American Indian Humanity

10/30/00 Arguments of American Indian Humanity By what right did the Europeans conquer the American Indians, take their land, and subjugate them? There were three arguments: 1) The view propounded by Bartolome de Las Casas, God's angry man of the sixteenth century. He argued that all men are endowed with natural rights, that the Europeans had no right to enslave the Indians, that according to natural law the Indians were entitled to live as free men, under …

…none of which is entirely correct in my mind, but each with far-reaching effects in the society of its time, as well as today's. The importance of each argument varies, from the political vision of Vitoria to the humility of Las Casas, but the importance of all three together is enormous. They constituted a growing awareness of the atrocities of Spaniards in the Indies, and acted as a precedent for the condemnation of future abominations.