SOURCE: Hanke, Lewis. “The Theoretical Problems Created by the Conquest of America.” In The First Social Experiments in America: A Study in the Development of Spanish Indian Policy in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 3-18. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935.

In the following essay, Hanke discusses how Spain's discovery of new civilizations in the sixteenth century sparked a number of religious and secular debates about how American Indians should be treated, most centering finally on whether American aboriginals should be regarded as rational beings or savages.

The discovery of America precipitated a flood of theories which has not yet fully abated and, as Samuel Johnson declared, “gave a new world to European curiosity”.¹ The origin of the new world natives proved to be one of the most fruitful subjects for speculation. Columbus called them Indians but not for long did Spaniards consider them inhabitants of ancient India. Could they be...