"rather to reform the faith in us Christians than to give it to the Indians"

"'Our people here are such that there is neither good man nor bad who hasn't two or three Indians to serve him and dogs to hunt for him and, though it perhaps were better not to mention it, women so pretty that one must wonder at it.  With the last of these practices I am extremely discontented, for it seems to me a disservice to God, but I can do nothing about it, nor the habit of eating meat on Saturday [sic, for Friday] and other wicked practices that are not for good Christians.  For these reasons it would be a great advantage to have some devout friars here, rather to reform the faith in us Christians than to give it to the Indians.  And I shall never be able to administer just punishments, unless fifty or sixty men are sent here from Castile with each fleet, and I send there the same number from among the lazy and the insubordinate, as I do with this present fleet—such would be the greatest and best punishment and least burdensome to the conscience that I can think of.'"

     Christopher Columbus to Ferdinand and Isabella "Shortly after landing on Hispaniola in 1498," as trans. Felipe Fernández-Armesto on pp. 133-134 of his Columbus (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1991), and citing Crístobal Colón:  textos y documentos completos, ed. Varela (Madrid:  1984), 244.  Yet "Columbus's requests for friars to be sent to Hispaniola for the needs of the colonists rather than the natives were consciously ironic:  he was using the simple pagan in his traditional role as a commonplace of sententious literature, to point up the moral deficiencies of the Christians.  He was, beyond question, every bit as enthusiastic about converting the natives as his royal sponsors" (137).