Notes on Translation by Herma Briffault

Las Casas's sentences are sometime terribly long, and since he uses practically no conjunctions except "and", one loses the thread before reaching the end, where sometime the verb is to be found. I have slightly broken up the sentences and have occassionally used "but", "although", etc. to make the meaning clearer. Las Casas's biggest "sin" aside from some exaggeration is his repetitiveness. Sometimes in the course of a long sentence he repeats what he said at the beginning; and also repeats on a later page what he had said earlier. I have eliminated most of the repetitions.

My aim, which I hope I have reached, was to preserve the 16th century feeling in the English prose, while still making it accessible to the modern reader. Occassionally to preserve Las Casas's style, I have kept his loose constructions, but have not done so consistently.

The New Kingdom of Granada

The Governor of the province seized Bogota, the lord and the King of the entire region and held him prisoner for six or seven months, demanding gold from him. The said King, impelled by fear and hoping to released, promised to give the Spaniards a house of gold. Although he could give a large qunatity of gold, since he could not provide a gold house, the King was sentenced to be tortured. First they appled the torture of screws. Then they poured hot candle grease on his belly, then they put his feet in irons through which a stick was thrust that could be twisted, then they set a fire at his feet, and while he was being tortured the Governor came into the room from time to time and told the victim that if he did not keep his promise of giving them a house of gold, they would kill him by slow torture. And it was done. The King was tortured to death.

The same cruel Governor, set out a Captain with a company of Spaniards with the assignment to make enquiries as to who was the noble successor as a ruler to the province since the execution by torture of Bogota. They marched through many leaques of the province, capturing for questioning as many Indians as they could. And when a captive Indian did not give the desired information, they cut off his hands or threw him to their savage dogs to be torn to pieces.

Spaniards had butcher shops where the corpses of Indians are hung up, on display, and some one will come in and say, more or less, "Give me a quarter of that rascal hanging there, to feed my dogs unitl I kill another one for them". Other Spaniards go hunting with their dogs in the mornings and when one of them returns at noon and is asked "Did you have good hunting?" he will reply "Very good! I killed fifteen or twenty rascals and left them with my dogs"

Peru

During invasion in Peru, a tyrant destroyed towns, killed and robbed the people of quantities of gold. The native ruler of all these mainland provinces, Atubaliba, came with his numerous attendants. He and his followers were all naked and carried only mock weapons, knowing nothing of swords and pikes, how they could wound, knowing nothing about horses, how they could run, or of what kind of men were these Spaniards who would attack.

This native king arrived and called out: "Where are these Spaniards? Let them come out, for I will not move from here until they recompense me for the vassals they have taken from me or killed, and for the towns they have destroyed and the wealth they have taken from me!" The Spaniards came out and assaulted his followers, killing many, after which they captured the ruler and demanded a ransom of four million castellanos. He gave them 15million castellanos. Despite all this, Spaniards condemned him to be burned alive. As he heard this sentence pronounced, this Indian ruler asked: "Why will you burn me? What have I done? Did you not promise to release me if I gave gold to you? And did I not give you more than you asked for? But since this is what you want, then send me to your King". And he said many other things of this kind, in confusion and revolt against the great injustice of the Spaniards. And finally they burned him.

Spaniards tortured with sharpened reeds and then killed a great queen, the wife of Inca, King of all these realms which the Christians seized and laid waste. And they took the queen, his wife, and against all justice and reason killed her, even though it is said that she was with child, for the sole reason to cause suffering to her husband.

Fray Marcos de Niza, a Franciscan friar who was present in Peru from the beginning of the invasion and who had witnessed a few attrocities committed against Indians, has recorded them in a letter to the Bishop of Mexico.

The coast of pearls, Paria, and the Island of Trinidad

A Spanish tyrant received great comforts from Indians and he lived in a house constructed by them. After some time, he invited a large number of them to his house and then locked them in and burnt them.

