< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > introduction</h1>
Readers and friends familiar with the history of the Americas should know that Europeans who colonized the Americas used black slave labor extensively to produce agricultural or industrial products, and the black slaves they used were originally shipped from thousands of miles away from far away, and the price was not cheap.
So why didn't europeans enslave local Indians after discovering the Americas? Instead, they spend a lot of money to buy black slaves from overseas to use?
Colonists landed in the Americas
In fact, the original source of slavery for Europeans in the Americas was Indians, and the early colonists led by the Spaniards, while establishing the American colonies, also opened a precedent for enslaving Indians, and captured many Indians as slaves, but later for various reasons, they had to import black slaves as labor.
Now please follow the article to understand the early history of the Spanish enslavement of indians!
Spanish conquistadors landed in the Americas
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Columbus set the stage for enslaving Indians</h1>
As early as Columbus's first voyage to the west in 1492, the frank and generous qualities of the American Indians aroused the greed of the Spaniards, and Columbus and his associates showed racial discrimination to the fullest, and when they saw the Indians, they had no concept of equal relations in their hearts except the concept of master and slave.
Spanish colonists and Indians
Although Columbus was outwardly polite to the Indian chiefs who received him, he did not respect the Indians in his heart, and he warmly made friends and gifts with the Indians while thinking about how to enslave these friendly Indians. In his Logbook to the Two Kings of Spain, Columbus clearly states that he intended to enslave the weak and good Indians:
"The two Majesties can be convinced that this island, and everything else, belongs to them as much as Castile. There's nothing else you need here but to set up a colony, and you can direct them to do everything you're going to do. Because I led these few people on the ship to be able to walk all the islands here without encountering obstacles. I have seen that I have only sent three crew members ashore, where countless Indians are fleeing in all directions, and none of them dare to do anything wrong to these crew members. They had no weapons, no self-defense, they were so timid and fearful that thousands of them could not deal with three men. Thus they are suited to obedience, to work under duress, to sow seeds and to do whatever else we need to do. ”
Columbus and the Indians
In addition, Columbus vigorously advocated the weakness of the Indians in several briefs to the Spanish court, saying that a simple adjustment of the Indians would make them the best source of labor for the colonies:
"I know that they [the Indians] are a people who can better accept liberation, and it is a miracle that they are so kind to us, that they do not carry weapons, and that they do not know what they are used for, because I show them that they have caught the edge of the knife in ignorance, that they have cut their own hands, that they have no iron. They are generally quite tall and good-looking, with strong physiques. At first I believed, and I still believe that those who come to this island from the mainland can make them good servants and good skilled workers. ”
Spanish conquistadors and Amerindians
Before I learned about the history of slavery in the Americas, I had wondered why Europeans could enslave others with peace of mind, especially the natives of the Americas, but then I understood the racial concept of Europeans at that time, and this problem was solved.
The idea of the Spaniards enslaving indians did not arise out of thin air, and the phenomenon and policy of enslaving others had already appeared in European societies long before the discovery of the Americas. The Spaniard concept of master-servant and race relations with the Indians was based on the portuguese enslavement of black Africans and the enslavement of the Canary Islands by spaniards in the mid-15th century.
Spanish conquistadors who landed in the Americas
At that time, most Europeans pursued the concept of the innocence of enslaving other peoples, and European society was very tolerant of this, so neither the Spaniards nor other Europeans who came to colonize the Americas felt that there was anything wrong with enslaving Indians. Although Christians do not have the right to enslave others according to the Bible, a Spanish priest who was a contemporary of Columbus also criticized Columbus's enslavement of Indians in harsh terms:
"Note here that the innocent and friendly nobility of the Indians and their modesty, as well as their lack of weapons and lack of self-defence, made the Spaniards arrogant and disrespectful to them, blind to them, and forced them to do the harshest and hardest work they could find, to the point of oppression and to the face of destruction, and Columbus exaggerated himself in words, and what he envisioned here and what he spoke of was the beginning of his subsequent violent abuse of the Indians.
Persecution of the Indians by Spanish colonists
But most Spaniards threw the Bible and the priest's advice behind them for the sake of profit, and the Spaniards, led by Columbus, began to use force to massly maim the Indians and capture them as slaves, even though Queen Isabella repeatedly ordered the Spanish colonists to treat the Indians well, and the days of Columbus's "discovery" of the Americas became the beginning of the Indians' suffering.
Queen of Spain – Isabella
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > early history of the Spanish enslavement of indians</h1>
In 1494, in order to suppress the Indian rebellion and plunder wealth, Columbus led an army to conduct a careful search on the island of Hispaniola (Haiti), attacking any Indian village that dared to rebel against the Spanish colonial government, plundering the Indians' property and capturing about 1500 Indians back to the colony as slaves.
Hispaniola Island
In order to obtain funds to develop the colony and prove the future of the colony, Columbus also deliberately selected 500 "best men and the best women" to be shipped to the Spanish slave market for sale, opening the infamous American slave trade.
