For fifty years, the sixteenth-century Spanish missionary Bartolomé de
Las Casas fought the inhumane treatment of the native people of the
New World by Europeans. His book, A Brief Account of the Destruction
of the Indies (1552), is an eyewitness account of life in the early Spanish
settlements of the West Indies.
Las Casas’s father was a merchant who sailed on Christopher
Columbus’s second voyage to the New World in 1493. He acquired
property in Hispaniola (an island in the Caribbean Sea). The younger
Las Casas was born in 1474. While his father traveled, he remained in
Spain, studying theology and law in Madrid.
Joins Spanish colonists on Hispaniola
Around 1502, Las Casas traveled to Hispaniola to live. Fascinated by the
native people of the island, the young man studied their cultures and languages. Despite his understanding of the natives, Las Casas used the
native Hispaniolans as slave workers to farm the land his father had given
him. He saw nothing wrong with this practice.
The Spanish believed that because Columbus had conquered
Hispaniola, the land and its people belonged to Spain. Queen Isabella
(1451–1504) of Spain agreed that the native people should be put to
work, but she also ordered the Spanish settlers to convert the natives to
the Catholic faith and to teach them to read and write. The explorers and
settlers, however, were more interested in gold and treasures than in converting the native people to the Catholic religion. In their greed, the
explorers enslaved the natives to work in mines and on their farms. Las
Casas shared their desire for riches.
The Spaniards disrupted the native Hispaniolans’ hunting and foodgathering practices, causing famine among the tribes. They also brought
to the New World diseases against which the native people had no natural defenses. Thousands died of smallpox, measles, and influenza. The
natives tried to fight against the Spanish invasion of their lands, but their
primitive bows and arrows were no match for the swords of the Spaniards mounted on horseback. Hundreds of thousands of natives
died each year. Those who remained were quickly enslaved.
Comes to new understanding of native people
Most Spaniards gave no thought to the world they were destroying.
Gradually, however, some recognized the suffering of the natives and
began to speak out against the injustice. In 1514, while reading a passage
in the Bible, Las Casas suddenly realized the horror of the Spanish brutality toward the native people.
Las Casas gave up his land, freed his slaves, and began delivering
sermons to the Spanish settlers to try to stop the injustice. He traveled
back and forth to Spain to report to its rulers the suffering of the native
peoples.
In 1520, King Charles I (1500–1558) of Spain granted Las Casas,
who had become a bishop, some land to set up peaceful, free villages
where native Hispaniolans could live and work with Spanish peasants.
Under Las Casas’s plan, the peasant families were to instruct the native
people in European systems of farming and wage earning, as well as in
Catholicism. The experiment quickly failed when the native
Hispaniolans rebelled and the peasants deserted to join the other
colonists. Las Casas, discouraged, returned to Spain and isolated himself
in a monastery for nearly ten years.
During his stay at the monastery, Las Casas began working on his
book, A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, which was not published until 1552. The book described the cruelties the native peoples
had suffered after the Spanish had arrived in the New World. While in
Spain in 1542, Las Casas read some of the passages of his as yet unfinished book to King Charles. The ruler was shocked by the terrible stories
of native women raped in front of their husbands, of native children
thrown into rushing rivers, and of young men slowly burned alive—all
inflicted by the Spanish. At least partly because of the book’s affect on
him, in 1542 King Charles established the New Laws, which prohibited
the future enslavement of native Hispaniolans and gave guidelines for
the proper treatment of those already working for Spanish landowners.
(See Encomienda System.) But under pressure from outraged settlers,
the New Laws were repealed in 1545.
Las Casas continued to fight on behalf of native Hispaniolans for the
rest of his life. His book, translated into English, French, Dutch,
German, and Italian, was read throughout Europe.