Father Jayme's Argument Analysis

1051 Words5 Pages

I will outline the argument put forth by father Luis Jayme for support being sent from the Franciscian church to aid both neothytes (Indian converts to Christianity) and gentiles (non-converted Indians), who are allegedly subject to rape from the Portuguese soldiers. Father Jayme Is sympathetic towards the native Indians who he believes act in a better nature than that of the Portuguese soldiers. In summary, Jayme notes of his own Spanish Christians, he writes "I burst into tears to see how these neophytes were setting an example for us Christians"1. The outrageous acts of rape performed by the soldiers referencing personal accounts given to him by the native Americans as his main source of evidence. "some soldiers went their and raped their women ..... three other Indian villages about a league or a league and a half from here have reported the same thing to me many times"2. In many ways Jayme offers a very human argument appealing to the human condition in a contemporary limelight to help those of a noble and pious nature, to fend off the oppressor in this case the soldiers. Additionally he highlights the Indian actions that are in line with …show more content…

Secondly Father Jayme in aiding the Native Americans is going against the Spanish soldiers, many of them were Christians. Throughout the whole history of human kind our inability to go against people of our own cultures, skin colours has clouded peoples abilities to see the wrong in themselves. Such biases lie in line with the stereotypes of the time. For example Native American attire involved little clothing especially for women, they wore necklaces with no tops often times, or merely cloth. Whereas the Spanish were “fully clothed”, they saw this lack of clothing as a sign of barbarianism, It was such stereotypes that Jayme hoped to