Did Christopher Columbus Seize, Sell,

and Export Sex Slaves?

A Facebook meme accurately describes some of Columbus's
most brutal practices in the Caribbean.

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CLAIM

Christopher Columbus sold sex slaves — some as young as nine years old.

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ORIGIN

As time passes, a greater and greater number of people have been exposed
to the often uncomfortable historical details of Christopher Columbus’s
voyages to the Americas at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. The
murder, enslavement and mistreatment of the native peoples of the
Caribbean islands which Columbus and his crews conquered, can provoke
shock and even disbelief, more than 500 years on.

In May 2018, readers asked about the veracity of a meme which claimed
that Columbus had been involved in procuring and distributing women and
even children as sex slaves:

Columbus Provided Native Sex Slaves to His Men

In addition to putting the natives to work as slaves in his gold
mines, Columbus also sold sex slaves to his men — some as young
as 9. Columbus and his men also raided villages for sex and sport.
In the year 1500, Columbus wrote: “A hundred castellanoes are as
easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general
and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls;
those from nine to ten are now in demand.”
The quote attributed to Columbus in the meme is accurate and was taken
from a letter he wrote in 1500 to Doña Juana de la Torre, a nurse in the
royal court of Queen Isabella and the sister of one of Columbus’ leading
crew members on his second voyage to the Americas.

At this time (just after his return from the third voyage) Columbus had been
removed as Governor of the American territories after reports surfaced of
horrific misgovernment and brutal treatment of natives, and he was even
briefly imprisoned before he was pardoned by King Ferdinand of Aragon
who — along with Isabella of Castile — was one of the “Catholic Monarchs”
of modern-day Spain.

In the Early Modern Spanish used by Columbus, the passage reads:

Por una mujer tan bien se falla çient castellanos como por una labrança, y
es mucho en uso, y ay fartos mercaderes que andan buscando muchachas,
de nueve a diez son agora enprençio, de todas hedades ha de tener un
bueno.

The quote underlines Columbus’s view of indigenous Americans as

commodities. He compares the market value of a female sex slave with
that of a piece of farmland, and notes that “of late” (“agora”) slave dealers
were particularly interested in purchasing nine- or ten-year-old girls from
him.

Sex slavery and forced labor were among the many brutalities that
Columbus and his crews inflicted on the native Taíno people on the island
of Hispaniola (now the site of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.)

One of Columbus’s crew members, Bartolemé de las Casas, became so

disenchanted with the atrocities of the European conquerors that he
turned on Columbus and his mission. Later, he became a Dominican friar,
dedicating his life to exposing and opposing the brutalities perpetrated by
Columbus and his men and attempting a more peaceful missionary
colonization of the Caribbean islands.
In 1542, de las Casas wrote a famous book about that era, A Brief Account
of the Destruction of the Indies (“Brevísima Relación de la Destrucción de
las Indias.”) In it, he condemned the destruction caused by the Columbian
voyages:

There are two main ways in which those who have travelled to this part of
the world pretending to be Christians have uprooted these pitiful peoples
and wiped them from the face of the earth. First, they have waged war on
them: unjust, cruel, bloody and tyrannical war. Second, they have murdered
anyone and everyone who has shown the slightest sign of resistance, or
even of wishing to escape the torment to which they have subjected him.

This latter policy has been instrumental in suppressing the native

leaders, and, indeed, given that the Spaniards normally spare only
women and children, it has led to the annihilation of all adult
males, whom they habitually subject to the harshest and most
iniquitous and brutal slavery that man has ever devised for his
fellow-men, treating them, in fact, worse than animals.

On his 1493 return to Europe from the first voyage, Columbus wrote a
famous letter to Ferdinand and Isabella (who had sanctioned the
expedition), recounting the timidity and naivité of the Taíno people, and
offering his patrons “slaves as many as they shall order to be shipped,” in
return for the ships and resources required for a second voyage:

They have no iron or steel, nor any weapons; nor are they fit thereunto; not
because they be not a well-formed people and of fair stature, but that they
are most wondrously timorous… such they are, incurably timid… They are
artless and generous with what they have, to such a degree as noone
would believe but him who had seen it. Of anything they have, if it be asked
for, they never say no, but do rather invite the person to accept it, and show
as much lovingness as though they would give their hearts…

…Their Highnesses may see that I shall give them as much gold as
they may need, with very little aid which their Highnesses will give
me; spices and cotton at once, as much as their Highnesses will
 order to be shipped, and as much as they shall order to be shipped
of mastic… and aloe-wood as much as they shall order to be
shipped; and slaves as many as they shall order to be shipped.

What followed were the infamous slave raids of 1495, during the second
voyage. As the historian Howard Zinn described in A People’s History of the
United States, Columbus could not find as much gold on the conquered
Caribbean islands as he had hoped, and so chose to round up a greater
number of native slaves for export to Europe instead:

Because of Columbus’s exaggerated report and promises, his second

expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men.
The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the
Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the
Europeans’ intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they
found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle
with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold,
taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor.

Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after

expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to
fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In
the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen
hundred Arawak men, women and children, put them in pens
guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best
specimens to load on to ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred
died en route.

The meme accurately points out that Columbus was responsible for forcing
thousands of natives on the Caribbean islands into slave labor, as well as
seizing, selling, distributing, and exporting many native women and
children as sex slaves.