Question

In 1548, spanish historian fernandez de oviedo wrote "there are not now believed to be at the present time…five hundred persons left" what was he writing about?

Answer 1

Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes was a Spanish historian, and one of the main sources we have of life in the Caribbean shortly after the Spanish conquest.

In this sentence, Fernandez de Oviedo is talking about the decimation of the indigenous Taino people on the island of La Hispaniola. Victims of warfare, but mostly infectious diseases, their culture was lost almost completely in a few years. At the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in Taino population in La Hispaniola was between 100,000 and 1,000,000.

Bartolome de Las Casas wrote that:

"There were 60,000 people living on this island [when I arrived in 1508], including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this?"

Although the exact numbers are uncertain, it is believed that about 80-90% of the Taino population was exterminated in thirty years.