In addition, Columbus pulled the remaining more than a thousand Indian slaves to the square, leaving all spaniards to choose at will, giving as much as they wanted, in order to promote the development of the colony and "bribe" the Spanish colonists.
Columbus declared possession of the land beneath his feet
But because there were not many Spanish colonists at that time, and many of them had already enslaved some Indians before, there were still about 400 Indians left, old and weak, and no one to choose, at this time the Spaniards spared them and let the remaining Indians all get out, ending the tragedy. Colonial officials at the time recorded that some Indian women did not even want children in order to escape the clutches of the Spanish colonists as soon as possible:
"They (Indian women) were afraid of being caught again, and in order to better escape from us, they casually threw their babies on the ground and began to flee as desperately as desperate people. Some people have escaped so far across mountains and rivers that they have fled to a place seven or eight days away from the Isabella colony. ”
When the Spanish colonists acquired Indian slaves, they would cultivate the land, serve themselves, or do all kinds of heavy labor, such as panning for gold and mining. In the process, a large number of Indians died painfully, and in order to make up for the shortage of labor in the colonies, the Spanish colonists constantly captured or forced Indians to be enslaved as a supplement or trafficker, so many Indian villages were razed to the ground and a large number of Indians were forcibly enslaved.
The brutal war of the Spanish colonists against the Indians
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Columbus's cruel policy of enslaving Indians— the tributary system</h1>
Columbus, who had tasted the sweetness of enslaving the Indians, formally imposed a cruel tribute system on the Indians in 1495 in order to obtain gold and prove to the Spanish court the prospects of colonizing the Americas.
Columbus declared that all the Indians on the island were under the Spanish colonial government, and that every adult Indian had to pay a certain amount of gold or cotton yarn to the colonial government as a condition for not being killed.
Sands
This system of forcing the Indians to pay tribute to gold and property was the tribute tax system, the main means by which the Spanish colonists collected gold!
The tributary system was so cruel that every Indian over the age of 14 was required to pay to the colonial government every 3 months a sand or nugget of gold that could fill an "eagle bell", while the Indian chieftain had to pay a gourd filled with gold to the colonial government every 2 months. If there were no gold deposits on the land inhabited by the Indians, 25 pounds of cotton yarn or cotton cloth would be paid every three months as a substitute for gold, otherwise the penalty would not be severe.
ps: The eagle bell was originally a bell worn on eagle birds, often made of copper, which can make a sound when shaken, and there is a certain space inside to accommodate small objects, and later the Spanish colonists used it as a container unit.
The European in the picture is holding an eagle bell
When the colonial government weighed the taxes paid by the Indians and ensured that they were qualified, they would give the Indians who paid the tribute a bronze medal with a seal and wear it around their necks to prevent new extortion or execution by the tax collectors.
This tribute tax system was very unreasonable, and the tax standards were too high for the Indians to complete on time.
The Spaniards used the gold and cotton cloth they had originally collected from the Indians as a source for planning taxes, but the problem was that the gold and cotton cloth had been accumulated by the Indians over generations, so they appeared to be rich.
Hispaniola was not a region rich in gold or a thriving textile industry, and when the accumulated treasures were handed over to the colonial government for generations, the Indians could not come up with more gold and cotton cloth, but had to go to rivers or streams to pan for gold or weave cotton cloth day and night.
Have fun with the Indians
The Indians' scientific and technological means are extremely backward, labor efficiency is also low, they need to spend a lot of time and energy to collect a small amount of gold from the soil or weave some cotton, but in order to survive, the Indians can only spend a lot of time to find gold or textile cotton, and even the time to cultivate the land is not, but even if the Indians work day and night, they cannot guarantee that they can come up with qualified property on every tax day to save their lives.
Some Indian chiefs who could not afford to produce money had asked Columbus to abolish the tribute tax system, and they were even willing to cultivate enough food for all the colonies to eat, but Columbus only lowered the tax standard by 50%, and did not further reduce or abolish the tribute tax system. As a result, the Indians still had difficulty meeting excessively high tax standards.
The Indians, who failed to pay their taxes on time, were brutally persecuted by the Spanish colonists, many of whom were killed. To this end, some Indians chose to hide, others chose to resist, but the weak Indians could not resist the heavily armed Spaniards, and one witness recorded the misery of the Indians who failed to pay their taxes on time:
Some did so, but others failed, and thus fell into the most miserable situation of life, some of whom went into hiding in the mountains, while others, because of the violence, provocation and persecution of Christians, never ceased, and they suffered so much from special injuries and torture that they could not bear it, so they killed some Christians in an attempt to take revenge. As a result, Christians immediately resorted to retaliation against them and called punishment. The death penalty and torture of as many people as possible, not only for the murderers, but also for entire villages or entire regions, with no respect for the just principles of humanity and divinity and the laws of nature, are precisely under their authority. ”
The Indians who rebelled
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the early policy of the Spanish colonists to enslave the Indians, the distributive system</h1>
Although the Spaniards used a tribute system against the Indians in the American colonies, because of the lack of gold and other property in the area, the Spanish colonial government spent several years slaughtering a large number of Indians and failing to obtain a large amount of gold, not only failing to recover all the funds spent on colonizing the Americas, but even the most basic material supply of the colonies could not guarantee stability, which made many Spanish colonists gather to launch multiple rebellions to resist the rule of Columbus and the colonial government, demanding more benefits and power.
