Prince Henry The Navigator Analysis

To get a better understanding of today’s racial inequality, people may want to look at the past, reaching as far back as 1500 and 1600. This issue did not happen overnight but instead, evolved from the early settling of the Europeans. Firsthand accounts from times of exploration in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries suggest that rapidly expanding colonization played a key role (large or small, differing from one perspective to another) in people’s stereotypical ideas of skin color and race. Documents from the explorer Prince Henry “the Navigator” give us not just evidence of European stereotypes of other races, but also stereotypes towards Europeans from another race’s point of view. Bartolomé de la Casas’ accounts do suggest that while …show more content…
In his account, de Las Casas describes the cruel scenes he encountered in the land of Hispaniola. Once on the Indians’ turf, the Christians were said to have eaten the Indians’ food, beaten and attacked the Indians for no reason, and assaulted the Indian ruler’s wife . All of these unprovoked acts contributed to the loathing of the Christians by the Indians, thus resulting in the Indian people’s negative attitudes towards the Christian people. Naturally, these events would leave the Indians wanting to get rid of the foreigners; the Indian people then decided to kill in self-defense. The Spaniards, described as “enemies of the human race” , heard of this, and joined in the unjustified slaughter of the Indians; de Las Casas states that “the Spaniards made a rule among themselves that for every Christian slain by the Indians, they would slay a hundred Indians” . Whatever the reason for the attacks, not only was there now bad blood between the Indians and the Christians, the Spaniards would become another race against the Indian peoples. Once the slaughters had ceased, the few surviving Indians were separated from their families, put into groups of twenty to two hundred, and given to the Christians to be used as slaves . This, of course, would lead to more hatred from the Indian peoples towards the …show more content…
Different from the Christians’ abuse of only one race, this account states that multiple races were present on this slave ship. They had all been grouped together, “. . . amongst them were some white enough, fair to look upon, and well proportioned; others were less white like mulattoes; others again were as black as Ethiops, and so ugly” . Although this account includes unnecessary details describing the slaves’ appearances, appearance must not have mattered too much to the buyers and owners, considering there were not just black slaves or white slaves, but a mix of the two. The slave owners probably did have some sort of preconceived idea of the slaves’ races, but race seems to be an unimportant factor in this trade. These people were not concerned about skin color, they were concerned about finding slaves who would do what was asked of them. Although the slaves, already miserable on the ship, were separated from their loved ones, Gomez goes on to reassure readers that the slaves were treated “with great favour” , regardless of their race. The Europeans “saw how they came in unto the law of Christ with a good will, they made no difference between them and their free servants, born in our own country” . Eventually, as slaves were freed, they were treated as free; many married and were seen for being a