The ostensible reason for the Spanish conquests in the New World was the bringing of Christ to the natives. But the extraordinary rapacity and cruelty shown by many of the Spanish soldiers often made a mockery of this purpose. Bartolomé de las Casas describes in gruesome and almost incredible detail how countless Indians, including women and children, were murdered. There was something diabolic about the measureless frenzy of their cruelty as de las Casas says, they behaved, “more inhumanely then rapacious Tygres Wolves and Lyons.”

Such cruelty naturally caused a hatred of the Christian faith in the peoples who were supposed to be evangelized, as a letter from a bishop quoted by de las Casas puts it:

[There] can be nothing in the World so odious and detestable among [the Indians], as the Name of a Christian: for they term the Christians in their Language Yares, that is, Devils; and in truth are not without reason; for the Actions of those that reside in these Regions, are not such as speak them to be Christians or Men, gifted with Reason, but absolute Devils; hence it is, that the Indians, perceiving these Actions committed by the Heads as well as Members, who are void of all Compassion and Humanity, do judge the Christian Laws to be of the same strain and temper, and that their God and King are the Authors of such Enormities.

How could these conquistadors be so inhuman? Many of them had been recruited from prisons, but even for habitual criminals their cruelty was astonishing. In his fascinating economic history, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber gives an illuminating account. He begins by noting that just as irrational as their cruelty was their greed. After they conquered Tenochtitlan, gaining unheard of plunder, instead of retiring to enjoy their wealth they soon started new expeditions to find yet more treasure.

Graeber explains that all these men were caught in debt traps; however much treasure they got, they never seemed able to extricate themselves. The leaders were in debt to money lenders at home, and they in turn caught the men in usurious traps. All the men’s supplies were sold to them by the officers, at inflated price, on credit (probably at a high rate of interest), so that after the fabulous treasure of the Aztecs were divided, many of the soldiers found that they still did not have enough to pay of their creditors. Their violence against the Indians thus came from the peculiar rage of the victims of usury: