A Thin Line Between Good and Evil

Abigail Aguilar

Dr. John Dean

ENGL 2327. 102

November 24th, 2015

A Thin Line Between Good and Evil

During the Spaniards conquest of the New World they encountered Native Americans and labeled them as evil in the name of God, because they were not under the belief of Christianity. To their justification anyone who is not a person of god is the devil’s minion. In Bartolome De Las Casas narrative, “The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies” he gives vivid imagery of the inhumane acts the Spaniards did against the natives. Throughout the passage, Bartolome describes the horrendous massacres such as murdering children, raping women, and also setting victims on fire. This leads the reader to question themselves, do all these atrocities committed by the Spaniards still set them to be considered true christians? Although, the Spaniards give explanations on the dehumanization of the Natives in Hispaniola, the devastating acts they did should not have been allowed. Spaniards should not consider themselves christians because the unrelenting cruelty they used is most definitely contradicting.

The Spanish Christians claim their motive, on the abusive acts done on the Native Americans, was in the name of God. Part of the problem on why the gruesome treatment was committed was because the, “native peoples lay in their unclear character in Spanish eyes” (Sowel 58). Were the natives human? If they were, why didn’t they have a religious status or convert to christianity? Or were they animals, whom could simply be executed without reason? Many of the Spaniards were convinced that the Native Americans were not in fact humans, which led them to do extremely unpleasant executions, “... not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in a slaughter house” (De Las Casas 40). They compared the natives to animals in order to murder human beings, whom are innocent of committing any crimes, with a clean conscience. God’s command is against murdering and yet, “the brutality of Spanish treatment of native peoples are all too frequent” (Sowel 40).

In addition, the Spaniards did many reckless actions. Their blind hatred to the indians compelled them to be, “...roaring with laughter and saying as babies fell into the water, ‘Boil there, you offspring of the devil!”’ (De Las Casas 40). Defining the babies as symbols of the devil made it easier for the spaniards to kill and execute the “devil’s spawns”. The Christians attacked the defenseless children and pregnant women; “the mortality was terrible” (Sowel 28). Not only did they attack the towns and neither spare the lives of children, elderly, pregnant women, or the poor babies, the Spaniards consumed the food of the indians. The little that they ate was never enough, “for a Christian eats and consumes in one day an amount of food that would suffice to feed three houses inhabited by ten Indians for one month” (De Las Casas 40). Indians had then realized that these people, whom they viewed as holy, were nothing more than inhumane Christians who only wanted to satisfy their lust for new land.

Many indians were murdered, “disease, however, and not cruelties, cost most natives their lives” (Sowel