Columbian Exchange- Primary Source Analysis

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Directions: Choose TWO (2) primary sources to analyze. Use the appropriate Analysis Worksheets to support you.

Primary Source #1: Photo/Description- Use the Photo Analysis Worksheet to analyze the picture. Use the Written
Document Analysis Worksheet to analyze the Excerpt.

Bernardino de Sahagún, quoted in Seeds of Change

. an epidemic broke out, a sickness of pustules. It began in Tepeilhuitl. Large bumps spread on people; some were
entirely covered. . . .[The victims] could no longer walk about, but lay in their dwellings and sleeping places, . . . And
when they made a motion, they called out loudly. The pustules that covered people caused great desolation; very many
people died of them, and many just starved to death; starvation reigned, and no one took care of others any longer.

Excerpt and illustration from Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, c. 1575-1580; ed., tr., James
Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest Mexico (Univ. of California Press, 1993)
Primary Source #2: Use the Written Document Analysis Worksheet to analyze the Excerpt.

Olaudah Equiano

Introduction
Within ten years of the first North American settlements, Europeans began transporting captured Africans to the
colonies as slaves. Imagine the thoughts and fears of an eleven-year-old boy who was kidnapped from his village by
African slave traders. He was forced to march west to the coast of Africa, sold to different people along the way.
When he reached the Slave Coast he saw white men for the first time. His mind must have been filled with many
questions. Where was he going? What would these men do to him? Would he ever see his home again?
This young man was Olaudah Equiano. He and many other Africans, both male and female, were loaded on ships
that took them to the British colonies, where they were sold as slaves. Hundreds of people were packed into the
lower decks with barely enough room to move during a journey that took at least six weeks. Many died, but Equiano
survived.
Equiano traveled the world as a slave to a ship captain and merchant. In 1766 he was able to purchase his own
freedom. Equiano wrote his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus
Vassa, the African, in 1789. Equiano recounted how his early life in Africa was interrupted when he was kidnapped
by slave traders and separated from his family, writing “we were soon deprived of even the smallest comfort of
weeping together.” Equiano was bought and sold, marched to the African coast, and shipped in squalid conditions to
America. He wrote of the voyage, “The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in
the ship, which was so crowded that each had scacely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us.” Many people read
Equiano’s Narrative, and his account exposing the horrors of slavery influenced Parliament’s decision to end the
British slave trade in 1807.

Excerpt

I was not long suffered to indulge my grief; I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation
in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life; so that with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I
became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste any thing. I now wished for the last
friend, Death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables; and, on my refusing to
eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across, I think, the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other
flogged me severely. I had never experienced any thing of this kind before; and although not being used to the water, I
naturally feared that element the first time I saw it; yet, nevertheless, could I have got over the nettings, I would have
jumped over the side; but I could not; and, besides, the crew used to watch us very closely who were not chained down
to the decks, lest we should leap into the water; and I have seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut
for attempting to do so, and hourly whipped for not eating. This indeed was often the case with myself. In a little time
after, amongst the poor chained men, I found some of my own nation, which in a small degree gave ease to my mind. I
inquired of them what was to be done with us. They gave me to understand we were to be carried to these white
people’s country to work for them.

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.

Primary Source #3: Use the Written Document Analysis Worksheet to analyze the Excerpt.

Epistola Christofori Colom ...de insulis Indie supra Gangem

Rome, April 1493.

(abridged)
A Letter addressed to the noble Lord Raphael Sanchez, Treasurer to their most invincible Majesties, Ferdinand and
Isabella, King and Queen of Spain, by Christopher Columbus, to whom our age is greatly indebted, treating of the islands
of India recently discovered beyond the Ganges, to explore which he had been sent eight months before under the
auspices and at the expense of their said Majesties.

. . . Thirty-three days after my departure from Cadiz I reached the Indian sea, where I discovered many islands, thickly
peopled, of which I took possession without resistance in the name of our most illustrious Monarch, by public
proclamation and with unfurled banners. To the first of these islands, which is called by the Indians Guanahani, I gave
the name of the blessed Saviour (San Salvador), relying upon whose protection I had reached this as well as the other
islands; to each of these I also gave a name, ordering that one should be called Santa Maria de la Concepcion, another
Fernandina, the third Isabella, the fourth Juana, and so with all the rest respectively. . . .

. . . In that island also which I have before said we named Espanola, there are mountains of very great size and beauty,
vast plains, groves, and very fruitful fields, admirably adapted for tillage, pasture, and habitation. The convenience and
excellence of the harbors in this island, and the abundance of the rivers, so indispensable to the health of man, surpass
anything that would be believed by one who had not seen it. The trees, herbage, and fruits of Espanola are very
different from those of Juana, and moreover it abounds in various kinds of spices, gold, and other metals. . . .

