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Destruction of the Indies

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In the book An Account. Much Abbreviated, Of The Destruction Of The Indies bishop De Las Casas writes to Don Felipe prince of all Spain to make him aware of the tortures and punishment the Spaniards did to the Indians on their conquests of the Islands. De Las Casas in the beginning of the book explains why the Spaniards tortured and killed the Indians when they came to their land. The Spaniards wanted their gold when they found out that the Indians were producing so much of it and in the end the Spaniards wanted their land. Las Casas says that the Indians never did any harm to the Spaniards and thought they were gods from the sky and here the Spaniards committed many acts of wrongful harm, theft, murder and violence. These acts begin on the island of Hispaniola where the Spaniards would beat the Indians with their bare hands or sticks till they found the lords of the Indian villages. The captain of the Spaniards would violate the wife of the Indian king. In the beginning the Indians would fight back but they were no match for the Spaniards who rode on horses and had metal swords while the Indians had spears made out of sticks they had no chance and were eventually slaughtered. The Spaniards spared no one including no children or pregnant woman. The Spaniards were so cruel that they would slice open the belly of a pregnant woman and then hack the baby to pieces also they would place wages on who might slice open a man in one swing of his sword. They would also cut the arms of the Indians and either hang them or burn them at the stake. The Indians that were fortunate to escape would go into the mountains and hide but the Spaniards would send hunting dogs into those mountains to slaughter them and whoever survived that and was found eventually became slaves to the Spaniards. The Spaniards would eventually move on to conquer the islands of San Juan and Jamaica where they would once again slaughter and torture the Indians and would take a

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