Conquerors and Their Views on the New World
by Throughout history, we witnessed Indians and non-Indians in the United States, at odds with outsiders in their bid to preserve Indian domains.
‘We are grateful, O Mother Earth
For the mountains and streams
Where the deer, by command of your
Breathe of life, shall wander.
Wishing for you the
Fullness of life
We shall go forth prayerfully upon
The trails of our Earth Mother’
This Native American chant was a painful reminder of how the New World used to be – peaceful and full of life. Beneath its seeming beauty though were the dark, painful mysteries waiting to be unraveled. The place’s idyllic beauty offered no solace to the violent maltreatment the Natives suffered in the hands of their colonizers. There was a terrible secret could not be contained and masked by the beauty of nature. The price of colonization was not without costs to the Native Americans. Colonization demanded payment in its highest form – sacrifice of human lives in multitudes – such was the price Native Americans were willing to pay to be able to enjoy the greatest right of all, their freedom.
Christopher Columbus’ in his letter describing his first voyage to the New World, which had become a welcome addition to the European literary tradition, confirmed this vivid depiction by the Natives. Columbus write that the New World was a ”promised land” of idyllic beauty, opportunity, and great hope. He described the islands in New World as :
“And the said Juana and the other islands there appear very fertile. This island
was surrounded by many very safe and wide harbors, not excelled by any others
that I have ever seen. Many great and salubrious rivers flow through it. There are
also many very high mountains there. All these islands are very beautiful, and
distinguished by various qualities;” (University of Maine)
Columbus believed that what made the New World ideal was the presence of tamed Native Americans. In his famous letters praised the Native Americans he encountered, the Taíno or Arawak. He wrote with such amazement regarding the friendly innocence and beauty of these peace-loving Indians that he coined the enduring myth of the Noble Savage. “These people have no religious beliefs, nor are they idolaters. They are very gentle and do not know what evil is; nor do they kill others, nor steal; and they are without weapons.” But the seeming peace was short-lived. If Columbus saw the New World as ideal, others after him did not agree. Ten thousand years after a relatively peaceful first human settlement of the Americas started, Europeans discovered and invaded the sacred spaces Native Americans enjoyed and claimed them as their own. Native Americans migrated by land from Asia. The Vatican Pontiff granted Spain and Portugal sovereignty on the lands they conquered.
Columbus’ wonderful accounts of the New World were in stark contrast to the accounts written by his successors. Pedro de Alvarado (in a letter to Cortes):
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