The Spanish under Columbus hunted the Taino People for sport and for dog-food for their attack hounds. 1) 40) 64)
So great were the cruelties and horrible the degradations that the Taino People suffered at the hands of Columbus and his men, that entire villages would bolt in panic at the sight of a single Spaniard. The whole populations of some villages would, upon the approach of Spanish soldiers, hurl themselves from cliffs, hang themselves, shoot one another with arrows, or take poison to avoid life under the boot of Spanish oppression. Others abandoned their cultivated fields and homes to hide in the forested hills where many thousands starved to death.
Pedro de Cordoba in a letter to King Ferdinand wrote in 1517, "As a result of the sufferings and hard labor they endured, the Indians choose and have chosen suicide.....Many when pregnant, have taken something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive slavery." 1)
James W. Loewen writes that Columbus was not only the first to ship slaves across the Atlantic but that Columbus was the most prodigious slave trader in recorded history. Over 5,000 Tanio People were exported by Columbus to Europe.
Before his death, Columbus, recorded in his will, "I presented [to Spain] the Indies. I say presented, because it is evident that by the will of God, our Sovereign, I gave them, as a thing that was mine." 39)
After the surrounding Islands of the Caribbean were likewise depopulated, the African slave trade began to replace the now all but extinct Taino People.
Estimates of the Taino population of Haiti in 1492 range up to 8 million people. In 1496, according to the results of a Spanish census, the populace had dropped to approximately 3 million. By 1516 only 12,000 remained. In 1542, 200 remained alive. By 1555, nearly all 8 million were gone. 1)
The Taino People of the Bahamas did not fare much better. Of an estimated populace of over 50,000 People, the Native population was reduced in the first hundred years after the arrival of the Spanish, to nearly zero. 72)
"How much damage, how many calamities, disruptions and devastations of kingdoms have there been? How many souls have perished in the West Indies over the years and how unjustly? How many unforgivable sins have been committed? ...... What we committed in the West Indies stands out among the most unpardonable offenses ever committed against God and mankind...." 1)
-Bartolome de Las Casas- Spanish priest, historian, and compatriot of Christopher Columbus
In-spite of the best efforts of Columbus and the Spanish colonialists, the Taino People of the West Indies have survived. I urge you to visit http://www.uctp.org/ or http://www.taino-tribe.org/jatiboni.html two websites of the Taino People.
SOURCES:
1). "LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME" National bestseller by JAMES W. LOEWEN
39). "SEARCH FOR COLUMBUS" by Eugene Lyon, National Geographic, January 1992
40). "CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS and the New World He Found" by John Scofield, National Geographic, November 1975
71). "EATING FIRE TASTING BLOOD, an anthology of the American Indian Holocast" edited by Marijo Moore
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