A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies
by Friar Bartolomé de las Casas
THE LITERARY WORK
A brief personal account written in 1542; published in Spanish (as Brevissima relación de la destrucción de las Indias) in 1552, in English in 1583.
SYNOPSIS
Bartolomé de las Casas reports to the King of Spain on the atrocities and injustices that Spanish soldiers have committed against the native people of the Americas.
Events in History at the Time the Account Takes Place
Events in History at the Time the Account Was Written
Born in Seville, Spain, in 1474, Bartolomé de las Casas was among the first wave of Spanish missionaries in the New World. From 1502 on, he lived almost continually in the New World. Although initially an owner of native slaves, he was always uneasy with the Spanish treatment of Native Americans. He experienced a spiritual turning point upon attending a sermon delivered by the Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos, which convinced him of the injustice being wrought upon native peoples of the Americas, particularly in the Caribbean. Beginning in 1511 he raised his voice on their behalf, using his power as a Dominican friar (and eventual Bishop of Chiapas) to condemn Spanish atrocities. This effort reaches its climax in A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, a renowned description of a genocidal nightmare.
Events in History at the Time the Account Takes Place
The perils of empire
When Columbus returned from his first voyage to the New World, he did more than simply reshape the European conception of the world. As profoundly as his discovery affected science and philosophy, it made its first and most devastating impact in the fields of politics and power.
In 1492 Spain was already among Europe’s principal kingdoms, wielding its power from the Netherlands to the Vatican to the Mediterranean. The news that Columbus had discovered a “New World” must have seemed like a gift from heaven: if it could exploit and export the riches of these new lands, Spain would rise, from being one kingdom among many, to undisputed preeminence in Europe. For the next century, this is precisely what happened. Competition from Portugal, France, and England was quick to arise, yet, despite this competition, by 1550 Spain was reaping the treasures of an empire that stretched from present-day California to the southernmost tip of South America. The Spanish gained wealth and power on an unprecedented scale, establishing an empire that lasted into the nineteenth century. But there was a wrinkle in the fabric of the empire: the lands that Spain had conquered were already inhabited. To benefit from the wealth of Columbus’s discoveries, Spanish settlers would have to find a way to subjugate the numerous peoples and empires of the Americas.
Today it is generally assumed that the Spaniards’ preferred method was simple, unmitigated brutality. Hernán Cortez’s conquest of the Aztecs and Francisco Pizarro’s of the Incas are only the most famous incidents in a long tragedy of greed, murder, and enslavement. There is, of course, a great deal of truth to this picture; but it is not the whole truth. Especially in the first 50 years after 1492, the Spaniards were deeply concerned that their conquest be justified, both legally and religiously. The Spanish kings, searching for a way to justify their endeavors, encouraged open debate on the subject of the Native Americans. For the first few decades, at least, it seemed possible to reconcile concern for the natives (and, especially, concern for Christianizing them) with desire for gold. This conflict is summed up in the words of Bernal Díaz, a foot soldier of the time: “We came here to serve God, and also to get rich” (Diaz in Hanke, p. 32).
A NEW WORLD?
Of course, the Western Hemisphere was “new” from the vantage point only of the Europeans, not the natives who lived there. In fact, Christopher Columbus died believing he had discovered a more efficient passage to the East Indies, not a “new” world. Subsequent voyages by Américo Vespucci confirmed that indeed Columbus had stumbled upon lands previously unknown to the Europeans, who called these lands the “Indies,” “West Indies,” or “New World.” An account in 1507 of Vespucci’s travels used “America” to designate South America and the West Indies, which others soon applied to the whole New World.
Spain’s moral dilemma cannot be separated from the very source of its so-called “right” to dominance of the New World: Christianity. In the Inter caetera, a papal bull signed May 4, 1493, Pope Alexander VI decreed that Spain could colonize the New World, as long as it conquered in the name of Jesus Christ. In other words, Spain had lawful dominion over Native Americans but was obligated to attend to its new subjects’ souls by making real efforts to convert them to Christianity. Inter caetera was not simply a hypocritical attempt to put a Christian face on naked greed. God spoke, it was widely believed, through the Pope’s mouth; failure to obey his orders meant risking damnation after death, and dire consequences for Spain in this world. (In the Short Account Las Casas repeatedly warns that Spain’s crimes against Native Americans will cause God to punish the nation.)
