Columbus for Worcester, Part 2 - Burned Alive 13 at a Time

Five members of the Worcester City Council voted on Tuesday, October 25, to prevent a city manager led conversation related to the Christopher Columbus statue on Tuesday night, citing a range of reasons. The vote for a city led community conversation was rejected on a 5-5 vote, with Mayor Joe Petty recusing himself from the item.

One councilor suggested that they would always be against "removing history" and that we weren't there, so "we don't know what happened."

See, the first part of this series, Columbus for Worcester, Part 1.

None of us were there, but people who were wrote things down. One was a Spanish priest, Bartolomé de las Casas, who wrote "A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies," in 1542 and advocated for the rights of Native American slaves before the Spanish king. He was not a perfect person, as he did not relinquish his own Native American slaves until 1515. He then became an advocate against the Spanish system that rewarded conquerors with the labor of conquered non-Christians.

Bartolomé de las Casas didn't need five centuries to pass to understand what he witnessed was inexcusable. Five centuries later, the City of Worcester can't figure out why this monument idolizing the man ultimately responsible for these acts of depravity is a message, no longer tolerated for any other community in the city but indigenous people.

The first chapter of his book, Hispaniola, begins as follows.

"As we have said, the island of Hispaniola was the first to witness the arrival of Europeans and the first to suffer the wholesale slaughter of its people and the devastation and depopulation of the land. It all began with the Europeans taking native women and children both as servants and to satisfy their own base appetites; then, not content with what the local people offered them of their own free will (and all offered as much as they could spare), they started taking for themselves the food the natives contrived to produce by the sweat of their brows, which was in all honesty little enough."

There is no shortage of specifics in de las Casas' recollections of what he witnessed at Hispaniola in 1502:

• "They forced their way into native settlements, slaughtering everyone they found there, including small children, old men, pregnant women, and even women who had just given birth."
• "They hacked them to pieces, slicing open their bellies with their swords as though they were so many sheep herded into a pen."
• "They even laid wagers on whether they could manage to slice a man in two at a stroke, or cut an individual’s head from his body, or disembowel him with a single blow of their axes."
• "They grabbed suckling infants by the feet and, ripping them from their mothers’ breasts, dashed them headlong against the rocks. Others, laughing and joking all the while, threw them over their shoulders into a river, shouting: ‘Wriggle, you little perisher.’"
• "They slaughtered anyone and everyone in their path, on occasion running through a mother and her baby with a single thrust of their swords."
• "They spared no one, erecting especially wide gibbets on which they could string their victims up with their feet just off the ground and then burn them alive thirteen at a time, in honour of our Saviour and the twelve Apostles, or tie dry straw to their bodies and set fire to it."
• "Some they chose to keep alive and simply cut their wrists, leaving their hands dangling, saying to them: ‘Take this letter’ - meaning that their sorry condition would act as a warning to those hiding in the hills."
• "The way they normally dealt with the native leaders and nobles was to tie them to a kind of griddle consisting of sticks resting on pitchforks driven into the ground and then grill them over a slow fire, with the result that they howled in agony and despair as they died a lingering death."

*Emphasis added.

The highest commanding officer of the men carrying out these acts of human mutilation, torture, terrorism, and murder for sport was Christopher Columbus.

Readers should not think this is a carefully selected or cherry-picked selection from the book. It is simply the second paragraph of the first chapter. In the next paragraph, de las Casas says, "I saw all these things for myself and many others besides," while recounting what happened when "the poor creatures’ howls came between the Spanish commander and his sleep."

The second paragraph of the first chapter of "A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies," as it reads.

"They forced their way into native settlements, slaughtering everyone they found there, including small children, old men, pregnant women, and even women who had just given birth. They hacked them to pieces, slicing open their bellies with their swords as though they were so many sheep herded into a pen. They even laid wagers on whether they could manage to slice a man in two at a stroke, or cut an individual’s head from his body, or disembowel him with a single blow of their axes. They grabbed suckling infants by the feet and, ripping them from their mothers’ breasts, dashed them headlong against the rocks. Others, laughing and joking all the while, threw them over their shoulders into a river, shouting: ‘Wriggle, you little perisher.’ They slaughtered anyone and everyone in their path, on occasion running through a mother and her baby with a single thrust of their swords. They spared no one, erecting especially wide gibbets on which they could string their victims up with their feet just off the ground and then burn them alive thirteen at a time, in honour of our Saviour and the twelve Apostles, or tie dry straw to their bodies and set fire to it. Some they chose to keep alive and simply cut their wrists, leaving their hands dangling, saying to them: ‘Take this letter’ - meaning that their sorry condition would act as a warning to those hiding in the hills. The way they normally dealt with the native leaders and nobles was to tie them to a kind of griddle consisting of sticks resting on pitchforks driven into the ground and then grill them over a slow fire, with the result that they howled in agony and despair as they died a lingering death."

Note: The image above is a depiction of de las Casas' description of Spanish atrocities by two artists from the Netherlands, designer Joos van Winghe and engraver Theodor de Bry, in 1664. It is in the public domain.