Columbus Statue Motion For Recusal

______________________________
ITALIAN SONS AND :

DAUGHTERS OF AMERICA, : COURT OF COMMON PLEAS
: ALLEGHENY COUNTY
:
Plaintiff, :
: Docket No. GD-20-010732
v. :
:
CITY OF PITTSBURGH :
and :
MAYOR WILLIAM PEDUTO, : HONORABLE JOHN T. MCVAY, JR.
:
Defendants. :
______________________________:
ORDER
AND NOW on this _____________ day of _______________, 2020, upon consideration
of Plaintiff’s Motion to Recuse, and any opposition thereto, it is hereby ORDERED that said
Motion is GRANTED;
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that this matter shall be reassigned to another Judge
within the Court of Common Pleas, Allegheny County.
BY THE COURT:
______________________________
Hon. John T. McVay, Jr.
BOCHETTO & LENTZ, P.C.
By: George Bochetto, Esquire
David P. Heim, Esquire
Attorney I.D. # 27783, 84323
1524 Locust Street
Philadelphia, PA 19102
215.735.3900
gbochetto@bochettoandlentz.com
dheim@bochettoandlentz.com Attorneys for Plaintiff
______________________________
ITALIAN SONS AND :
DAUGHTERS OF AMERICA, : COURT OF COMMON PLEAS
: ALLEGHENY COUNTY
:
Plaintiff, :
: Docket No. GD-20-010732
v. :
:
CITY OF PITTSBURGH :
and :
MAYOR WILLIAM PEDUTO, : HONORABLE JOHN T. MCVAY, JR.
:
Defendants. :
______________________________:
PLAINTIFF’S MEMORANDUM OF LAW IN SUPPORT OF ITS

MOTION FOR RECUSAL OF THE HONORABLE JOHN T. MCVAY
Plaintiff, Italian Sons and Daughters of America (“ISDA”), by and through undersigned
counsel, respectfully submit this Memorandum of Law in support of Plaintiff’s Motion for Recusal
of The Honorable John T. McVay (“Judge McVay”) from the instant action and order that this
case be reassigned:
I. INTRODUCTION
Jurists must recuse themselves when their continued involvement in a case creates even the
mere appearance of impropriety. In this case, Judge McVay has entered an extraordinary Order
that promotes an inaccurate recitation of history and improperly contextualizes this lawsuit in
history, casting Christopher Columbus in a bad light, all of which prejudices Plaintiff’s position
for reasons unsupported by the record and perhaps personal to Judge McVay.
The October 30, 2020 Order entered by this Court creates an appearance of bias and leads
Plaintiff to question Judge McVay’s impartiality in this action. The Order draws comparisons
between statues of Christopher Columbus and those of Confederate generals. The Order also
suggests that the atrocities of racism, slavery and discrimination should be the precepts by which
Christopher Columbus’s legacy is to be judged and the determining factors as to whether the Statue
should remain at Schenley Park.1 The comparisons and proposed considerations prompted by the
Order do not belong in this action.
This action is premised strictly on legal grounds that demand adjudication from an
impartial tribunal, which fairly applies the applicable law to the facts of record. To date,
Christopher Columbus’s legacy has not been an issue in this action. Now, however, by Court fiat,
Columbus’s legacy has become front and center. Concerning to Plaintiff is that the Court adopts
its own beliefs as to what considerations belong in the settlement discussions surrounding this
action and those beliefs are based on demonstrably false and biased recitations of history that are
swiftly disproven by the primary sources of Columbus’s time.
What’s more, the Order goes to great lengths to contextualize this lawsuit within history in
what appears to be an effort to liken Plaintiff’s position with the “Lost Cause” response to
Reconstruction efforts during the Jim Crow era to erect statues of Confederate generals. The
Court’s attempt to contextualize this action in history is inappropriate and displays its bias.
1
See Court Order, attached hereto as Exhibit “A.”
2
A Judge is required to not only remain unbiased but also avoid even the mere appearance
of bias. Here, Judge McVay’s Order attempts to give Defendants the moral high ground by
referencing what he believes to be the accurate historical precedent and, consequently, instructing
the parties as to how settlement discussions should proceed based on that biased view.
Whether Judge McVay intended to convey such bias is irrelevant. Objectively, Judge
McVay’s Order gives the appearance of bias by unnecessarily introducing his personal views,
attempting to contextualize this lawsuit in history by drawing parallels between statues of
Christopher Columbus and those of Confederate generals and erroneously linking the legacy of
Christopher Columbus with racism, discrimination and slavery. This action has been strictly based
on the City and Mayor’s violations of the Constitution, statues, regulations and ordinances of this
Commonwealth and the City of Pittsburgh. Judge McVay’s Order, however, introduced his
personal views on the lawsuit. Accordingly, Plaintiff submits that Judge McVay must recuse
himself from this action and order reassignment to a different judge.
II. DISCUSSION
A. Legal Standard
“A judge shall disqualify himself or herself in any proceeding in which the judge’s
impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” 207 Pa. Code Judicial Conduct Rule 2.11(A).
Importantly, governing tribunals of this Commonwealth “must not only be unbiased, but must
avoid even the appearance of bias.” In the Interest of McFall, 617 A.2d 707, 713 (Pa. 1992)
(quoting Horn v. Twp. of Hilltown, 337 A.2d 858, 859-60 (Pa. 1975)) (emphasis added). The rule
is simple: “disqualification of a judge is mandated whenever a ‘significant minority of the lay
community could reasonably question the court’s impartiality.’” Commonwealth v. Bryant, 476
A.2d 422, 425 (Pa. Super. 1984) (quoting Commonwealth v. Darush, 459 A.2d 727, 732 (Pa.
3
1983)). To be sufficient for disqualification, a bias must be a personal one arising outside the four
corners of the courtroom. Commonwealth v. Druce, 796 A.2d 321, 327 (Pa. Super. 2002).
Druce and Bryant make clear that disqualification is necessary where there is evidence of
bias or prejudice, or where there is evidence tending to show an appearance of bias or prejudice.
See Druce, 796 A.2d at 327; Bryant, 476 A.2d at 426; see also Rizzo v. Haines, 555 A.2d 58, 72
(Pa. 1989); Reilly v. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transp. Auth., 489 A.2d 1291, 1299 (Pa. 1985).
Indeed, it is axiomatic that “[t]he appearance of bias or prejudice can be as damaging to public
confidence in the administration of justice as would be the actual presence of either of these
elements.” McFall, 617 A.2d at 713; see also Joseph v. Scranton Times L.P., 987 A.2d 633, 636
(Pa. 2009) (per curiam) (holding that where appearance of judicial impropriety has been
established, no showing of actual prejudice is required).
In considering a recusal request, the jurist must first make a conscientious

