A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

In 1522 or 1523 Dávila (again, not named in the text) set out to add Nicaragua’s fertile landscape, booming population, and large towns “to his fiefdom” (37). Unlike other islands, the flat terrain of this region gave “no mountains for the locals to hide in” (37) and allowed Spanish horsemen to easily run down the natives. Here, the Spanish justified wholesale massacre on “the flimsiest pretexts, accusing their victims of not coming quickly enough when they were summoned, or of not having brought enough cargas of maize […] or of not surrendering sufficient of their kinsmen as slaves” (37).

Slaves taken by Dávila were chained together by the neck and forced to carry massive loads. Any who fell behind were decapitated to spare the Spanish the work of unchaining them. The colonists also took up residence on the fertile lands already farmed by the natives, setting them to work as slaves on their own property. Spanish seizure of maize crops caused many families to die of hunger, with “some mothers even killing their own children and eating them” (38). Las Casas references the encomienda system, which allotted natives to the Spanish as workers of the land, noting the colonists’ abuse of this ordinance to enslave and starve native peoples (38-39).