Word: arawak
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Well, it's time to shatter that idealized myth. When Columbus arrived on Cuba, Hispaniola and other islands in the Caribbean he instituted shockingly cruel and genocidal policies which rapidly decimated the populations of indigenous Arawak Indians. He was also a slave trader, and his own words condemn him. Furthermore, the claim that he "discovered" the New World is dubious--he accidentally came into contact with a culture that had existed for hundreds if not thousands of years...
...Columbus' first observations of the Arawak men and women who greeted him peacefully in the Caribbean was that "[t]hey would make fine servants....With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." He also believed that the Indians would be able to provide him with the immense quantities of gold he was seeking. When he returned to Spain, he promised the Spanish royals that he would return from his next vogage with "as much gold as they need...and as many slaves as they...
...Bartoleme de las Cases, a Spanish priest who witnessed the conquest firsthand. He wrote that the Spanish "thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades." He recorded a story of two Spaniards who met two Arawak boys carrying parrots; the parrots were seized and the boys were beheaded "for fun." He also wrote: "[O]ur work was to exasperate, ravaage, kill, mangle and destroy...[Columbus] was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians...
...Americans with statements like: "I'm now a wealthy person.... I wasn't wealthy when I retired. I mean, I just figured out what the white guys were doing." (Henry Louis Gates, The New Yorker, Sept. 25, 1995). Or statements like: "He ticks off African, English, Irish, and probable Arawak Indian ancestry [when asked to describe his own city...