. . . On my arrival at that sea, I had taken some Indians by force from the first island that I came to, in order that they
might learn our language, and communicate to us what they knew respecting the country; which plan succeeded
excellently, and was a great advantage to us, for in a short time, either by gestures and signs, or by words, we were
enabled to understand each other. These men are still travelling with me, and although they have been with us now a
long time, they continue to entertain the idea that I have descended from heaven; and on our arrival at any new place
they published this, crying out immediately with a loud voice to the other Indians, “Come, come and look upon beings of
a celestial race”: upon which both women and men, children and adults, young men and old, when they got rid of the
fear they at first entertained, would come out in throngs, crowding the roads to see us, some bringing food, others
drink, with astonishing affection and kindness. . . .

. . . Finally, to compress into few words the entire summary of my voyage and speedy return, and of the advantages
derivable therefrom, I promise, that with a little assistance afforded me by our most invincible sovereigns, I will procure
them as much gold as they need, as great a quantity of spices, of cotton, and of mastic (which is only found in Chios),
and as many men for the service of the navy as their Majesties may require. I promise also rhubarb and other sorts of
drugs, which I am persuaded the men whom I have left in the aforesaid fortress have found already and will continue to
find; for I myself have tarried nowhere longer than I was compelled to do by the winds, except in the city of Navidad,
while I provided for the building of the fortress, and took the necessary precautions for the perfect security of the men I
left there. Although all I have related may appear to be wonderful and unheard of, yet the results of my voyage would
have been more astonishing if I had had at my disposal such ships as I required. But these great and marvellous results
are not to be attributed to any merit of mine, but to the holy Christian faith, and to the piety and religion of our
Sovereigns; for that which the unaided intellect of man could not compass, the spirit of God has granted to human
exertions, for God is wont to hear the prayers of his servants who love his precepts even to the performance of apparent
impossibilities. . . .

Such are the events which I have briefly described. Farewell.

Lisbon, the 14th of March.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS,
Admiral of the Fleet of the Ocean.
Primary Source #4: Use the Written Document Analysis Worksheet to analyze the Excerpt.

Bartoleme de Las Casas, Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies. (1542)

Excerpt

The Indies were discovered in the year one thousand four hundred and ninety-two. In the following year a great many
Spaniards went there with the intention of settling the land. Thus, forty-nine years have passed since the first settlers
penetrated the land, the first so claimed being the large and most happy isle called Hispaniola, which is six hundred
leagues in circumference. Around it in all directions are many other islands, some very big, others very small, and all of
them were, as we saw with our own eyes, densely populated with native peoples called Indians. This large island was
perhaps the most densely populated place in the world. There must be close to two hundred leagues of land on this
island, and the seacoast has been explored for more than ten thousand leagues, and each day more of it is being
explored. And all the land so far discovered is a beehive of people; it is as though God had crowded into these lands the
great majority of mankind.
And of all the infinite universe of humanity, these people are the most guileless, the most devoid of wickedness and
duplicity, the most obedient and faithful to their native masters and to the Spanish Christians whom they serve. They
are by nature the most humble, patient, and peaceable, holding no grudges, free from embroilments, neither excitable
nor quarrelsome. These people are the most devoid of rancors, hatreds, or desire for vengeance of any people in the
world. And because they are so weak and complaisant, they are less able to endure heavy labor and soon die of no
matter what malady. The sons of nobles among us, brought up in the enjoyments of life's refinements, are no more
delicate than are these Indians, even those among them who are of the lowest rank of laborers. They are also poor
people, for they not only possess little but have no desire to possess worldly goods. For this reason they are not
arrogant, embittered, or greedy. Their repasts are such that the food of the holy fathers in the desert can scarcely be
more parsimonious, scanty, and poor. As to their dress, they are generally naked, with only their pudenda covered
somewhat. And when they cover their shoulders it is with a square cloth no more than two varas in size. They have no
beds, but sleep on a kind of matting or else in a kind of suspended net called bamacas. They are very clean in their
persons, with alert, intelligent minds, docile and open to doctrine, very apt to receive our holy Catholic faith, to be
endowed with virtuous customs, and to behave in a godly fashion. And once they begin to hear the tidings of the Faith,
they are so insistent on knowing more and on taking the sacraments of the Church and on observing the divine cult that,
truly, the missionaries who are here need to be endowed by God with great patience in order to cope with such
eagerness. Some of the secular Spaniards who have been here for many years say that the goodness of the Indians is
undeniable and that if this gifted people could be brought to know the one true God they would be the most fortunate
people in the world.
Yet into this sheepfold, into this land of meek outcasts there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like
ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved for many days. And Spaniards have behaved in no
other way during tla! past forty years, down to the present time, for they are still acting like ravening beasts, killing,
terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new
methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola once so populous
(having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred
persons.

Source: Bartoleme de Las Casas, Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies. (1542)