History of George Washington
Bartolome de Las Casas, The Tears of the
Indians
A particularly eloquent defender of the Amerindians was Bartolome de Las Casas
(1474-1566), who spent most of his long life in Spanish America. In The Tears of the Indians, also published as A Short History of the Destruction of the Indies, Las
Casas described in graphic detail the atrocities inflicted on the Amerindians. His account greatly exaggerated the number of Amerindians killed by the Spaniards; disease, for which the Amerindians had no immunity, not Spanish mistreatment, was the principal reason for the decimation of the native population. Las Casas' appeals were instrumental in stimulating reforms by the Spanish throne, but the distance separating Spain from her possessions in the New World often prevented effective enforcement of these reforms. In the following excerpt from The Tears of the Indians, Las Casas recounts the brutal behavior of the Spaniards toward the native inhabitants of Hispaniola whom he described as a people "devoid of wickedness and duplicity ... or desire for vengeance."
On the Island Hispaniola was where the Spaniards first landed, as I have said. Here those Christians perpetrated their first ravages and oppressions against the native peoples. This was the first land in the New World to be destroyed and depopulated by the Christians, and here they began their subjection of the women and children, taking them away from the Indians to use them and ill use them, eating the food they provided with their sweat and toil. The Spaniards did not content themselves with what the Indians gave them of their own free will, according to their ability, which was always too little to satisfy enormous appetites, for a Christian eats and consumes in one day an amount of food that would suffice to feed three houses inhabited by ten Indians for one month. And they committed other acts of force and violence and oppression which made the Indians realize that these men had not
come
Indians
A particularly eloquent defender of the Amerindians was Bartolome de Las Casas
(1474-1566), who spent most of his long life in Spanish America. In The Tears of the Indians, also published as A Short History of the Destruction of the Indies, Las
Casas described in graphic detail the atrocities inflicted on the Amerindians. His account greatly exaggerated the number of Amerindians killed by the Spaniards; disease, for which the Amerindians had no immunity, not Spanish mistreatment, was the principal reason for the decimation of the native population. Las Casas' appeals were instrumental in stimulating reforms by the Spanish throne, but the distance separating Spain from her possessions in the New World often prevented effective enforcement of these reforms. In the following excerpt from The Tears of the Indians, Las Casas recounts the brutal behavior of the Spaniards toward the native inhabitants of Hispaniola whom he described as a people "devoid of wickedness and duplicity ... or desire for vengeance."
On the Island Hispaniola was where the Spaniards first landed, as I have said. Here those Christians perpetrated their first ravages and oppressions against the native peoples. This was the first land in the New World to be destroyed and depopulated by the Christians, and here they began their subjection of the women and children, taking them away from the Indians to use them and ill use them, eating the food they provided with their sweat and toil. The Spaniards did not content themselves with what the Indians gave them of their own free will, according to their ability, which was always too little to satisfy enormous appetites, for a Christian eats and consumes in one day an amount of food that would suffice to feed three houses inhabited by ten Indians for one month. And they committed other acts of force and violence and oppression which made the Indians realize that these men had not
come