determination of his or her ability to assess the case in an impartial manner, free of
personal bias or interest in the outcome. The jurist must then consider whether his
or her continued involvement in the case creates an appearance of impropriety
and/or would tend to undermine public confidence in the judiciary. This is a
personal and unreviewable decision that only the jurist can make. Where a jurist
rules that he or she can hear and dispose of a case fairly and without prejudice, that
decision will not be overruled on appeal but for an abuse of discretion. In reviewing
a denial of a disqualification motion, we recognize that our judges are honorable,
fair and competent.
Commonwealth v. Abu-Jamal, 720 A.2d 79, 89 (Pa. 1998) (emphasis added).
B. The Preamble to the Order Demonstrates Bias by the Court
Judge McVay’s extraordinary Order manifests a bias that arises outside the four corners of
the courtroom. Unprompted, Judge McVay sympathizes and bolsters an erroneous and biased
recitation of history in his Order that cuts against Plaintiff’s case and, at a bare minimum, gives
the appearance that he is prejudiced against Plaintiff’s position.
4
Particularly, Judge McVay draws upon his father’s teachings in what appears to be an effort
to liken Plaintiff’s position in this action to protect the Christopher Columbus Statue at Schenley
Park to the “Lost Cause” response of commissioning Confederate general statues during the Jim
Crow era. Specifically, Judge McVay’s Order states:
My father, a career high school history teacher and lifelong reader of history, taught
me at an early age that the commissioning of Confederate generals statues in the
Jim Crow south was part of the “Lost Cause” response to Reconstruction efforts
and often intended as symbols of white supremacy, while the federal governments
commissioning of military bases, and battleships commemorating the Confederacy
and the placement of Confederate figures in the halls of Congress were at least by
some, motivated by an intent to heal the nation.
See Court Order, attached hereto as Exhibit “A.”
Judge McVay further introduces his personal and extraneous views by stating that:
The fate of the Christopher Columbus statue should be determined after all
concerns are fully expressed and heard with an intent to reach a common ground
that reflects Pittsburgh and its pride in being a diverse and welcoming community.
However, this must be done while recognizing the good and bad that comes with
statues depicting historical figures. While acknowledging that historical figures are
people and necessarily come with heroic qualities along with character flaws,
nonetheless, racism, slavery and prejudice must always be condemned and rejected
by our city. Discrimination has and continues to exist. Indigenous people and the
immigrants who followed have all unfortunately shared that experience, none of
which should be acceptable to a community striving for better.
Id.
Plaintiff wholeheartedly stands with Judge McVay in his condemnation of racism, slavery,
prejudice and discrimination of all kinds against all people. However, the Court’s Order is the first
time in this action that the legacy of Christopher Columbus was raised. Before the Order was
issued, this lawsuit was premised entirely on the Constitution, statues, regulations and ordinances
of this Commonwealth and the City of Pittsburgh that Defendants have been flouting in their
efforts to remove the Columbus Statue at Schenley Park. Thus, the Court’s introduction of
extraneous and erroneous opinions bespeaks bias.
5
For context, Judge McVay’s decision to issue an Order that requests the parties conciliate
was discussed at length during a status conference on October 29, 2020. However, at no point
during the status conference – or at any time prior – was Christopher Columbus’s legacy at issue.
Then, the Court issued the instant Order, taking it upon itself to contextualize this lawsuit in history
while adding credence to patently false accusations against Christopher Columbus. The Court
effectively gave Defendants the moral high ground based on an incorrect understanding of
Columbus’s legacy. Candidly, the Court’s Order carries a tone more akin to a political declaration
or press release than an impartial court decree. An Order of this nature is worrisome to Plaintiff
since it clearly demonstrates some form of bias by the tribunal in favor of Defendants’ position.
While Judge McVay’s intentions of urging conciliation may be pure, the Order gives the
appearance that he is biased against Plaintiff’s stance and effort to preserve Columbus’ legacy.
Accordingly, Plaintiff respectfully requests that Judge McVay recuse himself from this action.
C. Christopher Columbus According to the Facts
In Judge McVay’s Order, he instructs the parties to conciliate and in doing so, to consider
the atrocities of racism, slavery and discrimination that he contends belong in the settlement
discussions in this action. This Court’s stated belief that Christopher Columbus and his legacy are
at odds with the indigenous people and immigrants is demonstrably false and unfounded in the
primary sources that document Christopher Columbus’s life and voyages. Stanford Professor
Emeritus Carol Delaney, who left her tenured university position to dedicate ten years of her life
to travel the world in the study of Columbus artifacts, agrees that all the tired calumny repeatedly
charged against Christopher Columbus is simply a collection of lies. “[H]e’s been terribly
6
maligned,” she wrote of Columbus, by revisionists who are “blaming [him] for things he didn’t
do.”2
This Court (and likely Defendants) derives its inaccurate recitation of history about
Christopher Columbus from a single, secondary source: Howard Zinn’s polemic, A People’s
History of the United States. Zinn’s A People’s History repeatedly mistranslated and quoted out of
context earlier sources. 3 Zinn relied extensively on the writings of Comendador Francisco de
Bobadilla, a conquistador recalled by the Crown from the Reconquista and sent to the West Indies,
and who actually committed the atrocities Christopher Columbus is wrongly blamed for.4
Bobadilla published libelous claims against Columbus in an effort to unseat him as
governor of the West Indies and usurp the position for himself. Columbus defeated the claims in
2
Carol Delaney, Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem (Sept. 20, 2011); Robert Petrone,
Christopher Columbus is the greatest hero of the 15th & 16th centuries (pt. I): Introduction, Broad
+ Liberty (Sept. 14, 2020), https://broadandliberty.com/2020/09/14/robert-petrone-christopher-
columbus-is-the-greatest-hero-of-the-15th-16th-centuries-part-one/, attached as Exhibit “B.”
3
In 2018, the City of Philadelphia commissioned attorney and Columbus expert Robert F. Petrone,
Esquire to draft a report on the main primary source from which Columbus is most accurately
depicted – Historia de las Indias (translated to, and hereafter referenced as “History of the Indies”)
by Friar Bartolomé de las Casas – to determine the veracity of the accusations against Christopher
Columbus and decide whether Columbus Day should remain an official city holiday. The works
of Mr. Petrone, which directly cite and quote the primary sources, are cited repeatedly herein. See
Robert F. Petrone, Esquire, The Philadelphia Truth: Why Michael Coard’s Op-ed that Columbus
“Was One of History’s Worst Monsters” is Full of Baloney (October 16, 2019), attached as Exhibit
“C.”
4
Bobadilla produced libelous accounts of Christopher Columbus’s governance in an effort to
unseat Columbus from his gubernatorial office in the West Indies and usurp the position for
himself. At first, Bobadilla was successful. However, Columbus defeated all of Bobadilla’s
calumnious claims in a court of law with evidence and testimony. As a result, the Crown fully
exonerated Columbus and, based upon his evidence, unseated Bobadilla and rescinded his
viceroyalty of the West Indies. Modern-day revisionists rely on Bobadilla’s fictitious writings
which have also been heavily incorporated into Howard Zinn’s The People’s History of the United
States. Id.; A Report by Robert F., Petrone, Esquire to City Council of the City of Philadelphia on
History of the Indies Books I of VI (December 6, 2018), attached as Exhibit “D.”
7
Bobadilla’s writings “in a court of law 500 years ago, just before the Crown unseated Bobadilla”
and replaced him with Nicolás Ovando, whose governance, unfortunately, was no better than
Bobadilla’s.5
Now, cities across the country are removing their Christopher Columbus statues based
solely on the demonstrably-false writings of Francisco de Bobadilla; the same writings adopted in
Zinn’s work and by which this Court and Defendants mistakenly rely.6 However, the activists and
politicians committing these acts of damnatio memoriae have done so without examining the
primary sources, which unanimously contradict Bobadilla’s politically-motivated libel and Zinn’s
similarly-motivated polemic.
The primary sources documenting the life and voyages of Christopher Columbus are vital
to understanding Columbus’s character and deeds. They unequivocally and irrefutably show that
he was not a racist, rapist, slaver, maimer, murderer or genocidal maniac. In fact, Christopher
Columbus spent his entire life fighting against these atrocities, committed by Bobadilla, Ovando
and the hidalgos. Columbus intervened always as a pacifying force against the greedy and entitled
Spanish nobles who defied his governance and indulged in mutual hostilities with the islanders by
5
Id.
6
This Court has cited the book Lies My Teachers Told Me by James W. Loewen. Notably, that
novel’s passage on Christopher Columbus is based on Zinn’s work and has been debunked by the
primary sources of the 15th and 16th century.
8
acting as mediator and peacemaker between the Spanish settlers and the tribal peoples. 7 Thus,
Christopher Columbus firmly established himself as the first civil rights activist of the Americas.8
Shortly after Columbus made landfall in the New World, he immediately began advocating
in correspondences to the Spanish Crown granting full rights and protections of Spanish citizenship
to the tribal peoples of the West Indies.9 On October 14, 1492, he penned in his journal a passage
where he urged the Crown to make “subjects” of the islanders. Though detractors commonly
mistranslate his use of the Spanish verb “subjujar” to mean “subjugate,” the word, in fact, meant
“to be made subjects of” the Crown, thus granting the tribal peoples all the rights attendant to the
protections of the Spanish Crown – including protection from enslavement, displacement or any
other mistreatment. On February 15, 1493, on the return leg of his first voyage, he wrote a letter
to the Spanish Crown urging that they give the tribal people of the Indies “the love and service of
their Highnesses and of the whole Spanish nation.”10
One of the main primary sources regarding Christopher Columbus’s life, trans-Atlantic
expedition and gubernatorial administration of the West Indies (which also provides a
comprehensive history of the first sixty-eight years of the Spanish settlements in that region) is
7
A Report by Robert F., Petrone, Esquire to City Council of the City of Philadelphia on History
of the Indies Books I of VI (December 6, 2018), Exhibit “D.”; A Report by Robert F. Petrone,
Esquire to City Council of the City of Philadelphia on History of the Indies Books II and III (of
III) (March 19, 2019), Exhibit “E.”
8
Robert Petrone, Christopher Columbus is the greatest hero of the 15th & 16th centuries (pt. I):
Introduction, Broad + Liberty (Sept. 14, 2020), https://broadandliberty.com/2020/09/14/robert-
petrone-christopher-columbus-is-the-greatest-hero-of-the-15th-16th-centuries-part-one/, Exhibit
“B.”
9
of the Indies Books I of VI (December 6, 2018), Exhibit “D.”
10
Letter of Columbus dated February 15, 1493.
9
History of the Indies, by Bartolomé de las Casas.11 History of the Indies is “the predominant, first-
hand account of the governorship of Christopher Columbus[.]”12
Nowhere in any of the three volumes of History of the Indies does de las Casas indicate
that Columbus mistreated the indigenous people. Neither do any such accounts appear in any of
the primary sources. uite to the contrary, de las Casas’s History and all primary sources explicitly
indicate that Christopher Columbus repeatedly protected the tribal peoples, even the cannibalistic
Caribs who often attacked him and his sailors unprovoked. “Columbus prohibited the Spaniards
from molesting indigene women at every turn. De las Casas notes in History of the Indies (Book
I, Chapter 164) . . . that Columbus took great pains to prevent the sailors of his ships from
exploiting the indigene women, in one instance, even refusing to allow the sailors to disembark
from the confinement of a grounded ship for an entire year to protect the indigene women – a
restriction that contributed to a violent mutiny by the men, which Columbus and those crewmates
still loyal to him managed to quell (Book II, Chapters 30 - 36).”13
Throughout his voyages, “Christopher Columbus vigilantly reported to the Crown the
kidnapping of indigenes by slavers, including of women for sex trafficking.” He described the
11
“The Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas wrote the original primary source of the history
of the West Indies, Historia de las Indias, originally intended to be a six-volume work, but ending
after the third volume. . . . De las Casas’s Historia is the predominant, first-hand account of the
governorship of Christopher Columbus, whose policies protecting the indigenes from enslavement
and exploitation prompted gold-mongering Spanish hidalgos to depose and replace him. De las
Casas, appointed Protector of the Indians by the Church and the Crown of Spain, personally knew
Christopher Columbus” and witnessed his governance first hand as a young man. Id.; A Report by
Robert F. Petrone, Esquire to City Council of the City of Philadelphia on History of the Indies
Books II and III (of III) (March 19, 2019), Exhibit “E.”
12
Id.
13
Robert F. Petrone, The Philadelphia Truth: Why Michael Coard’s Op-ed that Columbus “Was
One of History’s Worst Monsters” is Full of Baloney (October 16, 2019), Exhibit “C.”
10
slavers as “‘rebels and other untrustworthy people’ who ‘did not deserve water before God or the
world’ (Book I, Chapter 181).”14
In the seven years Christopher Columbus spent as governor of the West Indies, he “refused
to allow the Spanish hidalgos to enforce the encomienda system on the indigenes, which would
have made slaves of the indigenes.” 15 Importantly, Columbus “never ferried slaves but rather
prohibited the Spanish hidalgos from enslaving the indigenes. . . . (Book I, Chapters 84-106).”16
Significantly, Columbus did not commit genocide of the tribal peoples of the West Indies.
Rather, the “murders that reduced the indigene populations of the West Indies were caused by two
conquistadors, Francisco de Bobadilla and Nicolás de Ovando, both of whom usurped Columbus’s
office after Bobadilla ousted Columbus with the slander that Columbus subsequently defeated in
a court of law[.]”17 Columbus spent the rest of his life combating Bobadilla and Ovando. He
managed to unseat Bobadilla based on evidence he presented to the Crown. Though he was not
as successful in his fight against Ovando, Columbus did successfully petition the Crown of Spain
to promulgate the first civil rights legislation “forbidding all Spaniards to aggrieve the Indians in
any way, to capture them, to remove them to Castile or other regions unfamiliar to them, or to
tamper with their persons and/or possessions.”18
14
Id.
15
Id.
16
Id.
17
Id.
18
A Report by Robert F. Petrone, Esquire to City Council of the City of Philadelphia on History
of the Indies Books II and III (of III) (March 19, 2019), Exhibit “E.”
11
Christopher Columbus’s resistance to and efforts in unseating Bobadilla and Ovando, his
petitioning the Spanish Crown for civil rights legislation to protect the tribal peoples, and his active
participation in liberating the Tainos of the West Indies from both Spanish and domestic slavers
firmly establish Columbus as the first civil rights activist of the Americas. On Columbus’s second
voyage, he sailed directly to the islands inhabited by the Canib tribes, whom the Tainos had
constantly complained attacked, subjugated, raped, and ate them. Without any charts to these
islands, but based solely on the accounts of the Tainos who had willingly traveled with him, he
anchored at island after island, rescuing Tainos from captivity and enslavement and setting them
free on islands untouched by the Caribs in a manner akin to the Underground Railroad of the early
United States. 19 Indeed, on every island he visited, on all four of his voyages, Columbus
maintained friendly, peaceful, mutually-beneficial relations with the islanders of the West Indies,
the overwhelming majority of whom considered Columbus a good friend and a welcome
newcomer. 20 “Columbus’s civil rights activism was not limited to the tribes of the Americas;
throughout his maritime career, he also rescued Jews from the Spanish Inquisition by employing
them as crew members on various expeditions.”21
Overwhelming evidence in the primary sources and the effectively-unanimous consent
among historians who have read those primary sources, firmly establish that Christopher
Columbus was a righteous man, innocent of the accusations of the atrocities to which this Court
19
See generally Columbus’s Journal entries describing his Second Voyage, dated 1493 through
1496; The Letter of Dr. Diego Alvarez Chanca, Dated 1494, Relating To The Second Voyage of
Columbus to America, attached as Exhibit “F.”
20
of the Indies Books I of VI (December 6, 2018), Exhibit “D.”
21
The Philadelphia Truth, supra.
12
lent credence in its Order and about which modern revisionists cry foul without support. He was
no racist, rapist, slaver, maimer, murder or genocidal maniac. Rather, Christopher Columbus
earned his place in history as the first civil rights activist of the Americas.22
III. CONCLUSION
Based on the foregoing, the Italian Sons and Daughters of America respectfully request
that The Honorable John T. McVay recuse himself from this case.
Respectfully submitted,
/s/ George Bochetto

