S. today if every single white person and every single back person died (Stannard pp). By far, the extermination of the Native American was the most "massive act of genocide in the history of the world" (Stannard pp). .

             By 1496, the native population of Hispaniola had dropped from eight million to four million, and by 1508, it had fallen to less than a hundred thousand, and a decade later in 1518, there were less than twenty thousand left, and according to leading scholars, by 1535, "for all practical purposes, the native population was extinct" (Stannard pp). It had taken less than the normal life span of a human being, to exterminate an entire culture of people, millions in number and thousands of years resident in their homeland (Stannard pp). This same fate fell to the native peoples on the surrounding islands and well as the mainland of the Americas (Stannard pp).

             Ironically, Columbus had written back to the King and Queen of Spain:.

             So tractable, so peaceable, are these people," [referring .

             to the Tainos on the island of San Salvador, so was named by Columbus], 'that I swear to your Majesties there is not in the .

             world a better nation. They love their neighbors as themselves, .

             and their discourse is ever sweet and gentle, and accompanied with a smile; and though it is true that they are naked, yet their manners are decorous and praiseworthy (Massacre pp).

             Yet rather ominously, he wrote in his journal, "I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, and govern them as I pleased" (Genocide-I pp). And he did. .

             Of all the horrific genocides that have occurred in the twentieth century none has come close to destroying so many – in such great a proportion - of wholly innocent people (Stannard pp).

             The gratuitous killing of the native people throughout the Caribbean and the Americas by the Spanish soldiers amounted no nothing less than outright sadism (Stannard pp).