Human progress does not justify the atrocities committed against the Native Americans. There are so many examples of the negative effects of the cruelty against the Native Americans, and hardly any positive ones. Native Americans weren’t even the only ones negatively affected, as Spain was as well. Progress is not worth killing and enslaving an entire group of people, especially since those people, had they been left alone, would have been able to create a lot of human progress themselves. There are lots of sources that support this, which we will look at below.

There were lots of negative effects that happened in the name of “Human Progress”. In Source 12, it says “When they took prisoners, they hanged them or burned them to death. Unable to fight against the Spanish soldiers’ guns, swords, armor, and horses, the Arawaks began to commit mass suicide with poison.” This quote shows how horribly the Native Americans were treated by Columbus and the other Spaniards. Conditions were so bad that the Native Americans thought killing themselves was a better alternative than facing the …show more content…
Spanish colonists, like Columbus, who had set the example of harming, killing, and enslaving Native Americans, were negatively impacted too. On page 18 of the Columbus, Indians, and Human Progress packet it says “For all the gold and silver stolen and shipped to Spain did not make the Spanish people richer.all that was left was a deadly inflation, a starving population, the rich richer, the poor poorer, and a ruined peasant class.” This quote shows that all of the atrocities committed by the Spanish people in the name of human progress actually did the opposite of what they intended. They wanted to become richer, so they killed and enslaved people, and justified it with human progress. In the end, though, they caused massive inflation and saw the consequences of their