Date: November 13, 2020 By: ________________________
George Bochetto, Esquire
David P. Heim, Esquire
Attorney ID No. 27783, 84323
1524 Locust Street
Philadelphia, PA 19102
Phone No. 215-735-3900
Fax No. 215-735-2455
gbochetto@bochettoandlentz.com
dheim@bochettoandlentz.com
Attorneys for Plaintiff
22
Plaintiff incorporates by reference the documentary Courage and Conviction: The True Story of
Christopher Columbus which can be accessed HERE. Plaintiff strongly recommends that the Court
-- and the Defendants -- watch the linked documentary to provide further necessary background
on Christopher Columbus. See Courage and Conviction: The True Story of Christopher Columbus,
Italian Sons and Daughters of America (Oct. 19, 2020)
https://www.orderisda.org/culture/news/know-columbus/.
13
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
I, George Bochetto, Esquire, hereby certify that a true and correct copy of the within
Motion for Recusal was forwarded on this 13th day of November, 2020 via electronic mail to the
following:
Emily C. McNally, Assistant City Solicitor

Michael E. Kennedy, Associate City Solicitor
Yvonne S. Hilton, City Solicitor
City of Pittsburgh
Department of Law
313 City-County Building
414 Grant Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
Emily.mcnally@pittsburghpa.gov
Michael.kennedy@pittsburghpa.gov
Yvonne.hilton@pittsburghpa.gov
Honorable John T. McVay, Jr.

Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County
709 City-County Building
414 Grant Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
EEfinger@alleghenycourts.us
By: /s/ George Bochetto

George Bochetto, Esquire
EXHIBIT A
IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS OF ALLEGHENY COUNTY,
PENNSYLVANIA CIVIL DIVISION
ITALIAN SONS AND DAUGHTERS CIVIL DIVISION

OF AMERICA
Docket No. GD-20-10732
Plaintiffs
v.
CITY OF PITTSBURGH and
MAYOR WILLIAM PEDUTO
Defendants
MEMORANDUM/ORDER OF COURT
History is often said to be written by the "winners", and our understanding of it as a
nation tends to evolve over time as research reveals new understandings and our cultural
norms change. Undoubtedly, history as taught to most in the United States has been from a
nationalistic and eurocentric perspective1.Certainly, our national understanding of history
is evolving today as evidenced by the statue removal movement occurring all over the
United States with respect to Confederate and Union generals, Presidents, explorers like
Christopher Columbus, civic leaders, and here in Pittsburgh, past cultural icons like
composer Stephen Foster. My father, a career high school history teacher and lifelong
reader of history, taught me at an early age that the commissioning of Confederate generals
statues in the Jim Crow south was part of the "Lost Cause" response to Reconstruction
efforts and often intended as symbols of white supremacy, while the federal governments
commissioning of military bases, and battleships commemorating the Confederacy and the
placement of Confederate figures in the halls of Congress were at least by some, motivated
by an intent to heal the nation. Recently, in July of 2020, Congress voted to remove those
same figures from the House of Representatives as our understanding of history has
evolved and the statues are no longer deemed appropriate in our contemporary nation
trying to heal the issue of racial divide, ultimately inflamed by the killing of George Floyd
in Minneapolis.
Open mindedness as a community requires that we listen to each other and weigh
the concerns expressed collectively with the sincere intent of trying to understand all sides
of an issue. We must also be mindful that freedom of expression can be a double-edged
1
Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W Loewen
sword. The fate of the Christopher Columbus statue should be determined after all
concerns are fully expressed and heard with an intent to reach a common ground that
reflects Pittsburgh and its pride in being a diverse and welcoming community. However,
this must be done while recognizing the good and bad that comes with statues depicting
historical figures. While acknowledging that historical figures are people and necessarily
come with heroic qualities along with character flaws, nonetheless, racism, slavery and
prejudice must always be condemned and rejected by our city. Discrimination has and
continues to exist. Indigenous people and the immigrants who followed have all
unfortunately shared that experience, none of which should be acceptable to a community
striving for better. With this common understanding, I am asking that we strive to reach a
consensus in good faith. It is my belief that through conciliation, Pittsburgh will lead the
nation on this issue of statue removal vis a vis history and evolving community historical
understanding.
Upon consideration of the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure, Local Rule 212.2
and the pleadings and briefs of both parties, I find that pre-trial conciliation is warranted.
Accordingly, it is ORDERED, ADJUDGED and DECREED as follows:
1. The parties are ordered to meet and discuss resolution of the request for
equitable relief in an attempt to reach a consent agreement. If the parties are
unable to reach a consent agreement on their own, the Court will conduct a
remote conciliation with a representative of each party with settlement authority
at a time agreed upon by all parties and the Court. The Court is willing to
discuss resolution of the case with non-party stakeholders at the remote
conciliation if the parties agree. All provisions of my previous court orders
remain in effect including the City's agreement to not move the statue before
this litigation is resolved and that the statue shall remain covered for protection.
2. It is further ORDERED that the Parties’ obligations to respond to pleadings is
suspended pending further Order of Court.
3. It is further ORDERED that a second status conference will be held on
November 20th, 2020 at 1:00 p.m. The status conference will be held via a
remote Microsoft Teams conference call.
BY THE COURT
EXHIBIT B
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Home  2020  September  14  Robert Petrone: Christopher Columbus is the greatest hero of the 15th & 16th centuries (pt. I): Introduction
HISTORY
Robert Petrone: Christopher Columbus is the greatest hero of the 15th &
16th centuries (pt. I): Introduction
 SEPTEMBER 14, 2020  ROBERT PETRONE
Christopher Columbus was none of the epithets with which his detractors repeatedly characterize him — and all of the
historical resources show this unequivocally.
By Robert Petrone
PRINT/DOWNLOAD
Have you ever — even once — asked yourself where this current, fashionable
narrative came from that Christopher Columbus was a racist, rapist, murderer,
slave-driver and genocidal maniac? Have you ever looked into finding out the
answer to that question? A good chance exists that your answer to one, if not
both of those questions, is a resounding “no.” That is precisely what the
Columbus detractors are banking on in perpetuating their false narrative
against him.
As an attorney, historian and professional researcher, I have asked myself that

question and have looked into it, on a deep, methodical and scholarly level. In
fact, I was enlisted to do so by Philadelphia’s City Council when they received a
petition to eliminate the municipal holiday of Christopher Columbus Day — as
over sixty U.S. cities had already done — from a local member of the bar.
He shall remain anonymous in this article — let’s call him “Mr. Coarse.” But
suffice it to say he has characterized himself in a local news-outlet interview as
a “Socialist ideolog[ue]” and “aveng[er of his] enslaved ancestors” who, oddly, is
admittedly “scared sh**less of statues.” In that same interview, he also
expressed his opinion that “[t]here are no ‘good cops'” and revealed that those
who know him understandably may be “surprised to know” his secret: “I don’t
hate all white people”.
The splenetic “Mr. Coarse” buttressed his polemic petition with the usual lies
about Christopher Columbus being a racist, rapist, genocidal maniac, et cetera.
He purported to support those lies with the usual hackneyed hack-job of out-
of-context pseudo-quotes of Columbus’s own writings. The reader is
undoubtedly familiar with these pseudo-quotes: those so carefully crafted with
strategic use of ellipses to twist portions of Columbus’s own correspondences
to create the false impression that he means the exact opposite of what he
actually said, and that are plastered ubiquitously across the Big-Tech-controlled
internet.
“ Christopher Columbus became the first civil rights

activist of the Americas and the founder of
Western Culture in the New World, making him,
beyond cavil, the greatest hero of the Fifteenth
and Sixteenth Centuries.
At the request of City Council to investigate the calumnious claims of “Mr.

Coarse,” I reread the primary historical sources, this time in their original
Fifteenth-Century Spanish. These included the seminal, three-volume Historia
de las Indias (History of the [West] Indies) by Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, who
was appointed by both the Crown of Spain and the Church as “Protector of the
Indians.” De las Casas’s account, written contemporaneously with the Spanish
settlement of the West Indies — and, importantly, very critically of his own
countrymen’s violent and anti-Christian deeds in that endeavor — is the closest
account in existence to having been recorded by the indigenes themselves. I
also read the epistolary account of Columbus’s Second Voyage written by Dr.
Diego Chanca, effectively the surgeon general of the West Indies, and
Columbus’s own journals, which have been publicly available in English for
nearly two centuries.
All of the primary sources dovetailed in one important regard: they show,
unequivocally and irrefutably, that Christopher Columbus was none of the
epithets with which his detractors repeatedly characterize him. Rather, in
addition to his well-known feat of bringing to light to the rest of the world the
existence of the Americas and its inhabitants, Christopher Columbus actively
fought against the rampant racism, rape, murder, enslavement and genocide
committed by his arch-nemeses, the Spanish hidalgos (low, landed nobles).
Consequently, Christopher Columbus became the first civil rights activist of the
Americas and the founder of Western Culture in the New World, making him,
beyond cavil, the greatest hero of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.
This is precisely why Columbus’s detractors — a sinister axis of cultural

majoritarians that includes radical leftists, post-modernists, neo-Marxists and
globalists — hate him; because Christopher Columbus stands for everything
they stand against. That is, he was a devout Catholic who valued and
successfully fought for the welfare of all human lives; brought the existence of
the Americas to light to the rest of the planet; and established the “trinity” of
Western Culture in the Americas: (1) Judeo-Christian ethics and morals; (2)
Greco-Roman democracy and law; and (3) the benefits of self-sovereignty, which
in turn include civil rights, personal responsibility and the demos of capital.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, in this spirit of cultural majoritarianism, has recently

