In Honor of Columbus Day, 2013

Excerpt from the Requerimiento, a document drawn up in 1513 that the Spanish conquistadores were to read to the indigenous inhabitants upon claiming ownership (read in Spanish):

http://ows.edb.utexas.edu/site/tejano-history-
curriculum-project/alonso-álvarez-de-pineda-visuals

On the part of the King, Don Fernando, and of Doña Juana, his daughter, Queen of Castille and León, subduers of the barbarous nations, we their servants notify and make known to you. . .[that] we ask and require you that you consider what we have said to you, and that you take the time that shall be necessary to understand and deliberate upon it, and that you acknowledge the Church as the Ruler and Superior of the whole world, and the high priest called Pope, and in his name the King and Queen Doña Juana our lords, in his place, as superiors and lords and kings of these islands and this Tierra-firme by virtue of the said donation, and you consent and give place that these religious fathers should declare and preach to you the aforesaid.  If you do so, you will do well. . .But, if you do not do this, and maliciously make delay in it, I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their Highnesses; we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them. . . 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Portraiture_of_Elizabeth_I_of_England

Queen Isabella's instructions to the comendador of Hispaniola, Fray Nicolás de Ovando, regarding indigenous labor, sent in 1553:

I have commanded this my letter to be issued on the matter, in which I command you, our said Governor, that beginning from the day you received my letter you will compel and force the said Indians to associate with the Christians of the island and to work on their buildings, and to gather and mine the gold and other metals, and to till the fields and produce food for the Christian inhabitants and dwellers of the said island; and you are to have each one paid on the day he works the wage and maintenance which you think he should have. . .and you are to order each cacique to take charge of a certain number of the said Indians so that you may make them work wherever necessary, and so that on feast days and such days as you think proper they may be gathered together to hear and be taught in matters of the Faith. . .This the Indians shall perform as free people, which they are, and not as slaves.  And see to it that the said Indians are well treated, those who become Christians better than the others, and do not consent or allow that any person do them any harm or oppress them.

The Dominican Friar Bartolomé de las Casas's accusations regarding Ovando's response to Queen Isabella's commands, written sometime between 1553 and before de las Casas died  in 1566:

http://floridamemory.com/items/
show/146229

1. I have already said and I repeat, the truth is that in the nine years the comendador governed the island, no measures were taken for the conversion of Indians and no more was done about the matter nor any more thought given to it than if the Indians were sticks, stones, cats or dogs. . .

2. He [Ovando] disrupted villages and distributed Indians at his pleasure, giving fifty to one and a hundred to another, according to his preferences, and these numbers included children, old people, pregnant women and nursing mothers, families of high rank as well as common people. . . 

3. The men were sent out to the mines as far as eighty leagues away while their wives remained to work the soil. . .Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides that they had no mind for marital communication and in this way they ceased to procreate.  As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7,000 children died in three months. . .

7 I believe the above clearly demonstrates that the Indians were totally deprived of their freedom and were put in the harshest, fiercest, most horrible servitude and captivity which no one who has not seen it can understand. Even beasts enjoy more freedom when they are allowed to graze in the fields. . .