Christopher Columbus and the Genocide of the Taino Nation
October 8th, 2012
On
his third expedition, Columbus explored the region before returning to
Hispaniola in 1498 where he had left his brothers in charge, Diego and
Bartholomew. Conditions there were in decline so he stepped up the
terror campaign against the Taino, ruling with an iron hand causing
resentment from the colonists and local chiefs alike. Complaints of his
brutality got back to the Spanish monarchs and in 1500 they sent a Chief
Justice to bring him and his brothers back to Spain in chains. However
he was released on his arrival and allowed a fourth and final
expedition, which he conducted with the same brutality as previous ones.
By the time he finally left in 1504, the Taino had been reduced from as
many as eight million to around 100,000 people arguably making Columbus
a war criminal by today’s standards and guilty of committing some of
the worst atrocities against another race in history. Some were killed
directly as punishments for ‘crimes’ such as not paying tribute to the
invaders. Many who could not or would not pay had their hands cut off
and were left to bleed to death. Columbus and his men are documented by
the chronicles of Las Casas, know as Brev’sima relaci-n, to have
partaken in mass hangings, roasting people on spits, burnings at the
stake and even hacking young children to death and feeding them to dogs
as punishment for the most minor of crimes. The Spanish masters
massacred the natives, sometimes hundreds at a time for sport, making
bets on who could split a man in two, or cut a head off in one blow. By
1542 there were only 200 Taino remaining and soon afterwords they were
considered extinct, as was becoming more and more the case throughout
the Caribbean basin.
No comments:
Post a Comment