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| Codex Coyoacan 1529, Mexico |
The image shows Hernan Cortes and his mistress Marina looking on while a hapless native gets killed by a man-eating Spanish attack dog.
The Book of Mormon says the Gentiles invading the Americas would treat Lehi's posterity with inhumane brutality.
1 Nephi 13:14 The Gentiles would be numerous "many multitudes." See the blog article "Prophecy Fulfilled 007" that documents the arrival of 1.4 million Europeans during the colonial era.
1 Nephi 13:14 The natives "were scatterred before the Gentiles and were smitten." Deuteronomy 28:22 says God smites with the sword and with disease. The blog article "Prophecy Fulfilled 010" documents the death of 45 million human beings in Latin America from 1492 to 1650 from both violence and disease.
1 Nephi 22:7 After the house of Israel in the Old World has been scattered and confounded, God "will raise up a mighty nation among the Gentiles." That mighty nation was Spain which was the most powerful country on earth for about 150 years in the 1500's and 1600's. It was the most powerful country in the New World for 300 years. See the blog articles "Prophecy Fulfilled 016" and "Mighty Nation = Spain."
1 Nephi 22:7 Spain prior to the 1820's was "upon the face of this land" which means North and South America. See the blog article "This Land." By them (Spain) shall our seed (Lamanites) be scattered.
1 Nephi 22:8 After Spain scatters the Lamanites, then the marvelous work of the Restoration and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon will commence.
2 Nephi 1:11 Spain and other colonial powers will take control of formerly native lands. Lamanites will "be scatterred and smitten." The expropriation of indigenous land began on Columbus' second voyage in 1493.
Helaman 15:12 Lamanites will be driven, "hunted, and shall be smitten and scattered."
Helaman 15:12 Lamanites will have "no place for refuge." This describes the Latin American system where Indian reservations do not exist. See the blog article "Prophecy Fulfilled 013."
3 Nephi 16:8-9 Lamanites will be scattered, cast out, trodden under feet, smitten, afflicted, slain, hated by the Gentiles. Native Americans will be a hiss and a byword among the Gentiles.
Mormon 5:20 Lamanites will be "driven and scattered by the Gentiles."
So, how did the Spanish conquistadores displace, dispossess, and generally destroy amost 50 million children of Lehi? They used military force, forced relocation, and enslavement. Natives were forced on pain of death to relocate and become gold and silver miners, pearl divers, plantation slaves, loggers, cochineal harvesters, weavers, etc. On the island of Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic) those natives who fled into the mountainous interior were hunted down by cavalry and war dogs. As natives died by the millions on Hispaniola and Cuba from disease and starvation, the Spanish staged slave raids across Venezuela and the Bahamas to replenish their labor pool. Most of the captured slaves died enroute and their bodies were thrown into the ocean.
In the former Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, Cortes drove the entire Mexica population out, levelled their structures, and built an exclusive Spanish enclave that still exists in the Mexico City Zocalo today, Native farming communities by the thousands were burned or torn down and survivors were concentrated into Spanish mission towns so they could be forced to convert to Catholicism, donate labor, and pay taxes. Many natives committed suicide rather than submit to this extortion.
In highland Guatemala, Pedro de Alvarado followed Cortes' example, burning nobles at the stake, destroying the Kiche and Kaqchikel capitals, and forcing survivors into new mission towns. After years of guerilla warfare, the natives finally gave up and submitted to Spanish domination. The Yucatan peninsula was turned into vast haciendas that controlled all the best land and scarce water supplies.
After Francisco Pizarro captured Cusco, the Inca nobility fled to Vilcabamba in the Amazon basin. The Spanish soon invaded, killed Tupac Amaru, and forced the survivors to relocate. Francisco de Toledo forced 1.4 million Andean farmers and herders into controlled towns thbat provided a rotating labor force for the rich silver mines at Potosi, Bolivia and the mercury mines at Huancavelica, Peru. The mortality rate in these mines was so high that the Spanish began importing African slaves as replacements.
In northern Mexico, indigenous towns were destroyed and the former inhabitants were sent as slaves to plantations throughout southern Mexico and the Caribbean. In New Mexico, Juan de Onate took revenge on Acoma Pueblo because his nephew was killed. Hundreds were enslaved. Men over 25 had one foot cut off to prevent their escape.
The carnage described in the foregoing 5 paragraphs all happened before the year 1600.
Huge Spanish mastiffs were trained to dismember, disembowel, and kill people by biting their throat. These dogs terrorized the natives who literally provided a ready food source for the beasts. If you visit any of the Inquisition museums throughout Latin America today you will see instruments of torture that will make your stomach turn. All of these insidious methods of inflicting pain were used on the native Americans at the mere suspicion of insubordination.
For more context on Spanish (and Portuguese) depravity, see the blog article "Prophecy Fulfilled 017."
For more than 300 years, this kind of inhumane brutality fulfilled Book of Mormon prophecies about the children of Lehi being scattered, driven, hunted, smitten, and slain. English colonial treatment of American Indians in what is today the United States of America was tame in comparison.
