The Brutality of the European Invasion of the New World in the Documentations of Bartolome de las Casas and Hernan Cortes

It is common knowledge that starting from the year 1492, savage European conquistadors brutally slaughtered the native indigenous people of North and South America as to unrightfully obtain the land and all it contained. There are several documented eye-witness accounts that capture the sheer brutality of the European invasion of the New World.

Such documentations include A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies by Bartolome de las Casas and "The Second Letter of Hernan Cortés to Charles V" by Hernán Cortés himself. Upon examination of both pieces, the two Spanish men had drastically disparate firsthand perspectives of the New World.

Both points of view differed from one another in an almost contradictory sense as Casas merely witnessed the intrusion and wrote of its barbarism while Cortés actively participated in the slaughter. There are a remarkable amount of differences found in the two literary works, each of which give important insight on the invasion of the Americas from the year 1492.

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Most Americans today know of the intense history of which their nation was built upon. Starting from late fifteenth century until the late sixteenth century, an estimated fifteen million native Indians were slaughtered after the European discovery of the New World (Casas, 1542). The way in which the Indian people were massacred by the English and Spanish settlers was rather savage and sadistic.

Various methods were used to wipe out the population to obtain religious purification, gold, and land. The Spaniards often hung the Indians from gallows, burned them alive by wrapping them in straw and setting it ablaze, and dismembered them as if they were cattle in a slaughterhouse (Casas, 1542).

No one was safe; not women or children. While laughing, the Spaniards would sometimes snatch newborn babies from their mothers' arms and throw them into rivers to drown (Casas, 1542). Then to make matters worse, European disease of which the natives' immune systems could not fight against spread into the Americans, also contributing to the near extinction of the population.

Nearing the end of the intense slaughter and spread of foreign malady, the remaining native Indians were distributed amongst the Spanish settlers as slaves (Casas, 1542). Even after their gruesome experiences, death soon followed the few survivors, as the Spaniards took poor care of their captives and many died of hunger and exhaustion (Casas, 1542).

Thus, the once extremely populated North and South Americas was nearly wiped clean by the European-Spanish conquistadors.

Bartolome de las Casas wrote in his excerpt A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies of the first impressions the Indians and the Spanish had of one another and evaluated how the situation escalated.

He observed the increasing rate of which the Indians were controlled and then slaughtered by his fellow Spaniards and recorded the results. From the initial point of view of Casas, the Indians were a fascinating new culture to observe and study. Casas was inarguably captivated by the natives as he had noted certain aspects of Indian life such as their clothing, sleeping arrangements, and hygiene (Casas, 1542).

He documented these observations in his passage, completely mesmerized by the differences found in the Indian civilization and his own. According to Casas, the intense engrossment was mutual, as the Indians took a great interest in the Spaniards as well. Tension soon arose between the two civilizations when the Indians first encountered Christianity. Cases writes of their discovery, expressing that the Indians were "apt to receive our Holy Catholic faith" and eager to learn more of it (Casas, 1542).

To emphasize their interest, Casas goes on to add that the Spanish missionaries would most likely grow tired from attempting to quench the intense fascination (Casas, 1542). This may have been the beginning of the two contrasting societies' decline with one another, as many Christian Spaniards considered the Indians heathens and lesser people because they did not originally believe in the Catholic God.

Soon, the relationship between the Indians and the Spaniards would further evolve from an innocent mutual captivation to something more severe with the Spaniards' discovery of gold in the New World. Casas noted this shift and accused his fellow Spaniards as having "an insatiable greed and ambition" that would soon influence the ferocious slaughter. The animosity that originated from the discovery of religious differences helped spark the initiation of the massacre.

Witnessing the attacks, Casas goes as far as comparing his Spanish brethren as "ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, and lions" driven by greed and the quest for immense wealth (Casas, 1542). According to Casas, the Spaniards wanted the Indians' land and its resources, and so they unrightfully invaded and took complete control of the native people both physically, mentally, and morally. The Indians were easy to take advantage of, and so the discourse easily progressed into an outright slaughter, and greed is solely at fault. Casas was merely an unbiased eye witness to the destruction of Indian civilization.

