Spain In The New World Dbq

Spain in the New World
As the Spanish began to conquer land in the Americas from the 1500s to 1600s, their demand for goods to bring back to Europe caused a greater need for labor in which the Spanish were not willing to provide themselves. The Spanish were also aspiring to spread the Christian faith unto the Native Americans. When such did not go as planned they used the Native’s rebellion against the Catholic faith as an excuse to use them to force them into laboring for the good of Spanish wealth. The Native Americans were treated unfairly under the system of Encomiendas, causing a change of attitude and governmental protocol by the Spaniards and soon imported the African population to supply their labor. Document one shows a letter written

In document two, Bartolomé de las Casas is completely agaisnt and adressing the mistreatment under this system. He believes that the abuse that was begun by Cortés will ultimately not convince the Native’s to Christianize. He states that they were looked upon as the “dung and filth of the earth”. This in turn is the impetus of a new law. As shown in document three, Charles V creates new ordinances against the slavery and mistreatment of the Indians. As stated “Indians may not remain in slavery unjustly” (doc. 3). This new law proposes that Christian or not, the Indians may not be forced into slavery unless having committed a crime or done something unmoral. That year, the Spanish government eradicated the encomienda system. However a problem still arose, if they were no longer allowed to use the Native’s for their labor, how must they go about harvesting their goods? Bartolomé de las Casas suggest using the Atlantic Trade routes to import Africans to use for labor, stating that one African laborer is worth more than four Indian

Because of the need to go deeper into the earth, the Spaniards are not willing to do so and because of the new rule, the Indians cannot be forced to do the labor either. This source is showing slight frustration towards the rule, which frees all Native’s who convert to Christianity. This ushered in a new idea of importing African slaves to complete the work for them. The Atlantic Trade influenced the business of buying and selling these Africans. Because of the easy access to Africa and the cheap prices for the slaves themselves, there would soon be the importing of slaves by the millions. Clear bias is shown in document four as they admit to making the slaves work too hard and he briefly discusses them falling sick and dying. Later on, Las Casas changed his mind about the use of African slaves for labor, however it was simply too late as many people became adjusted to the idea, not only that, they in fact promoted