EQUAL TIME: ACKNOWLEDGE SPANIARD ATROCITIES, TOO

(Ed.'s Note: We have often been taken to task when we post stories about abuses by the U.S. military, the Texas Rangers, Charles Stillman and his buddies Richard King and Mifflin Kenedy, et al, on Native and Mexican-Americans in the U.S and the the Rio Grande Valley. The Spaniards also did it, they say. They are right. Below is a narrative (La Leyenda Negra) on those Spanish atrocities by the Spanish conquistadores written by Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican missionary who accompanied them on their conquests. Now, do two wrongs make a right?)

"The Spaniards with their horses, their spears and lances, began to commit murders, and strange cruelties: they entered into towns, boroughs, and villages, sparing neither children nor old men, neither women with child, neither them that lay in, but that they ripped their bellies, and cut

them to pieces, as if they had been opening of lambs shut up in their fold....

They laid wagers with such as with one thrust of his sword would most readily punch or bowel a main in the middle, or with one blow of the sword would most readily and most delivery cut off his head, or that would pierce his entrails at one stroke. They took the little souls by their heels, ripping them from their mother's breasts, and crushed their heads against the cliffs. Others they cast into the rivers laughing and mocking, and when they tumbled into the water, they said, now shift for yourself such as a corpse. They put others, together with their mothers, and all that they met, to the edge of the sword....

They made gibbers long and low, of such sort, that the feet of those hanged, touched in a manner the ground, even one enough for 13, in honor and in worship of our Saviour and the 12 apostles (as they used to speak) and setting to fire, burned them all quick that were fastened. Unto all others, whom they used to take and keep alive, cutting off their two hands as near as might be, and so letting them hang, they said: 'Get thee with this letters, to carry tidings to those which are fled to the mountains.' They murdered commonly the lords and nobility in this fashion: they made certain grates of perches laid on pitchforks, and made a little fire underneath, to the intent, that by little and little yelling and despairing in these torments, that they may give up the ghost...

One time I saw four or five of the principal lords roasted and broiled upon these gridirons. Also I think that there two or three of these gridirons, garnished with like furniture, and for that that they cried out piteously, which thing troubled the captain sergeant that he could not sleep. He commanded to strangle them. The sergeant, which was worse than the hangman that burned them (I know his name and friends in Seville) would not have them strangled, but himself putting bullets into their mouths, to the end that they should not cry, put to the fire, until they were softly roasted after his desire...

They taught their hounds, fierce dogs, to tear them into pieces at the first view, and in the space that one may say a credo, assailed and devoured an Indian as if it had been a swine. These dogs wrought great destruction and slaughters. And forasmuch as sometimes seldom, when the Indians put to death some Spaniards unto good right and law of justice, they made a law between them that for one Spaniards they had to slay 100 Indians...

One time the Indians came to meet us, and to receive us with victuals and delicate cheese, and being come to the place, they presented us with a great quantity of fish, bread, and other meat, together with a;; they could do for us to the uttermost. See incontinent the devil, which out himself into the Spaniards, to put them all to the edge of the sword in my presence, without any cause whatsoever, more than 1,000 souls, which were set before us, men, women and children. I saw there so great cruelties, that any man living either have or shall see the like...

After that the Indians in this island (Cuba) were thus brought into bondage and calamity like unto those of the isle of Hispaniola, and what they saw that they died and perished without remedy, some of them began to flee into the mountains, others quite desperate hanged themselves, and there hung together husbands with their wives, hanging with them their little children. And through the cruelty of one only Spaniard, who was a great tyrant, and one whom I know, there hung themselves more than 200 Indians, and in this fashion died and infinite of people....