Thus, Spain had to answer two questions. First, and most urgently, it had to discover the most effective means of converting Native Americans to Christianity. Second, it had to decide how to justify declaring war on native peoples who refused to convert. From the modern perspective, it may seem as if the Spaniards decided simply to ignore the Pope’s edict, as the centuries of conquest would suggest. However, in the first 50 years of Spanish presence in the Americas, this serious moral dilemma led to an open, and important, debate on the nature of Native Americans and their rights under Christian law. Las Casas is only the most famous of various defenders of native peoples.
The encomienda system
As soon as they arrived in the Americas, the Spanish conquerors needed to organize a system that would begin the process of Christianization ordered by the Pope. They responded to this need in a way typical of their conflicted mixture of greed and evangelism: they created the encomienda system.
The roots of the encomienda system lay in the 1502 proclamation of Queen Isabella of Spain, which authorized the governor of Hispaniola (present-day Haiti) to “compel and force” the natives to grow crops, construct buildings, and mine gold—for a fair wage (McAllister, p. 157). This led to the creation of encomiendas: large estates whose land was owned by the Crown, but whose peoples were entrusted to a colonist, the encomendero. Encomiendas were granted to those who served the King, and encomenderos were expected to care for their natives and educate them in Christianity. In reality, as Las Casas points out repeatedly, the encomenderos exploited and even tortured native peoples, and “produced little Christianity” among them (McAllister, p. 166). Las Casas reports that natives were literally worked to death by the encomendero, and killed as soon as they were too weak to work. There were encomenderos who, to enforce discipline or discover the whereabouts of gold, had natives burned at the stake or roasted on spits. The natives were essentially slaves; along with such torture, the brutal working conditions and epidemic diseases (like smallpox) brought over by the Europeans quickly killed off the once numerous populations of the New World.
Always, the Spanish were most concerned with the mining of silver and other precious metals. Crops were grown almost solely for subsistence: mining, diving for pearls, and even conducting raids on other native tribes were the chief duties of the native workers.
Moral backlash
In 1511 an almost unknown Dominican friar named Antonio de Montesinos preached a sermon in the colonial capital of Santo Domingo (in present-day Dominican Republic). In this sermon Montesino fulminated against the slave-holding Spanish: “This voice says that you are in mortal sin, that you live and die in it, for the cruelty and tyranny you use in dealing with these innocent people. Tell me, by what right or justice do you keep these Indians in such cruel and horrible servitude?” (Montesino in Hanke, p. 17). The colonists were outraged, and demanded that Montesino be punished. But while both the head of the Dominican Order in Spain, and King Ferdinand himself, threatened to punish the rebellious preacher, the sermon led directly to the first attempt to relieve the suffering of the Indians: the Laws of Burgos.
Enacted in 1512, the Laws of Burgos attempted to normalize relations between settlers and natives. The laws did not abolish slavery, but they did regulate how much work slaves could be forced to do, how they could be punished, and how they must be treated. They also defined the slaveowners’ obligation to provide food, rest, and (most important) religious education. One of the laws prohibits a Spaniard “from calling an Indian ‘dog’ or any other name unless it is his real name” (Hanke, p. 25). The debate over the laws established the terms of the argument for the rest of the century. One side claimed that the natives were naturally servile, and could be brought to know God only by force and labor, which justified almost anything the Spanish did to keep them in line. The other side argued that, although obligated to serve the King and God, the natives were in all other respects free and equal to Spaniards, and should be treated with no more severity than any of the King’s European subjects.
THE REQUERIMIENTO
Perhaps no document better captures the conflict between the high ideals of the Spanish court and the sordid reality of conquest as practiced by the brutal Spanish soldiers, than the Requerimiento. This document was drafted in 1513, as the largest Spanish fleet yet assembled for America lay waiting in port. Designed to clarify the conditions under which the Spanish could make war on, and enslave, native peoples, it finds its justification in the Christian imperative of Inter caetera. One historian writes, “It begins with a brief history of the world since its creation and an account of the establishment of the Papacy, which leads naturally to a description of the donation by Alexander VI of ‘these isles and Tierra Firme’ to the Kings of Spain” (Hanke, p. 33). (Alexander VI is the pope who allowed Spain to settle the New World in 1493; “isles and Tierra Firme” refer to the Indies and to mainland South and Central America.) The Indians are then commanded to convert to Christianity at once, and to accept the King as their ruler. Any native who resists can be killed or enslaved.
