Las Casas' Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies
Uploaded by Brown6857 on Feb 06, 2001
Bartolome’ De Las Casas stated that “those who have traveled to this part of the world pretending to be Christians have uprooted these pitiful peoples and wiped them from the face of the earth (Las Casas, 12). After reading the horrific accounts of what has occurred to those “unassuming, long suffering, unassertive and submissive” peoples of the Indies that “are with out without malice or guile, and are utterly faithful and obedient both to their own native lords and to the Spainards in whose service they now find themselves” (Las Casas, 10). As a god-fearing man of the priesthood, I utterly deplore the use of my Christian faith as a ruse of the Spaniards in the Indies to justify their agenda of greed and destruction.
It is my personal inclination that the text I have just read finds it’s way into the hands of all the peoples of Spain, in hopes that they to agree that our men in the Indies to have “lost all fear of God, all love of their sovereign and all sense of self-respect” (42). In belief that with their support our Prince Phillip will find a means to regulate the activities in the Americas and put an end to the hardships of her natives and possibly unearth a way to avenge the use of his good name, country and faith for such a merciless show of power. As for those Conquistadors who possess sin filled hearts and who have taken so many innocent lives, they must “wait until the Day of Judgment when all shall be made clear and God will come to punish the wickedness and atrocious behaviour towards the inhabitants of the New World of men masquerading as Christians” (Las Casas, 90).