PJ Vogt

I think there's a lot of evidence that that is what is going on here.

Because what ends up happening is Queen Isabella, who has, like, sent Columbus on this journey, when she gets the reports back that some of these people eat people, she says that he's allowed to treat the cannibals differently from the other locals.

Ooh, I see.

So the incentive structure gets all messed up.

Exactly.

So she writes—this is the letter she sends—

Amen.

Amen.

So basically, the queen appears to be giving Columbus and his fellow colonizers special permission to subjugate and enslave cannibals in a way that he wouldn't be able to with other people.

Because cannibal is sort of linked with a kind of a maximum cruelty or a definition of quote-unquote savagery.

Yes.

And so what ends up happening, he shows up trying to find gold because, again, he thinks you find gold in hot places.

There's not as much gold as he was anticipating.

And so since they're not finding gold, the Spaniards just start looking for people to enslave.

And that will be the resource that they go after.

So now, even when they're in Arawak country, they'll just label people there as cannibals.

Anytime someone resists them, anytime it's convenient, it's like this magic word, cannibal.

You call someone a cannibal, you can take their rights away.

There's actually another complicating story here.

The whole time the Europeans are obsessed with cannibalism, they're practicing cannibalism, just like in a slightly different form.