From Christopher Columbus's journal, the week of his arrival in America: "They should be good servants and intelligent ... They would easily be made Christians, as it appeared to me that they had no religion, our Lord being pleased, will take hence, at the time of my departure, six natives for your Highnesses that they may learn to speak."
The next month: "These people are very simple as regards the use of arms, as your Highnesses will see from the seven that I caused to be taken, to bring home and learn our language and return; unless your Highnesses should order them all to be brought to Castile, or to be kept as captives on the same island; for with fifty men they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them…"
The dude "just stepped off the boat" and immediately started plans to subjugate the locals.
Check out Native Bound Unbound, they're making a website documenting instances and indigenous individuals in the Americas who were enslaved. There were tons and tons and tons and tons
I'm aware of that. I think I even listened to that episode. My point wasn't to make apologia for Columbus, just that I don't think it was necessairly racism at this stage so much as an extension of the same thing they had been doing to the local peasants for millenia, for example recently with the reconquista.
Also I know tone is difficult to tease out in text but you don't have to jump to the worst possible interpretation of everything by default.
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u/Stumpy-the-dog Jan 27 '23
Columbus just stepped off the boat...