These demands are troubling enough to modern sensibilities; but the way Spanish soldiers carried out the Requerimiento dismayed many even in the sixteenth century. Almost invariably, the document was read in Latin to uncomprehending natives. Frequently it would be read miles from a village as a sneak attack was prepared, or even from the deck of a Spanish ship. Bent on capturing Indians, soldiers on the ship would read the Requerimiento while still at sea to legalize whatever they did to the natives when they landed. In short, “the sight of Spanish swords and dogs and of their own dwellings in flames was often the first knowledge the Indians had of the presence of Christians in their midst” (Hanke, p. 34). Thinking of the Requerimiento, Las Casas said that he did not know whether he should laugh or cry.
The Laws of Burgos were an important milestone in the Conquest. For the first time, the Spanish court recognized that Native Americans had rights, and attempted to protect those rights. However, it is uncertain to what extent the laws were ever enforced. Many of the settlers were adventurers, speculators, and even convicts; they came to the New World to enjoy the kind of wealth that Spain’s rigid class structure denied them at home. Living thousands of miles from the Spanish court, many undoubtedly continued to do what they pleased.
The Laws of Burgos, then, did little to stem the everyday brutality of the Conquest. But if the Laws did not stop conquistadors from slaughtering and enslaving, neither did they quiet the increasingly vocal opponents of Spanish actions. For the next 30 years, the debate continued to rage, in letters sent between the colonies and Spain; in strife between soldiers and missionaries; and in councils held at the court city of Valladolid. Over the course of these decades, the voice of Las Casas became preeminent in the defense of the natives.
Las Casas—his moral journey
Las Casas did not come to the New World to defend its native peoples. A member of the secular clergy (as opposed to a full member of a religious order), he owned a number of Indians by 1510. He was in Hispaniola when Montesino delivered his indictment, but he was not immediately convinced. He accompanied Diego Velazquez on the latter’s invasion of Cuba in 1512, and was granted a fairly large encomienda. He prospered, but the seeds of discontent had been sown, in part by Montesino’s speech. The massacres that accompanied the conquest of Cuba haunted Las Casas; and although he treated his slaves well, he was troubled by the severity of his fellow encomenderos.
He made a decisive break with his past in 1515. Meditating on a biblical text that condemns oppression and hypocrisy, he came to believe that “everything which had been done to the Indians in the Indies was unjust and tyrannical” (Griffin in Las Casas, p. xxii). He freed his slaves and traveled to Spain, where he informed King Ferdinand of all the atrocities he had seen. From this time on, he acted as a continual thorn in the side of the Spanish settlers, by appealing to the conscience of the Spanish court. Twice, in 1521 and from 1545 to 1560, he attempted to establish peaceful, noncoercive settlements of natives and priests; these efforts eventually succumbed to the violence and turbulence of the world outside. In the case of the second settlement (called Verapaz), the missionaries started out well, but the natives in their sphere were attacked by a band of soldiers. Not differentiating among Europeans, the natives assumed the missionaries were in league with the soldiers, and, fearing massacre, the missionaries fled. More famous than these ventures was Las Casas’s writing of letters, arguments, debates, a history, a description of native cultures, and the impassioned, violent, propagandistic A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies.
New Laws of 1542—first (and last) fruits
In short, Las Casas played a part in the struggles of his time far more direct and effective than that of a mere observer. He could boast of powerful allies, especially in Spain: in 1544, despite opposition from colonists, he was named Bishop of Chiapas (in southern Mexico). The most direct evidence of his impact on the debate over the Conr quest are the New Laws, a sweeping (if only briefly enacted) reform of the Conquest, the encomienda system, and relations between colonist and native. These laws, passed in 1542 and repealed three years later, are generally considered to be at least partly the result of Las Casas’s ceaseless agitation.
