Columbus, the Indians, & Human Progress

Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the
island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his
sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them
food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:

"They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things which they
exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned.... They
were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know
them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They
have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we
could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable
(European observers were to say again and again) for their hospitality, their belief in sharing. These
traits did not stand out in the Europe of the Renaissance, dominated as it was by the religion of popes,
the government of kings, the frenzy for money that marked Western civilization and its first messenger
to the Americas, Christopher Columbus.

Columbus wrote:

"As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force
in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts."

The information Columbus wanted most was: Where is the gold? He had persuaded the king and
queen of Spain to finance an expedition to the lands, the wealth, he expected would be on the other
side of the Atlantic -- the Indies and Asia, gold and spices. For like other informed people of his time,
he knew the world was round and he could sail west in order to get to the Far East.

Spain was recently unified, one of the new modern nation-states, like France, England, and Portugal.
Its population, mostly poor peasants, worked for the nobility, who were 2 percent of the population and
owned 95 percent of the land. Spain had tied itself to the Catholic Church, expelled all the Jews,
driven out the Moors. Like other states of the modern world, Spain sought gold, which was becoming
the new mark of wealth, more useful than land because it could buy anything.

There was gold in Asia, it was thought, and certainly silks and spices, for Marco Polo and others had
brought back marvelous things from their overland expeditions centuries before. Now that the Turks
had conquered Constantinople and the eastern Mediterranean, and controlled the land routes to Asia,
a sea route was needed. Portuguese sailors were working their way around the southern tip of Africa.
Spain decided to gamble on a long sail across an unknown ocean.

In return for bringing back gold and spices, they promised Columbus 10 percent of the profits,
governorship over new-found lands, and the fame that would go with a new title: Admiral of the
Ocean Sea. He was a merchant's clerk from the Italian city of Genoa, part-time weaver (the son of a
skilled weaver), and expert sailor. He set out with three sailing ships, the largest of which was the
Santa Maria, perhaps 100 feet long, and thirty-nine crew members.

Columbus would never have made it to Asia, which was thousands of miles farther away than he had
calculated, imagining a smaller world. He would have been doomed by that great expanse of sea.
But he was lucky. One-fourth of the way there he came upon an unknown, uncharted land that lay
between Europe and Asia --- the Americas. It was early October 1492, and thirty-three days since he
and his crew had left the Canary Islands, off the Atlantic coast of Africa. Now they saw branches and
sticks floating in the water. They saw flocks of birds. These were signs of land. Then, on October 12, a
sailor called Rodrigo saw the early morning moon shining on white sands, and cried out. It was an
island in the Bahamas, the Caribbean sea. The first man to sight land was supposed to get a yearly
pension of 10,000 maravedis for life, but Rodrigo never got it. Columbus claimed he had seen a light
the evening before. He got the reward.

So, approaching land, they were met by the Arawak Indians, who swam out to greet them. The
Arawaks lived in village communes, had a developed agriculture of corn, yams, cassava. They could
spin and weave, but they bad no horses or work animals. They had no iron, but they wore tiny gold
ornaments in their ears.

This was to have enormous consequences: it led Columbus to take some of them aboard ship as
prisoners because he insisted that they guide him to the source of the gold. He then sailed to what is
now Cuba, then to Hispaniola (the island which today consists of Haiti and the Dominican Republic).
There, bits of visible gold in the rivers, and a gold mask presented to Columbus by a local Indian
chief, led to wild visions of gold fields.

On Hispaniola, out of timbers from the Santa Maria, which had run aground, Columbus built a fort, the
first European military base in the Western Hemisphere. He called it Navidad (Christmas) and left
thirty-nine crew members there, with instructions to find and store the gold. He took more Indian
prisoners and put them aboard his two remaining ships. At one part of the island he got into a fight
with Indians who refused to trade as many bows and arrows as he and his men wanted. Two were run
through with swords and bled to death. Then the Nina and the Pinta set sail for the Azores and Spain.
When the weather turned cold, the Indian prisoners began to die.

Columbus's report to the Court in Madrid was extravagant. He insisted he had reached Asia (it was
Cuba) and an island off the coast of China (Hispaniola). His descriptions were part fact, part fiction:

"Hispaniola is a miracle. Mountains and hills, plains and pastures, are both fertile and beautiful ... the
harbors are unbelievably good and there are many wide rivers of which the majority contain gold ...

