Cabeza De Vaca And The Conquistadors

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Over the course of history, Native Americans have become misinterpreted as “Savages”, based on ill-informed preconceptions. In the works of Christopher Columbus, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and Bartolomé de las Casas, the Natives have been characterized through positive views in such ways that they were as civilized as the Spaniards. However, negative contexts indicated that Indians created war and showed no signs of respect. No matter the view, there will always be one fact for certain: Christians wanted the land for themselves. Effectively, the Spaniards need to fulfill expectation mandated by the Spanish monarch, motivated them to spread Christian beliefs through conversion. Therefore, the Conquistadors, applying biblical texts, imposed…show more content…
The Spaniards were unable to get supplies for New Spain because the monarch at the time would not have allowed a rebellious group to separate from Spain. At the same time, Bartolomé de las Casas was a member of the governor’s party in Spain and thus, asked to investigate God’s territories with the Christians. Throughout the texts in Casas, he is more of a passive Christian than most of the Spaniards he identifies. In the beginning text of the passage, it can be seen that he is explaining the inhuman ways of Christians “From The Coast of Pearls, Paria, and the Island of Trinidad” “…more than two million souls taken captive, and have sent them to do hard labor in the mines, labors that caused many of them to die.” (Casas, 41). He then goes on to say the word “repartimiento”, specifically talking about how the Christians mission was to convert the Indians as a duty from biblical texts. Presently, Casas wrote these depicted writings as in means to educate Christians, as a warning sign to all those who do not convert. He made the foundation of the divine government, where in essence, this will be a Christian nation where all the land will be pure. This set up an example for the rest of the nations to follow because Spain had many issues in converting many of its people into Christianity. Thus, New Spain would have none of these problems. The converting of these Natives was an amusement for the Christians so, instead of converting them and increasing the amount of followers, they used the Indians as slaves and used them to accomplish the goal which was to create a divine
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