Those That Stood in Their Way
The English and Spanish Colonists ' Terrible Treatment of Native Americans While America is now a flourishing country, its creation came at a terrible cost. This continent was not empty when English colonists arrived; rather there were millions of inhabitants already living there. These inhabitants, the Native Americans, were greatly effected by the arrival of European colonists, and not in a good way. The two major groups of colonists, the Spanish and the English, had different reasons for coming to this continent, and each dealt with Native Americans in their own way. Christopher Columbus came to the New World in hopes of learning, “the proper method of converting them to our holy faith,” along with searching …show more content…
The first example of Native American captives can be seen with Christopher Columbus who refers to his captives saying, “those seven which I have ordered to be taken and carried to Spain in order to learn our language and return, unless your Highnesses should choose to have them all transported to Castile, or held captive in the island”x. Later when other Spanish colonists arrived, the Native Americans that were not killed were forced to work in mines in order to “accumulate Gold by their bodies and Souls, for which Christ was Crucified”xi. The slaves inside mines were worked to death, and any slaves outside of the mines faced other horrible fates, including being forced into battle or even used as a food source for fellow Native American captivesxii. English colonists used slavery as well, though their form was not quite as extreme. According to Digital History, “In every New World colony, Europeans experimented with Indian slavery, convict labor, and white indentured servants. For example, as late as the early 1700s, a third of South Carolina 's labor force consisted of Indian slaves”xiii. While the slave population eventually shifted to African-American slaves and most of the information available about slavery int the New World focuses on African-Americans, Native Americans did serve as slaves for a time. Olaudah Equiano, an African-American slave from early colonization era, gives a detailed description of both his own slavery as well as some of the slavery around him, and although he himself was an African-American, his story reveals some of the troubles that Native American slaves might have gone through. Equiano writes that, “many times have I even seen these unfortunate wretches beaten for asking for their pay; and often severely flogged by their owners if they did not bring them their daily or weekly money exactly to the
The English and Spanish Colonists ' Terrible Treatment of Native Americans While America is now a flourishing country, its creation came at a terrible cost. This continent was not empty when English colonists arrived; rather there were millions of inhabitants already living there. These inhabitants, the Native Americans, were greatly effected by the arrival of European colonists, and not in a good way. The two major groups of colonists, the Spanish and the English, had different reasons for coming to this continent, and each dealt with Native Americans in their own way. Christopher Columbus came to the New World in hopes of learning, “the proper method of converting them to our holy faith,” along with searching …show more content…
The first example of Native American captives can be seen with Christopher Columbus who refers to his captives saying, “those seven which I have ordered to be taken and carried to Spain in order to learn our language and return, unless your Highnesses should choose to have them all transported to Castile, or held captive in the island”x. Later when other Spanish colonists arrived, the Native Americans that were not killed were forced to work in mines in order to “accumulate Gold by their bodies and Souls, for which Christ was Crucified”xi. The slaves inside mines were worked to death, and any slaves outside of the mines faced other horrible fates, including being forced into battle or even used as a food source for fellow Native American captivesxii. English colonists used slavery as well, though their form was not quite as extreme. According to Digital History, “In every New World colony, Europeans experimented with Indian slavery, convict labor, and white indentured servants. For example, as late as the early 1700s, a third of South Carolina 's labor force consisted of Indian slaves”xiii. While the slave population eventually shifted to African-American slaves and most of the information available about slavery int the New World focuses on African-Americans, Native Americans did serve as slaves for a time. Olaudah Equiano, an African-American slave from early colonization era, gives a detailed description of both his own slavery as well as some of the slavery around him, and although he himself was an African-American, his story reveals some of the troubles that Native American slaves might have gone through. Equiano writes that, “many times have I even seen these unfortunate wretches beaten for asking for their pay; and often severely flogged by their owners if they did not bring them their daily or weekly money exactly to the