There are many spices, and great mines of gold and other metals..."

The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has
not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the
contrary, they offer to share with anyone...." He concluded his report by asking for a little help from
their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage "as much gold as they need ...
and as many slaves as they ask." He was full of religious talk: "Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives
victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities."

Because of Columbus's exaggerated report and promises, his second expedition was given seventeen
ships and more than twelve hundred men. The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island
to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans' intent they
found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad
had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for
gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor.

Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found
no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year
1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children,
put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to
load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and
were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were
"naked as the day they were born," they showed "no more embarrassment than animals." Columbus
later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to
those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of
Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons
fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it,
they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had
their hands cut off and bled to death.

The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from
the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets,
swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among
the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the
Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti
were dead.

When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge
estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the
thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five
hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the
island. The chief source --- and, on many matters the only source of information --- about what
happened on the islands after Columbus came is Bartolome' de las Casas, who, as a young priest,
participated in the conquest of Cuba. For a time he owned a plantation on which Indian slaves
worked, but he gave that up and became a vehement critic of Spanish cruelty. Las Casas transcribed
Columbus's journal and, in his fifties, began a multivolume History of the Indies. In it, he describes the
Indians. They are agile, he says, and can swim long distances, especially the women. They are not
completely peaceful, because they do battle from time to time with other tribes, but their casualties
seem small, and they fight when they are individually moved to do so because of some grievance, not
on the orders of captains or kings.

Women in Indian society were treated so well as to startle the Spaniards. Las Casas describes sex
relations:

"Marriage laws are non-existent: men and women alike choose their mates and leave them as they
please, without offense, jealousy or anger. They multiply in great abundance; pregnant women work
to the last minute and give birth almost painlessly; up the next day, they bathe in the river and are as
clean and healthy as before giving birth. If they tire of their men, they give themselves abortions with
herbs that force stillbirths, covering their shameful parts with leaves or cotton cloth; although on the
whole, Indian men and women look upon total nakedness with as much casualness as we look upon a
man's head or at his hands."

The Indians, Las Casas says, have no religion, at least no temples.

"They live in large communal bell-shaped buildings, housing up to 600 people at one time ... made
of very strong wood and roofed with palm leaves .... They prize bird feathers of various colors, beads
made of fishbones, and green and white stones with which they adorn their ears and lips, but they put
no value on gold and other precious things. They lack all manner of commerce, neither buying nor
selling, and rely exclusively on their natural environment for maintenance. They are extremely
generous with their possessions and by the same token covet the possessions of their friends and
expect the same degree of liberality...."

In Book Two of his History of the Indies, Las Casas (who at first urged replacing Indians by black slaves,
thinking they were stronger and would survive, but later relented when he saw the effects on blacks)
tells about the treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards. It is a unique account and deserves to be
quoted at length:

"Endless testimonies ... prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives. . - . But our work was
to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now
and then.... The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to
please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians...."

Las Casas tells how the Spaniards "grew more conceited every day" and after a while refused to walk
any distance. They "rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry" or were carried on hammocks by
Indians running in relays. "In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the
sun and others to fan them with goose wings."

Total control led to total cruelty. The Spaniards "thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and
twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades." Las Casas tells how "two of
these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots
and for fun beheaded the boys."

The Indians' attempts to defend themselves failed. And when they ran off into the hills they were
found and killed. So, Las Casas reports, "they suffered and died in the mines and other labors in
desperate silence, knowing not a soul in the world to whom they could turn for help." He describes
their work in the mines:

"...mountains are stripped from top to bottom and bottom to top a thousand times; they dig, split rocks,
move stones, and carry dirt on their backs to wash it in the rivers, while those who wash gold stay in the
water all the time with their backs bent so constantly it breaks them; and when water invades the
mines, the most arduous task of all is to dry the mines by scooping up pansfull of water and throwing it
up outside...."

After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig
enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.

While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced
into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.

"Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they
were so exhausted and depressed on both sides ...they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born,
they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for
this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned
their babies from sheer desperation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and
children died from lack of milk and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile
was depopulated.... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I
write...."

When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, "there were 60,000 people living on this
island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from
war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a
knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it .... "

Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in
the Americas. That beginning, when you read Las Casas -- even if his figures are exaggerations (were
there 3 million Indians to begin with, as he says, or 250,000, as modem historians calculate? -- is
conquest, slavery, death. When we read the history books given to children in the United States, it all
starts with heroic adventure---there is no bloodshed---and Columbus Day is a celebration.