When I remonstrated with the Captain general for such an outstanding acts of wickedness and betrayal , as I encountered him in SanJuan, his response was this: "Sir, after all, I have only obeyed the orders I was given when I was sent to the Indies, for I was told 'If you can not conquer them by war, then capture them, no matter how' " And he told me that, in truth, he had all his life lacked a mother and father and had never been treated kindly except by the Indians on the island of Trinidad. He said this to explain his great confusion and the worsening of his sins which had been many on the mainland, and now the taking captive Indians to whom he had promised saftey.

On another occasion, our Dominican Order having been given permission to preach and convert the native peoples who were without enlightenment and hope of salvation, then sent a religious eminently learned in theology and of great virtue and holiness, along with a lay friar to survey the land and to find with the help of an Indian a site favorable to the establishment of a monastery. They were welcomed like angels from Heaven and their words were listened to with attention.

By chance, after the ship that brought them had gone away, another vessel came with the Spaniards on it. Using their customary deceitfulness, took on board the Don Alonso, the chief ruler of these lands, Spaniards duped him to board the ship along with his wife and a certain number of his followers. Once they had Indians on board, Spaniards hoisted the sail and voyaged to Hispaniola where all the captives were sold into slavery.

All the people of the land, upon seeing this, came to the Dominican friars, intending to kill them. They soothed Indians as best as they could, assuring them that by next ship they would send a letter to Hispaniola and would have the Indian Chief and his followers returned to this land. Dominican friars wrote many times asking for the return of the Indians who had been so unjustly taken captive. Those who read the letter were never willing to do justice. The friars had promised the Indians that within four months they would see their chieftain return with his followers. When they did not return even after eight months, Indians took a just vengeance and slew the friars.

During voyage, the ship owners never gave food to the Indians. And for the pitiful Indians who died of hunger and thirst, there is no remedy but to cast them into the sea. The ships in this reason could voyage without compass or chart, merely by following for the distance between the Lucayos Islands and Hispanioloa, which is sixty or seventy leagues, the trace of those Indian corpses floating in the sea, corpses that had been cast overboard by earlier ships.

When they embark on the islands of Hispaniola, the Indians are traded and shared among Spaniards. When in this repartimiento, a tyrant gets an old person or an invalid, he says "Why do you give me this one? To bury him? And this sick one, do you give him to me to make him well?".

The tyranny exercised by the spaniards against the Indians in the work of pearl fishing is one of the most cruel that can be imagined. The pearl fishers dive into the sea at a depth of five fathoms, and do this from sunrise to sunset, and remain for many minutes without breathing, tearing the oysters out of the rocky beds where the pearls are formed. If the pearl diver shows signs of wanting to rest, he is showered with blows, his hair is pulled, and he is thrown back into the water.

Often a pearl diver does not retrun to the surface, for these waters are infested with man eating sharks of two kinds, both vicious marine animals that can kill, eat and swallow a whole man. Exposed to water continuously, cold penetrates Pearl fishers, constricts the chest, and they die spitting blood or weakened by diarrhea.

The Province of Santa Marta

The pronvince of Santa Marta was rich in gold and the Indians had the energy to extract the gold. For this reason, the Spaniards unleashed terror attacks on them unabated. The content of two letters written by the Bishop of Santa Marta to the King is a testimony to the wicked acts of the Spaniards.

A letter dated 20th May 1541, "... the means to remedy this land is to remove from power these rascally stepfathers and to give the land a husband who will treat her with the reasonableness she deserves. And this must be done rapidly.."

In another letter, "..there are no christians in these lands; instead, there are demons. They are neither servants of God nor of the King. My greatest obstacle to bring Indians to the Faith is the harsh treatment of these Indians by Spanish Christians. The cruel acts of Spaniards gives them cause to laugh and to mock Jesus Christ and His law. Indians are preferring to die in battle after seeing the treatment meted out to the peace loving Indians. I know this from experience."

The Kingdom of Yucatan

As the Spanish wretches went about with their savage dogs trying to terrorize the Indians, men and women alike, one woman tied her year-old child to her foot and hanged herself from a beam. No sooner had she done this than the dogs arrived and tore the child to pieces. It must be added that a Franciscan friar baptized the child before it died.

