conflict of interest that sometimes put
him on the side of brutality: he wanted to
use Native Americans to produce the
gold he felt he needed to justify his expe-
ditions to the crown. In any case,
Columbus had little say in the matter
after 1500, when the crown removed
him and his brothers from the gover-
nance of the New World.
Atrocities against the Native
Americans of Hispaniola, many of them
well documented by Las Casas, were
legion. Soldiers murdered and tortured,
took slaves, stole provisions, and raped
women at will. For sport, Arawak babies
were dashed against rocks or fed to dogs.
To test the sharpness of their swords, sol-
diers would cut open the nearest Native
American. At one point all adult Arawak
were ordered to deliver a certain amount
of gold every three months, at which
time they would receive a token to wear
around their necks as proof of delivery.
Anyone found without his token would
have his hands cut off.
When the Arawak resisted with their
inferior weapons, the massacres grew
worse. The Spanish decided unofficially
that for every European killed, 100
Indians would be executed. The Native
Americans tried to hide in the hills or flee
to neighboring islands, but the Spanish
presence soon pervaded the Caribbean,
and there was nowhere to hide. As the
Native Americans abandoned their crops,
many died of starvation. Countless others
died of diseases brought in by the
Spanish to which the Native Americans
had no natural immunity.
Other islands suffered similar fates.
The Spanish launched successful cam-
paigns to conquer Puerto Rico in 1508,
Jamaica in 1509, and Cuba in 1511—the
three large islands that, with Hispaniola,
compose the Greater Antilles. The
Native American populations of all these
islands were soon wiped out. In 1542,
describing the Spanish Caribbean in his
blistering A Short Account of the
Destruction of the Indies, Las Casas
wrote: “All those islands... are now
abandoned and desolate.”The Encomienda System
Hispaniola saw the development of a
system known as the encomienda—SPAIN IN THE AMERICAS 29Bartolomé de Las Casas (Library of
Congress)Enslaved Indians work at the command of a Spanish overseer.(Library of Congress)