6


DiScOvErInG HiStOrY


Bartholomé de las Casas was the son of a merchant who travelled with Columbus to Hispaniola in 1502. Hispaniola was the name given to the island of modern Haiti and the Dominican Republic. De las Casas was initially involved in the raids against the local Taíno tribes, despite being ordained a Dominican friar in 1510. In 1514, he realised the brutality of what was happening to the local populations and travelled back to Spain to persuade the Spanish king to order an end to the abuses. He wrote A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies and History of the Indies in which he outlined the abuses that he had recorded when in the New World.


Fig 6.1 A page from the Florentine Codex showing Aztecs celebrating the festival of Toxcati with a human sacrifice.


2. Native sources


Felipe Huaman Poma de Ayala was a local Peruvian noble who wrote El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (translated as Letter to a King) between 1612 and 1615. This book of 1,189 pages and 398 drawings outlined the history and culture of the Inca civilisation which he hoped to share with the King of Spain.


Another native author was Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, who was born in Peru, travelled to Spain at the age of 21 and wrote The Royal Commentaries of the Incas. In this he described the customs of the Inca people and the Spanish conquest.


Many other native sources used by later Spanish historians were accepted as correct but modern historians now dispute the truthfulness of their accounts.


Controversy Some historians,


like the American professor Camilla


Fig 6.2 An image from Letter to a King showing a llama sacrifice.


Townsend, claim that the popular idea that the Aztec Emperor Montezuma believed Hernando Cortés was a god is simply wrong. This myth is included in many history books, but it was invented in 1552 by a secretary to Cortés who had never even been to the Americas!


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