As the Spaniards prepared to depart from this Kingdom, one of them told the son of a chieftain of a certain village to come with them. The boy said No, he did not want to leave his country. The Spaniard responded: "Come with us, otherwise, I will cut off your ears" The boy still said No. Thee Spaniard unsheathed his dagger and cut off the boy's ears, first one, then the other. And when the boy said again that he did not want to leave his land, the Spaniard cut off his nose, laughing as he did, as if he had administered a punishment as trifling as to pull the boy's hair.

One day, a certain Spaniard went hunting for stags or rabbits and, finding no game and wanting to satisfy his dogs, he took a baby from its Indian mother and with his sword sliced off the child's arms and legs for the dogs to share, then after that meal on those pieces of flesh, he threw down the little body for all the dogs to share.

In 1534, some friars offered to stay with the people of a devastated Indian Kingdom. They called a council of all the village chiefs. Finally they welcomed them and said they could stay provided they would not be accompanied by any other Spaniards. The friars promised to abide by this ruling, which was approved by the Viceroy of New Spain.
Friars preached gospel of Christ as it should be preached and the Indians learned articles of the Faith and about the Kings of Spain who were their sovereign rulers. At the end of forty days of preaching, the Indians took the friars to show them their idols, handing them over to be burned and afterward took the friars to meet their sons and tell them about the burning of the idols for they wanted their sons, who were apple of their eyes, to hear the friars preach. Pursueded by Franciscan friars, twelve or fifteen noble chieftains, each having much land and many vassals, each one acting on his own account, assembled their vassals and taking their votes, he and they declared themselves subjects of the King of Castile and recognized the Emperor as their supreme and universal ruler.

At this time, there entered the land eighteen Spanish horsemen and twelve foot soldiers, a total of thirty, bringing many loads of idols taken from Indians in other provinces. The Captain summoned an Indian noble and asked them to buy the idols for an Indian man or woman to be given to the Spaniards. When Indians saw there no true escape from wicked Spaniards, they rose up in angry revolt and the entire population joined them in opposition to the Franciscan friars. Some Indians came to them saying: "Why did you lie to us, falsely telling us that no other Christians would enter our lands? And now they have come to sell us the gods of other provinces and other nations. And why did you burn our gods? Were not our gods better than theirs?"

The Franciscan friars tried to pacify Indians and sought the Spaniards to leave the land. Spaniards refused to leave and Indians decided to kill friars. Having been warned, the friars, managed to escape one night.

Panuco and Jalisco

Marching into the southern province of Mechuacam, Spaniards captured its King who came out to welcome them. He was tortured as he was reputed to have a large store of gold and silver and other treasures. They stretched his body between two branches of a tree and placed a burning brazier under his feet and a boy, with a swab dipped in oil sprinkled the soles of his feet from time to time to roast them well, while a cruel soldier kept hs arbalest aimed at victims heart and another excited a savage dog to attack the tortured man. And in a trice the dog amputed his hands. To this, a Franciscan friar bore witness. And from all these torments, the Indian King soon perished.

One Spaniard took a maiden by force to commit the sin of the flesh with her, dragging her away from her mother, finally having to unsheath his sword to cutt off the womans hands and when the damsel still resisted they stabbed her to death.

The Province and Kingdom of Guatemala

Spaniards when they arrived to Guatemala, they were received by the chief and the nobles accompanied by trumpets and timbrels and they celebrated the arriving Spaniards with many fiestas at the gate of the capital city of Ultatlan. The Spaniards slept that night outside the city, which seemed safer to them, for they thought they might be in danger had they slept inside the city. Next day, they summoned the chief ruler and many nobles, they were seized and commanded to furnish the Christians with a certain weight of gold. When they revealed that their land lacked gold, the Spaniards burnt them alive without trial or sentencing.

His followers, left the villages and fled to hide in the mountains and ordered their servants to go to the Spaniards and serve them as their lords, but telling them that they must not reveal where their masters were hidden. All the common people came to the Spaniards and said they would serve them.

