Bartolomé de las Casas once stated: “Upon this flock of docile sheep, the Spaniards descended like hungry wolves, tigers and lions. Las Casas believed that the natives were peaceful and did not deserve the torment and persecution they received. What made the conquistadors think differently? Desire for gold, to get rich quickly, doctrine to spread and increase in social rank. Once the Spanish reached the Brazilian coast, they brought with them many customs and traditions of ancient Spain. One of these customs, the Encomienda system, was established in New Spain and implemented with the intention of caring for and providing for Native Americans, but instead became New Spain's most abusive and destructive system. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original Essay An encomienda meant that a Spaniard, the encomendero, was presented with a piece of land and property rights over a certain population of natives. If an encomendero had more than fifty natives in his encomienda, they would have to teach one of the boys to write and the concept of Christianity. This indigenous boy would later teach the other indigenous people these principles because the Law of Burgos required it. Europe, and especially Spain and Portugal, believed in the teaching of their religions as expected, and some undertook risky journeys across the world to spread the word of the Christian God. Las Casas recalls: “The Spanish enslaved the Indians and made them work for their new masters harder than they could bear, so that some died and others killed themselves. " Upon their first arrival, the conquistadors saw nothing that they wanted to take away from the first indigenous people, the Tupi, and even began to trade with them. Until one day they noticed French ships appearing off the coast of Brazil, making the king of Portugal fear the his claims.To secure his claims on the new island, he sent more Portuguese settlers to colonize Brazil and suddenly there was something the Portuguese wanted: their land native and forests for their crops. One of the crops that replaced the land was sugarcane, a plantation crop. Since manual labor was contradictory to their vision of success, the Spanish and Portuguese began to attack and enslave. the natives are the first to suffer because they take their lands and enslave them to do free work, clashing with their semi-sedentary lifestyle. But as Chasteen points out, “extracting land and labor from the 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 became extinct due to contagion passing through the confined spaces of the sugar plantations. Francisco Cervantes de Salazar observes: “There is no nation so barbarous, so full of defects, that virtuous and intelligent men cannot be found within it. The Spanish desire to Christianize the natives was not the only motivation why the Spanish established the encomienda system in New Spain. The Spanish believed that Native Americans were too savage and inept to live a Christian lifestyle. This ethnocentric view motivated the Spanish to establish the encomienda system. The Spanish took it upon themselves to provide clothing and education for the natives to learn about God. The rule was that the encomenderos paid the natives for their work and provided them with the necessities of life. What in the end.