Document Analysis
Definitely focus on the document about Indies that I’m going to upload. The source that you’re going to select should only be used to back facts that are in this document.
This analysis is for a history class that focuses on empires so I want you to focus on the general themes about the empires that come up in the document and analyse those with connection to Indies.
flee into the hills while others were in such despair that they took their own lives. Men and women hanged themselves and even strung up their own children. JAs a direct result of the barbarity of one Spaniard (a man I knew personally) more than two hundred locals committed suicide, countless thousands in all dying in this way.
There was one royal official on the island who, when he was allotted three hundred natives, worked them so hard that, at the end of three months, only thirty -that is to say, just one tenth of the original number -were still-alive, the other two hundred and seventy having perished down the mines. Later, he received another consignment of much the same number, or even more, _ and he saw them -off, too. The more he received, the more he killed, until eventually he himself died and the Devil took his soul.
During the three or four months I was there, more than seven thousand children died of hunger, after their parents had been shipped off to the mines, and I saw many other horrors also.
It was later decided to hunt down the natives who had fled into the mountains, and the subsequent hunting parties were responsible for carnage beyond belief. Thus it was that the whole of the island was devastated and depopulated, and it now affords, as we discovered on a recent visit, a moving and heartrending spectacle, transformed, as it has been, into one vast, barren wasteland.
THE MAINLAND
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It was in I P4 that a governor lande~ on the Mainland.”l This man, who descended on the region like the wrath of God, was the cruellest of tyrants, totally devoid as he was of any feelings of mercy or even of common sense. He was determined to settle the whole area with Spaniards. The Mainland had seen its share of despots before, who had pillaged and murdered and alienated the local people, but their depredations and iniquities had so far been confined to the coastal areas. This individual, however, outstripped all his predecessors, transcending in cruelty even those that had ravaged the islands, and his devilish deeds surpassed all the abominations that had taken place before his arrival. Nor did he confine his attentions to the coastal area, but cut great swathes through the interior, driving the locals ~
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out, killing left, right and centre, and despatching everyone he encountered to Hell. He devastated the land for many leagues r north of Darien right up to and including the kingdom and provinces of Nicaragua -a distance of more than five hundred ~; leagues over some of the most fertile and densely populated
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areas that are to be found anywher~ in the known world. It -,<
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was a region in which there lived many great lords, and where
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there were countless large cities. Nowhere on the face of the iA earth had such an enormous wealth of gold been discovered, { for, although the island of Hispaniola had filled Spain to overflowing with gold, and ,gold of the _ highest quality, this had all to be extracted from the bowels of the earth by the sweat
41 Pedro Arias de Avila, or Pedrarias Davila; se~ Canes. Lellm fro”, M.xifo, pp115-14. The Mainland (Tim-” Fir”,e) was the name given to northern South America and southern Central America, and was the area referred to by the English 2S the ‘Spanish Main’
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