The captain refused to accept them until they revealed where their masters were hidden and that otherwise he would kill them all. The Indians said they did not know where their masters were, but surely their master's wives and children must know and they were still in their houses, therefore the Spaniards could go there and do with them as they liked. The Spaniards went to the villages and killed women and children with swords cutting them to pieces.

Unable to escape the killings, the Indians decided to fight and since they well knew that being not only unarmed but naked they would be opposing ferocious men on horseback so well armoured that to prevail against them would be impossible, they conceived an idea of digging holes in the middle of the roads, into which the horsemen would fall and have their bellies pierced by the sharp sticks with which the holes would be filled, covered over with turf and weeds. Once or twice horsemen did fall into these holes, but not more than that, for the Spaniards learnt how to avoid them. But they started throwing captured Indians into these holes. Indians were mortally wounded on the sharp sticks. Children, old women, pregnant women were thrown into these holes in a similar manner. It was a pitiful sight, especially women and children.

One captain general used to force captured Indians to invade new Indian settlements. And since he did not provide food for his Indians he gave them the permission to eat the enemy Indians they captured. Thus, he created a butchery of human beings, where, Children were killed, cooked and eaten, and where men were killed merely for their hands and feet which were esteemed as delicacies. And these inhumanities were occuring in other parts of the Indies.

New Spain

Among other massacres, the one that was initiated in Cholula, a big city with more than 30000 inhabitants, was a notable one. The people came out to welcome all the lords of the country and the earth; first of all came the priests with the head priest of the Christians in procession and received them with great respect and reverence, and took them to lodge in the center of the town, where they would reside in the houses of the most notable nobles. Soon after this, the Spaniards carried out a masscre as a punitive attack, in order to sow terror and apprehension, and to make a display of their power in every corener of that land. This was always the pattern: to commit a great massacre that would terrorize the tame flock and make it tremble.

The Spaniards had asked for five to six thousand Indians to carry their cargo. When all the Chiefs and burden bearers came, they were all bound and tied. At the closed doorways, armed guards took turns to see that none escaped. Then, at a command, all the Spaniards drrew their swords or pikes and while their chiefs looked on, helpless, all their people were butchered, cut to pieces. At the end of two or three days, some survivors came out from under the corpses, wouded but still alive. They went, weeping, to the Spaniards imploring mercy, which was denied. The Spaniards had no compassion but drove them back and cut them down. Then the chiefs, a total of more than hundred, who were already shackled, burned at the stakes that had been driven into the ground. But one of the caciques, managed to escape with twenty or thirty of his followers. They took refuge in the great temple that was there, which was like fortress, and was called Curu. The Spaniards set fire to the temple and burned them there as they cried out: "Oh, wicked men! What have we done against you? Why are you killing us? Go to the city of Mexico where our lord, Montezuma will revenge us!"

Spaniard carried another such massacre in the city of Tepeaca and then entered the city of Mexico. Great Montezuma sent them thousands of presents and an assmbly of chiefs and people celebrated fiestas on the road, and as the Spaniards reached the pavements of the city at a distance of two leagues, the great ruler sent them his own brother accompanied by many nobles, bearing gifts of gold and silver and rich garments. At the entrance of the city he himself greeted them and accompanied them to the palace in which he had arranged for them to be lodged. On the same day, Spaniards deceitfully captured the King and put him in chains.

The Indians, nobles and commoners alike, throughout the city, were celebrating fiesta, singing and dancing. The nobles donned their gala costumes to display their wealth, and some of these nobles were of royal lineage. Celebrating this fiesta were more than a thousand nobles, the flower of Indian youth, the elite of Montezuma's empire. The Spanish captain sent small teams of his men to all these fiestas. They pretended, initially as enjoying the fiesta and at a previously set time, they mercilessly attacked the fiestas simultaneously killing all the nobles and most of others. Other Indians rebelled and killed many Christians. In retaliations, Spaniards reinforced their stength and successfully contained the rebellion killing more number of Indians in the same way.