Eventually, as the number and scale of rebellions grew, the colonial government headed by Columbus had to meet their demands in order to win back the support of the rebels, and in 1498 formally established a colonial system called the distributive system in the Americas, giving each Spanish colonist many benefits and powers.
Colonial port
The distribution system, also known as the partition system, in which the Spanish colonial government distributed large tracts of land that could grow 10,000 cassava crops and the Indians living on the land to every Spanish colonist, allowed the colonists to share in the benefits and made them masters of the land and indians.
Moreover, the colonial government was only responsible for dividing the land and distributing it to the colonists, and as to how the land was acquired and managed, the colonial government no longer cared, and the colonists, as the owners of the land, did whatever they wanted, whether they forced the Indians to cultivate the land for them, or mined or performed other labor.
Indian slaves digging mines for colonists
The distributive system was an unofficial system of private division of the king's land and subjects, but because it could benefit from it, it was generally welcomed by the colonists and spread throughout the Americas as the scope of the Spanish colonists expanded.
Although the Indians were generally opposed to this system of exploitation, in order to get rid of the more cruel and difficult to satisfy the tribute tax system, the Indians who could not resist could only be forced to agree to this system and give their personal rights and land to the colonists.
Because there was no legal constraint, the Spanish colonists mostly brutally squeezed the Indians they were assigned, forcing them to work day and night to collect gold or cultivate the land and weave cotton cloth, but only to provide the Indians with a small amount of food. This brutal exploitation and oppression was unbearable even for livestock, let alone the frail Indians.
Spanish conquistadors
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the collapse of Indian society on the island of Hispaniola</h1>
Because of the devastation of the Spanish colonists and the colonial government, the Indians on hispaniola died in large numbers, the population dropped sharply, and some Indians who could not withstand the heavy enslavement of the Spanish colonists even committed suicide by swallowing the toxins extracted from cassava as a means of escaping their tragic fate.
The Indians who hid
Other Indians hid in the mountains, hoping to escape slavery, but were arrested and slaughtered by Spanish colonists, chased by warhorses and hounds. In order to prevent the Indians from escaping and resisting, the colonial government built a number of forts on the island, and also sent a large number of troops to patrol the island, and the Indians were powerless to resist under the attack of metal weapons and gunpowder weapons, and could only be killed by the neck.
Spanish colonists and Indians
In addition to these cruel policies mentioned above, the spread of deadly infectious diseases has also dealt a terrible blow to Indian society.
Smallpox, hemorrhagic fever, malaria, yellow fever brought by the Spaniards, as well as tuberculosis, influenza, cholera, plague, measles, leprosy, dysentery and other infectious diseases of the Old World, made it difficult for indians to bear, because indians did not have antibodies to these germs and viruses, so many Indians died of diseases and the population was sharply reduced.
Indians who infect smallpox
Eventually, The Indian society on the island of Hispaniola inevitably collapsed!
According to one historian's estimate, before Columbus arrived in the Americas, the total number of Indians on Hispaniola was between 200,000 and 300,000, but by 1496, due to the wanton mutilation of the Spaniards and the spread of the deadly virus, one-third of the Indians on the island died.
By 1508, Spanish statistics showed that the number of Indians on the island had dropped to about 60,000. By 1510, the number of Indians on the island had dwindled to 46,000 and was still decreasing! Four years later, there were fewer than 14,000 Indians on hispaniola! Finally, by 1548, the Spaniards, through detailed statistics, found that there were not even 500 Indians on the island.
At this point, the social organization of the local Indians completely collapsed, and the culture was extinct with the disappearance of the population, and its tragic situation even made some Spaniards unbearable to look at it.
The tragedy of the extermination of the Indians on Hispaniola revealed to the newcomers the cruelty and irrationality of the early Colonial Policy of the Spaniards, and the European colonists who followed it took it as a warning, learned from it and developed some more complex and comprehensive colonial policies, but the peace-loving and obedient Indians could not escape the fate of enslavement.
(This article ends here, thank you all for watching, I will continue to work hard to contribute better articles!) ）
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > references:</h1>
Columbus's Voyage Diary [meaning] by Christopher Columbus
The Biography of Columbus [s] by Salvador de Madariaga
A Narrative of the Destruction of the West Indies by Bartolomé Delas Casas
"Distributive and Entrusted Guardianship" F· By A. Kirkpatrick