Peace not WoD
FFFF
MMMay Day
DdC

dC, your a real hoot! But you did give me a real good laugh though.

I noticed you qualified your question, "In how many of these instances did a democratic government, respectful of human rights, occur as a direct result?

"Direct(?)" Cute. Dumb, but cute. phil

"Columbus, the Indians, & Human Progress"

dC, any original thougths? phil

"Columbus, the Indians, & Human Progress"

dC, any original thoughts? phil

Danny(JAW)
Hi, this is harder than I thought to do. LOL,,I messed up twice, anyways, know that I support you, in prayer, and the others, that you are loved, and repected for what you are doing for our country, you are a very special man, and I know God walks with you. His protection is around you, and your kids. Take care of yourself, keep your spirits high, and I am proud to have you as a brother.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IS EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS

Pro-Serbs,

If the man next door beats his wife and abuses her
I hope there will be at least one man amongst you
That will come forward to stop it.

But I fear none of you will do it.
You will say: "domestic violence is not my business".

I would first try talking to the guy, and hope he behaves.
If talk fails and he slaps her infront of me,
I will not walk-away.
It may be necessary to use force.

If that is necessary,
would you give the guy a side-kick to neutralize him?
Or will you just WALK AWAY - and "forget about it".
Turn your back, leave him alone with the bruised wife.

I am a pacifist, but if diplomacy fails,
I would have NO PROBLEM beating a wife-beater.

The same for NATO.
NATO hasn't been on a rampage for 50 years.
NATO hasn't been beating up on others.
But when the likes of Milo start abusing weaker peoples,
Then ..... GO NATO !

Is this clear or do you have problems understanding it?

Yes, you go ahead and turn away and "forget about it"
Even defend the wife-beater if he's your friend.
You go ahead and cover your eyes.
Go ahead and say "DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IS NOT OUR BUSINESS"

I say : GO NATO !

GOOD GUYS ALWAYS WIN.

JACK LONDON, I have not been posting under the name of Nick. I do not know what you were seeing in his messages to make you come to that conclusion. If I have something to say I proudly post it under my name, my real name.

ZOJA AND EMINA, same person.
First Zoja was a younger sister, few days later they were twins, indentical ones. I asked for the translation of the whole song, not only the first line ( that was already translated in the western media ). So difficult? Being a Bosnian it surely shouldn't be so. And, go back and read your postings. You have ateast ten times misspelled the name Milosevic. In such manner no Bosnian would do it. Milcohevich, Milocevic... and such. You are saying you are a doctor who fled Bosnia when the war started. That means you gained your education in Bosnia. Excuse me, how can you finish University illiterate in the language used in Bosnian schools? Every ten year old in Bosnia can spell Milosevic. Not only cause of the Serbian president but because that is a very common last name. Zoja says Emina has not only one doctor digree but many of them. She said in the beggining she is 32. That means she was about 26 when she fled Bosnia. She managed to get married, have three kids and achieve numerous doctor digrees all by the age of 26. A genious indeed. There were even more facts that just do not sound even close to being a truth, but I think that is enough.

You are calling me propaganda? You coming here faking yourself to be a victim of Serbs who killed your family and raped you three times to make Serbs look like demons. Maybe I should try this effective method. KLA members kicked me out of Kosovo, murdered all my family and raped me. Please, I want your sympathy. Pathetic, indeed.

There are some nice spells in this horrible war, read this:

