Bartolomé de las Casas once said: “Upon this flock of gentle sheep the Spaniards descended like wolves, tigers and hungry lions. " Las Casas believed that the natives were peaceful and did not deserve the torment and persecution they suffered. What made the conquistadors think differently? Desire for gold, to get rich quickly, to a doctrine to spread, and of increased social standing Once the Spanish reached the Brazilian coast, they brought with them many customs and traditions from ancient Spain. One of these customs, the Encomienda system. , was established in New Spain and implemented with the aim of caring for and providing for the Native Americans, but it became the most abusive and destructive system in New Spain Say no to plagiarism Get a. custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayAn encomienda meant that a Spaniard, the encomendero, was presented with a portion of the land and property rights over a certain population of indigenous people. If an encomendero had more than fifty natives in his encomienda, they would have to teach one of the boys about writing and the concept of Christianity. This native boy would then teach these principles to the other natives because the law of Burgos required him to do so. Europe, and particularly Spain and Portugal, believed it was okay to teach their religion and some undertook risky journeys around the world to spread the word of the Christian God. Las Casas remembers: “The Spaniards enslaved the Indians and made them work for their new masters harder than they could stand, so some died and others committed suicide. » When they first arrived, the conquistadors saw nothing they wanted to take from the first natives, the Tupi, and even went to trade with them. Until the day they noticed the appearance of French ships off the coast of Brazil, which made the King of Portugal fear their pretensions. To secure his claims to the new island, he sent more Portuguese settlers to colonize Brazil and suddenly the Portuguese wanted something: their land. For the Portuguese, the only way to colonize the land was to clear native lands and forests for their own crops. One of the crops that replaced land was sugarcane, a plantation crop. Because manual labor conflicted with their visions of success, the Spanish and Portuguese began attacking and enslaving native people. The Tupi were the first to suffer when they seized their land and enslaved them to perform free labor, in contradiction with their semi-sedentary lifestyle. But as Chasteen points out, “extracting land and labor from semi-sedentary forest dwellers meant completely destroying their society, leaving them to die in the process.” » Another group enslaved by the Portuguese, the Tupinambas, eventually disappeared because of the contagion that spread around the sugar plantations. Francisco Cervantes de Salazar remarks: “There is no nation so barbaric, so riddled with defects, that one cannot find within it some virtuous and intelligent men. “The Spanish desire to Christianize the natives was not the only motivation for the Spanish to establish the encomienda system in New Spain. The Spanish believed that the Native Americans were too savage and incompetent to live the Christian way of life. This ethnocentric vision motivated the Spanish to establish.