In this excerpt from his “Report on the Destruction of the Indies,” the priest Bartolomé de Las Casas describes what happened to the American Indians on Hispaniola. Read the passage and then answer the question.
“[T]hey assigned them [the American Indians] to each Christian, under the pretext [false reason] that the latter [the Christians] should train them in the catholic faith. . . . The care and thought these Spaniards took, was to send the men to the mines to dig gold, which is an intolerable labor; and they put the women into dwellings, which are huts, to dig and cultivate the land. . . . They gave food neither to the one, nor the other, except grass, and things that have no substance . . . the men died of fatigue and hunger in the mines and others perished in dwellings or huts, for the same reason. It was in this way that such multitudes of people were destroyed in this island, as indeed all those in the world might be destroyed by like means.”
—Bartolomé de las Casas, 1552
According to Las Casas, how did the Spanish treat American Indians in the Caribbean?
A.
Spanish colonists concentrated on teaching them Christianity.
B.
They forced the men to work in gold mines, supported by women who grew food for them.
C.
They enslaved both men and women and let most die from overwork and starvation.
D.
The Spanish were fair to them, but unfortunately many of them were not willing to work.
Yes, C.
For this test I recommend searching each question individually
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Finally a good answer out of Mrs. Sue
To answer this question, we need to analyze the given passage by Bartolomé de Las Casas. According to the passage, the Spanish treated the American Indians in the Caribbean in the following ways:
1. "They assigned them [the American Indians] to each Christian" - This indicates that the Spanish colonists assigned the native people to individual Christians.
2. "The care and thought these Spaniards took was to send the men to the mines to dig gold, which is an intolerable labor" - This suggests that the Spanish forced the men to work in gold mines, which Las Casas describes as intolerable labor.
3. "They put the women into dwellings, which are huts, to dig and cultivate the land" - This implies that the women were made to work in dwellings or huts, engaging in agricultural activities.
4. "They gave food neither to the one, nor the other, except grass, and things that have no substance" - According to the passage, the Spanish provided insufficient food for both men and women, offering them only grass and other substances lacking nutritional value.
5. "The men died of fatigue and hunger in the mines, and others perished in dwellings or huts" - This suggests that many men and women died from overwork and starvation in both the mines and the dwellings.
Based on these descriptions by Las Casas, the most accurate answer to the question is:
C. They enslaved both men and women and let most die from overwork and starvation.