With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want. In exchange for bringing back riches to Spain's monarchs, Columbus had been promised 10 percent of all profits and governorship of the land he took control of. The result was a holocaust against the native population as the Spaniards pillaged the Caribbean, island by island. In 1495, Indians were shipped to Spain as slaves, many dying en route. But far more Indians were enslaved in their homelands to harvest gold from bits of dust found in streams.
History tells a different story.
But Las Casas had a change of heart and began recording what he'd witnessed. He described a cooperative Indian society in a bountiful land, a generally peaceful culture that occasionally went to war with other tribes. Yet there'd been no subjugation of the kind brought by Columbus. My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write. This bloody history might make modern readers tremble- if they had access to it instead of just today's mythology.