The Province of Nicaragua

The Governor of Nicaragua, had given great freedom to his subordinates in the matter of petitioning slaves from caciques of the towns. They petitioned every four or five months and each time a new allotment. The Governor could obtain 50 slaves at a time by threatening the caciques with being burned at the stake or thrown to the fierce dogs if he refused. Since the Indians do not commonly have slaves, he simply went through the settlement, taking orphans, taking one son from those who had two, taking two sons from those who had three. In this way, the cacique completed the number demanded by the tyrant, with loud lamentations and weeping by the people, for it seems they most greatly love their sons.

The Mainland

A Governor, who had heard the presence of gold in an Indies settlement, sent the thieves under his command to that place in the night. When the Christians were half a league away from the settlement, they were told to read in a loud voice his order: "Caciques and Indians of this land, hark ye! We notify you that there is but one God and one Pope and one King of Castille who is the lord of these lands. Give heed and show obedience!" Etcetera, etcetera. "And if not, be warned that we will wage war against you and will slay you or take you into captivity." etc., etc.

Then in the early dawn, when these innocents are asleep with their wives and children, the Spaniards attack and enter the town and set fire to the houses, which, being commonly made of straw, burn rapidly will all who are within them.

In another instance, a cacique (as a native ruler was called) had given a Spaniard tyrant, either on his own accord or impelled by fear, gold worth nine thousand castellanos. Not content with this amount, the Governor had the cacique bound to a stake in a sitting posture, his legs extended, and set a fire to burn the soles of his feet, demanding more gold. The cacique sent to his house for more gold and the servant brought back three thousand castellanos worth. Not content with this, more gold was demanded of the cacique. He was continued to be tortured until the bone marrow came out of the soles of his feet and he died.

Once, a company of Spaniards made an attack on a mountain refuge where some Indians were hiding from the pestilential acts of the Christians. Falling upon this numerous band, the Spaniards captured some women and maidens, sixty or eighty of them. Next day, some of the surviving Indians, anxious about the captive women, came upon the Christians from the rear and attacked them. Seeing they were hard-pressed, the Christians, who hesitated to bring up their cavalry, set their swords against the bodies of the women and maids, leaving not one of them alive. At sight of this Indians screamed in an access of grief and horror: "Oh!, vile men! Oh, cruel Christians! So you kill women?"

The island of Cuba

Among the noteworthy outrages committed by the Spaniards is the one that they perpetrated against a cacique, a very important noble, by name Hatuey, who had come to Cuba from Hispaniola with many of his people, to flee the calamities and inhuman acts of the Christians. When he was told that Christians were now coming to Cuba, he assembled as many of his followers as he could and said this to them: "Now you must know that they are saying Christians are coming here, and you know by experience how they have put So and So and So and other nobles to an end. They are coming here to do the same here. Do you know why they do this?". The Indian replied: "We do not know. But it may be that they are by nature wicked and cruel." And he told them: "No, they do not act only because of that, but because they have a God they greatly worship and they want us to worship that God, and that is why they struggle with us and subject us and kill us".

He had a basket full of gold and jewels and he said" "You see their God here, the God of the Christians. If you agree to it, let us dance for this God, who knows, it may please the God of the Christians and then they will do no harm." And his followers said, all together, "Yes, that is good, that is good!" And they danced around the basket of gold until they fell down exhausted. Then their chief, the cacique Hatuey, said to them: "See here, if we keep this basket of gold they will take it from us and will end up by killing us. So let us cast away the basket into the river." They all agreed to do this, and they flung the basket of gold into the river that was nearby.

The Christians, when they arrived, captured the cacique Hatuey and many of his followers and they burned all at the stake. They killed him because he had fled from Christians before and had defended against them. When tied to the stake, the cacique Hatuey was told by a Franciscan friar who was presetn, an artless rascal, something about the God of the Christians and of the articles of the Faith. He was told what he could do in the brief time that remained to him, in order to be saved and go to Heaven. The cacique, who had never heard any of this before, and was told he would go to Inferno where, if he did not adopt the Christian Faith, he would suffer eternal torment, asked the Franciscan friar if Christians all went to Heaven. When told that they did he said he would prefer to go to Hell. Such was the fame and honor that God and Christian Faith had earned in the Indies.

A few days after a typical massacre, I (the author of the book) sent messengers ahead to the chiefs of the province of Havana, knowing they had heard good things about me, telling them we were about to visit the town and telling them they should not hide but should come out to meet us, assuring them that no harm would be done to them. I did this with full knowledge of the captain. And when we arrived in the province, there came out to welcome us twety-one chiefs and caciques, and our captain, breaking his pledge to me and the pledge that I had made to them, took all these chieftains captive, intending to burn them at the stake, telling me this would be a good thing because those chiefs had in the past done him some harm. I had great difficulty in saving those Indians from the fire, but finally succeeded.

Hispaniola

Spaniards first landed on the island of Hispaniola. They initially ate the food provided by the Indians but later on they began their subjection of natives. Christians attacked natives with buffets and beatings, until finally they laid hands on the nobles of the villages. They behaved with such temertity and shamelessness that the most powerful ruler of he islands had to see his own wife raped by a Christian officer. Indians took up arms to throw the Christians out of their lands. But their weaponswere very weak and of little service in offense and still less in defense. Christians with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They stgabbed women and children. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers breasts, snatching them the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter as the babies fell into the water "Boil there, you offspring of the devil". Spaniards made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victims feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive. To others, they attached straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and set them afire. With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victims neck, saying, "Go now, carry the message", meaning, Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains. The chieftains and nobles were dealt in the following way. They made a grid of rods which they placed on forked sticks, then lashed the victims to the grid and lighted a smoldering fire underneath, so that little by little, as those captives screamed in despair and torment, their souls would leave them.

In one such occasion, for or five nobles were burning on the grids, and because they uttered such loud screams that they disturbed the captain's sleep, he ordered them to the strangled. The constable, who was worse than an executioner, did not want to obey that order, but instead put a stick over the victims tongues, so they could not make a sound, and he stirred up the fire. but not too much, so sthat they roasted slowly, as he liked.

Spanish captains pursued those Indians who had fled to the mountains with the fierce dogs. These dogs attacked Indians tearing them to pieces and devouring them. And because on few and far between occasions, the Indians justifiably killed some Christians, the Spaniards made a rule among themselves that for every Christian slain by the Indians, they would slay a hundred Indians.

On the land island of Hispaniola there were five very large principalities ruled by five very powerful Kings to whom almost all the other rulers paid tribute. There was a kingdom called Magua which name means "The realm of the fertile lowlands". The King who ruled this realm was called Guarionex. He was virtuous and was by nature very pacific and was devotedly obedient to the Kings of Castile and in certain years gave them, through the nobles under his command, a generous amount of gold dust. This Kindg Guarionex proclaimed himself ready to serve the King of Castille with a labor force that would work the mines with great heartiness and it would be worth more than three million castellanos every year. He said, with reason, that they should not have to pay in gold because his vassals did not know how to procure it. The recompense Spaniards gave this great and good Indian ruler was to dishonor him through his wife, who was raped by a Christian officer. The King went into hiding and placed himself under the protection of the chieftain of the province called Ciguayos, one of his vassals.

When his hiding place was discovered, the Christians waged war on Ciguayos, massacring a great number of people until finally they took the exiled King and in chains put him on vessel that was to take him to Castille. But the vessel was lost in the sea and in this shipwreck was lost a quantity of gold dust and gold nuggets weighing the equivalent of 3600 castellanos.

The King of another island called Marien (now Puerto Real), Guacanagari welcomed the admiral and all those accompanying him with food and other gifts. But this King was attacked, captured when he fled to mountains. Caonabo, chief of Kingdom called Maguana was captured by Spaniards using great and wicked subtlety and was put on a ship outward bound for Castille. But this ship was lost in the sea. The native ruler had three brothers tried to resist Christians but were attacked by cavalry.

