Bartolome De Las Casas
After reading the short text called “A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies,” by Bartolomé de Las Casas, I was surprised at the brutality and coldheartedness of the Spaniards towards the Indian natives. I knew that they did some horrible things from previous history classes and what not, but actually reading about some of the specific things they did was a bit hard to take in. An example of this is the following quote: “And thus pregnant and nursing women and children and old persons and any others they might take, they would throw them into the holes until the pits were filled, the Indians being pierced through by the stakes, which was a sore thing to see, especially the women with their children.” Throwing defenseless and harmless
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Lester, touches upon the different portraits of the famous explorer across various time periods, their origins, and their impact on society. Right from when I started reading this piece, I still had the memory of the previous article fresh in my head. Christopher Columbus was the one who started all that tragedy, wasn’t he? If he had never discovered the Indians and their land, the natives could have lived peaceful lives on their own. That is not the way things went down though, and at the cost of the natives’ peace and even their lives, Columbus found a gold mine; which can be interpreted in two ways. One: He found a pretty primitive population who the Spanish could use as slaves; and two: he found a brand new land, filled with untapped minerals and resources. To be completely honest, the beginning of this reading which talked about celebrating Christopher Columbus and his deeds did not appeal to me much. I agreed more with the outraged American Indian groups who said he was a man who “makes Hitler look like a juvenile delinquent,” because it can indeed be argued that his deeds were worse. Moreover, as the reading continues, different portraits of Christopher Columbus, hailing from different artists and time periods, are examined. I think the fact that there were so many different and unique portraits of him shows us that no one really knew what Christopher Columbus looked
Lester, touches upon the different portraits of the famous explorer across various time periods, their origins, and their impact on society. Right from when I started reading this piece, I still had the memory of the previous article fresh in my head. Christopher Columbus was the one who started all that tragedy, wasn’t he? If he had never discovered the Indians and their land, the natives could have lived peaceful lives on their own. That is not the way things went down though, and at the cost of the natives’ peace and even their lives, Columbus found a gold mine; which can be interpreted in two ways. One: He found a pretty primitive population who the Spanish could use as slaves; and two: he found a brand new land, filled with untapped minerals and resources. To be completely honest, the beginning of this reading which talked about celebrating Christopher Columbus and his deeds did not appeal to me much. I agreed more with the outraged American Indian groups who said he was a man who “makes Hitler look like a juvenile delinquent,” because it can indeed be argued that his deeds were worse. Moreover, as the reading continues, different portraits of Christopher Columbus, hailing from different artists and time periods, are examined. I think the fact that there were so many different and unique portraits of him shows us that no one really knew what Christopher Columbus looked