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As time passes, a greater and greater number of people have been exposed to the often uncomfortable historical details of Christopher Columbus's voyages to the Americas at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. The murder, enslavement and mistreatment of the native peoples of the Caribbean islands which Columbus and his crews conquered, can provoke shock and even disbelief, more than 500 years on. In May 2018, readers asked about the veracity of a meme which claimed that Columbus had been involved in procuring and distributing women and even children as sex slaves: The quote attributed to Columbus in the meme is accurate and was taken from a letter he wrote in 1500 to Doña Juana de la Torre, a nurse in the royal court of Queen Isabella and the sister of one of Columbus' leading crew members on his second voyage to the Americas. At this time (just after his return from the third voyage) Columbus had been removed as Governor of the American territories after reports surfaced of horrific misgovernment and brutal treatment of natives, and he was even briefly imprisoned before he was pardoned by King Ferdinand of Aragon who — along with Isabella of Castile — was one of the Catholic Monarchs of modern-day Spain. In the Early Modern Spanish used by Columbus, the passage reads: The quote underlines Columbus's view of indigenous Americans as commodities. He compares the market value of a female sex slave with that of a piece of farmland, and notes that of late (agora) slave dealers were particularly interested in purchasing nine- or ten-year-old girls. However, in the broader context of his letter to Doña Juana de la Torre, Columbus appears to have been neutrally describing the fact that girls as young as nine years old were sold as slaves. In the particular passage quoted in the meme, he was neither endorsing nor criticizing the practice, nor admitting that he personally took part in it. Nonetheless, it is well documented that sex slavery and forced labor were among the many brutalities that Columbus' crews inflicted on the native Taíno people on the island of Hispaniola (now the site of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.) Bartolomé de las Casas, a Spaniard who took part in colonial expeditions to Hispaniola led by Nicolás de Ovando, became so disenchanted with the atrocities of the European conquerors, including Columbus and Ovando, that he turned on the violence of the project. Later, he became a Dominican friar, dedicating his life to exposing and opposing the brutalities perpetrated by Columbus and others during that era, and attempting a more peaceful missionary colonization of the Caribbean islands. In 1542, de las Casas wrote a famous book about that era, A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (Brevísima Relación de la Destrucción de las Indias.) In it, he condemned the destruction caused by the Columbian voyages: On his 1493 return to Europe from the first voyage, Columbus wrote a famous letter to Ferdinand and Isabella (who had sanctioned the expedition), recounting the timidity and naivité of the Taíno people, and offering his patrons slaves as many as they shall order to be shipped, in return for the ships and resources required for a second voyage: What followed were the infamous slave raids of 1495, during the second voyage. As the historian Howard Zinn described in A People's History of the United States, Columbus could not find as much gold on the conquered Caribbean islands as he had hoped, and so chose to round up a greater number of native slaves for export to Europe instead: Evidence also exists which indicates that, as well as overseeing the mass capture, mistreatment and export of slaves, Columbus appears to have been indifferent to brutal acts of sexual assault on young girls, in keeping with the meme's claim that Columbus provided native sex slaves to his men. In an October 1495 letter, crew member Michele de Cuneo recounted that Columbus gave him a young girl, whom Cuneo proceeded to brutally rape. The following account contains descriptions of sexual assault that some readers might find disturbing: When I was in the boat, I took a beautiful Cannibal girl and the admiral [Columbus] gave her to me. Having her in my room and she being naked as is their custom, I began to want to amuse myself with her. Since I wanted to have my way with her and she was not willing, she worked me over so badly with her nails that I wished I had never begun. To get to the end of the story, seeing how things were going, I got a rope and tied her up so tightly that she made unheard of cries which you wouldn't have believed. At the end, we got along so well that, let me tell you, it seemed she had studied at a school for whores. Ample evidence exists to show that Columbus was responsible for forcing thousands of natives on the Caribbean islands into slave labor, as well as seizing, selling, distributing, and exporting many native women and children, with either foreknowledge of, or indifference to, their fate as sex slaves. However, the specific quotation featured in the meme, although accurate and authentic, came from a longer passage written by Columbus. In context, Columbus was neutrally describing the practice of buying and selling nine-year-old girls, and in that particular letter, he neither endorsed it nor condemned it, nor admitted to personally taking part in it.
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