英文文学 第10章 节选

From The Very Brief Relation of The Devastation of The Indies

Bartolomé de las Casas

From Hispaniola

This was the first land in the New World to be destroyed and depopulated by the Christians, and here they began their subjection of the women and children, taking them away from the Indians to use them and ill use them, eating the food they provided with their sweat, and toil. The Spaniards did not content themselves with what the Indians gave them of their own free will, according to their ability, which was always too little to satisfy enormous appetites, for a Christian eats and consumes in one day an amount of food that would suffice to feed three houses inhabited by ten Indians for one month. And they committed other acts of force and violence and oppression which made the Indians realize that these men had not come from Heaven. And some of the Indians concealed their food while others concealed their waives and children and still other fled to the mountains to avoid the terrible transactions of the Christians.

And the Christians attacked them with buffets and beatings, until finally they laid hands on the nobles of the villages... From that time onward the Indians began to seek ways to throw the Christians out of their lands. They took up arms, but their weapons were very weak and of little service in offense and still less in defense. (Because of this, the wars of the Indians against each other are little more than games played by children.) And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them...

And because all the people who could do so fled to the mountains to escape these inhuman, ruthless, and ferocious acts, the Spanish captains, enemies of the human race, pursued them with the fierce dogs they kept which attacked the Indians, tearing them to pieces and devouring them. And because on few and far between occasions, the Indians justifiably killed some Christians, the Spaniards made a rule among themselves that for every Chrisitan slain by the Indians, they would slay a hundred Indians.

From The Coast of Pearls, Paria, and the Island of Trinidad

[The Spaniards] have brought to the island of Hispaniola and the island of San Juan more than two million souls taken captive, and have sent them to do hard labor in the mines, labors that caused many of them to die. And it is a great sorrow and heartbreak to see this costal land which was so flourishing, now a depopulated desert.

This is truth that can be verified, for no more do they bring ships loaded with Indians that have been thus attacked and captured as I have related. No more do they cast overboard into the sea the third part of the numerous Indians they stow on their vessels, these dead being added to those they have killed on their native lands, the captives crowded into the holds of their ships, without food without water, or with very little, so as not to deprive the Spanish tyrants who call themselves ship owners and who carry enough food for themselves on their voyages of attack. And for the pitiful Indians who died of hunger and thirst, there is no remedy but to cast them into the sea. And verily, as a Spaniards told me, their ships in these regions could voyage without compass or chart, merely by following for the distance between the Lucayos Islands and Hispaniola, which is sixty or seventy leagues, the trace of those Indian corpses floating in the sea, the corpses that had been casted overboard by earlier ships.

Afterward, when they disembark on the island of Hispaniola, it is heartbreaking to see those naked Indians, heartbreaking for anyone with a vestige of pity, the famished state they are in, fainting and falling down, weak from hunger, men, women, old men, and children

Then, like sheep, they are sorted out into flocks of ten or twenty persons, separating fathers from sons, wives from husbands, and the Spaniards draw lots, the ship owners carrying off their share, the best flock, to compensate them for the money they have invested in their fleet of two or three ships, the ruffian tyrants getting their share of captives who will be house slaves, and when in this \"repartimiento\" a tyrant gets an old person or an invalid, he says, \"Why do you give me this one? To bury him? And this sick one, do you give him to me to make him well?\" See by such remarks in what esteem the Spaniards hold the Indians and judge if they are accomplishing the divine concepts of love of our fellow man, as laid down by the prophets.

The tyranny exercised by the Spaniards against the Indians in the work of pearl fishing is one of the most cruel that can be imagined. There is no life as infernal and desperate in this century that can be compared with it, although the mining of gold is dangerous and burdensome way of life. The pearl fishers dive into the sea at a depth of five fathoms, and do this from sunrise to sunset, and remain for many minutes without breathing, tearing the oysters out of their rocky beds where the pearls are formed. They come to the surface with a netted bag of these oysters where a Spanish torturer is waiting in a canoe or skiff, and if the pearl diver shows signs of wanting to rest, he is showered with blows, his hair is pulled, and he is thrown back into the water, obliged to continue the hard work of tearing out the oysters and bringing them again to the surface.