and repeatedly attempted several journalistic kill-shots at Christopher
Columbus. As my own name surfaced as a local expert in the history of
Columbus and his voyages, the Inquirer attempted the same at me, claiming
that no historians supported my characterization of Columbus as the greatest
hero of the post-medieval era and first civil rights activist of the Americas.
The Inquirer was wrong, of course, and seems to have quietly removed the
article from the internet without a formal retraction or apology. To add insult to
injury, my multiple correspondences to Inquirer Managing Editor of the Op-Ed
section, Sandra Shea, requesting to provide an historically-accurate counter-
narrative, were repeatedly ignored by her.
“ This is precisely why Columbus’s detractors — a

sinister axis of cultural majoritarians that includes
radical leftists, post-modernists, neo-Marxists
and globalists — hate him; because Christopher
Columbus stands for everything they stand
against.
Yet, anyone who has actually read the primary sources — not the internet’s
reimagining of them — concurs with my characterization. For instance,
Stanford Professor Emeritus Carol Delaney, who left her tenured university
position to dedicate ten years of her life to travel the world in the study of
Columbus artifacts in order to write her book Columbus and the Quest for
Jerusalem — and who is truly an unparalleled world-expert on Christopher
Columbus — agrees that all the tired calumny repeatedly levied against him is
simply a collection of lies. “[H]e’s been terribly maligned,” she wrote of
Columbus, by revisionists who are “blaming [him] for things he didn’t do.” And
that, dear reader, is the reason for this exposé.
In the months to come, I, with the help of Broad + Liberty, will continue to bring
you a series of articles about Christopher Columbus, entitled “Christopher
Columbus: The Greatest Hero of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries as
Revealed by the Primary Historical Sources,” to put to rest these lies of the
cultural majoritarians. Following this introduction, my first substantive article
on the man will chronicle Columbus’s birth and early life, putting a real, human
face on the near-mythical historical figure Columbus has become. The
subsequent articles will detail his First, Second, Third and Fourth Voyages; the
world-changing events they spawned; his lifelong and tireless civil rights
activism on behalf of the indigenes of the New World; and his continued efforts
to his dying day as their champion.
Should you honor me by continuing to the end of this series, it will conclude
with an account of the civil rights legacy his life and efforts spawned through
those that proudly modeled themselves after “the illustrious Genoese”
Christopher Columbus, the first civil rights activist of the Americas, our first
Founding Father and the greatest hero of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuries.
Robert Petrone, Esq. is a civil rights author and attorney, and local Philadelphia
expert on Christopher Columbus.
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4 thoughts on “Robert Petrone: Christopher Columbus is the greatest hero of the 15th &
16th centuries (pt. I): Introduction”
Patricia Badia-Johnson says:

September 15, 2020 at 2:53 pm
Bravo! I have read Delaney’s book along with S.E. Morison’s Admiral of
the Ocean Sea. The historical ignorance of Columbus boggles the
mind! But then those who use violence to impose their way of life are
counting on ignorance and fear to grab power over others.
Reply
Jim Ryan says:

September 18, 2020 at 7:50 am
It is a belivable story. It is just too bad the Philadelphia Inquirer is

the only major paper in Philadelphia. Most local Tv news site lean
heavily left.
Reply
Jim Ryan says:

September 18, 2020 at 7:50 am
It is a belivable story. It is just too bad the Philadelphia Inquirer is the

only major paper in Philadelphia. Most local Tv news site lean heavily
left.
Reply
Phillip Lloyd Jones says:

November 2, 2020 at 1:40 pm
Thank you, Mister Petrone, for telling the truth about the Admiral of
the Ocean Sea, Christopher Columbus, and for starting a 1492 project.
I’ve emailed several individuals, such as
officialchristophercolumbus.com creator Rafael, about starting one to
counter the noxious 1619 project, and to defend Columbus’s honor.
He is the grandfather of our country, as George Washington is the
father of it. That’s why leftists attack him. They want people to believe
that America was born in sin, evil from the start, or as the
Revolutionary Communist Party put it, that “America was never great.”
Once they get them thinking that, they can fundamentally transform
America into a communist utopia. If Columbus and his holiday go, so
does American patriotism and capitalism. Keep up the good work!
Reply
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EXHIBIT C
The Philadelphia Truth: Why Michael Coard’s Op-ed that Columbus
“Was One of History’s Worst Monsters” is full of baloney.
by Roberto F. Petrone
The extremist tabloid “The Philadelphia Tribune” – the logo of which is red, white and black, the colors of anarchist
organizations like Antifa, as well as, in no small twist of irony, the colors of the National Socialist Party of 1920s and
1930s Germany – published an article on Christopher Columbus Day written by attorney Michael Coard, who told
Philadelphia Magazine in August of 2018 that he discriminates against people by rejecting them as clients on the
basis of their skin color. In a masterstroke of hypocrisy, Coard claimed falsely that Christopher Columbus was “one
of history’s worst monsters,” and proffered five falsehoods to support his libel of the Western Word’s first Founding
Father and first civil rights activist. This article debunks each and every one of Coard’s mindless claims based on real
facts from the primary historical sources, originally written in 15th Century Spanish by the Protector de los Indios
(“Protectorate of the Indians”), Bartolomé de las Casas.
You’ve undoubtedly heard the usual narrative lately, that Christopher Columbus supposedly committed genocide,
sold women into slavery, punished petty crimes by cutting off the ears and noses of Native Americans, kidnapped
indigenes and rewarded “his men” with native women to rape. All of that is false. After uniting the Americas with
the rest of the world, Christopher Columbus spent the rest of his life fighting against all those things, which were
committed by greedy and entitled Spanish nobles, hidalgos, who thumbed their noses at his governance. Columbus
successfully petitioned the King of Spain to pass legislation that “all the Indians of Hispaniola were to be left free, not
subject to servitude, unmolested and unharmed and allowed to live like free vassals under law just like any other
vassal in the Kingdom of Castile.” That is reported in Book II, Chapter 3, of de las Casas’s Historia de las Indias, and
makes Christopher Columbus the western world’s first civil rights activist.
So what of Coard’s false claims? They stem from only one source, a secondary source at that: Howard Zinn’s pseudo-
historical polemic The People’s History of the United States, which mistranslated and quoted out of context earlier
sources. Zinn, in turn, relied extensively on the writings of the man who actually did commit the atrocities Coard
incorrectly blames on Christopher Columbus, the bloodthirsty Reconquistador Francisco de Bobadilla, whose
slanderous claims Columbus defeated in a court of law 500 years ago, just before the Crown unseated Bobadilla and
funded Columbus’s fourth voyage to the Indies, made for the sole purpose of unseating Bobadilla’s conspirators.
Coard’s “five facts” are not facts at all, but the false slanders of Bobadilla that Christopher Columbus defeated in
court. Someone like Coard, who bears the title “esquire” after his name, would know this as “res judicata” – already
legally decided, over with and done. Nevertheless, Coard presents these slanders with the purpose of eliminating
Christopher Columbus Day as a holiday, as the Ku Klux Klan tried to do in the 1920s to foster ethnic and religious
resentment. So, here are the real facts, from the primary sources, debunking Coard’s previously-defeated slander.
In an eight-paragraph preamble preceding his five slanders, Coard accuses anyone who celebrates Christopher
Columbus as a “celebrator of racist genocide, massive land robbery,” and so forth. In fact, as this article will
demonstrate, celebrating Christopher Columbus is a celebration of civil rights activism on behalf of the tribal people
of the Americas. He claims Columbus didn’t “discover” a “western hemisphere already inhabited by about 100
million people”; but by “discover,” de las Casas and modern educators have always meant that Columbus made the
peoples of the Americas known to the rest of the world. Those who have used the term “discover” never denied
that the Americas were inhabited at the time by peoples who immigrated to North and South America from Asia via
ice bridges over the Bering Straight, and colonized it with warfare amongst themselves with whatever tribes beat
them to a particular parcel of land (such as the Taino tribes taking many of the lands they occupied by means of
conquest of the Sibonay tribes). Lastly, Coard uses the term “inept” to describe Admiral Columbus’s forging a trans-
Atlantic route still used by modern sailors while using no navigational instruments, but rather only dead reckoning.
And then Coard lists his false reasons why Christopher Columbus supposedly, inter alia, “destroy[ed] ancient
civilizations” and “murdered approximately eight million Red/Brown people.” Coard is just flat wrong; so, using
Coard’s own numerical system, his five slanders are debunked as follows:
1. Not only did Columbus not punish indigenes “by having their hands cut off” (notice Coard’s avoidance of the
use of a subject in that phrase – that’s intentional in order to falsely imply that it was Columbus who did such
a thing – in fact, the conquistadors who conspired and ousted Columbus from office were the ones who cut
off the hands of indigenes), Christopher Columbus interposed his own body between the blades of the
Spanish conquistadors and the indigenes to save the lives of the indigenes. For instance, Alonzo de Hojeda,
who, in defiance of Columbus’s gubernatorial mandate that the Spanish hidalgos (nobles) “abstain from
doing” the indigenes “any injury,” maimed a group of indigenes who had double-crossed Hojeda by leaving
Hojeda’s men stranded by a riverside and fording the river with the Spaniards’ clothes. Hojeda’s retribution
against the indigene perpetrators was swift and fierce, he seized their cacique (chieftain), maimed him and
his family, and brought them before Columbus insisting they be put to death. When the chieftain offered a
tearful apology, Columbus released the indigenes, instructing Hojeda that his over-the-top response had
done enough injury, and that the matter was to be considered resolved. This is revealed in detail in Book I,
Chapter 93, and Book II, Chapter 8, of the Historia de las Indias. Coard’s false account tellingly provides no
citations.
2. Not only did Christopher Columbus never deliver women to his crewmates or “lieutenants” for rape, as Coard
falsely claims, Columbus prohibited the Spaniards from molesting indigene women at every turn. De las
Casas notes in Historia de las Indias (Book I, Chapter 164) that a “sign of great friendship” of many of the
tribes “is the sharing of wives and daughters; parents think it an honor when someone indicates that he
wants their daughter, even though she may be a virgin, because it seals a friendship.” In light of this free
trafficking of women by the indigenes, Columbus took great pains to prevent the sailors of his ships from
exploiting the indigene women, in one instance, even refusing to allow the sailors to disembark from the
confinement of a grounded ship for an entire year to protect the indigene women – a restriction that
contributed to a violent mutiny by the men, which Columbus and those crewmates still loyal to him managed
to quell (Book II, Chapters 30 - 36). Christopher Columbus vigilantly reported to the Crown the kidnapping
of indigenes by slavers, including of women for sex trafficking, describing the slavers as “rebels and other
untrustworthy people” who “did not deserve water before God or the world” (Book I, Chapter 181).
3. Again, tellingly, without citations, Coard claims that eight million Taino indigenes were “reduced to just three
million” by the time Columbus left. Note Coard’s duplicitous wording; he does not point to anything
Columbus did. In fact, Christopher Columbus, in the seven years he spent in the Indies as governor, refused
to allow the Spanish hidalgos from enforcing the encomienda system on the indigenes, which would have
made slaves of the indigenes. Largescale deaths occurred among both the Spaniards and the indigenes by
diseases each group had transmitted to the other. The murders that reduced the indigene populations of
the West Indies were caused by two conquistadors, Francisco de Bobadilla and Nicolás de Ovando, both of
whom usurped Columbus’s office after Bobadilla ousted Columbus with the slander that Columbus
subsequently defeated in a court of law, but that Coard revives in his op-ed article.
4. Not only did Columbus not “pioneer[ ] a new form of murder” or “a new form of slavery,” as Coard claims,
Columbus never ferried slaves but rather prohibited the Spanish hidalgos from enslaving the indigenes. The
indigenes that traveled with Columbus back to Spain after his first voyage went willingly to meet the King and
Queen of Spain. During that sojourn, Spanish sailors left behind were murdered to the man by some of tribes,
and those indigenes captured for hostilities against the settlers and in conflicts with the rebellious hidalgos
that disobeyed Governor Columbus were transported later as prisoners of war (Book I, Chapters 84-106).
5. Coard saves his most pernicious lies for last. In his fifth slander, he acknowledges the writings of Bobadilla,
but portrays Bobadilla as a peacekeeper who arrested Columbus for alleged atrocities for which Coard falsely
claims “Columbus confessed and was convicted.” In fact Columbus neither confessed nor was convicted.
Bobadilla knowingly falsified claims against all three Columbus brothers so that Bobadilla could oust them all
from office, usurp the vice-regency of the Indies, and undo all the restrictions Christopher Columbus had
placed on the Spanish hidalgos. Under Bobadilla’s reign of terror that ensued, the widespread murder and
enslavement began upon Bobadilla’s orders. Bobadilla told the hidalgos, “Take as many advantages as you
can, because you don’t know how long this will last.” He knew Columbus would easily debunk the slander,
and Columbus did just that. With his hands in manacles aboard the prison ship that Bobadilla used to send
Columbus back to Spain, Columbus wrote out his defense and testimony. The ship’s master wanted to
remove the shackles, but Columbus protested, saying indignantly that “only the monarchs could do this”
(Book I, Chapter 174). Columbus presented his arguments and evidence to the royal court, who removed his
shackles, dismissed all the charges against him as false, and removed Bobadilla from office for his treachery.
The Crown then funded Columbus’s fourth and final voyage to the West Indies, which Columbus made for
the express purposes of ousting Bobadilla’s conspirators. Columbus also successfully petitioned the Crown
for civil rights legislation to protect the indigenes, and spent the rest of his life detailing violations of that
legislation by the hidalgos in letters Columbus continuously wrote to the king.
Now that Coard’s false, slanderous statements have been debunked, here are 10 Reasons Why Columbus was the
first civil rights activist. Christopher Columbus:
1. defied the Crown of Spain, his employers, in refusing to enforce the feudal encomienda system upon
the indigenes, which the Spanish hidalgos claimed entitled them to enslave the indigenes;
2. advocated in writing to the Crown of Spain that the indigenes they encountered should be granted
all rights and entitlements of Spanish citizens;
3. disallowed the Spanish hidalgos settling in the West Indies from forcing the tribal peoples of the
Americas to labor for the Spaniards in the construction of the settlements, but forced the Spanish
nobles to toil for themselves;
4. prohibited the Spaniards from taking the indigenes’ gold by force, requiring the settlers to trade for
it only;
5. prohibited the settlers from engaging in unfair trade practices against the tribal people of the
Americas, forcing the Spaniards only to trade items comparable in value;
6. protected indigene women from the depravities of the Spaniards by, in one instance, confining the
Spaniards to a grounded sailing ship, and prohibiting the Spaniards from stepping foot on land except
by special permission;
7. severely punished disobedient settlers who engaged in aggression against the tribal people of the
Americas, including allowing the jurists of the settlement to hang the conquistador Adrián de Moxica
despite Columbus’s personal misgivings about capital punishment (Book I, Chapter 181);
8. provided the Spanish crown with the evidence required to oust the conquistador Francisco de
Bobadilla from his usurped vice-regency of the West Indies for atrocities Bobadilla committed against
the tribes of the Americas;
9. successfully lobbied for civil rights legislation, passed by King Ferdinand II of Spain, instructing the
Spanish settlers of the West Indies that "all the Indians of Hispaniola were to be left free, not subject
to servitude, unmolested and unharmed and allowed to live like free vassals under law just like any
other vassal in the Kingdom of Castile," ultimately ending all conflict between the surviving Spanish
settlers and tribal people, who subsequently intermarried and created the Latino ethnic group;
10. wrote until the day he died to the widowed King of Spain, reporting the hidalgos’ violations of the
civil rights legislation.
Columbus's civil rights activism was not limited to the tribes of the Americas; throughout his maritime career, he also
rescued Jews from the Spanish Inquisition by employing them as crew members on various expeditions. His tireless
and life-long civil rights activism also inspired the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas, to successfully petition
King Ferdinand to fund a religious order to perpetually advocate for the tribal peoples of the Americas, resulting in
de las Casas being appointed by the Church and the Crown of Spain as "Protector of the Indians."
Some other facts you didn’t know about Columbus:

Columbus had a full-blooded Taino son. When Columbus’s best friend, the Taino chieftain Guacanagarí, was fatally
wounded by a rival Taino tribe, Columbus adopted Guacanagarí’s son Guaikan and, as a widowed single father, raised
the boy to adulthood.
After his first voyage to the West Indies, Columbus brought many willing indigenes of several tribes back to Spain to
meet the king and queen. Some of the indigenes on board were cannibals who had a history of eating members of
the other tribe on board, the Tainos. Columbus managed to get them all to Spain without any conflict among the
various tribes or his sailors.
On his second voyage to the West Indies, Columbus found two young boys and six women native to the island of
Boriquen (modern day Puerto Rico) who had been kidnapped by the cannibalistic Carib tribe for the purpose of
becoming a meal. Columbus took the eight kidnapping victims on board his ship and shuttled them to safety.
As Governor, Christopher Columbus used diplomacy to quell no less than six rebellions by the resentful hidalgos
whose depravity he restrained. Columbus ushered in a “Pax Columbiana” to the West Indies in which “things were
calm, the land was rich and everyone lived in peace” (Historia de las Indias, Book I, Chapter 181). Bobadilla undid
this peace by ousting Columbus (with false slander that Columbus ultimately defeated in court), undoing all
restrictions Columbus had put on the hidalgos, and unleashing a reign of terror on the West Indies until Columbus
succeeded in unseating Bobadilla.
Columbus was given a hero’s burial when he finally passed away, in 1506, after a lifetime of civil rights activism on
behalf of the tribal peoples of the Americas. He is buried in a gilded tomb in the Cathedral of Seville.
Latinos owe their very existence to Christopher Columbus. Had he not (1) restrained the Spaniards from killing their
ancestors; (2) successfully petitioned for civil rights legislation to protect the indigenes from any harm; and (3)
continued to report violations of that legislation to the king, the conquistadors would have wiped out all of the
ancestors of modern-day Latinos. But because of Columbus’s deeds, the surviving Spaniards and indigenes finally
found peace together, intermarried, and created the Latino ethnic group.
Phyllis Wheatley, a 14-year-old, free African-American girl wrote a poem in 1775 to George Washington featuring
“Columbia,” the personification of the American colonies, whom she named after Christopher Columbus. The poem
so moved Washington that he distributed it widely, prompting the appearances of Columbia and Columbus in myriad
songs, poems, and newspaper essays, and firmly weaving the intrepid mariner into the very fabric of the American
identity.
Now, more than sixty cities across America, including the District of Columbia, which is named after Christopher
Columbus, are abolishing the holiday of Columbus Day based on the slander of Francisco de Bobadilla, which was all
proven entirely false in a court of law 500 years ago. Michael Coard has the monster wrong; those who perpetuate
the slander against Columbus are the real “monsters.” Columbus Day must continue to be celebrated in honor of
the first civil rights activist of the western hemisphere, Christopher Columbus.
EXHIBIT D
A Report
by Robert F. Petrone, Esquire,
to City Council of the City of Philadelphia
on
HISTORY OF THE INDIES

