Treatment Of Indigenous People

3 Pages 867 Words

Many reasons were given to justify what was done to the indigenous groups of America during the age of colonization and discovery. There is no real way to now know which reasons were the real reasons and which ones were just rationalizations. Christianity was used almost as an excuse for their actions and in reality was forced upon the Indians who at the time already had their own religious belief systems. Spain and Portugal, being as extreme in their Catholicism as they were, strongly believed in “white man’s burden” to find new souls that needed to be saved even if it meant the destruction and enslavement of entire civilizations. As religious as they were, it was not their primary goal to convert the “savages” to Christianity, but to justify their mercantilism with a higher, moral, and divine goal. The main motives for the Portuguese and Spanish exploration and colonization were predominantly economic, such as finding new territories for resources and raw materials, new labor to cultivate these resources, and somebody to sell the finished products to. A cycle that benefits the motherland but diminishes the colonies.

By the mid-fifteenth century most of the European countries developed a system of mercantilism that could only exist if a country had a favorable balance of trade. Since there was no way for two or more mercantilist countries to trade with each other while retaining the purpose of keeping their goods within their own country, many of these countries had to look for new markets somewhere else. Many countries promoted expeditions set to find new lands where they were yet unaware of mercantilism. Spain and Portugal were among the first ones to expand their influence beyond charted territories. The two countries even had a dispute over where each country had the power to establish colonies. Pope Alexander VI, a highly regarded figure in both Catholic countries, with the Treaty of Tordesillas, easily settled th...