The fourth kingdom Xaragua was ruled by Behechio. He had a sister by name Anacaona. Together, brother and sister had rendered great service to the Kings of Castille. After the death of the King, Anacaona ruled the land. To this land, a Christian Governor arrived with a cavalry force of 60 horses and three hundred foot soldiers. Cavalry alone was sufficient to lay waste the land. Having been promised safe conduct there soon arrived three hundred Indian nobles. They were tricked to enter a very big Indian house of straw where they were shut in and burned alive when the house was set on fire. Those who did not perish in the conflagration were put to the sword or the pike, along with countless number of common people. As a special honor, the lady Anacaona was hanged.

Those Christians, either out of peity or cupidity, took some boys to shield them from the slaughter and placed them on the croup of their horses. But other Spaniards came up from behind and ran the boys through with their pikes. When the victims fell from the horses the Spaniards cut off their legs with a sword.

Higuanama, the aged queen of the fifth Kingdom Higuey was hanged and her subjects were butchered.

How the Spaniards behaved with Amerindians?

Spaniards, who came into this land of American Indians, behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved for many days. They killed, terrorised, afflicted, tortured and destroyed the native people with strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard before and to such a degree that various regions of Americas, once so populous has been wiped off. Native people were slain or died after being taken into captivity and sold as slaves. When Spaniards saw that some of these had escaped, they sent a ship to find them and it voyaged for three years among the islands searching for those who had escaped being slaughtered. Most of the islands and other regions were depopulated and the land laid waste in the same way. Nearly 40 years of such massacre was conducted on American islands by the time the author had wrote this book and according to the estimate of the author, more than 12million people were killed by Spaniards.

Spaniards used to kill maximum number of people, especially the native rulers and the young men, and the women and children were subjugated to the hardest and bitterest servitude ever suffered by man or beast. Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire gold and to swell themselves with riches in a very brief time and thus rise to a high estate disproportionate to their merits. Their insatiable greed and ambition, the greatest ever seen in the world, is the cause of their villainies. American land was so rich and felicitous, the local people so meek and patient, so easy to subject, that Spaniards had no more consideration for them than beasts. Spaniards treated local Indians as excrement on the public squares and thus they have deprived the Indians of their lives and souls, for the millions died without the Faith and without the benefit of sacraments. Never had the Indians in all the Indies committed any act against the Spanish Christians until those Christians have first and many time committed countless cruel aggressions against them or against neighbouring nations. For in the beginning, the Indians regarded Spaniards as angels from Heaven. Only after Spaniards used violence against them, killing, robbing, torturing, did the Indians ever rise up against them.

Nature of the American Indians

American Indians were most guileless, the most devoid of wickedness and duplicity, the most obedient and faithful to their native masters and to the Spanish Christians whom they serve. They were by nature the most humble, patient and peacable, holding no grudges, free from embroilments, neither excitable nor quarrelsome. These people were the most devoid of rancords, hatreds, or desire for vengeance of any people in the world. They were weak and complaissant and were less able to endure heavy labor and soon die off even from small maladies. They were poor people, they possessed very little and had no desire to possess worldly goods. For this reason, they were not arrogant, embittered or greedy. As to their dress, they were generally naked, with only their pudenda covered somewhat. And when they cover their shoulders it is with a square cloth no more than two varas in size. They had no beds, but sleep on a kind of matting or else in a kind of suspended net called hamacas. They were very clean in their persons with alert intelligent minds, docile and open to doctrine, very apt to receive hold Catholic faith, to be endowed with vitruous customs, and to behave in a godly fashion. And once they begin to hear the tidings of the Faith, they were so insistent on knowing more and on taking the sacraments of the Church and an observing the divine cult that, truly, the missionaries need to be endowed by God with great patience in order to cope with such eagerness.

Chronological order of Areas subjected by Spaniards

Spaniards entered Mexico in 1507. After two years, they landed on Jamaica in 1509. In 1511, Cuba was occupied. Main land was the next target in 1514. In 1522, Rio de la plate was found by the Spaniards. Next year, in 1523, Nicargua and Santamarta were focussed by Spaniards. They reached Yucatan and Venenzuela in 1526. In 1529, Paria was occupied. Spaniards took over Paria in 1529 and Peru in 1531. Florida was explored for domination by Spaniards between the years 1510 to 1538. Granada was subjugated in 1539.