BOOK I OF VI
Authored by Bartolomé de las Casas
Translated and edited by Andreé M. Collard
December 6, 2018
History of the Indies, by Bartolomé de las Casas, is one of the main primary sources
regarding the life, trans-Atlantic expedition and gubernatorial administration of the West Indies of
Christopher Columbus, as well as a comprehensive history of the first sixty-eight years of the
Spanish settlements in that region. Bartolomé de las Casas was a Seville-born historian and
social reformer who, in 1502, at the age of 18, participated in the Spanish settlement of the West
Indies during the administration of Governor Christopher Columbus. In 1510, de las Casas
became a priest, among the first to be ordained in the Americas. Circa 1516, the Crown of Spain
and the Church appointed him Protectoría de los Indios, Protector of Indians, an administrative
office of the Spanish colonies that was responsible for ensuring the welfare of the tribes of the
Americas, including representing them in the courts and notifying the Crown of Spain regarding
matters involving them. In 1523, de las Casas became a Dominican friar and, in 1527, he began
the six-volume book, the first volume of which is the subject of this report, History of the Indies,
originally Historia de las Indias.
The edition of History of the Indies that is the subject of this report, and will be the subject
of the reports of the subsequent volumes to follow, was translated into English, edited and
published in 1971 by Andrée M. Collard (1926 -1986), a professor and writer, who also wrote an
Introduction to the book. De las Casas commences his original work with a self-authored
Prologue followed by six volumes recounting the history of the West Indies. Book I begins with
the discovery of the West Indies by Admiral Columbus and the first 8 years of its history, including
his gubernatorial administration. Books II through VI record the following sixty years of the history
of the Indies, each book covering a single decade. This report comprises a summary of Collard's
Introduction and the Prologue and Book I of de las Casas's History of the Indies, with a particular
focus on the life, expedition and governorship of Christopher Columbus.
Collard's Introduction
Collard makes clear in his Introduction to his translated edition of de las Casas’s History
of the Indies that to the extent Christopher Columbus's detractors argue that his discovery of the
New World ignited Spanish atrocities against the tribes of the Americas, the opposite is, in fact
true. Collard notes that it was actually the encomienda, the Spanish feudal system that
considered conquered peoples the vassals of the Spanish monarch – which long preexisted the
expedition of Admiral Columbus, and which Columbus actually restrained until his political rivals
deposed him – that sparked the brutality of the Spaniards in their conquest of the Americas. The
encomienda system of the Crown, Collard notes, served "as the system responsible for the
existence of de facto slavery" (Introduction, xvii). In contravention to this system of Spanish
1
feudalism, Admiral Columbus's expedition, Collard explains, ignited what was to be the undoing
of the encomienda, and sparked, instead, the spread of "the enlightened Spanish legal tradition"
of "the Siete Partidas" that had been promulgated in the 13th Century.
The Siete Partidas, or “Seven Parts,” referring to the number of sections into which it is
divided, was the Castilian statutory code first compiled during the reign of Alfonso X of Castile
(1252–1284). It established a uniform body of normative rules for the kingdom akin to the Magna
Carta or the American Bill of Rights. The Siete Partidas "provides for...civil rights" in the face of
the institution of slavery, the "liberal tradition...of Erasmian humanism1...which stresses the
Pauline view of humanity2 – all people are God's people," and "the God-given 'natural rights of
man'" (Introduction, xvii).3 The propagation of the principles of this code of civil rights, Collard
maintains, was the true legacy of the Genoan explorer Christopher Columbus in spite of and in
the face of the atrocities committed by the political enemies who deposed and succeeded him.
Collard’s assessment of Christopher Columbus as an enlightened champion of the civil rights of
the tribes of the Americas is borne out by de las Casas’s explicit characterization of Columbus as
such throughout History of the Indies.
De las Casas's Prologue
De las Casas begins the self-authored Prologue of his History of the Indies by quoting the
first-century Romano-Jewish scholar, historian and hagiographer Rabbi Titus Flavius Josephus's
four reasons why "men are impelled to write history": (1) "self glory," (2) "to serve and flatter
princes," (3) "to elucidate and defend the truth" upon "knowing that events they have witnessed
and in which they took part are not being recorded truthfully," and (4) "to rescue the great deeds
of their nations from neglect and oblivion" (Prologue, 3). He notes that the latter two reasons
inspired him to write Historia de las Indias, and, as the remainder of the book notes, to debunk
1
Desiderius Erasmus Raterodamus was a Dutch priest and philosopher who regarded humanist
principles such as human dignity, individual freedom and the primacy of human happiness as
essential components of – or at least compatible with – the teachings of Jesus.
2
Saint Paul the Apostle of Tarsus believed that human nature innately resists a state of total
depravity, and that a Christian must fight against "disordered passions" and "self-will" while
acknowledging that God has created him with good sentiments, desires and the needs of the
body.
3
The Siete Partidas addressed legislative, philosophical, oral and theological topics from Greco-
Roman, Judeo-Christian and Islamic perspectives and has been regarded as an "encyclopedia of
humanism."
2
false claims levied specifically against Governor Christopher Columbus by the governor’s political
rivals: Juan Aguado, Alonso de Hojeda, Adrián de Moxica, Francisco Roldán and Francisco de
Bobadilla.
De las Casas reveals the lens through which he has reviewed the history of the West
Indies. He cites "the ancient historians, holy and profane" to demonstrate "that there never was
a people...who, no matter how politically well organized and urbane it may be now, was not in its
beginnings full of wild and irrational defects and abounding in grave and nefarious idolatry." Citing
Spain as just such an example, he adds, "Many nations, today smoothly organized and
Christianized, lived like animals, without houses and without cities, before their conversion to the
Faith" (Prologue, 6). As such, de las Casas reasons that at his point in history, the teachings of
Christianity served as one of the few catalysts, if not the only one of the time, to the shedding of
primitive or prehistoric traditions and ideas. He writes, consequently, "Whenever and wherever
in the universe one discovers such a Faithless group, no matter how many grave sins they may
possess – idolatry and others – we can only treat them with the love, peace and Christian charity
which we owe them." He counsels, from the perspective of his time, that Christians must "attract"
the primitive and any others not exposed to the teachings of Christianity "as we would be attracted
ourselves to the holy Faith through sweet and humble evangelical preaching in the form
established by Christ" in order to uplift all of humanity (Prologue, 6). Thus, through this lens does
de las Casas review the first sixty-eight years of the history of the Indies, commencing with what
he characterizes as its "discovery," from the perspective of the Old World, by the Admiral
Christopher Columbus, and continuing with the atrocities of the greedy Spanish nobles who, in
defiance of Governor Columbus’s repeated calls for peace, mercy and restraint, deposed the
pious governor and brutally imposed their imperialistic aspirations.
Columbus the Man
Within the first few pages of Book I of his History of the Indies, Bartolomé de las Casas
introduces with effusive praise the man he credits with the discovery of the Americas. He names
him as "the illustrious Genoese Christopher Columbus" and describes him as "good-natured, kind,
daring, courageous, and pious." De las Casas marvels at Admiral and Governor Columbus's
many "acquired qualities," including his masterful calligraphy, arithmetic and drawing; his skill with
Latin, his "unusual insight into human and divine affairs"; "good judgment"; "sound memory and
eagerness to learn"; intense study; and "proficiency in geometry, geography, cosmography,
astrology or astronomy, and seamanship." Of Christopher Columbus's journals, he noted that as
3
admiral and governor, Columbus "avoided exaggeration" in authoring these "documents of value"
(Book I, 15).
In analyzing these journals, de las Casas quotes Admiral Columbus's correspondence
with the Crown, noting the admiral’s "over forty years" of experience "in sailing all waters known
today," and his collaboration with scholars among the "Latins and Greeks, Jews and Moors, and
many others of many other sects." Here de las Casas portrays Christopher Columbus as a worldly
intellectual who did not discriminate against scholars of any race, religion or creed in working with
and learning from them. De las Casas cites Admiral Columbus's inspiration by these multicultural
scholars, as well as by God, to undertake the "enterprise" of his expedition despite that
"[e]veryone laughed at" him "and dismissed it as a joke." In the eight years that Christopher
Columbus lobbied the Spanish Crown to fund his trans-Atlantic expedition, he wrote to them,
forebodingly, in 1501, "My knowledge and my quoting of authorities have proved of no help. And
now I trust only in Your Highnesses...." (Book I, 15-16).
De las Casas expounds upon Christopher Columbus’s erudition, and expedition, in his
own, superlative characterizations. He writes, “I think Christopher Columbus was the most
outstanding sailor in the world, versed like no other in the art of navigation, for which divine
Providence chose him to accomplish the most outstanding feat ever accomplished in the world
until now” (Book I, 17). By citing Governor Columbus’s complaints to the Crown in 1495 “about
the craftiness of navigators who act one way instead of another in order to deceive their people”
de las Casas contrasts Admiral and Governor Columbus’s virtue to the defects of those who
arrived in his wake, further emphasizing Christopher Columbus’s morality, integrity, dignity,
rectitude, honor and decency (Book I, 16). De las Casas praises Columbus as being “talkative
and self-assured,” as he is described in the book Historia portuguesa (“Portuguese History”)4 as
a man of “moderation and generosity” (Book I, 22).
To further emphasize Christopher Columbus’s goodness and virtue, de las Casas relates
an anecdote regarding the book Crónica, by the prolific Augustín Justinianus, a Fifteenth Century
Genoan bishop of Nebbio, Corsica, and a member of the fifth Lateran ecclesiastical council
convoked by Pope Julius II. Justinianus wrote in his book Crónica5 that Christopher Columbus
was “only an artisan.” The ruling house of Genoa took such umbrage at the understatement that
4
Though not explicitly credited by de las Casas, his mention of the book Historia portuguesa likely
references the Sixteenth Century writings of the Portuguese historian João de Barros.
5
Crónica translates to “Chronicle” or “Annals,” likely a reference to Justinianus’s historical work
Castigatissimi Annali di Genova, “The Most Abstemious Annals of Genoa,” published
posthumously in 1537.
4
it issued a decree prohibiting the possession or reading of the book and withdrawing it from
circulation. De las Casas concurred that its “inaccurate” depiction was “harmful to the reputation
of a person as meritorious as Christopher Columbus, to whom all Christendom is so greatly
indebted” (Book I, 17).
A Brief Account of Columbus’s Arrival in and Return to Spain
De las Casas recounts Christopher Columbus’s ultimate arrival in Spain. He tells of how
the navigator sailed with a Genoan privateer, also named Columbus, who was fighting the
Venetians for dominance in the Mediterranean on behalf of the doge, akin to a “duke,” of Genoa.
The privateer’s ship was burned in a naval battle, and Christopher Columbus survived by jumping
overboard, grasping a floating oar, and swimming two leagues to shore, where he convalesced
from paralysis of his legs (Book I, 18).
After a full recovery, the young Columbus traveled to Lisbon, Portugal, where he married
the daughter of a wealthy hidalgo (petty noble), Don Bartolomé Muñiz Perestrello, also an
accomplished mariner and explorer. Perestrello’s wife gifted her new son-in-law her late
husband’s navigational instruments and maps, and Christopher Columbus joined several
Portuguese expeditions, ultimately settling in Puerto Santo of the Madeira archipelago, an island
Don Bartolomé had settled. Christopher Columbus’s son Diego was born in Puerto Santo to don
Bartolomé’s daughter Felipa (Book I, 18).
Christopher Columbus then went in search of Princes who might fund his proposed
expedition to find an all-water route to Asia, based on the writings of Ptolemy and the geographer
Marinus of Tyre (AD 70-130), He went first to the King of Portugal, who double-crossed him,
sending a caravel along a route Columbus had intended for himself. Columbus learned of the
double-cross when the caravel was forced to return after being damaged in a storm (Book I, 20-
23).
Columbus then sent his brother Bartolomé to England to beseech King Henry VII to fund
the expedition. De las Casas describes Bartolomé as “very wise and courageous” and even
“more careful and astute, and less direct than Christopher.” Bartolomé Columbus provided King
Henry with a hand-made map, based on the writings of the Greek geographer Strabo, the Greco-
Roman astronomer Ptolemy, the Roman Philosopher Pliny the Elder, and the Seventh Century
scholar St. Isidore of Seville. Bartolomé adorned the map with a poem that practically prophesied
the discovery of America. After many years, King Henry VII of England agreed to fund the
expedition (Book I, 24-25).
5
Meanwhile, Christopher Columbus personally appeared before the Crown of Spain, then
recently comprised of the newly united Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon.6 As Spain was
7
preoccupied with the Reconquista in Grenada, the king appointed “court scholars” to entertain
Christopher Columbus’s modest petition for what de las Casas characterized as “a mere trifle” in
funds for the expedition. The court scholars counseled the king to reject the proposal, which he
did, prompting Columbus to solicit Spanish dukes for funding. One such duke, Don Luis de la
Cerda, Duke of Medinaceli, agreed to fund the expedition. The war in Granada ended, however,
during this time, and Queen Isabella reconsidered Christopher Columbus’s petition, agreeing to
fund the expedition from the Crown’s treasury. By this time, however, Don Luis has already paid
for the construction of three ships, but acceded with chagrin to the Queen’s decision. She
reimbursed Don Luis and paid Admiral Columbus only half the “trifle” he requested. A wealthy
mariner by the name of Martín Alonzo Pinzón contributed another half million maravedís to the
fund. In consideration for the contribution, Admiral Columbus appointed Pinzón captain of the
swiftest Caravel, La Pinta, and himself took command of the flagship, La Santa María de la
Inmaculada Concepción, nicknamed the Capitana (Book I, 25-34).
Christopher Columbus’s First Voyage: Peaceful First Contact with the Tainos
In 1492, Admiral Columbus departed Spain, and before year’s end, had arrived in the
West Indies, accomplishing what he had set out to do: find an all-water route to lands occupied
by Asiatic peoples, the tribes of the Americas. His first contact with them was amicable and
peaceful in its entirety, as was his continued relations with them during his sojourn there. Clearly
inspired by Admiral Columbus’s discovery of populated continents heretofore unknown by
