These weren&#x27;t Europeans in the rain forest (which is a large continent of many different peoples), but mostly Spanish and Portuguese. Who married and had kids with native Americans. They weren&#x27;t racist as we think of it today, they just held little regard for human life, especially little regard for non-christian human life.<p>To put this in perspective, this period came right after 100 years of bloody civil war in Spain that produced some of the most efficient killers the world had ever seen.<p>[EDIT] I shouldn&#x27;t have said that they weren&#x27;t Europeans, but that not all of Europe was represented, only Portugal and Spain. That blaming Poland or Germany for the activities of the Spanish was pretty unfair.