The Crimes of Christopher Columbus

The Crimes of Christopher Columbus: "However small their numbers, however crude their representatives, Europeans came to the Americas with a civilizational ideology that was unquestionably modern, even if embryonically so. Among the ingredients of this modernity were a rational understanding of the universe and a new understanding of individual initiative.
By contrast, the Indians still lived in the world of the spirits-the enchanted universe. They could not adapt to changing circumstances. They confused the Europeans with gods. They sought to reverse casualties by sacrificing their own soldiers to the totems. When Montezuma's military advisers and soothsayers warned him of ill-omens he ordered them imprisoned and their wives and children killed. The Indians were held in paralyzing obedience to the emperor. They were accustomed to exterminating their inferiors but were unfamiliar with the challenges of combat against well-armed peers.
In short, the Indians were defeated and massacred because, by a cruel juxtaposition of history, they encountered, even in the persons of 'semi-literate, implacable, and greedy swordsmen,' a Spanish civilization that was superior both in the sophistication of its arms and its ideas. "