WEEK 2 INTRODUCTION TO READINGS Bartolomé de Las Casas, excerpts from Apologia (ca. 1548-1550), translated into English as In Defense of the Indians Bartolomé de Las Casas was born in 1474 in Seville. His father was a small businessman who sailed with Columbus on Columbus’s second voyage in 1493. His father brought aTaino Amerindian to Bartolomé to be his servant; theAmerindian was later freed by order of Queen Isabella. In 1502, at the age of twenty-eight, Las Casas made his firstvoyage to the Indies, having qualified to serve as ateacher of Christian doctrine to the Indians. In Hispaniola, Las Casas received an encomienda for helping toquell Indian uprisings. From this grant, he gained notonly land but also the forced labor of its Amerindianinhabitants. In 1512, Las Casas became the first priestordained in the Americas, and in 1513 he received anencomienda on Cuba. By the second decade of the sixteenth century, some90% of the Amerindian population of Hispaniola had alreadybeen destroyed. In 1510, Dominican priests arrived andbegan a campaign against mistreatment of Indians. Las Casas rejected their arguments. In 1514, however, LasCasas experienced a conversion to the Dominican position,freed his own Indians, and preached a sermon denouncing theexploitation of the Amerindians. This began Las Casas’scareer as an advocate for Amerindians, during which LasCasas wrote numerous works, designed utopian schemes forpeaceful colonization, evangelized numerous tribal groups,advocated the use of slaves from Africa to relieve the burden on the Amerindian population (a position heeventually denounced), and worked vigorously on both sidesof the Atlantic for Amerindian welfare. In 1544, Las Casaswas appointed Bishop of Chiapas in southern Mexico.Popular resistance to his social teachings made his tenureas bishop stormy and largely ineffective. Driven from Chiapas, he left the Americas in 1547, never to return, andwas divested of his bishopric. He died in 1566. The following reading is from Las Casas’s lastsignificant moment on the public stage. Another Spaniard,Ginés de Sepulveda, had attempted to publish a treatisejustifying war against the Amerindians, but in 1550 theChurch denied Sepulveda permission to do so. Sepulvedaappealed the Church’s decision and Las Casas argued againsthis appeal. Sepulveda’s treatise relied heavily onAristotle’s conception that hierarchy was natural. For Sepulveda, just as animals should obey humans, the bodyshould obey the soul, women should obey men, childrenshould obey adults, and Indians should obey Spaniards. War against the Amerindians was morally just for four reasons,Sepulveda argued: 1. The Amerindians refused to obey their naturalsuperiors; 2. Aztecs ate human flesh, sacrificed humans, andworshipped the Devil, all of which provoked God’s wrath; 3. War was a means of protecting the innocent victims ofhuman sacrifice; 4. War would facilitate conversion of the Amerindians to Christianity. The reading is from Las Casas’s response to thesearguments. Diego Durán, excerpt from Book of the Gods and Rites andthe Ancient Calendar (ca. 1580) Born in Spain in 1537, Durán emigrated to Mexico atthe age of five or six. As a member of the Dominican order, Durán devoted his life to converting Amerindians toChristianity. Between 1576 and 1581, Durán prepared hisstudy of Aztec religion and history. Essentially unknownin its own time, the work was not published until thenineteenth century. Durán died in 1588. WEEK 2 QUESTIONS Bartolomé de las Casas, excerpts from Apologia (ca. 1548-1550), translated into English as In Defense of the Indians1. When Las Casas actually describes the Indians, in whatterms does he describe them? 2. On what basic grounds does Las Casas oppose theChristian conquistadors’ treatment of the Indians? 3. On p. 50, Las Casas condemns the rituals practiced byancient Roman and Greek pagans to worship their gods as“disgraceful, ugly, and repugnant to sound reason.” What attitude does he display toward the practice of humansacrifice common to the Indian societies? Diego Durán, excerpt from Historia de las Indias de NuevaEspaña e Islas de la Tierra Firme (ca. 1580), part of whichhas been translated into English as Book of the Gods andRites and the Ancient Calendar 4. What facts, according to Durán, support speculationthat Topiltzin was one of the original apostles of Christ? 5. The task of the historian often requires a sensitivereading of descriptions like Durán’s in order to find outabout people who have left almost no records of their own(many of them having been destroyed by the Spanish). From Durán’s descriptions of Indian behavior in religiousfestivals, can you gain a sense of how the conquered mayhave developed strategies to preserve their own religiousand social rituals even as they participated in Christianones? 6. Which of the two readings offers a greater sense of thedifferences between the Indians and the