““For while those like Señor Coma of Aragon were drawing a parallel between darkness of flesh and commitment to cannibalism—while Columbus and others were expounding on an opposite relationship (but one with identical consequences) involving light skin, intelligence, and closeness to God—still more Spaniards were locating evidence for the Indians’ alleged inferiority within their very biology, in what was said to be the “size and thickness of their skulls,” writes J.H. Elliott, “which indicated a deformation in that part of the body which provided an index of a man’s rational powers,” and which could be used to support the increasingly popular idea that the Indians were made by God to be the “natural slaves” of the Spanish and, indeed, of all Europeans.””
