A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

Summary

A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias) is a passionate report by the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas on the cruelty of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. He wrote it in 1542 for the future King Philip II and the royal court, and he printed it at Seville in 1552. The English translation used here was published in London in 1689; like several Protestant editions of the time, it was given a hostile anti-Catholic title, which this library omits. Las Casas describes the peoples of the Indies as gentle, simple and ready to receive the Christian faith, and the conquerors as wolves among sheep. He moves region by region: Hispaniola, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Jamaica, the mainland coasts, Nicaragua, New Spain (Mexico), Guatemala, Venezuela, Florida, the Río de la Plata, Peru and New Granada. In each he reports massacres, enslavement, forced labour in the mines and pearl fisheries, torture of chiefs to extract gold, and the destruction of whole populations. He blames above all the greed for gold and the system of encomienda, which gave Spanish settlers the labour of native villages. The book is not a neutral history. Las Casas wrote to persuade the king to enforce the New Laws of 1542, which limited the encomienda and forbade the enslavement of Indians, and he probably exaggerated some numbers. Yet many of the abuses he records are confirmed by other sources, and he writes as an eyewitness of events in the Caribbean. He judges the conquest by the law of God and by the Christian duty to win souls through peace and preaching, not war. The Short Account was translated into Dutch, French, English, German and Latin, often with engravings, and Spain's rivals used it to attack Spanish rule. In Spain it fed a long debate over the justice of the conquest, including the disputation of 1550–1551 at Valladolid between Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. Las Casas himself had once proposed bringing African slaves to relieve the Indians, an idea he later repented as equally unjust. His book remains a powerful early witness to human rights grounded in the belief that all people are made by God. Content note: many passages describe killing, torture and cruelty to women and children in graphic terms.

Top Lessons

• Speaking for the oppressed

  Las Casas used his voice and position to defend people who could not appeal to the king themselves. Christians are called to speak for the voiceless.

• Every person made by God

  Las Casas insists that the native peoples are fully human, made by God and capable of faith. This belief underlies the idea of universal human rights.

• Repentance

  Las Casas had once been a slaveholder and later regretted proposing African slavery. His life shows a conscience that kept growing.

• Reading a passionate source

  The book was written to persuade, and its numbers may be exaggerated. Careful readers ask how far a source can be trusted.

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