A SHORT ACCOUNT
OF THE DESTRUCTION
OF THE INDIES
by
Bartolomé de las Casas
written 1542, published 1552* [EXCERPTS]
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PRESENTATION by Bishop don Fray Bartolomé de las Casas or Casaus, to the
most high and potent lord Prince of all the Spains don Felipe, our lord
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Most high and potent lord:
Because divine providence has ordered in this world that for
the direction and common utility of the human lineage the world be
constituted by Kingdoms and peoples, with their kings like fathers and
shepherds (as Homer has called them) and therefore the most noble and
generous members of the republics, for that reason no doubt of the rectitude
of the royal spirits of those kings may be held, or with right reason might
be held. And if any wrongs, failings, defects, or evils should be suffered
in those kingdoms, the only reason for that is that the kings have no notice
of them. For these wrongs &c, if they be present and reported, it is the
duty of the king, with greatest study and vigilant industry, to root them
out. . . .
Considering, then, most potent lord, the evils and harm, the
perditions and ruin, the equals or likes of which, never were men imagined
capable of doing, considering, as I say, those evils which as a man of fifty
years’ and more experience, being in those lands present, I have seen
committed upon those so many and such great kingdoms, or better said, that
entire vast and new world of the Indies . lands conceded and given in trust
by God and His Church to the king and queen of Castile, to rule and govern
them, convert them to belief in Christ and the Holy Catholic Church, and
give them to prosper temporally and spiritually, this subject was not able
to contain himself from supplicating with Your Majesty, most importunely,
that Your Majesty not concede such licence nor allow those terrible things
that the tyrants did invent, pursue, and have committed against those
peaceable,
humble, and meek Indian peoples, who offend no person. . . .their children.
.
. . Into and among these gentle sheep, endowed by their Maker and Creator
with all the qualities aforesaid, did creep the Spaniards, who no sooner had
knowledge of these people than they became like fierce wolves and tigers and
lions who have gone many days without food or nourishment. And no other
thing have they done for forty years until this day,1 and still today see
fit to do, but dismember, slay, perturb, afflict, torment, and destroy the
Indians by all manner of cruelty . new and
divers and most singular manners such as never before seen or read of heard
of . some few of which shall be recounted below, and they do this to such a
degree that on the Island of Hispaniola, of the above three millions souls
that we once saw, today there be no more than
two hundred of those native people remaining.
The island of Cuba is almost as long as from Valladolid to
Rome; today it is almost devoid of population. The island of San Juan
[Puerto
Rico] and that of Jamaica, large and wellfavoured and lovely islands both,
have been laid waste. On the Isles of the Lucayos [Bahamas] . . . where
there were once above five hundred thousand souls, today there is not a
living creature. All were killed while being brought, and because of being
brought, to the Island of Hispaniola where the Spaniards saw that their
stock of the natives of that latter island had come to an end. . . .
Two
principal and general customs have been employed by those, calling
themselves Christians, who have passed this way, in extirpating and striking
from the face of the earth those suffering nations. The first being unjust,
cruel, bloody, and
tyrannical warfare. The other . after having slain all those who might yearn
toward or suspire after or
think of freedom, or consider escaping from the torments that they are made
to suffer, by which I mean all the native-born lords and adult males, for it
is the Spaniards’ custom in their wars to allow only young
boys and females to live . being to oppress them with the hardest, harshest,
and most heinous bondage
to which men or beasts might ever be bound into. . . .
The cause for which the Christians have slain and destroyed
so many and such infinite numbers of
souls, has been simply to get, as their ultimate end, the Indians’ gold of
them, and to stuff themselves with
riches in a very few days, and to raise themselves to high estates . without
proportion to their birth or
breeding, it should be noted . owing to the insatiable greed and ambition
that they have had, which has
been greater than any the world has ever seen before. . . [A]ll the Indians
of all the Indies never once did
aught hurt or wrong to Christians, but rather held them to be descended from
heaven, from the sky, until
many times they or their neighbours received from the Christians many acts
of wrongful harm, theft, murder,
violence, and vexation. . . .
I, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, or Casaus, friar of the order of Saint
Dominic, who by the mercy of God am here today in this court of Spain, was
persuaded by the same notable persons resident in this Court . . . to
set down an accounting of the hell that is the Indies, so that those
infinite masses of souls redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ may not die
for all eternity without any help for it, but rather know their Creator and
be saved. And by the compassion that I have for
my native land, which is Castile, I pray that God not destroy it for the
great sins committed against its faith and honour. . . .
I have great hope that the emperor and king of Spain, our
lord Don Carlos, the fifth of that name, may come to understand (for until
now the truth has always been most industriously covered over) the acts of
malice and treachery which have been and still are being done upon those
nations and lands, against the will of God and his own, and that he may
bring an end to so many evils and bring relief to that New World
which God has given him, as the lover and cultivator, as he is of justice.
They would erect long gibbets . . . and bind thirteen of the Indians at one
time, in honour and reverence, they said, of Our Redeemer and the twelve
Apostles, and put firewood around it and burn the Indians alive.
[T]he lord asked the holy father whether Christians went to
the sky. The priest replied that they did, but only those who were good. And
the cacique then said . . .that he did not desire to go to the sky, but
rather down to hell, so that he would not be where they were and would not
see such cruel people.
Another time, because the Indians did not give him a coffer
filled with gold, . . . they killed an infinite number of souls, and cut off
the hands and noses of countless women and men, and others they threw to the
savage dogs, who ate them and tore them to pieces.
1 I.e., since 1502, the year las Casas first went out to the
Indies with the expedition led by Nicolás de Ovando. Las Casas is, then,
implying that his Brevísima Relación will be based on personal experience
and observation. It should be noted that las Casas did not adopt the views
expressed in this account until 1514, twelve full years after he came to the
Indies. He was, in fact, an encomendero at first, one of those who exploited
the Indians, and it was not until he was exposed to the ideas of Antonio de
Montesinos, a Dominican who preached that the Indians were “men,” with
souls, that las Casas’ eyes were opened to the brutality of the Conquest.
[Knight & Hurley, p. 6] Univ. of Alabama Library Ortelius, Americæ sive novi
orbis, nova descriptio, Antwerp, 1570
(details)
