Disease, not Spanish brutality, destroyed the native peoples of the Americas

Evidence

The destruction of the Arawaks has been largely blamed on the Spanish cruelty, not only by the later Protestant historians of the ‘Black Legend’ school but also by such contemporary Spanish writers as Oviedo and Bartolome de Las Casas. Without doubt the early Spaniards brutally exploited the Indians. But it was obviously not in order to kill them off, for the early colonists had to deal with a chronic labor shortage and needed the Indians. Disease would seem to be a more logical explanation. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1902

Categorization

• XREF: Challenges the Black Legend narrative; grounds the labor-shortage logic that made the slave trade necessary. — connects to: U.S. forces slaughtered buffalo deliberately to starve Native peoples into submission — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1195; Disease emptied native villages years before settlers occupied their maintained lands — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 888