Information and Plan!

1. de las Casas had travelled in 1502 to La Española, a Caribbean island now known as Haiti and the
Dominican Republic, which at the time was inhabited by the indigenous Taínos people. On
landing, the Spanish settlers already on shore reportedly told the new arrivals, ‘The Island is
doing well, because much gold is being mined.’ (You can pick one day when he arrived the
place and saw the brutality going on for the first few weeks)
2. It is thought that when the conquistadors arrived in the Americas, there were 100 million
inhabitants. 90% died on contact, many succumbing to diseases, to which they had no
immunity, brought in by the Europeans.
AND THEN
Those who didn’t die from imported diseases were treated with ‘strange cruelty’ by the
aggressive invaders. They fed Indian babies to dogs, hunted adults for sport and roasted men
alive. ‘They think no more of killing ten or twenty Indians for a pastime, or to test the sharpness
of their swords,’ wrote de las Casas, continuing:
One day … the Spanish dismembered, beheaded or raped 3,000 Indian people. They cut off the
legs of the children that ran before them. They poured people full of boiling soup. I saw all the
above things … and numberless others.’ (First citiation
https://www.survivalinternational.org/articles/3208-bartolome do also mention that how it
was effecting de le casas. Like imagine you seeing it live! And what you though)
3. Though the Spanish carried the Requerimiento – a royal document that outlined Spain’s divinely
ordained right to sovereignty – into every battle, de las Casas believed that spreading the word
of God was largely a ruse: an expedient mask. Ambition, not altruism, was the driving force;
gold, not God, was their goal. (feelings shifted)
4. He believed that the conquistadors slashed and slaughtered their way like ‘ravening wild beasts’
across the ‘New World’ not solely in homage to Christ, but to ‘swell themselves with riches’. He
suspected they had crossed the Atlantic not only to spread the word of the Lord, but to find the
gold that washed through the rivers of Amazonia and the minerals that lay beneath their
rampaging feet. ‘Our work,’ de las Casas said, ‘was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and
destroy.’ The conquistadors destroyed lives and lands, and they told the Indians that to save
their souls, they would need to become Christians.
5. Revolted by the hypocrisy of men who proclaimed pious inspiration while distributing the
horrors of hell, he was also influenced by a group of Dominican preachers who asked the
conquistadors, ‘Tell me, by what right do you hold these Indians in such a cruel and horrible
servitude? Are they not men?
6. De las Casas reformed his views, giving up his Indian slaves around 1515, and set about exposing
the lies. He felt morally bound to inform the Spanish court what was being carried out in the
name of Christ.
7. These truths, which became extensive writings about the mistreatment of the Indians – one of
the most famous being A Short Account of The Destruction of the Indies – were instrumental in
prompting King Charles V to issue his ‘New Laws’ in 1542, which abolished slavery and the
encomienda system, and resulted in the liberation of thousands of slaves.