Christendom, de las Casas waxes poetic about the accomplishment. He writes, “Many is the time
I have wished [for the] eloquence to extol the indescribable service to God and to the whole world
which Christopher Columbus rendered at the cost of such pain and dangers, such skill and
expertise, when he so courageously discovered the New World.” The author humbles himself
6
The royal wedding of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon, as well as the
annexation of León resulting from Isabella’s succession to the throne of that kingdom upon the
death of her brother King Henry IV, established Spain as a world superpower. This status made
the nation an obvious candidate for the funding of Columbus’s planned expedition, though Spain
was not Christopher Columbus’s first choice.
7
The Reconquista constituted Spain’s attempt to reacquire portions of its peninsula conquered
in 711 A.D by soldiers comprising Muslim Moors, North African Berbers and Arabs, and since
occupied by them.
6
before Admiral Columbus’s deed, adding that “the fruit of Columbus’s labor speaks better for
himself than I do…. Is there anything on earth comparable to opening the tightly shut doors of an
ocean that no one dared enter before?” As if anticipating those detractors who might point to the
chance landings of previous mariners, he notes, “And supposing someone in the most remote
past did enter, the feat was so utterly forgotten as to make Columbus’s discovery as arduous as
if it had been the first time.” De las Casas marvels at the profound and beneficial effect Admiral
Columbus’s discovery had on the evolution of human history, what modern scholars might now
call a “singularity” in human development:
But since it is obvious that at that time God gave this man the keys to the awesome
seas, he and no other unlocked the darkness, to him and to no other is owed for
ever and ever all that exists beyond those doors. He showed the way to the
discovery of immense territories whose coastline today measures over 12,000
leagues from pole to pole and whose inhabitants form wealthy and illustrious
nations of diverse peoples and languages
(Book I, 34-35). With this characterization de las Casas frames his account of Christopher
Columbus’s voyages to the New World.
Of Admiral Columbus’s first voyage, specifically, de las Casas sums up the endeavor with
no less lofty language. “And of all those distinguished and incomparable goods,” he writes, “that
most worthy man Christopher Columbus was the cause, second to God but first in the eyes of
men, being the discoverer and only worthy first admiral of the vast territory already known as the
New World” (Book I, 37).
De las Casas recounts Admiral and Governor Columbus’s “Return from the First Voyage”
in 1493. He writes that Christopher Columbus returned to Spain in the year following his fateful
journey, “taking with him the seven Indians who survived the voyage.” He notes that Castilians
“flocked from all directions to see him; the roads swelled with throngs come to welcome him in
the towns through which he passed.” The monarchs had already begun to launch a second
expedition, and “were very anxious to see him. They had organized a solemn and beautiful
reception to which everybody came. The streets were crammed with people come to see this
eminent person who had found another world, as well as to see the Indians” and the artifacts of
their land and culture (Book I, 37).
Columbus reported favorably to the Crown about the people he encountered in the West
Indies. He “praised” the indigenes for their simplicity and gentleness. Presenting those who had
traveled with him as an example, he urged that the tribes he encountered were “ready to receive
the Faith” (Book I, 38), to him an expression of their equality and worthiness of the protection of
the Crown and the rights of all Spanish citizens.
7
Columbus and the Crown immediately negotiated the terms of the contract for the second
voyage. In consideration for his service, the Crown granted Christopher Columbus the titles of
“Admiral, Viceroy and Governor of the Islands and Mainland already discovered and to be
discovered” by him. The Crown intended these titles to be hereditary, to be passed to his heirs.
The Crown knighted his brothers, Bartolomé and Diego, and appointed Bartolomé the first
“Adelantado” of the Indies (Book I, 40-41).8
Columbus’s Second Voyage: The Cannibalistic Caribs and the Entitled Hidalgos
De las Casas details Admiral Columbus’s departure, on October 7, 1493, on his second
voyage, taking a more southerly route than his first, and landing him on an island he named
Dominica, named for the day he spotted it: Sunday, the third of November. The crew dropped
anchor at a nearby island, which the Admiral named Marigalante (meaning “courtesan” or, more
literally, “flirtatious Mary”) after his ship (Book I, 43).
On Monday, November 4th, the crew sailed to a third island, which Admiral Columbus
named Guadalupe.9 On the island, they found a deserted village on the coast containing a hut in
which, remarkably, they found a ship beam that had been lost from the first voyage. The
inhabitants of the village were nowhere to be found. In fact, the crew later learned that the
villagers had fled into the mountains to escape a doom the Europeans found utterly shocking:
capture by cannibals (Book I, 43).
The day after arriving at the abandoned village, Admiral Columbus and his crew
encountered “two youths” of the already familiar Taino tribe, who explained with sign language
that the Carib tribe, who inhabited the island, had abducted them from their own island of Boriquen
(modern day Puerto Rico) with the intention of eating both of them. Admiral Columbus and his
crew also found six women who had escaped the Caribs. The women showed the Europeans
the Caribs’ huts, which contained human bones, and boiled, shrunken, decapitated human heads.
8
During the Spanish Reconquista, the adelantados were military caudillos – leaders – who
commanded the advance of the troops of the Crown of Castile through the Moor-occupied
territories. The Crown granted the adelantados authority to govern any reconquered districts.
During the colonization of the Indies, the Spanish Crown appointed “Adelantados de Indias” to
command the exploration of the New World and to establish settlements. Adelantados held the
post for life and maintained gubernatorial, military and judicial powers. Recompilación de Leyes
de los Reynos de las Indias, Book IV, Titles 3, 4 and 7 (1680).
9
Though not explicitly stated by de las Casas, the name is most likely an homage to the town in
Extremadura, Spain, made famous for a 14th Century Marian apparition.
8
Admiral Columbus took the two Taino youths and the women on board his ship to rescue them
all from the cannibals, and continued his trek through the archipelago (Book 1, 43-44).
From Admiral Columbus’s journals, de las Casas relates the crew’s navigation to and from
many islands, meeting various tribes, some hostile and warlike, and others peaceful. From the
latter came emissaries of the Tainos of King Guacanagarí, who would go on to become
Christopher Columbus’s best friend, and whose son Columbus would eventually adopt upon
Guacanagarí’s death in a battle with a rival tribe (Book I, 45-47).
On his trek from island to island, Admiral Columbus found signs of more conflict. At first,
he could not discern if they evidenced internecine warfare among the local tribes, or conflict
between the indigenes and the Spanish settlers. They were, in fact, evidence of both. Regarding
the latter conflict, however, members of a Taino tribe informed Admiral Columbus of the shocking
tragedy that entire villages of Spaniards had been wiped out, either by disease or from attacks by
indigenes; the Tainos provided confused stories as to the exact details of the settlers’ ghastly fate
(Book I, 46).
Though dismayed by these grisly tidings, Admiral Columbus and his crew carried on with
their mission, and settled in a large river port on Hispaniola, which he named Isabela, after the
Queen. There, the crew hastened to build homes, a church, a hospital, and a fort. But the men
were exhausted and hungry; their food rotted with unexpected celerity due to the humid climate.
To make matters worse, many of the settlers were entitled hidalgos, Spanish nobles, who deemed
themselves above manual labor and refused to toil. De las Casas relates that “many noblemen
raised in comfort who had never known a day of hardship in their lives found their misery
intolerable and some died in a state of great turmoil.” By March 29th, starvation, sickness,
demoralization and death were the hallmarks of the Isabela settlement. With the very survival of
the settlers hanging in the balance, Governor Columbus promised harsh penalties to the hidalgos
if they refused to contribute their share of the work. To avoid the growing threat of famine, he
also rationed food among the settlers. For these desperate measures, the hidalgos grew fiercely
resentful of Governor Columbus, falsely accusing him of being “hateful of all Spaniards.”
Moreover, the hidalgos and other high-born Spaniards regarded Governor Columbus as a low-
born foreigner in their midst, and this bigotry exacerbated their indignation, discontent and
acrimony toward him (Book I, 47-50).
At this low point in the settlement effort, Captain Pedro Margarite of the settlement of
Santo Tomás advised Governor Columbus that the tribe of Chief Caonabo planned to attack the
fort at that location. The governor sent Captain Margarite a reinforcement of seventy men, and
ordered Alonzo de Hojeda – who would later become one of Governor Columbus’s political rivals
9
– to make a show of force with his squad to frighten the tribal warriors out of attacking, and thus
avoid bloodshed. Hojeda exceeded his mandate in response to an act of deception by a chief of
a nearby tribe. The chief double-crossed Hojeda by sending members of the tribe to “help”
Hojeda’s men ford a river; the tribe members left the Spaniards stranded and stole their supplies.
Hojeda’s retaliation was fierce, and far beyond what Governor Columbus had authorized; Hojeda
cut off the ears of the chief’s kinsman, and shackled the chief and other members of his family to
bring them back to the settlement (Book I, 50-51).
All the while, Governor Columbus was sick, starving, sleepless, and under enormous
pressure and expectation from the Crown to deliver on their sizable investment in the second
voyage. Hojeda brought before the beleaguered governor the double-crossing chief. The
governor threatened capital punishment for the crime, but when the chief offered a tearful apology
for the robbery, Christopher Columbus revoked the sentence immediately (Book I, 51).
No sooner had the situation been resolved did horsemen arrive with news of yet another
conflict: an insurrection of the chief’s warriors who surrounded and attempted to kill five settlers.
These continuing incidents made clear to Governor Columbus that in his absence, and without
his pacifying presence and disciplined rulership of the settlers, relations between the indigenes
and the Spaniards had soured terribly, resulting in some tribes declaring outright war on the
settlers (Book I, 51-52).
De las Casas, as Protector of the Indians, sympathized with the tribes in these conflicts.
He opined that “with their lord taken away prisoner” by Hojeda, the indigenes “had a right to
declare a just war” against the settlers. Though he criticizes the settlers’ efforts “first and foremost
to instill fear in these people” where they “should have taken pains to bring love and peace,” he
exonerates Governor Columbus for his actions in this crisis thrust upon him. De las Casas writes,
“Truly, I would not dare blame the admiral’s intentions, for I knew him well and I know his intentions
were good.” Indeed, the governor ordered only a show of arms against the chief and his tribesmen
in order to frighten them out of warring against and otherwise terrorizing the settlers. De las
Casas notes that the Spaniards “were such a fierce-looking novelty, trespassing with arms and
horses that seemed so ferocious.” Despite Hojeda’s indiscretion and the tensions it caused,
Columbus availed himself of the Spaniards’ appearance of strength to ensure that not a single,
additional drop of blood was spilled over the incidents (Book I, 52).
De las Casas demonstrates that despite the souring of relations between the indigenes
and the Spanish settlers that occurred in Christopher Columbus’s absence – when he had
returned to Spain after the first voyage – and the growing resentment of the hidalgos for Governor
Columbus’s rationing of their food and insistence that they pull their weight in constructing the
10
Isabela settlement, the governor still managed to foster a mutual trust between himself and the
tribes of the Americas. The indigenes informed Columbus of “the multitude of other islands in the
vicinity,” which he explored “[t]o make provision of water and food” (Book I, 53-55).
On July 7, 1494, an elderly chief visited Columbus and his crewmen in Cuba, during a
Mass. The chief noted “the priest’s rituals, the Christians’ signs of adoration, reverence and
humility, and the respectful way they treated the admiral.” The chief gifted Columbus “a pumpkin-
like bowl of native fruit,” sat with Columbus, and offered him kind counsel – both spiritual and
political – regarding relations with the tribes. Columbus was delighted to learn that the spiritual
beliefs of this particular tribe broadly mirrored those of Christianity. Columbus promised the old
man that it was his solemn mission “to prevent” the “man-eating cannibals or Caribs...from doing
such evil” against the other tribes and the settlers, “while defending and honoring the good people
who lived in peace.” De las Casas recounts that “[t]he wise old man heard these words with tears
of pleasure” and expressed his desire to travel with Columbus back to Castile. The old chief “sank
to his knees with signs of admiration for men of such quality that he was not quite sure whether
they had been born on earth or in Heaven.” De las Casas cites the writings of Christopher
Columbus’s son Hernando, which are corroborated by “the more lengthy account in [15th Century
historian] Pedro Martyr’s [epistolary historical accounts of Central and South American
explorations] Decadas” and editorializes that he is not at all surprised by “the old man’s speech”
(Book I, 55-56).
The “Scheme” Against Columbus by the Inimical Hidalgos
De las Casas recounts the seeds of sedition against Governor Columbus laid by the
nobles chagrined by the governor’s labor distribution and strict rationing of food, including
Benedictine Monk Fray Bernardo Buil and Captain Pedro Margarite of the Fort of Santo Tomás.
The hidalgos retaliated fiercely. They seized Bartolomé Columbus’s ship and returned to Castile.
They falsely told King Ferdinand “that he should not entertain any hopes of acquiring wealth in
the Indies, for the whole affair was a joke, there simply was no gold on the island.” They
conveniently neglected to inform the Crown that, being busy with constructing the settlement, no
one had yet mined for any gold. In fact, Governor Columbus prohibited the settlers from stealing
gold from the tribes; he allowed them only to barter for it. The deceptions of the resentful hidalgos
convinced King Ferdinand that “Columbus’s enterprise [w]as a waste of money, which was
reinforced by the fact that these gentlemen had not brought any gold with them.” De las Casas
counters the lies of the hidalgos by arguing that given that Columbus only “had been there [in the
West Indies] four months and a few days; how, then, could he have mistreated the Spaniards and
11
what was his bad government…? God only knows.” De las Casas notes that the angry hidalgos
“worked hard against him in court” by hatching “the first and bitter trick against him”: they deceived
the Crown into believing that “Columbus was busy unjustly harming the Indians, a scheme...that
meant his first severe reprimand” (Book I, 56-57).
Juan Aguado: Royal Spy, Political Saboteur, Instigator of War
De las Casas introduces those confederates of the treacherous “scheme” to destroy

