When our historians date the beginning of Modern Times from the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, they are fully justified, as no other event has caused so many radical changes in the thoughts of men as well as in all commercial and social conditions.
The earlier views about our terrestrial globe and its relation to the universe gave place to new and far greater conceptions. Almost every day brought new and astonishing disclosures in natural history, physics and other spheres of science.
The end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th Century was also the time of the Renaissance as well as of the Reformation, of a revival of the wisdom of the classic past and of the rise and establishment of new sublime ideas about God and the destiny of man.
It could not fail that in this period of spiritual fermentation and inspiration the views about women, matrimony and woman's rights likewise underwent considerable changes. While the discovery of America brought incredible riches to various European nations, it caused nothing but misery and disaster to the aborigines of the New World. And to many million Africans as well. We also must call to mind, that in company with these conquerors went hosts of monks and priests of all orders, eager to convert the "heathen" to the "only true creed.
The well known accounts, given by the Spanish bishop Las Casas, disclose among other horrible events the factβheretofore unheard of in human historyβthat whole bands and tribes of American Indians, to evade the tyranny of their European oppressors, slaughtered their own children, and then committed suicide. These Indians had been compelled not only to work in the gold mines and in the pearl fisheries, but to perform all other labor that white men were unable or unwilling to do.
