Bartholomew De Las Cases

ON TH E D E ST R U CT IO N OF
T H E IN DI ES
1 5 4 0S




------------------- Bartolomé de Las Casas -------------------


The Spanish quicklyconquered the land and people of the Caribbean in the 16th
century through military force and European diseases. In 1542, the Spanish
missionary Bartolomé de Las Casas wrote this description of the brutaltreatment
of Native Americans forced to mine gold for the Spanish. It was part of his attempt
to convince the Spanish court to improve the treatment of native peoples under Spanish rule.


T H I N K TH R O U G H HI S T O R Y : Recognizing Bias
How does this account reflect de Las Casas's beliefs about the purposes of Spanish
colonization in the New World?------------------------------------------------------------


The Indies were discovered in the year 1492. The year following, Spanish
Christians went to inhabit them, so that it is since forty-nine years that numbers of Spaniards havegone there: and the first land, that they invaded to inhabit, was the
large and most delightful isle of Hispaniola, which has a circumference of 600 leagues.
There are numberless other islands, andvery large ones...that were all—and we have seen it—as inhabited and full of their native Indian peoples as any country in
the world. Of the continent...more than 10,000 leagues of maritime coasthave
been discovered, and more is discovered every day; all that has been discovered up
to the year 1549 is full of people, like a hive bees.(
Among these gentle sheep...the Spaniards entered...likewolves, tigers, and lions
which had been starving for many days, and since forty years they have done
nothing else; nor do they otherwise at the present day, than outrage, slay, afflict, torment, anddestroy them.(To such extremes has this gone that, whereas there
were more than 3 million souls, whom we saw in Hispaniola, there are today, not 200 of the native population left.
The island of Cuba...