At the heart of the New Laws were two main issues: the organization of the colonial government and the treatment of native peoples. The New Laws “revoked or limited the right of the Spaniards to service and tribute from Indians, who would ultimately be put under the crown and administered by paid royal officials” (Hanke, p. 83). Another law prohibited the granting of encomiendas, and stated that all present encomiendas would revert to the Crown upon the death of the present encomendero. Thus, in terms of colonial organization, the New Laws were intended to abolish the encomienda system. They were similarly radical in their treatment of Indians: they restated the Laws of Burgos in even firmer terms, outlawed the enslavement of natives in any circumstances, and provided for punishment of any encomendero who mistreated his natives.
Las Casas, who agitated for these reforms in person, must have felt both vindication and relief. By the same token, he must not have been surprised when the inevitable happened. Encomenderos from Mexico to Peru protested loudly, unanimously, and (in the end) effectively that their rights were being trampled. In 1545 the most radical of the laws relating to the encomiendas was overturned, and following years saw further regression. Although the encomienda system was crippled in the long run, in Las Casas’s time the slaveowners were the ones who won. As one historian writes, “No further attempt was made to change radically the laws and basic institutions that had been established in these fateful fifty years” (Hanke, p. 105).
Missionaries and Indians
A papal bull of 1493 allowed for the establishment of religious orders in the New World. Soon, the Franciscans, Augustinians, Jesuits, and Dominicans began to send groups across the ocean to begin evangelical activities. The Jesuits focused on native self-sufficiency and improvement through education. The Franciscans and Augustinians started the first universities. The Dominicans, Las Casas among them, recognized and emphasized the rationality of the natives and their aptitude for Christianity. Native peoples generally accepted the missionaries because of their peaceful demeanor, their acceptance of native traditions, and their skill as healers (the Franciscans in particular held this distinction). Las Casas notes that missionaries who could preach without interruption from soldiers were welcomed with open arms. However, the relationship followed a downward pattern. At first, the clergy made concessions to the natives, and learned their languages and customs in order to better preach the gospel. Focusing on children, the missionaries fostered a teacher-student relationship, but allowed native practices to continue as long as they did not breach the basic tenets of Christianity. Conflict began when priests questioned native practices such as incest and bigamy. “Initially, Indians tended to allow missionaries to get a foot in the door. Often that was followed within a generation or two by rebellion intended to expel priest and civilians alike” (Deeds, p. 78). Las Casas himself blames not the priests, but the intrusions of Spanish soldiers for the disintegration of trust and respect. On more than one occasion, he bemoans the fate of missions, like his own Verapaz, that were sabotaged by the greed of roving Spaniards. He predicts that “the Indians would turn against them [the missionaries at Verapaz] once more, especially since it was no longer possible to preach the word of God without incidents caused by the wicked Spaniards” (Las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, p. 86).
The Account in Focus
Contents summary
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies is a brief yet highly repetitious book. After three dedications (designed to secure the book a royal audience), Las Casas starts the text proper with its unvarying pattern: the description of an area and when it was conquered, followed by graphic descriptions of the brutal actions of the Spanish there. He holds to this pattern for 19 chapters, following the path of conquest from Hispaniola to Peru. While details vary from region to region, the larger picture never changes: the natives of a region were peaceful and virtuous, welcoming the Spaniards in all hospitality; the Spaniards responded with unprovoked fury, massacring, torturing, and enslaving their
HATUEY, A CUBAN LEADER
Las Casas repeatedly asserts that the Spanish in the New World have forgotten God, and now worship only gold. He compares them to Jeroboam, the Jewish king of the Old Testament book of I Kings who ordered his people to worship golden calves. To emphasize the effect this lust for wealth has on the natives, Las Casas recounts the story of Hatuey. This Arawak leader moved his people from Hispaniola (now Haiti) to Cuba, hoping to escape the terrors of the Spanish. When he learned that the Spanish were mounting an expedition to Cuba, he addressed his people. Las Casas reports the speech as follows:
“They have a God whom they worship and adore, and it is in order to get that God from us so that they can worship Him that they conquer us and kill us.” He had beside him as he spoke a basket filled with gold jewelry and he said, “Here is the God of the Christians …Mark you: if we keep this God about us, they will kill us in order to get their hands on him. Let us throw Him into this river.”