Opposite to Casas' stance on the slaughter, a man by the name of Hernán Cortés actively participated in the annihilation of the native Indian civilization. As depicted in Cortés' letter to Charles V, it was plainly his duty to slaughter the natives of the New World in order to bring them to God and himself to a higher level of piety. Cortés identified as Christian and had a strong faith in God, who he refers to as "Your Highness" (Cortés, 1843). He believed it was his duty to turn the heathen Indian population over to Him (Cortés, 1843).

Cortés writes, "as Christians, we were obliged to wage war against the enemy of our faith; and thereby we would win glory in the next world" (Cortés, 1843). To insure he would achieve this fabled glory in his next life, it is believed that Cortés and his fellow conquistadors had the intention of wiping the Indian population clean. Cortés often referred to the slaughtered Indian peoples are "Your Highness's vassals", meaning he had turned them over to his God by killing them.

Cortés believed God was on his side when he conquered so many Indian villages, that Cortés was only able to do so because it was God's bidding. He writes, "we had won so many victories in which so many of the enemy had died, and none of us" (Cortés, 1843). From Cortés' perspective, he was doing the Indians a favor and a good deed. He writes, "they would rather be Your Highness's vassals than [live] to see their houses destroyed and women and children killed" (Cortés, 1843).

He was eminent in his goal of giving all Indians over to God. He knew that what he was doing was wrong as he wrote, "I attacked two towns, where I killed many people, but I did not burn the houses lest the fires should alert the other towns nearby" (Cortés, 1843). He is telling his audience of his crimes and insinuating that he will repeat them again.

Cortés knows that if the neighboring villages learn of his crimes prior to invading their own village they will get the opportunity to evacuate before he reaches them. This reveals that Cortés knows that the Indian people do not wish to be killed or sacrificed to God. He is actively thinking of ways to sneak an attack because he is consciously aware that it is what the Indians do not want, and yet he continues on with his plan nonetheless.

Unlike Casas, Cortés does not see the Indians as people for he does not take their feelings or wishes into account, rather, he goes against them. The only time Cortés ever saw the Indian people in the same light as Casas was when he came across the great city of Tenochtitlan located in present-day Mexico. After observing such a grand city, his view of the native American people began to change.

Cortés was amazed that people he once thought were uncivilized and unintelligent Godless heathens could craft a city as grand and successful as that of Venice (Cortés, 1843). Cortés sought to govern part of present-day Mexico because of his interest in the city of Tenochtitlan, and thus his murderous rage came to an end (Cortés, 1843). Still, it does not excuse his long list of war crimes and brutality. Cortés was a monster that eagerly cooperated in the eradication of native Indian society.

For obvious reasons, the two evaluations of the New World come from drastically different perspectives. Casas is morally and ethically sound as he observed the situation from a logical and sane standpoint. Cortés on the other hand believed that the Indian population is of lower quality people because they did not worship his Christian God. In an effort to save the Indian's souls, Cortés slaughtered as many as he could while Casas recorded the high death rate.

It is almost as if the two evaluations of the New World are opposites. One man watched the events unfold as the invasion of the New World turned from an innocent discovery to a blood bath, while the other actively participated in the massacre. Casas saw the indigenous people of the New World as an opportunity for study. His enthrallment with the Indian people was completely justified as he only wanted to observe without involvement, while Cortes' sick obsession was extremely unhealthy and indefensible.

After evaluating each literary work, it is easy for one to conclude that each man experienced drastically different views of the Americas and its peoples. These two very divergent first-person accounts of the discovery of the New World conflict in many ways. It is as if Casas and Cortés' interpretations are opposite viewpoints of the Indian civilization.

It appears that conflicts with religion and greed led to the slaughter and spread of disease in the New World. Almost complete annihilation of the native Indians was the irreversible outcome, but at least historians have these two conflicting accounts of the massacre to review and learn from.

There are two sides to every story, and each are represented in Casas' and Cortés' excerpts. Overall, the authors had completely contrasting views of Indians and Indian civilization, but both serve as important sources of evidence to provide today's world with what life was like for the native Americans after the year 1492.

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