220 : The Atlantic 



was particularly true in the West Indies and in Central America that 

 had a large Indian population. 



This Indian population disappeared in a remarkably brief time fol- 

 lowing the arrival of the Europeans. It disappeared for a variety of 

 causes. In part it was wiped out in warfare; in part it was elimi- 

 nated by torture and by the system of slave labor imposed by the con- 

 querors; in great measure it was eliminated by disease. The Indians 

 had built up no immunity to many diseases that had long been en- 

 demic in Europe so that many of the ills that we regard as childhood 

 diseases produced in the native populations all the ravages of a 

 plague. When forced labor on plantations and living under congested 

 conditions in stockades and compounds was substituted for their 

 natural outdoor life, they became a prey to these diseases and died by 

 the hundreds of thousands. 



Columbus on his first voyage to the Caribbean islands captured 

 Indians and took them back to Spain. Later some shiploads of Indi- 

 ans were sent as slaves to Spain. This was shortsighted. Quite apart 

 from the resistance that it aroused in Queen Isabella, it was doomed 

 to failure. The settlement and labor system employed by the Spanish 

 in the West Indies was so destructive of Indian life that in the first 

 quarter of the sixteenth century, as the writings of Las Casas show, 

 the native population of many of the islands had all but disappeared. 

 There was a shortage of labor to continue the operation of the 

 mines, the workshops and the plantations that the Spaniards had 

 established. 



In the face of this labor shortage there was soon a demand for 

 Negro slaves from Africa and the trade was developed first by the 

 Spaniards in the West Indies and later, progressively, in other areas. 

 The Portuguese in the colonization and development of Brazil en- 

 countered somewhat similar conditions, made many of the same 

 mistakes and resorted to the same solution — ^Negro slavery. 



The first Negro slaves were brought into Hispaniola in 1501. At 

 this time the Indians were still being used as slave labor so that there 

 was a period in the West Indies marked both by Indian slavery and 

 Negro slavery. The colonization system had been so brutal, the dis- 

 appearance of the Indian population so alarming, and the appeals of 

 Las Casas and other missionaries to the court in Spain had been so 

 persistent that there was built up a strong tendency to reform. New 

 laws respecting the colonial system and particularly the treatment of 

 the Indians were passed in 1542 and 1543. In theory at least these did 

 away with Indian slavery though they were difficult to enforce and 



