Requerimiento In Colonial America

Rachna Shah
APUSH: Log Entry #2

5.

The requerimiento was only an excuse to treat native people brutally, confiscate their land, and enslave them, because the Europeans believed that that would be the most efficient way. Of course, if the natives weren’t manacled, then they would have fought back, and quite possibly, especially if the natives enslaved by Columbus and his original men, have beaten the Europeans, at least for the time being. The Native American men wouldn’t have given up their rights, their land, their wives and their children, to the Europeans with nothing in return. Therefore, with the use of the requerimiento, the Europeans were also able to alleviate some guilt off of themselves, because according to the document which stated
“with the help of God”, they were practically saying that God was asking them to enslave all these people, take away their resources, and take them back to Europe to become slaves.

The most likely disease that killed so many Native Americans when Columbus returned on his second voyage and established the town of Isabella was smallpox.
Smallpox is the disease that killed most Natives; second was measles, then influenza, and then lastly the Plague/Black Death. There was no cure for the disease at the time, and the cramped conditions with very little food and improper hygiene when the Natives were enslaved only exacerbated the effects of smallpox, killing virtually all of them. The native people were more vulnerable to this plague than the Spanish because they hadn’t built up any immunity to this disease. Humans who live in close contact with domestic animals, like the Europeans who kept their animals inside of their houses, are at a greater risk to contract diseases (zoonotic diseases). Diseases such as smallpox (which wiped out Native Americans by the millions) were transmitted from human to human, however; the Natives hadn't built up any immunity to these zoonotic diseases because the only domestic animal in the Americas was the llama. There were not as many rats in the Americas either (rats spread the Plague). Also, the smallpox virus and other Old World viruses did not exist in the Americas like they did throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, therefore they killed not only the weak, the young, and the old, but people in their
prime.

Overall, the requerimiento was an excuse to treat native people in negative ways, to make them slaves and treat them like lesser beings. The most likely disease that killed so many Native Americans when Columbus returned on his second voyage was smallpox, which was a virus brought over by the Europeans during their voyage, which the Natives were extremely susceptible to. The native people were more vulnerable because there were no zoonotic viruses in the New World, therefore no type of person was killed excessively more than another.

Rachna Shah
APUSH: Log Entry #2

6.
Despite the fact that words such as genocide and holocaust are most commonly affiliated with Nazi Germany during World War II, they can be accurately applied to what the Spanish did to the native people they encountered.

However, there were no gas chambers. Like in what happened in Nazi Germany, people were taken from their homes because of being Native American, enslaved, separated from the rest of their family, stripped down until they believe that they are worth nothing, and become a labor working force. Unlike Nazi Germany, most of the Native Americans were not killed by Europeans, but instead by the diseases that Europeans unconsciously brought over to the New World during their voyages. On the other hand, only about six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust; anywhere from around 75 to 200 million Native Americans were killed by Europeans and/or European
diseases.

What motivated these unpardonable actions was both a conscious greed for gold and not a unconscious disregard for human life, but a conscious disregard for human life. Just because the Native Americans didn’t speak their language, Columbus and his men made no effort to communicate with the natives. Because of their primitive actions and their nonviolence ways, he enslaved all of the men almost immediately and brought the women and children on ships to be sent back to slaves. It was a conscious disregard for human life, because Columbus was just out there for himself; he didn’t care about what happened to the Native Americans as long as he was going to become rich and famous. Unlike what happened in Nazi Germany, where people throughout the world were speaking against the Nazis, the actions against the Native Americans weren’t realized to be cruel by the majority of the population until past the time of Andrew Jackson more than two centuries after the American Holocaust. Also, Columbus and his contemporaries were motivated by a conscious greed for gold. They were being paid more and more money by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand for the more bullion they shipped back to Spain, and it didn’t take very long for them to be overcome by the vice of greed.

Overall, it is very feasible for strong value-laden words such as genocide and holocaust to be associated with what the Spanish did to the native people they encountered; they were motivated by their vices, namely greed and lust, and though they were not motivated by a conscious disregard for human life, they still had the disregard.