156 : The Atlantic 



We should remember that the European conquerors were hardly 

 more cruel to the Indians than they were to each other when they 

 fell into disagreements. An example of this would be the treacherous 

 seizure of Balboa, the discoverer of the Pacific, and his execution by 

 Pedrarias Davila, Another instance is the fact that Magellan, who 

 was generally regarded as a temperate and humane leader, on one 

 occasion had an insubordinate officer skinned alive; a second man 

 stabbed to death with knives and two others marooned and aban- 

 doned in the wastes of Patagonia. 



To balance the account, we should also take note of the fact that 

 the Iberian Peninsula had no monopoly over cruel treatment of na- 

 tive populations. We will see shortly that the English at one time 

 went to extraordinary lengths to maintain and establish a monopoly 

 of the African slave trade, or we might examine the rapid and total 

 destruction of the population of Tasmania or the cruelty of our own 

 wars against the Indians in the United States. 



Let us return now to a consideration of the reasons, causes or pur- 

 poses of the voyages of exploration and discovery. In the paragraphs 

 above we have selected some of the reasons and purposes that the 

 sovereigns, the courts and the explorers themselves seemed to have 

 agreed upon and accepted. We also can accept them as being correct 

 so far as the actors themselves understood the situation. We, having 

 now the advantages of some centuries of record and reflection, can 

 see that they are incomplete explanations and they still leave much 

 to be understood and explained. 



Religious belief and missionary zeal have a long history and are in 

 fact in almost continuous operation. They were not a monopoly of 

 the people of the Iberian Peninsula in the fourteenth and fifteenth 

 centuries. Likewise, the greed for gold and the desire for quick and 

 prosperous trade is more or less continually present in all manner of 

 people. The more fundamental questions are: why did these motives 

 emerge at this particular time? Why did they operate effectively then 

 when they had not proved equally effective before? Once they began 

 to operate, what sustained them? In asking these questions we 

 should bear in mind that the Iberian conquests were only the begin- 

 ning of a vast wave of discovery and colonization that in time spread 

 in all the nations of Europe and that continued its movement for 

 some centuries. 



To explain events that are of great importance, that involve great 

 numbers of people and that operate over great distances, we should 

 look for very basic causes operating over a considerable period of 



