order to cope with such eagerness.Some of the secular Spaniards who have been here for many an(prenominal) years say that the goodness of the I ndians is undeniable and that if this gifted people could be brought to receipt the one true paragon they would be the most fortunate people in the world. The common ways in the first place employed by the Spaniards who call themselves Christian and who have gone thither to extirpate those pitiful nations and overfly them off the earth is by unjustly waging cruel and bloody wars. Then, when they have slain all those who fought for their lives or to escape the tortures they would have to endure, that is to say, when they have slain all the native rulers and young men (since the Spaniards usually stop only the women and children, who are subjected to the hardest and bitterest servitude ever suffered by man or beast), they en break ones back any survivors. With these infernal methods of totalitarianism they debase and weaken countlessnumbers of those pitiful Indian nations. Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ult imate aim, which is to acquire gold, and to swell themselves with loadedes in a very draft period and thus rise to a high estate disproportionate to their merits. It should be kept in mind that their insatiable greed and ambition, the greatest ever seen in the world, is the cause of their villainies. And also, those lands are so rich and felicitous, the native peoples so meek and patient, so easy to subject, that our Spaniards have no more consideration for them than beasts. And I say this from my own knowledge of the acts I witnessed. But I should not say than beasts for, thanks be to deity, they have interact beasts with some respect I should say alternatively like excrement on the public squares. I once axiom this, when there were four or five Indian nobles lashed on grids and burning I seem plain to recall that there were two or three pairs of grids where others were burning, and because they express such loud screams that they disturbed the Spanish captains sleep, he ord ered them to be strangled.And the constable,who was worse than an executioner, did not essential to obey that order (and I know the name of that constable and know his relatives in Seville), but instead put a stick over the victims tongues, so they could not make a sound, and he aroused up the fire, but not excessively practically, so that they roasted slowly, as he liked. I saying all these things I have described, and countless others. And because all the people who could do so fled to the mountains to escape these inhuman, ruthless, and angry acts, the Spanish captains, enemies of the human race, pursued them with the fierce dogs they kept which attacked the Indians, tearing them to pieces and devouring them. And because on a couple of(prenominal) and faraway between occasions, the Indians justifiably killed some Christians, the Spaniards made a rule among themselves that for every Christian slain by the Indians, they would slay a hundred Indians.Among the noteworthy outra ges they committed was the one they perpetrated against a cacique, a very distinguished noble, by name Hatuey, who had come to Cuba from Hispaniola with many of his people, to flee the calamities and inhuman acts of the Christians. When he was told by certain Indians that the Christians were now coming to Cuba, he assembled as many of his followers as he could and utter this to them Now you must know that they are saying the Christians are coming here, and you know by experience how they put So and So and So and So, and other nobles to an end. And now they are coming from Haiti (which is Hispaniola) to do the same here. Do you know why they do this? The Indians replied We do not know. But it may be that they are by nature wicked and cruel.And he told them No, they do not act only because of that, but because they have a God they greatly worship and they want us to worship that God, and that is why they struggle with us and subject us and kill us. He had a basket full of gold and jewels and he said You see their God here, the God of the Christians. If you agree to it, let us dance for this God, who knows, it may pl placidity the God of the Christians and then they pull up s compresss do us no harm. And his followers said, all together, Yes, that is good, that is good And they danced round the basket of gold until they unforgiving stilt exhausted. Then their chief, the cacique Hatuey, said to them See here, if we keep this basket of gold they will take it from us and will end up by killing us. So let us expend away the basket into the river.They all agreed to do this, and they flung the basket of gold into the river that was nearby. This cacique, Hatuey, was constantly fleeing before the Christians from the time they arrived on the island of Cuba, since he knew them and of what they were capable. Now and then they encountered him and he defended himself, but they finally killed him. And they did this for the sole reason that he had fled from those cruel and wicked Christians and had defended himself against them. And when they had captured him and as many of his followers as they could, they burned them all at the stake. When secure to the stake, the cacique Hatuey was told by a Franciscan friar who was present, an artless rascal, something about the God of the Christians and of the articles of the Faith.And he was told what he could do in the brief time that remained to him, in order to be saved and go to Heaven. The cacique, who had neer heard any of this before, and was told he would go to Inferno where if he did not adopt the Christian Faith, he would suffer eternal torment, asked the Franciscan friar if Christians all went to Heaven. When told that they did he said he would prefer to go to Hell. Such is the fame and honor that God and our Faith have earned through the Christians who have gone out to the Indies.The Middle Passage, from Olaudah Equianos arouse NarrativeThis account of the middle passage comes from one of the first writings by an ex-slave and the originator of the slave narrative. Equiano was born in Nigeria and was kidnapped into slavery at the age of eleven. After a time in the West Indies, he was sold to a Virginia planter before becoming the slave of a merchant. Years later he was able to buy his freedom and at the age of 44, he wrote The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African. Written by Himself. Equiano became an abolitionist and made the expedition to settle the dependance of ex-slaves at Sierra Leone.. . . The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled and tossed upto see if I were sound by some of the crew and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were goin g to kill me. Their complexions too differing so more from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke, (which was very different from any I had ever heard) united to confirm me in this belief. Indeed such were the repugnances of my views and fears at the moment, that, if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to have ex agitated my condition with that of the meanest slave in my own sphere.When I looked round the ship too and saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck of cards and fainted. When I recovered a little I found some black people about me, who I believe were some of those who brought me on board, and had been receiving their brook they talked to me in order to cheer me, but all in vain. I asked them if we were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks,red faces, and loose hair.They told me I was not and one of the crew brought me a small portion of spirituous liquor in a wine glass but, being horror-stricken of him, I would not take it out of his hand. One of the blacks therefore took it from him and gave it to me, and I took a little down my palate, which, instead of reviving me, as they thought it would, threw me into the greatest consternation at the strange feeling it produced, having never tasted any such liquor before. Soon after this the blacks who brought me on board went off, and left me abandoned to despair. I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country or even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the shore, which I now considered as friendly and I even wished for my causation slavery in preference to my present smudge, which was filled with horrors of every kind, still heightened by my ignorance of what I was to undergo.I was not long suffered to indulge my grief I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never go through in my life so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to tasteanything. I now wished for the last friend, death, to beg off me but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across I think the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely. I had never experienced anything of this kind before and although, not being used to the water, I naturally feared that element the first time I saw it, yet nevertheless, could I have got over the nettings, I would have jumped over the side, but I could not and, besides, the crew used to watch us very closely who were not chained down to the decks, lest we shou ld startle into the water and I have seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting to do so, and hourly whipped for not eating.This indeed was frequently the case with myself. In a little time after, amongst the poor chained men, I found some of my own nation, which in a small degree gave ease to my mind. I inquired of these what was to be done with us they gave me to understand we were to be carried to these white peoples country to work for them. I then was a little revived, and thought, if it were no worse than working, my situation was not so desperate but still I feared I should be put to death, the white people looked and acted, as I thought, in so savage a manner for I had never seen among any people such instances of brutal cruellty and this not only shewn towards us blacks, but also to some of the whites themselves. One white man in particular I saw when we were permitted to be on deck, flogged so unmercifully with a large rophy near the fore mast, that he died in consequence of it and they tossed him over the side as they would have done a brute.This made me fear these people the more and I expected nothing less than to be treated in the same manner. I could not help expressing my fears and apprehensions to some of my countrymen I asked them if these people had no country, but lived in this hollow place (the ship) they told me they did not, but came from a distant one. Then, said I, how comes it in all our country we never heard of them? They told me because they lived so very far off. I then asked where were their women? had they any like themselves? and why, said I, do we not see them? they answered, because they were left behind. . . .The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time, and some of us had been permitted to stay on the deck for the fresh air but now that the wholeships cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pest ilential. The closeness of the place, and the horniness of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almostsuffocated us. This produced adequate perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a unsoundness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers.This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable and the filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable. Happily perhaps for myself I was soon reduced so low here that it was thought necessary to keep me almost always on deck and from my extreme youth I was not put in fetters. In this situation I expected every hour to share the fate of my companions, some of whom were almost daily brought upon deck at the point of death, which I began to hope would soon put an end to my miseries. Often did I think many of the inhabitants of the deep much more happy than myself. I envied them the freedom they enjoyed, and as often wished I could change my condition for theirs. Every circumstance I met with served only to render my state more painful, and heighten my apprehensions, and my suasion of the cruelty of the whites.One day they had taken a number of fishes and when they had killed and satisfied themselves with as many as they thought fit, to our astonishment who were on the deck, rather than give any of them to us to eat as we expected, they tossed the rest fish into the sea again, although we begged and prayed for some as well as we could, but in vain and some of my countrymen, being pressed by hunger, took an opportunity, when they thought no one saw them, of trying to get a little privately b ut they were discovered, and the attempt procured them some very severe floggings. . . . . . . I and some few more slaves, that were not saleable amongst the rest, from very much fretting, were shipped off in a sloop for North America. . . . firearm I was in this plantation in Virginia the gentleman, to whom I suppose the estate belonged, being unwell, I was one day sent for to hisdwelling house to fan him when I came into the room where he was I was very much affrighted at some things I saw, and the more so as I had seen a black fair sex slave as I came through the house, who was cooking the dinner, and the poor creature was cruelly loaded with motley kinds of straighten out machines she had one particularly on her head, which locked her mouth so fast that she could scarcely speak and could not eat nor drink. I was much astonished and shocked at this contrivance, which I afterwards learned was called the iron muzzle . . .