The Spanish’s influence upon
“discovering” the New World has forever changed history and mankind. Writings
from two men who are living in nearly the same generations, Bartolome’ De Las
Casas and Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca, identify themselves as the apologists of
the mayhem and destruction caused by the New World Explorers. Both men are
providing detailed accounts of the atrocities which their people enforced upon
the Natives in the New World. However, their writings are significantly
different from each other. One writer’s main objective appears to be a defaming
against the Spanish Crown and Christianity, while the other writer takes on
more of a documentation-like approach. The
language, tone, sentiments, and contexts written by both men are contrastingly
different, and they have documented many elements of Western society that are
prevalent today and throughout American history.
De Las Casas is a man who comes from
humble and noble beginnings as he was born into a merchant and farming family
in Sevilla, Spain. He is heavily involved with the Church and the Spanish
government and is often critical of both particularly in his writing Devastation of the Indies (1542). However,
in his initial journeys to the New World, De Las Casas intentions were in every
sense to take advantage of the Natives by subjugating them to his personal gain
through gold-mining and field work—until he realized that the evil he and the
Spaniards were permitting against the Natives were immoral and inhumane
according to his beliefs. De Vaca’s journey begins with the devastating loss of
his crew as he is taken in by two different Native tribes, where his
perspectives of the Natives completely change. Yet, he still finds ways to
manipulate them for his own personal gain, for instance, on Britannica’s
website, they mention where “Nunez later reported that he had pretended at
times to be a healer in order to receive better treatment and more food from
the Indians” (Britannica).
The language used by both men elicit two
distinct tones throughout their writings, which, in a sense, describe the the
truthfulness of their sympathy towards the Natives. De Las Casas consistently
uses aggressively violent language, almost as if he has a fascination with
violence. Halfway through the excerpt of Devastation
of the Indies, he describes the horror, “not only stabbing them [women and
children alike] and dismembering them but cutting them into pieces as if
dealing with sheep in the slaughter house” (De Las Casas 37). Although De Las
Casas describes many actions of genocide, which his people force, he fails to
directly apologize or cast shame amongst his people; yet, even more
importantly, he fails to find soluble resolutions for the damage that has
already occurred. Instead he consistently blames the Spanish crown and
Christianity, while continuing to disrupt the lives of the natives by enforcing
Spanish law and establishing missionaries. This is problematic because it shows
that there is no true remorse for humans annihilating the lives of other
humans, but rather it is the fault of a religion and a crown hailing from the
other side of the Atlantic. The canon and historians glorify these particular
writings by De Las Casas because he openly speaks out against certain aspects
of slavery, seemingly only on instances when people are brutally murdered and
tortured. His writings evoke a lackluster compassion because there is no
mentioning of proactive plans or means for revitalizing the lives of the Natives;
instead, he only laments about the devastating effects of malnourishment and
unbearable labors, “it is heart breaking to see those naked Indians,
heartbreaking for anyone with a vestiges of piety, the famished state they are
in…fainting…falling down, weak from hunger, men, women, old people, and
children” (De Las Casas 38). De Las Casas fails to recognize the Natives’ humanity
because he still allows for missionaries and Spanish law to be upheld in the
New World, and he does not sincerely apologize to the Natives for their destruction.
His works could more beneficial if he was to provide more of an analytical
critique on his people and himself—things like their spirit, motivations, and
desires that caused them to create such devastation—for this context would have
provided more of an emphatic understanding of De Las Casas intentions and
feelings. Otherwise, the texts provided in the Norton continue to perpetuate Euro-centric dominance and
devastation.
On the contrary, De Vaca’s language and
tone are noticeably different from that of De Las Casas’s. The excerpts used
from The Relation are written with
more of an anthropological approach as De Vaca describes the culture and nature
of the Natives in a way that disregards the Euro-centric perspective; however,
his writings do not equate to being a true representation of the Natives’
sentiments and ideas. In the opening paragraphs of The Relation, he writes, “These people love their offspring more
than any in the world and treat them very mildly” (De Vaca 42). De Vaca is humanizing
the natives as he addresses them as people unlike the traditional “savages”
they were unwillingly called before. He also mentions the importance of family
and how it affects the daily lives of the Malhado people: practices such as
daily mourning by parents three times a day, who have lost a son; the
family-village support through providing food to a family household, who has
recently lost a son or brother; and very strict marriage customs. His style of
documentation even projects a sense of enlightenment about the Natives, where
he realizes that they are indeed humans and friendly. In “The Falling-Out…” De
Vaca explains how the Natives “feared they would die if they returned [to their
homes] without fulfilling [the] obligation” (De Vaca 47), of safely delivering De
Vaca and others to another tribe. With De Vaca’s mentioning of this, we are
able understand that the Natives did see the humanity within the Spaniards.
These text leave a legacy of the Western
World’s influence, which is highly prevalent today. They showcase the European idea of capitalism
with both men originally coming to the Americas to seek prosperity and fortune;
they evoke feelings of white-supremacy and “Manifest Destiny” as the Spaniards
feel they have the divine right to enforce dominion and genocide upon Natives
and, eventually, Africans. The imperialistic mentalities and events stated in
De Vacas and Las Casas text will go on to be seen in future American documents
that will develop in the dark, desolate history we see today.
Works Cited
De Las Casas, Bartolome. “The Very Brief
Relation of the Devastation of the Indies.” The Norton Anthology: American
Literature 7th Edition. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: WW Norton and
Company, 2007. 37-38. Print
De Vaca, Alvar Nunez Cabeza. “The
Relation of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca.” The Norton Anthology: American
Literature 7th Editon. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: WW Norton and
Company, 2007. 42 and 47. Print
Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. Britannica. Web. 11, September, 2016.
Dear Darius,
ReplyDeleteThis is a very good post comparing and contrasting these two explorers. It has a clear thesis and provides adequate evidence. To make this post even stronger, take care to use the past tense for history and present tense for the literature itself. Also, take care to have clearer topic sentences. Use a classic compare and contrast structure, giving the first paragraph to one author, and the second to the other, then bring the two authors together in the third. Finally, your points become very broad at the end – try to stay specific about the ways in which these authors’ ideas affect us today.