Europeans in North America

In 1492, Western Europe was a political, social and economic mess. Freedom was nonexistent. Justice was often a cruel joke. Absolute rulers and feudal families lorded over teeming masses. European cities were ugly, cramped, filthy and squalid. Resources were quickly running out and poorly distributed. Most of the population was poverty-stricken, and the rich monopolized resources for themselves. People from other parts of the world were hard-pressed not to view Europe as a den of barbarians and violence. Endless fratricidal wars tore Europe apart. The Black Death and other plagues killed upwards of a third of the population. Religious intolerance and ethnic hatred spawned persecution in all countries.

Most of the population spent its time in a drunken stupor, trying to escape the awful realities of everyday life. Of course, beer was often safer to drink than the putrid water near cities, because pollution was devastating. Native people from the Americas who travelled to Europe in later years, when conditions had greatly improved, couldn't believe that Europeans put up with the abuse they saw.

By 1492, the Spanish had over-run the last Moorish outpost in Europe, Grenada in the south of modern Spain. The Moorish kingdom was renowned for cultural and religious tolerance, science, the arts and what most Europeans associate with the word "civilization". Even though Granada was considerably more civilized than anywhere else in Western or Northern Europe at the time by European standards, it was considered the rude cousin of the rest of the Muslim world, which was then at its height.

The Castilian Spanish and their mercenary armies replaced this order by persecuting the Grenadan Jews and Muslims, burning books and towns and people. They eventually set up the Inquisition. Starting in 1482 they began the conquest of the Canary Islands. It was finished in 1493. They slaughtered the non-Christian population and claimed the territory for Spain. In a chilling vision of what was to come, the Canary Islands became the model for Spanish expansion, and even acted as the bloody staging ground for their "exploration" of the Americas.

The European expansion into the Americas was the end of the world for many native peoples. Partly due to the feeling that they were waging a "holy war" against non-Christian peoples, and partly to greed and ambition, they treated the Americas with obscene brutality. With the assent of the Catholic church, the Spanish and other early adventurers used their feelings of moral and religious superiority to justify their savage crimes.

It was a disaster from the very beginning. Haiti supported a large agricultural population, a people who called themselves the Taino. These people so impressed the foul-smelling Europeans that the Spanish were astonished at their wealth and peaceful natures.

Despite what students normally learn in history classes, Christopher Columbus was an opportunistic monster who used deceit, treachery and vicious force to enslave the peoples of the Caribbean. Most of the native peoples of Haiti (the island of Hispaniola) were starved, beaten and worked to death to feed the European lust for precious metals and labour. The Europeans turned Hispaniola into an arid, treeless, eroding desert, and the descendants of African slaves in Haiti live in an area that may be incapable of supporting any sizeable population. Soon, the Europeans were running out of slaves for their mines and plantations as populations were decimated. They had to look to other coasts for their slave raids.

This was the same experience most Native peoples had at the hands of Europeans. In 1519 the Spanish conquered Panama, and Hernan Cortes started his death-march into Mexico. The Aztec Empire soon fell.

Documents say that Juan Ponce de Leon sighted eastern Florida on Easter (Pascua Florida, hence the name) in 1513. He tried to found a colony in 1521, but it was destroyed by native people. The Spanish emptied many of the islands in slave raids, and had to go as far as the Bahamas. They would descend on unsuspecting locals and abduct them en masse, filling the holds of their ships with prisoners and human cargo.

In 1514 or 1515, Pedro de Salazar left Hispaniola on a raid to the Bahamas. He ended up going as far as South Carolina. The native population there was tall and robust, and he thought it was an island, so the story of the "Isle of Giants" grew, where hearty slaves could be taken.

The slavers Pedro de Quejo and Francisco Gordillo sailed around the Carolina coastline, and learned that the "island" was, in fact, a continent. They found a kingdom, probably Cofitachequi, ruled by someone known as Datha or Duhare. On July 15th, 1521, they tricked about 60 natives into boarding their ships and then set sail. The Indians were sold as slaves.

Panfilo de Narvaez, lured by tales of pearl fisheries and wealth in the interior, tried to establish a colony on the gulf coast of Florida in 1528. He met the Apalachee and harassed the local towns. Three years later, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and three people walked (!) westward across modern Texas to Mexico.

So far, the natives were lucky. The Europeans were not technologically, politically or socially advanced enough to be able to establish colonies without great effort. But they knew how to wage war and pillage. By absorbing and massacring local populations, de-industrializing whole economies and laying waste to countries and nations, they managed to force themselves on the Americas and much of Africa and Asia. They were everywhere regarded as little better than coarse, smelly, repulsive barbarians, and their behaviour matched this description.