The food given to the pearl divers is codfish, not very nourishing, and the bread made of maize, the bread of the Indies. At night the pearl divers are chained so they could not escape.

Often a pearl diver does not return to the surface, for these waters are infested with man-eating sharks of two kinds, both vicious marine animals that can kill, eat, and swallow a whole man.

In this harvesting of pearls lets us again consider whether the Spaniards preserve the divine concepts of love for their following men, when they place the bodies of the Indians in such mortal danger, and their souls, too, for these pearl divers perish without the holy sacraments. And it is solely because of the Spaniards\' greed for gold that they force the Indians to lead such a life, often a brief life, for it is impossible to continue for long diving into the cold water and holding the breaths for minutes at a time, repeating this hour after hour, day after day; the continual cold penetrates them, constricts the chest, and they die spitting blood, or weakened by diarrhea.

The hair of these pearl divers, naturally black, is as if burnished by the saltpeter in the water, and hangs down their backs making them look like sea dogs or monsters of another species. And in this extraordinary labor, or, better put, in this infernal labor, the Lucayan Indians are finally consumed, as are captive Indians from other provinces. And all of them were publicly sold for one hundred and fifty castellanos, these Indians who lived happily on their islands until the Spaniards came, although such a thing was against the law. But the unjust judges did nothing to stop it. For all the Indians of these islands are known to be great swimmers.

解析：

只一篇节选是取自巴托洛梅·德·拉斯卡萨斯的著作“ 西印度毁灭述略”，其讲述了西班牙人在殖民美洲时的种种恶行。美洲在彼时还被认为是印度，因此得名西印度。巴托洛梅是一位西班牙教士。教士在殖民史里有着很重要的意义，一般当西方国家殖民美洲或是非洲时。他们大多会选择强制性的让原住民成为基督教的信徒。教士则会和原住民们住在一起进行转变。在欧洲列强殖民美洲时，他们最开始都是用当地的印第安人作为奴隶为他们工作。西班牙当时的殖民地主要是现在的南美洲及周边的一些群岛，如加勒比群岛。这些地方有着富有的矿脉被西班牙人肆意开采，让西班牙成为了当时欧洲最富有，最具影响力的国家之一。不过西班牙人对这些奴隶的待遇可谓是非常恶劣，说是毫无人性也不为过，毕竟欧洲的列强一向都是这样对待其他低于他们种族的人。在巴托洛梅亲身经历过这些恶行后，写下了这篇著作，严厉的指责了西班牙人的所作所为，以及皇室的不作为。虽说在这段时间里，西班牙皇室曾下令不许将当地的原住民当成奴隶，并且在律法里也写上了这一条，但并没有严格的执行这条法律。虽然不能把他们当成奴隶，但他们做的还是奴隶的活。拥有奴隶的人毕竟都是西班牙的征服者“conquistador”，大部分对皇室有功，所以皇室也是睁一只眼，闭一只眼的态度。巴托洛梅对于西班牙皇室的指控成为了当时著名的巴利亚多利德辩论，也是欧洲历史上第一次关于道德的辩论。此辩论就西班牙对原住民的所作所为进行了讨论。巴托洛梅等人是在皇室面前进行的辩论，最终导致西班牙皇室在1553年下达了新的律法，更为严格的执行关于原住民不得成为奴隶的法律。不过值得一提的是，虽说巴托洛梅在此次辩论上是位原住民说话的，要求西班牙停止恶行。但是所有人都知道必须有人来采集那些黄金和白银，所以巴托洛梅给出的方案是用非洲奴隶代替原住民来帮助西班牙王国采集在美洲的给中贵重品，最主要的就是黄金的开采。