(Short Account, pp. 27-28)
Hatuey’s assumption, based on the behavior of the Spanish, was that they worshipped gold as a god and wanted to take his tribe’s gold so that they could have more to worship. Overall, the story encapsulates the tragic irony of the Conquest: the Spaniards lost all sense of devotion to Christian ethics, even though they used Christ to justify their bloody deeds. Thus, in their treatment of the natives, they emulated the demons of Christian hell, and were doomed to damnation themselves according to the terms of their own religion.
Hatuey was eventually captured and condemned to be burned alive, in an effort to save his soul, a friar explained heaven, hell, and God to him. The chief asked if Christians went to heaven, and when told that they did, he said he chose hell, so as never to have to see a Christian again.
hosts. Driven by a lust for gold and pearls, the Spaniards not only ignored their duty to spread Christianity; they also forgot how to be Christians themselves, committing the worst acts of blood lust as casually as they would eat dinner.
Las Casas uses two kinds of evidence to illustrate Spanish atrocities. The first is statistical. He estimates that at least 12 million Native Americans were killed in the first 40 years of conquest, and suggests that the real number may be closer to 15 million. He peppers his account with reports of 30,000 natives killed in a single massacre, or of whole islands depopulated in a matter of months. While such numbers are only approximate, they undoubtedly convey a sense of the grand scale of Spanish brutality. However, it is Las Casas’s other type of evidence—anecdotal—that most moves the reader. The majority of the book is taken up by tales of unconscionable violence. Las Casas reports Spaniards raping, roasting, impaling Native Americans—not only men in battle, but also women and children. He reports that Spaniards would often crowd a house with the leaders of a tribe, on the pretext of a feast, and then set the house on fire, hacking to death anyone who attempted to escape. He repeatedly deplores the vicious mastiffs trained to hunt the natives who fled into the mountains; often, he claims, Indian-hunting became a sport as popular as fox-hunting. One of the most famous incidents described by Las Casas involves four or five nobles tortured over an open fire. Their screams disturbed the Governor’s nap: he ordered the torturer to cease. But the torturer, unwilling to loose his captives, stuffed bungs in their mouths to stop their cries, and continued the torture.
Las Casas contrasts these horrors with the peacefulness and hospitality of the Indians. Here he follows a pattern common to many chroniclers and propagandists of the time: he exaggerates details to create the image of a utopia in the New World. Partly to refute those conquistadors who justified their terror by accentuating the sloth and viciousness of Native Americans, he paints a picture of the natives as nearly perfect: kind, gentle, hospitable, and ripe to hear the word of God. He writes, “These people are the most guileless, the most devoid of wickedness and duplicity, the most obedient to their native masters and to the Spanish Christians whom they serve” (Short Account, p. 28). On the few occasions in which he mentions a native rebellion, he always points out that it is more than justified by native grievances. Against this background, the greed of the Spaniards shines even darker. The Spaniards, Las Casas claims, begin their slaughters instantly, without provocation, and for no other reason than to strike terror into the hearts of the survivors. And even though those survivors remain obedient to their oppressors, their nightmare does not end. In slavery, they are worked mercilessly in gold mines or in the fields. They are chained around the neck; when a slave collapses, unable to work anymore, he is instantly beheaded so that the chain need not be broken. Perhaps most horrific is the fate of the pearl diver. These slaves lived in water from dawn until dusk, diving 30 feet and more to claw at oysters on the sea floor. Those who did not fall prey to sharks died in a few weeks anyway, as the stress of repeated diving caused fatal hemorrhaging, and the cold water caused pneumonia.
It is undeniable that the Short Account fed anti-Spanish sentiment from the 1550s until modern times. In the sixteenth century, it was translated into numerous European languages, often accompanied by lurid illustrations. The book was reprinted as recently as the Spanish American War of 1898, for purposes of propaganda. However, this denigration of Spain had nothing to do with Las Casas’s own intentions. In his time, Spain, arguably the most important country in Europe, was engaged in countless political and religious struggles with all its neighbors. Thus, the European interest in the Short Account had less to do with concern for Native Americans than with a desire to blacken Spain at any cost. Las Casas himself was motivated by a deep concern for Spain’s welfare, which he feared was threatened by the nation’s own evil actions. He gave orders that his final book (a critical history of Spain in the New World) not be published until 40 years after his death, and then only if its publication would not harm Spain in any way. The book was not published until the 1850s.
