How Did Bartolome De Las Casas Treat The Americans

Spanish and the Black Legend
The colonization of the Americas caused some overall problems for the Spanish. The Spanish were painted as the criminals since Bartolome de las Casas published his ideas of how they treated the Natives. Overall, Spanish lives were negatively influenced by the Black Legend because even though other empires did the same things to the Natives, the Spanish were treated differently.
The Black Legend made the Spanish seem un-Christian. It made them look as if they were torturing Natives. Another important thing is that the Spanish seemed to only care about the wealth that was coming in. All of these things led to the Black Legend and de las Casas point of view. He made it seem as if they only cared about money, and

De las Casas spoke only of the brutalities and “the great iniquities and injustices, the outrageous acts of violence and the bloody tyranny of these Christians have steadily escalated, the perpetrators having lost all fear of God, all love of their sovereign, and all sense of self-respect.” (de las Casas, 1542). This shows that the other empires thought less of them because of some of their actions against the Natives. In 1552 this idea of how the Spanish treated the Natives as less than human; and as if they were only a thing to be conquered with a show of power through violence. They did end up using violence in more than one case, however, a few actions of the many cannot have reason to say that every single Spaniard would be un-Christian. An example of their over conquering would have to be the Aztec empire. In this case there was a ton of violence. The reason for this would be because the Aztecs were also a powerful empire that also happened to wealthy. The whole point here is that money created the people here. God, gold, and glory were the things they were after, and in every culture there is a few people who are going to be a little too willing to

This does not justify how they are considered the worst of the colonizing empires because they happen to have more things said about how they treated the Natives. They set up missions spreading their beliefs in the Christian religion and yet somehow became known for using un-Christian methods. Also they gave Natives the encomiedas system which limited their rights by a bit yet when it came down to it the English did the exact same thing but they worded it just a bit differently. Lastly the whole belief that the English and French came to the New world to help the Natives who they saw as meek and gentle while in reality they were only after more money. Spanish lives were negatively influenced by the Black Legend and made to think that they did something so horrible while in reality they were just bits a pieces of things that they really did that were bad. The English did just as much and they also were the ones who wrote the whole Black Legend leading to a one sided view against the