How Did The Spanish Conquistadors Treat The Natives

“One Hundred Indians should dye for every individual Spaniard that should be slain”, “Spaniards breed up such fierce hunting Dogs as would devour an Indian like a Hog”, and “they erected large Gibbets, but low made, so that their feet almost reached the ground, under which they made a Fire to burn them to ashes while hanging on them” are just some of the few atrocities committed by the Spanish on the Native Americans. These accounts are first hand experienced by the Spanish Dominican Priest, Las Casas, who objected to the Spanish treatment towards the natives. Not only did he tell how the Spanish conquistadors treat the peoples of the New World, but also told how his views on the Native American population, what he thought should be done with

He describes all the horrendous torture methods that the Native Americans went through. These tortures spanned from simply being slaughtered to killing babies, drowning infants, and hanging people as they slowly roast to death. Aside from all the native’s surprisingly gentle qualities, he says that he had heard other Spaniard say that they declare they had no interest in accepting the natives and preferred them out of “their territory”. More into the most important view of the treatment of the natives lies in how they were treated while being conquered. “The Spaniards first assaulted the innocent Sheep, whom they have so inhumanly and barbarously butchered and harrass’d with several kinds of torments, never before known, or heard that of three million people, there is present three hundred.” These tortures were indeed inhuman and barbaric.
These torments included separating the men of the tribes to make them as slaves, they were all put in cuffs, would beat the natives, Spaniards “spared no age, no sex, nay not so much women with child, but ripped the child out of their bellies, and tore them alive in pieces”, put bets on who can kill a native quicker or more gruesome, snatched babies from their mothers and bashed their brains out on rocks, threw infants into the waters and laughed as they drowned, and most gruesome was when they would roast people

It may not be pretty, but they did do these dirty deeds and deserve to get the exact credit they deserve. If the Spanish was brave enough to commit these atrocities then they can atone for their horrid reputation and the responsibility of having everyone know what they did to innocent people. If the Spanish conclude the exposed truth behind their actions as “unfair” then that goes to show that they know what they did was terrible and disgusting. Many Spanish soldiers, as Las Casas had reported, took joy in this massacre.
“They laid wagers among themselves, who should with a sword at one blow cut, or divide a man in two; or which of them should decollate or behead a man, with the greatest dexterity; nay farther, which should sheath his sword in the bowels of a man with the quickest dispatch and expedition….. Others they cast into rivers scoffing and jeering them, and call’d upon their bodies then falling with derision, the true testimony of their cruelty, to come to them, and inhumanely exposing others to their merciless swords, together with the mothers that gave them