Although descriptions of these inhumanities take up the majority of the Short Account, they are not the essence of Las Casas’s narrative. He wants the bloodshed to stop; but he wants it to stop so that true Christianity can take root in the New World. Las Casas reminds his readers again and again that the natives are ready to hear the word of Christ, and that only the greed and violence of the Spanish hold them back. Even more than the hellish physical torture they suffered in this world, Las Casas laments the eternal torture natives would suffer as non-Christians. Most of them were killed before they even had a chance to hear of the faith that Las Casas believes would have assured them of heaven.
Worse, they were killed by the very people responsible for converting them. Las Casas does not doubt that the Spaniards deserve to possess the New World. He even affirms that they deserve some authority over native peoples. But this authority is based on the fact that the Spanish are Christians, and thus the authority must be exercised in a Christian way. Not only must the Spaniards attempt to gain converts; more basically, they are required to treat Native Americans as fellow human beings, entitled to life and property and protected by law and justice. Instead, Las Casas insists, the Spanish have conducted nothing more than a naked grab for power, gold, and prestige. He warns that such misdeeds destroy natives and doom the conquerors to hell; the wrongdoings also threaten to draw God’s wrath upon Spain itself. Thus, he implores the Spanish Crown to order an end to the bloodshed before it is too late.
THE BLACK LEGEND
Despite his strenuous objections to his country’s conduct in the New World, Las Casas remained a loyal subject of Spain and its King. Thus, he would have been dismayed to learn that his Short Account became the critical document in the Leyendo Negro, the Black Legend. One historian defines the Leyendo Negro as “traditional literature that criticizes the people, history, and national character of Spain, in part for cruelty in the conquest of native America, and in part for bigotry, pride, hypocrisy, and other more or less undesirable attributes” (Gibson, p. 4). The theory of the Leyenda Negra was developed by Spanish historians early in this century; invariably, they pointed to Las Casas as the first and most important figure in the creation of the legend.
The great debate of Sepúlveda and Las Casas
Deep behind Las Casas’s assertion of Native American nobility lies what was, for European Christians, a debatable question: what kind of humans were the newly discovered peoples? For Las Casas and his supporters, the answer was simply that Native Americans were human, and lacked only knowledge of Christ to make them equal to Europeans. This side seems to have been supported by Pope Paul Ill’s 1537 bull Sublimis Deus, which declared that Indians were created by God with human souls. However, the situation was more complex. Other clerics and lawyers, finding support in Aristotle and some Church Fathers, advanced a more negative view of Indians. (In Politics, Aristotle speculates that there may be in the world “natural slaves,” or humans so base and ignorant that they are fit only to serve better humans.) Without denying the natives’ basic humanity, these clerics and lawyers propounded a view of the natives as vicious, animalistic humans. The Native Americans, they argued, were slaves by nature; the only way for Spaniards to convert them was to drag them forcibly from their own sloth. These two sides waged a running battle throughout the first half of the sixteenth century, beginning with the debate over the Laws of Burgos. One of the most famous incidents in this battle was the debate between Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, the chaplain to the King of Spain. This debate took place in 1551 in the Junta of Valladolid, a kind of court for judging grievances and points of law in Valladolid, Spain. Although it had little practical effect on Spain’s policies, the debate stands as a cultural and historical lightning rod. One historian writes, “For the first time in history, a nation and her king initiated discussions concerning the justice of a war that was being waged” (Losada, p. 279). In addition, his experience in the Junta seems to have prompted Las Casas to publicly print his Short Account the following year. It had been read to the King in 1542, but apparently the friar now came to realize that it needed a wider audience.
