Thursday, June 10, 2010
Life and death, good and evil in the New World
A fascinating PDF article about the role the Dominican friars played in the 16th-century exploration of the Americas. It shows the complicated mix of forces at play in terms of how the indigenous people were viewed, what the motives of the various colonists were, etc.
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There is a fantastic out-of-print biography of Bartolomé de Las Casas for young people. It is called Protector of the Indians and the author is Jones. We used it in American history last year. It spurred discussions about material cooperation with evil, when it's a good idea to try to change a system within and when it's a better idea to refuse to work within an evil system, the reason why people who persist in grave public sin (in this case enslaving people) are barred from the sacraments... and it's demonstration that there were some Spanish people who knew right from wrong even in those benighted times.
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