De Las Casas Analysis

What is an American? An American can be defined as many things, like a person who lives in the American continents, someone who has an American citizenship and etc. However, it seems that in most situations, an American seems to be someone who desires money. There are more nationalities that surely also want it, but even though it is said that America was started for freedoms, it was a whole country essentially built on it. With the colonialism of America and the immigration solely for economic purposes as well as the start of a slave trade, it can be seen that America was built more on a desire for money rather than the desire for freedom. Christopher Columbus’ and many other settlers colonized the country essentially to make money for themselves and Spain. In The Letters from Columbus and De las Casas this can be seen. In the letter from De las Casas, he says “ The Spaniards have brought to the island of Hispaniola and the island of San Juan more than two million souls taken captive, and have sent them to do hard labor in the mines..” The Spanish men took these millions of men to work in the mines. By working in the mines, the American Indians were earning income for the men who had captured them. These Spaniards were amongst one of the first groups who came to America, and

This started with the first settlers who came to the Americas, who captured American Indians to work hard labours, so they could make more money themselves. The desire was continued throughout the years with other settlers when their ship’s crew members immigrated solely for the purpose of earning money. Almost 300 years after all of that, American continued to earn money by selling off other people. Today, people will do many different things to get some sort of income. It is not hard to see that Americans do indeed desire money, and this desire seems to overrule the desire for the freedoms this country was supposed to be started