The Black Legend
Just how "unspeakable" is the Black Legend?
The Spanish came to the New World and decimated the native people in horrible, and most definitely, unspeakable ways as documented by "A Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies".
Thanks to: Bartolome de las Casas
Decimation
- Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies
Disrespect
"And the Christians attacked them with buffets and beatings, until finally they laid hands on the nobles of the villages. Then they behaved with such temerity and shamelessness that the most powerful ruler of the islands had to see his own wife raped by a Christian officer."
- Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies
Death
They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers' breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, "Boil there, you offspring of the devil!"
-Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies