Conquistadors's cannibalism

[Gandalfus]

Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.

This was two years alone. On Haiti.

Then:

When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, "there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it...."

[Petrucci]

Also, how is anyone supposed to know if they were forced into cannibalism? there is no text, spaniard or otherwise, that depicts such acts. And there are no corpses that can be analized. There are no evidences for it, as plausible or unplausible as it may be.

There is text, in book I mentioned and I believe there are other books where traces of cannibalism could be found. The best places to look for are Spanish reports dating from that era although they might be kinda untrustworthy so you must have at least two sources to confirm act .

[Kaiser Nonsense]

Im pretty sure the continents, and the civilizations within, existed for thousands of years before the arrival of the spaniards.
And the destruccion of completely unique, untouched cultures, and of thousands of texts that depicted there history is a good reason to frown on the conquistadors.

You must understand things were different in those days, they believed they had good reason for doing so.

Besides, I highly doubt the Aztecs had texts and paper.

[PikeStance]

You must understand things were different in those days, they believed they had good reason for doing so.

Besides, I highly doubt the Aztecs had texts and paper.

I don't think our goal is to "judge" people of history. Our goal should be to attempt to understand what they did within the context of their time. People in history have done "bad" things, so have people in the present, and I am sure people in the future. We ought to avoid this trap. If we take a defensive posture, we will achieve nothing and understand little of history.

I believe the text he was referring to are text by contemporary Spaniard themselves and not the Aztecs. I know there were several people who spoke out about the treatment of the Native Americans.

---

[saxdude]

Besides, I highly doubt the Aztecs had texts and paper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_writing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_script

really, a quick investigation on the subject quickly dissmisses the idea that these people were some kind of primitive savages with no concept of civility or basic technology, and that colonization by the spaniards was in anyway inevitable. it was a massive stroke of luck and good leadership if anything, that could have gone so very wrong for the spaniards in so many different moments and ways.

You must understand things were different in those days, they believed they had good reason for doing so.

I don't think our goal is to "judge" people of history. Our goal should be to attempt to understand what they did within the context of their time. People in history have done "bad" things, so have people in the present, and I am sure people in the future. We ought to avoid this trap. If we take a defensive posture, we will achieve nothing and understand little of history.

I believe the text he was referring to are text by contemporary Spaniard themselves and not the Aztecs. I know there were several people who spoke out about the treatment of the Native Americans.

As I understand, the spanish monarchy and several priests were quite keen on keeping and recording the history, traditions and beliefs of these people, and was seen in very bad eyes when several conquistadors and dogmatic priests (diego de Landa) were behaving like s and burning countless texts, and in generalbeing dicks to the natives.

There is text, in book I mentioned and I believe there are other books where traces of cannibalism could be found. The best places to look for are Spanish reports dating from that era although they might be kinda untrustworthy so you must have at least two sources to confirm act .

Its very much possible, but without a source there is no way to confirm it, and even those sources are sketchy.

[Petrucci]

If we are opening question about justification of Spanish conquest I would like to remind you they were cannibals and risking to sound eurocentric there is no justification for being cannibal except in very very very very very rare situations that must look something like you are trapped in Andes ,snow is around you etc , for more info watch movie called Alive.
Assuming most of world population don't know where and what are Andes, have different moral codes and putting aside all discussion about sources of moral and why should we obey moral rules my conclusion is cannibalism is forbidden in every single situation and as any military ship have right to stop and search trade ships for slaves I would give rights for freekilling all groups of people practicing cannibalism if they refuse to stop eating human flash after they are warn and taught that is absolutely not acceptable(Spanish did that every time before they declare war on cannibal natives and also read them document which name I can't remember but it starts on R, where all natives,not just cannibal one, are informed they are now under Spanish rules, must pay taxes, work for their new master etc. If they accepted they were treat considerably better then they would be treated if they didn't accepted).
And despite you might throw God knows what on me now, I think colonization is overall good, because in 300 years people of the new world evolved from bronze age and reached same level of progress as their brothers form main part of the rest of the world did. And when I say progress there is no way to interpret as Europeans are by nature better then rest of the world, have better or superior civilization(I don't think we could overall rank civilization at all) or any other ethnocentric nonsense ,but Europeans advanced much more then other civilization of New Ages in technology, military,naval , economy and in some aspect of culture(though other civilization were much better in some other aspects of culture).

[saxdude]

your post is mindbogglingly absurd, like, I dont even know where to start, so I wont, because a vein in my head would pop with the force of a bullet.
People, please read up on the things you write about, and if you have no real idea of what you are talking about then feel free to ask and investigate. But by the gods avoid posting nonsense you got from what you remember of your highschool textbook with one paragraph on precolombian America.

[Petrucci]

WTf is absurd in my post? I can elaborate every unclear statement if you wish.

[saxdude]

WTf is absurd in my post? I can elaborate every unclear statement if you wish.

Everything about it, right from the part where you are the one who decides when one thing or another is justified or not; who are you to say that cannibalism isnt justified, when you dont know the context of these acts or the extent of them? Afterwards you devolve into a tirade of contradictory posts in which you denounce slavery as bad as cannibalism, worthy of "freekilling", yet advocate they were better off as slaves to the spaniards?
Its absurd, like those people that argued that burning people in the stake, torturing them on the cross, and seeing them kill each other in an arena for the pleb's amusement was somehow more morally acceptable than the human sacrifices that took place within these civilizations.

Drop the middle class 21st century christian american morality, and do some research, understand the context of the people you are arguing about, learn and ask questions, you might find it very educating and interesting. But these kinds of silly posts add nothing much to actual intellectual discussion.

And despite you might throw God knows what on me now, I think colonization is overall good, because in 300 years people of the new world evolved from bronze age and reached same level of progress as their brothers form main part of the rest of the world did.

The nature of american coloization is also something you might want to take a closer look at.

[PikeStance]

WTf is absurd in my post? I can elaborate every unclear statement if you wish.

[1] It completely off topic. It really should had been posted here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=53
[2] If it was on topic, it lacks the scrutiny of the higher standards of the "College of History" in theory tries to maintain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_writing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_script

Wikipedia is NOT a source. Its an encyclopedia that is barely appropriate for my middle school to even look at much less use as a source.

--

[Petrucci]

@Pikestance

If we are opening question about justification of Spanish conquest I would like to remind you....

1.I made it obvious this post is exception.
2.My starting question was clear

I heard rumors that Spanish might eat human flesh during their conquest of New World. Knowing that Spanish exterminated all cannibalistic population they could find (except some allies) and use this as one of the main casus belli I would like to know if there are any written evidences with decent credibility that support this rumor.

3. I might be discredited for my second question, because it's a bit unclear to whom is it referring, so I'll simplify, exclusively to Inquisitor Gandalf.
4. Debate turned into were the Spanish good or bad , and you(PikeStance) tried to return it to the starting question, but unsuccessfully.
5. As most poster in this thread already did, I wanted to express my opinion about this period too. And I think there's nothing wrong in it,although if I knew discourse of the debate I would open topic in Ethos and moral sub forum. Once again prime reason for opening this topic was to find out if cannibalism among Spanish existed.

[Petrucci]

@saxdude
I would like to answer your questions if moderators agree we aren't getting into ethos, mores et monastica domain. If they think we are getting off the topic to much, I will either pm you or open new thread in mentioned sub forum, if somebody else wants to hear my opinion.

[Hresvelgr]

[1] It completely off topic. It really should had been posted here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=53
[2] If it was on topic, it lacks the scrutiny of the higher standards of the "College of History" in theory tries to maintain.



Wikipedia is NOT a source. Its an encyclopedia that is barely appropriate for my middle school to even look at much less use as a source.

--

It's still a blatantly obvious and well-known fact that the Mesoamericans had writing of their own.

[PikeStance]

@Pikestance

1.I made it obvious this post is exception.
2.My starting question was clear

3. I might be discredited for my second question, because it's a bit unclear to whom is it referring, so I'll simplify, exclusively to Inquisitor Gandalf.
4. Debate turned into were the Spanish good or bad , and you(PikeStance) tried to return it to the starting question, but unsuccessfully.
5. As most poster in this thread already did, I wanted to express my opinion about this period too. And I think there's nothing wrong in it,although if I knew discourse of the debate I would open topic in Ethos and moral sub forum. Once again prime reason for opening this topic was to find out if cannibalism among Spanish existed.

Your post as virtually nothing to do with Spanish conquest of the New World. It opines on the issue of cannibalism as a social taboo in European society. Why it may be a fascinating discussion, it has nothing to do with history.

Actually, the discussion is never about if the Spanish were good or bad. There was a brief discussion on the "intent" of Spanish were noble. The point was clarified and the discussion ended. It renewed with a "straw- man" that someone stated that the Spanish were bad. You are not even debating that issue. You want to debate the mores of European society. That's not history.

If your interest is to determine if the cannibalism among the Spaniards is correct, then your opening post was way off topic and you added little incite to the validity or the lack of validity of the claim.

It's still a blatantly obvious and well-known fact that the Mesoamericans had writing of their own.

What you mean it is an accepted fact, but that is beside the point; Wikipedia is not a proper source.

----

[Petrucci]

Your post as virtually nothing to do with Spanish conquest of the New World. It opines on the issue of cannibalism as a social taboo in European society. Why it may be a fascinating discussion, it has nothing to do with history.

Actually, the discussion is never about if the Spanish were good or bad. There was a brief discussion on the "intent" of Spanish were noble. The point was clarified and the discussion ended. It renewed with a "straw- man" that someone stated that the Spanish were bad. You are not even debating that issue. You want to debate the mores of European society. That's not history.

If your interest is to determine if the cannibalism among the Spaniards is correct, then your opening post was way off topic and you added little incite to the validity or the lack of validity of the claim.



What you mean it is an accepted fact, but that is beside the point; Wikipedia is not a proper source.

----

Don't go that hard on me I know I went a bit off the topic but there is not anything absurd in my post.
Also, your classification pair noble\ignoble , is subordinate to good\bad pair so I take your argument invalid. (If you are confused with this sentence or any other I wrote, pls ask me for clarification. English is not my native language and I might mess up with terminology). I don't want to debate about mores of European society, although mores of European society of New Ages belongs to history. I expressed my opinion like others who talked about Spanish conquest being noble/ignoble.
Once again my prime interest is clearly stated in the opening post.

[Ludicus]

this is the College of History Forum. This thread is about reports that Spaniards resorted to cannibalism to survive.

Precisely.

[saxdude]

Wikipedia is NOT a source. Its an encyclopedia that is barely appropriate for my middle school to even look at much less use as a source.

It's still a blatantly obvious and well-known fact that the Mesoamericans had writing of their own.

You want a source? check out the number of codexes there are and instead of dismissing wikipedia for some silly reason, look at the information within and the sources that are blatantly there.
Its like wanting a source for saying blood is red.

I would like to answer your questions if moderators agree we aren't getting into ethos, mores et monastica domain. If they think we are getting off the topic to much, I will either pm you or open new thread in mentioned sub forum, if somebody else wants to hear my opinion.

Also, your classification pair noble\ignoble , is subordinate to good\bad pair so I take your argument invalid. (If you are confused with this sentence or any other I wrote, pls ask me for clarification. English is not my native language and I might mess up with terminology). I don't want to debate about mores of European society, although mores of European society of New Ages belongs to history. I expressed my opinion like others who talked about Spanish conquest being noble/ignoble.

You were expressing critiscism of ancient practices and moral justification of conquest with 21st century morality, we can, in fact, debate wether or not applying modern day morality to cultures with different social, political and economical realities to our own is valid or not, but by most historians and arqueologists, moral relativism is the standard for studying past civilizations.

Actually, the discussion is never about if the Spanish were good or bad. There was a brief discussion on the "intent" of Spanish were noble. The point was clarified and the discussion ended. It renewed with a "straw- man" that someone stated that the Spanish were bad. You are not even debating that issue. You want to debate the mores of European society. That's not history.

My jab at the spanish conquest isnt out of some sense of modern morality against modern day imperialism, but the idea that the conquest could be deemed morally positive by any standard, when in fact ultimately the natives got the short end of the stick up to this day. If anything, it is what it is, and thats that.
Even by the standards and morality of the time, The Monarchy and many religous figures, the people you would expect to have the least interest in these things (when infact they generally have the most), looked very negatively towards the mistreatment of the native population and the destruction of their cultural heritage and history, for priests, understanding it is the perfect way to christianize the population, and keep record, like the ancient pagan practices of Rome, of their history. Hell I think there might be mesoamerican texts that we dont know about in the vaults of the Vatican.

So i dont think its fair to say the spanish conquest of the americas is morally justified (or not), nor inevitable, nor do I think that the destruction of texts and information by certain conquistadors can be blocked from criticism, especially since it was infact, criticized at the time. It happened, the conquest of the americas (mesoamerica especifically) is a fact of history like the conquest of Constantinople or the Fall of Rome, but its not a positive event.

Precisely.

Is there any information as to where or when the expeditions took place? might help narrow down the chronicles.

[Kaiser Nonsense]

Wikipedia is NOT a source. Its an encyclopedia that is barely appropriate for my middle school to even look at much less use as a source.

--

Wikipedia has more content than half of your pissing stained sources, content there is made by high knowledge people, professionals of the area, be it history or another area. Everything written in Wikipedia has a link to a source to said fact. It's a huge gathering of public knowledge maintened by hundreds of thousands of people who give their sweat to make it work. So unless you have any proof of why should people not study through there, I suggest you swallow your pride and start reading Wikipedia's pages.

[PikeStance]

Wikipedia has more content than half of your pissing stained sources, content there is made by high knowledge people, professionals of the area, be it history or another area.

This is what Wkikpedia states about itself in its own wikipedia entry;

Wikipedia (i/ˌwɪkɨˈpiːdiə/ or i/ˌwɪkiˈpiːdiə/ WIK-i-PEE-dee-ə) is a free, collaboratively edited, and multilingual Internet encyclopedia supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 23 million articles, over 4.1 million in the English Wikipedia alone, have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,[4] and it has about 100,000 active contributors.[5][6]

Everything written in Wikipedia has a link to a source to said fact. It's a huge gathering of public knowledge maintened by hundreds of thousands of people who give their sweat to make it work. So unless you have any proof of why should people not study through there, I suggest you swallow your pride and start reading Wikipedia's pages.

It is neither a primary or secondary source. In fact, it has a separate primary source "library." Many of the entries have found are actually opinions and not necessarily factually correct. In some cases, a wikipedia page is a direct unedited copy and paste from only one source.

Though matter how you "cut it" wikipedia is nothing more than an online version of a encyclopedia. In fact, unlike a true encyclopedia is not credited with top professionals in its field, its created like people on this forum. Given some of the opinions stated on here, that is the last place I want my students to go looking for information.

I suggest to you that you stop relying on other people's opinion and do some real research and come to your own conclusions. If you are above the 8th grade, you should NOT be wikipedia as a source of anything.

---

[Kaiser Nonsense]

This is what Wkikpedia states about itself in its own wikipedia entry;





It is neither a primary or secondary source. In fact, it has a separate primary source "library." Many of the entries have found are actually opinions and not necessarily factually correct. In some cases, a wikipedia page is a direct unedited copy and paste from only one source.

Though matter how you "cut it" wikipedia is nothing more than an online version of a encyclopedia. In fact, unlike a true encyclopedia is not credited with top professionals in its field, its created like people on this forum. Given some of the opinions stated on here, that is the last place I want my students to go looking for information.

I suggest to you that you stop relying on other people's opinion and do some real research and come to your own conclusions. If you are above the 8th grade, you should NOT be wikipedia as a source of anything.

---

I challenge you, find something there that isn't real, in an important page.

Take this for example, I suppose you will find that BBC is a highly important source.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british...adors_01.shtml

And now take a look at Wikipedia, on the same subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquistador

Which one does teach us more about it?

But it's normal, today it's full of reactionary people such as yourself, struggling to advance in the field of knowledge and think that Wikipedia is not a good place to study since their whole pages aren't better than 3 lines written by a bloody with a P.hD. For once, the world's greatest books and teachings can be gathered at one place, just one place so the entire world can study, read, help, improve, learn. Are there problems? Sure, nothing is perfect, but why aren't you helping us realise this dream, instead of sitting on your arse and mocking the hard work of others?