The debate was extremely intellectual, but it originated as much in personal grudges as in Aristotelean theory. In 1548 Sepúlveda’s book The Second Démocrates; Or, the Just Causes of the War Against the Indians was refused the royal license that all books in Spain needed before publication. Sepúlveda suspected, probably correctly, that Las Casas had campaigned to have his book refused. Sepúlveda complained to the Council of the Indies, which organized a debate between the two men in 1550. This was not a debate in modern terms: the two men were never in the same room at the same time. They took turns, several months apart, presenting their cases to a panel of judges, and then replying to a summary of the other’s arguments.
Each session filled several days of long, abstract, highly learned arguments. But the basic argument was simple. Sepúlveda claimed that the Indians were the natural slaves hypothesized by Aristotle: this class of people was fit only to serve better people. War against the natives was justified, because only by war could they be forced to accept Christianity. Finally, war was urgently needed to end the vile practices of cannibalism, human sacrifice, and idolatry that Sepúlveda claimed were endemic to South America. All of his more rarefied philosophical arguments boiled down to the belief that the natives were “homunculi in whom hardly a vestige of humanity remains … pigs with their eyes always fixed on the ground” (Sepúlveda in Las Casas, p. xxviii).
Las Casas’s reply was equally simple; but, in the process of making it, he advanced a number of ideas that were remarkably progressive, and all but unspeakably radical for his time. His first complaint was that Sepúlveda, who had never been to the New World, relied for his knowledge of the Indians on the accounts of conquistadors and slaveowners. Thus, he himself, Las Casas, is eminently more qualified to judge the nature of the natives. He rejects the assertion of their natural slavery first by his own reading of Aristotle, and then by recourse to his personal experience. According to Aristotle, says Las Casas, the number of humans who fall in the category of natural slaves is very small; Native Americans are too numerous and prosperous to fit this category. In other words, they are not natural slaves. They therefore deserve the same rights of sovereignty that Aristotle says should be given to all peoples, even those that are conquered. Las Casas asserts that war is justified only in extreme circumstances, and that nothing in America has met those circumstances. Most startling, he offers a defense of native practices that foreshadows the cultural relativism of modern times. He admits that cannibalism and human sacrifice exist, although he denies their prevalence; but he also argues that even these horrendous practices do not justify slaughter.
Clearly one cannot prove in a short time or with a few words to infidels, especially the Indians, that to sacrifice men to God is contrary to nature; consequently neither anthropophagy nor human sacrifice constitutes just cause for making war… . [T]hey are not obliged to abandon the religion of their forefathers until they come to know another which they find better.
(Las Casas in Losada, p. 297)
The answer, as always for Las Casas, is peaceful preaching.
The Junta was remarkably inconclusive. It did not affect Spanish policy in the least. Both sides claimed victory; although, inasmuch as Sepulveda’s book was never licensed, he was perhaps the loser. Exactly what prompted Las Casas to publish his own book the following year is uncertain. He may have felt the time was ripe for swaying public opinion, that given the debate, he would be striking at a moment when the Court was favorably disposed to his view. In any case, his book was licensed in 1552.
Literary context
Las Casas’s book is at once unique and extremely traditional. His boldness in criticizing his own country’s policies, and especially his recognition of Native American culture and achievement, are fairly unusual. In addition, his courage in pressing his complaint to the King, and eventually even publishing his book, are noteworthy. However, precisely because Las Casas is so well remembered, it is easy to forget that he did not operate alone. A fairly large group of clerics, both in the New World and in Spain, agreed with him, including, for example, Fray Juan Fernandez de Angulo, Marcos de Niza, and Juan del Valle. Las Casas was always the most vocal, but never the only, proponent of Indian rights. And, inasmuch as his complaints frequently found a sympathetic royal ear, we may conclude that all but his most radical assertions played on the conscience of the Spanish court. In other words, he was simply expressing unequivocally an issue that the court was concerned with in a more ambivalent way: the justice of its actions in the Americas. To understand this, it is necessary to remember an aspect of sixteenth-century Spain that is all but forgotten now: its obsession with legalism. This was a country in which a powerful, politically vital fleet was held in port for weeks while lawyers drafted the Requerimiento; a country in which the court would listen to the most subtle philosophical and religious arguments for days on end. It is in this context that Las Casas tendered his Short Account. In many ways, his thought prefigures that of the twentieth century; in just as many ways, it would have been at home in the twelfth century. Las Casas was heir to a long tradition of extremely sophisticated argumentation, developed by scholars from Aristotle to St. Thomas Aquinas, and practiced with the utmost sincerity by a whole class of clerics and lawyers.