Relevance of the book

The enduring relevance of Las Casas Devastation of Indies lies in its presentation of timeless and universal issues of human rights. The context in which this work appeared remains fundamentally important, for the author and his public reception clearly reflected the intellectual, moral climate of the 16th century of Europe. The Europeans were astonished by the discovery of the new world by Columbus and the early Spanish conquistadors. Their mind had to assimilate the sudden appearence of a new world profoundly different from that which Western intellectuals and religious traditions had created. Europeans were shocked to encounter people of whom the Bible and ancient texts mads no mention and whos physical appearence clearly differed from the of the Africans and Asians they had expected to find. The Spaniards when they first met Indians, were imbued with medieval warrior mentality. A dynamic martial spirit, medieval in its formation and aggressively religious and aristocratic in attitude, permeated Spanish culture. They were prepared to fight and conquer enemies under extremely difficult conditions seasoned by their struggle against Moorish occupation lasting from 711 to 1492. Las Casas reveals that millions of Indians were killed through enslavement and outright murder. Las Casa believed that native Indians should be peacefully converted to Christianity. As a Christian, he opposed the Chrstianity as it existed in the New World. He could not digest violence and killings against native people. He disapproved conversion by force and superficial mass conversions. He claimed that real baptism could take place only over time. For a modern reader, the book raises the profound question whether something intrinsically immoral in the West's ethos has underlain all Western / non-Western relaionsh from the earliest voyages of discovery. How should Westerners deal with historical tragedy - abstractly, in an intellectual setting, or concretely in their relationship with the other people.

Bartolome de Las Casas - Biography

Bartolome de Las Casas born in Serville in 1484. His father Pedro de Las casas was a merchant who became sufficiently wealthy to permit his son to study Latin instead of entering the family business. La Casas father and his three uncles accompanied Columbus on his second voyage. In 1512, he left for Indies as the first priest to be ordained in the new world. During his first couple of years, in Indies, he most celebrated leaders of the conquest. Learnt several native languages. In reward of his services as Chaplan, he received Indians and land. By all appearences he had settled in to become a typical encomendero. However, in 1514, he severely codemned Spanish treatment of native people in a Pentecost Sunday sermon. He soon freed his own native slaves and began vigourously interceding with local authorities on the Indians behalf. He questioned the entire system of encomienda and its relationship to Christian morality. In 1520, Charles V granted him a hearing to explain his stance and defend himself against the charges of colonial Spaniards. He called for peaceful conversion of Indies and for agricultural colonization. Charles V supported Casas viewpoint ruling governing of Indies without the force of arms. Yet the ruling had little practical effect in the distant Indies. He left Spain to establish a settlement in Venezuela hoping to peacefully convert local Indians. But opposition from encomenderos and colonial officials helped incite an India rebellion that wrecked the project. He entered the Dominican order as a monk in 1522. He proposed peaceful conversion as an alternative to military conquest in his work "The only method of attracting everyone to the true religion". In monastery, he recorded history of Indieans and initiated collection of documents. In 1537, Charles V supported an effort by Casas to establish missions in Guatemala based on Casas precepts. In 1542, New Laws, forbidding Indian slavery and discontinuing slavery came into force. In 1544, he returned to Indies as Bishop of Chiapas. Las Casas denied final ablation to any Spaniard who refused to free Indians. He issued a Confessor Manual for priests in his diocese. It created public outrage and officials confiscated the Confession Manual. The Council of Indies recalled Las Casas to Spain in 1547. In 1550, he resigned as Chiapas Bishop and churned out remarkable series of publications. In 1552, without seeking permission from Inquistion, Las Casas published "The Devastation of Indies". In his declining years, he remained an advocate of Indian rights. He died in July 1566 regreting for not having done more. He was cremated in Madrid.