ABSTRACT
Columbus’s voyages led to a new understand-ing of world geography, the flora and faunapresent on earth, and of course, the human societies that populated the planet.
The “discovery” of America touched off a debate in Europe on the nature of the people who lived in the New World. Native Americans had never before been seen by Europeans, so they were thought-at first-to be related to, perhaps, one of the lost tribes of Israel. In fact, it was not until 1537 that the Roman Catholic Church, via the papal bull Sublimus Deus, promulgated in 1537 by Pope Paul III, officially recognized the humanity of Native Americans, deeming them fit and equipped, as men, to receive the Catholic faith (and thus, salvation).