Events in History at the Time the Account Was Written
After the New Laws of 1542
For an all too brief period after the New Laws of 1542, it must have seemed as if the disastrous side-effects of the Conquest could be reversed: Spain appeared to have come to its senses and to be accentuating the more altruistic side of its mission to the New World. It was a tack that would last only as long as it took the colonists to remind the King of their importance, both as subjects and as creators of wealth. The sections of the New Laws that regulated treatment of natives were never revoked, but the central laws that might have permanently altered the situation (such as the abolition of encomiendas or the punishment of abusive slaveowners) were. Las Casas lived his last decades without being rewarded for his efforts. He continued to agitate and wrote two voluminous scholarly books on the New World. But as the tumultuous sixteenth century drew to a close, it became increasingly apparent that the Conquest would follow, if in a somewhat mitigated fashion, the furious pattern of its first half century. In the end, the encomienda system would expire, not because of Las Casas’s efforts, but rather because of the greed of the settlers themselves—native populations dwindled and the precious metals dried up, becoming harder to find.
Impact
In retrospect, however, Las Casas was hardly a failure. His effect on the course of Spain’s endeavors cannot be overstated. Ironically, the man who spent his life vindicating the humanity of Native Americans has become, for history, the figure who vindicates the humanity of Spaniards. Without his presence, an already black history would appear utterly bleak. He has been called the true conscience of the Conquest: “For many, both in Spain and beyond, his presence seems, somehow, to redeem the inescapable complicity of all Europe in the Spanish conquest” (Griffin in Las Casas, p. xiii). This is undoubtedly overstated: nothing can erase the slaughter of the conquistadors. But his memory should remind modern readers that, however sad the actual events of the Conquest are, for at least a little while Europe was able to pause and consider the injustice and impropriety of its invasion. Its motives were never simple, unalloyed greed.
Since his death, Las Casas’s reputation has grown in Latin America and elsewhere. He was the unwitting servant of anti-Spanish propagandists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During South America’s wars of independence from Spain in the nineteenth century, he was often cited as a prophetic figure, one who insisted on the rights of indigenous peoples to govern themselves. Even today, as much of Latin America struggles with the long after-effects of colonialism, he is cited in this regard. His insistence on the virtues of peace, humility, and poverty have made him a hero to many liberation theologians—those modern Christians who attempt to reconcile Christianity with social justice. He is, in brief, one of those writers whose memory looms so large not only because of what he wrote, but also because of how he lived. The eighteenth-century French philosopher Denis Diderot proposed a statue of Las Casas whose legend would read: “In a century of ferocity, Las Casas, whom you see before you, was a benevolent man” (Diderot in Las Casas, p. xiv). It is a simple statement of an almost impossible feat for the time. Las Casas achieved it through personal action, eloquent debate, and largely through writing.
—Soraya Alamdari and Jacob Littleton
For More Information
Biermann, Benno M. “Bartolomé de Las Casas and Verapaz.” In Bartolomé de Las Casas and History. Ed. Juan Friede and Benjamin Keen. DeKalb:Northern Illinois Press, 1971.
Deeds, Susan M. “Indigenous Responses to Mission Settlement in Nueva Vizcaya.” In The New Latin American Mission History. Ed. Erick Langer and Robert H. Jackson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
Gibson, Charles. The Black Legend: Anti-Spanish Attitudes in the Old World and the New. New York:Alfred A. Knopf, 1971.
Hanke, Lewis. The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America. Boston: Little, Brown, 1965.
Keen, Benjamin. Essays in the Intellectual History of Colonial Latin Amenca. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1998.
Las Casas, Bartolomé de. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Trans. Nigel Griffin. London: Penguin, 1992.
Losada, Angel. “The Controversy Between Sepúlveda and Las Casas in the Junta of Valladolid.” In Bartolomé de Las Casas in History.Ed. Juan Friede and Benjamin Keen. DeKalb: Northen Illinois Press, 1971.
McAllister, Lyle N. Spain and Portugal in the New World, 1492-1700. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.