ABSTRACT
Wayne Franklin writes that by 1500 "Europe was present . . . in the institutions of the church and state (slavery being the most obvious example) that had begun to reshape the identities and reorganize the lives of Native American peoples" ("Literature" 2). Franklin also writes: "In 1497, as part of an outline of Columbus's powers by the Crown" he was empowered to distribute "land grants to settlers," but Columbus later reinterpreted his power to apply to a "distribution of whole Taino Indian communities-as a source of labor-to" his Spanish rivals, who "would lay down their arms only if such awards were made to them" ("Bartolome" 14-15). Among the Spanish slaveholders was Bartolome de las Casas, a Catholic priest who was named "protector of the Indians" in 1515 by the Spanish government and who served as bishop of Chiapas, Mexico, from 1544 to 1547. Casas "was particularly concerned with the legality and morality of enslavement," and he saw cruelties on every hand: "It was a general rule among Spaniards to be cruel, not just cruel, but extraordinarily cruel so that harsh and bitter treatment would prevent Indians from daring to think of themselves as human beings" (15).