Bombed out
By Mark Steel
Wednesday April 7, 1999

"At last! Tony Blair was willing to stand up to Bill Clinton. As the numbers of refugees for each country were being read out, it was like watching the scoring in the Eurovision Song Contest. 'Canada 5,000, America 10,000', went the announcement, while we all waited eagerly for the British score, but nothing. The scoring ended and
we weren't even mentioned. 'You just can't trust those Macedonian judges', we thought. But the reason was that Clinton had suggested a token ounce of pretend humanity, and Blair finally put his foot down. His explanation was that to take
refugees would be exactly what Milosevic wanted.
So that must be why last year, New Labour proposed severe restrictions on asylum seekers. They knew in advance that to do otherwise would be exactly what Milosevic wanted. Maybe all policies will be justified like that from now on. David Blunkett will say 'We introduced performance related pay for teachers, because an across the board increase is exactly what Milosevic wanted.' How ironic then, that Radomar Diklic, campaigner for a free press in Serbia, laments 'Nato did a good job for Milosevic. It was the best present he could be given. When you bombed, he became a symbol of our country - which is awful.' In other words, Blair and Clinton have done exactly what Milosevic wanted. The action was supposed to prevent the Albanians being driven out of Kosovo, and two weeks later 700,000 have been driven out of Kosovo.
So they say that without the bombing it would have been even worse. How much worse would it have been? 701,000? 700,002? Maybe they could justify other military disasters like this. The Charge of
the Light Brigade, they could argue, was a success, because if they'd tried anything different they'd have only progressed a third of a league instead of the full half.
Nato has another trick, which is to end each disaster by announcing a new phase, then proudly announce that they've wrecked a vital road or railway. This time next year there'll be one Albanian left in the whole of the Balkans, and they'll announce phase 603, to destroy the B1675, the scenic route from Novo Sid to Cacuk avoiding the low bridge. So the scream goes out that Nato should have committed ground troops. Intervening has made it worse, so the answer is intervene more.
Some people won't be happy until they've found a way of involving Switzerland. The Nato disaster isn't just an accident. The issue, Blair said, is about 'good and evil.' So here's a puzzle. Milosevic has ruled Serbia for 10 years. But only in the last two weeks has he replaced the army
commander in Montenegro with his own stooge, shut down the B92 opposition radio station, and wiped out almost every form of internal opposition. Why is this? It could be that Nato bombs have, as Diklic said, united the population behind Milosevic. Or is it that, by coincidence, two weeks ago Milosevic suddenly became more evil than he was before? He would have taken that action
years ago, but at the time wasn't quite evil
enough. More logical is that every Nato bomb strengthens his hand. The first bombs in central Belgrade served no military purpose other than to save Nato credibility. Air commodore David Wilby
admitted this, saying the bombings 'will get me off this hook on which I am wriggling day after day'. And when your wriggling gets so bad, what else can you do but send a cruise missile into an office block right opposite a maternity ward? I
hope the bloke never gets piles, or the whole of bloody Europe will get nuked.
No doubt if the hospital had been demolished, Blair would have argued that it hadn't been knocked down, but that the missile simply merged it into a super-hospital on the other side of
Belgrade, with the use of private finance. Serbian support for Milosevic is often put down to their media, for not informing them of their Government's horrors. Amongst those unreported atrocities, I wonder whether our press will find examples of soldiers bayoneting unarmed prisoners to death, and cutting off their ears as trophies. If so, it may be a trick learned off the Third Battalion of the Parachute Regiment who, according to their corporal, Vincent Bramley, did exactly that during the taking of Mount Longdon in the
Falklands. I don't recall that information being on the six o'clock news straight after Thatcher beaming 'Rejoice rejoice'.
How many people knew about My Lai, or Bloody Sunday in Derry, or the road to Basra? Western armies are not a force for good, but for forcing governments to act in the West's interest. Which is why the only time they like refugees is when they make a good photo opportunity, as if they're at a wedding - 'Now I'd like one of the minister,
the refugee and the refugee's sister, smile,that's lovely. No you can't come with me dear, that's just what Milosevic wants.' "

Propagandas aside using only common sense. Do you think Albanians to Clinton are worth billions and billions of dollars? How naive do you have to be to believe such millitary force is moved to save few thousands of people? How naive do you have to be to believe politicians? Especially the ones who have more times lied.
Caring with bombing, yes. Caring by taking them into their countries, no. Of course that is promised, has been promised for a month. Refugees pleading to be moved into more human areas, but America doesn't hear those pleads. It only hears the pleads for bombs. America took none, Britain took 162. No criticism. Macedonia has 200.000 on their soil, 140.000 in the camps and getting criticised all the time. My country already has 4.000. And they are complaining non stop. Tho incedents have occured in last three days. Two refugee houses they have been sent to are not good enough for them. Eventhough Bosnian refugees who stayed there for five years have not complained. In the last refugee camp, there was a Bosnian woman speaking how her family was moved into a much smaller room to make space for Albanians, and now the big room is not good enough for them. They also do not like our food. They do not want to be in the small cities, they want to be in the capital. Well excuse me, would Hilton be good enough? Slovenian people were very generous in taking them in and helping, but after seeing that, many will change their mind.