Governor Columbus’s reputation and authority who carried out their respective roles in the
colonies. The false reports of the resentful hidalgos who returned to Castile prompted King
Ferdinand to send a spy to the West Indies, Juan Aguado. Aguado “began by throwing cold water
on the admiral’s pleasure and prosperity” by portraying him as “tyrannically offending the Indians
instead of converting them.” In fact, “the admiral was engaged in the war against King
Caonabo.”10 De las Casas writes that “Aguado took on airs of authority and liberties he did not
have when he meddled in juridical matters,” including “treating the admiral’s brother, Bartolomé,
then acting governor, with little respect. Then Aguado went looking for the admiral.” Aguado
incited the indigenes affected by their war to “thirst” for Governor Columbus’s murder, and
diverted their attention from how such an event “might bring about worse disasters,” which
Christopher Columbus’s pacifying influence prevented. Aguado’s machinations prompted “large
gatherings of Indian chiefs [who] discussed the benefits that might result from a new admiral.”
Aguado led them to believe that Governor Columbus “mistreated them; but they were mistaken.”
This mistake would ultimately result in their extinguishment by the Spaniards who unseated
Christopher Columbus from the governorship by the ultimate unfolding of this nascent, deceptive
and ruinous “scheme” (Book I, 57-58).
Columbus Returns to Spain to Refute Aguado’s Slander
De las Casas relates Governor Columbus’s return to Spain after the second voyage. He
left his brothers and “Chief Mayor” Francisco Roldán in charge of the West Indies in his absence.
Upon his arrival in Spain, Governor Columbus presented the Crown with evidence to refute the
resentful hidalgos’ pernicious allegations that the West Indian “enterprise was a waste of money”:
masks adorned with gold, and news of his discoveries of Cuba, Jamaica and other islands. De
10
Chief Guacanagarí informed Governor Columbus that Caonabo and his warriors had burned
the Spanish settlement of La Navidad and murdered all of its inhabitants. Saunders, Nicholas J.
The Peoples of the Caribbean: An Encyclopedia of Archeology and Traditional Culture. Santa
Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2005, p. 41. Print.
12
las Casas writes, “[W]e shall not waste time mentioning Aguado’s reports since little attention was
paid them,” further vindicating Christopher Columbus (Book I, 58-59).
Columbus and the Crown immediately discussed the terms of the third voyage –
whereupon Columbus intended to find the continent – including how the Crown could entice
Castilian citizens to move to and work in the New World. Among others, those convicted of all
but the most serious crimes were granted clemency by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand for a
few years of service on Hispaniola. So long as Christopher Columbus served as governor of the
Indies, even these men of questionable background made fine settlers. De las Casas writes of a
Castilian “whose ears had been cut off for a crime in Castile, and his conduct here [in Hispaniola]
was beyond reproach” (Book I, 59-60). Only after the hidalgos’ grand scheme to unseat
Columbus succeeded did these former criminals run amok under the new administration.
Alonso de Hojeda: The Pretender
Alonso de Hojeda, the military officer who exceeded the mandates of Governor Columbus
in punishing a tribe of indigenes who had robbed his men, reappears in de las Casas’s account
as one of the key conspirators in the sedition against the governor during the third voyage. Hojeda
had learned, in the late 1490s, of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the continent of South
America at the Paria peninsula of Venezuela. Without the Crown’s knowledge, Hojeda acquired
the permission of Bishop Juan de Fonesca of Badajoz to explore the peninsula, and enlisted
Amerigo Vespucci as his pilot. Hojeda lied about his departure date from Cádiz, Spain – claiming
he departed in 1497 when he actually departed in 1499 (Columbus departed on May 30, 1498) –
“in order to claim the discovery of the continent for himself, thus usurping the glory and honor due
to Columbus alone” (Book I, 61).
De las Casas ensures to set the record straight. He cites a “number of eyewitnesses”
who attest that “Columbus had discovered Paria” for the world east of the Atlantic, “as Pedro
Martyr corroborates in his Decadas, I, 8, 9.” De las Casas notes also that Hojeda himself admitted
eventually “that, having seen the chart [drawn by Christopher Columbus] in Castile, he explored
Paria, the land already discovered by Columbus” (Book I, 61-62).
Christopher Columbus’s discovery of Paria and his first contact with the indigenes there
yielded no known conflict. Hojeda’s crew was not so fortunate, experiencing mixed results from
his first contact with the tribes of Paria (Book I, 62-63). In one encounter, the tribes of Paria
attacked Hojeda and his men, wounding twenty-two of them, and killing one, according to the
journals of Amerigo Vespucci, after whom the Americas were named. De las Casas notes as an
13
aside to this account that the continents rightly “should have been called Columbia” (citing
Chapter 139 of the unabridged Historia de las Indias, p. 40), and that Hernando Columbus has
“documentary proof” making “clear that [Christopher] Columbus discovered the continent” for
Europe (Book I, 62).
De las Casas relates another encounter in which Hojeda and his men “rowed to shore”
making “the Christians’ signs of peace and friendship” to “an intimate number of naked people”
who “stood gaping” at the sight of their arrival. So shocked were these indigenes by the sight,
they nevertheless went “fleeing into the woods” (Book I, 63).
Hojeda and his crew set sail again, dropping anchor two leagues further down the coast.
There, they found yet another tribe of “people lining the banks, gathered there to see such a
novelty.” Forty Spaniards “went ashore, calling to the people and flashing mirrors and Castilian
beads until some of the Indians dared to approach to take what was offered them.” The following
morning, “the beach was full of Indians, men, women and children happily staring at the ship. And
when the Christians put the boats out to sea, some swam up to meet them. The trusting Indians
welcomed our men, milling around them as if they had known them all their lives.”
The difference in outcomes between Columbus’s encounters and those of Hojeda likely
had less to do with fortune than with the varying traditions and beliefs of the disparate tribes.
More importantly Admiral Columbus’s success in dealing with the tribes of the West Indies
resulted from his “good natured, kind...and pious” character (Book I, 15), which Hojeda sorely
lacked.
Amerigo Vespucci’s Anthropography of the Tribes Encountered on Hojeda’s Voyage
De las Casas offers some insight into the difficulties the Europeans and indigenes
experienced in dealing with one another. In very large part, these difficulties resulted from a wide
disparity in cultural mores that to European sensibilities seemed shocking and even horrifying, as
evidenced, for example, by the settlers’ reactions to the cannibalism of the Caribs (Book I, 43-
44). To the indigenes, the Spaniards seemed fearsome, as evidenced, for example, by the flight
of the Paria denizens upon seeing Hojeda’s crew alight from their technologically sophisticated
sailing ship carrying mirrors and other alien artifacts (Book I, 63). He synopsizes the
anthropographic writings of Amerigo Vespucci, the pilot of Hojeda’s ship, detailing the observed
cultural traditions of the various tribes they encountered on their expedition through the Paria
peninsula (Book I, 63-68). The traditions of the various Venezuelan tribes that de las Casas
highlights makes the culture clash self-evident.
14
Of that tribe that Hojeda’s crew encountered on the peninsular coast, de las Casas
recounts that Vespucci observed that they wore no clothing, but went about entirely naked, a
shocking, visual first impression that could not go unnoticed to the Europeans. The tribe members
carried “very sharp weapons and were excellent marksmen” who fought and warred with other
tribes “of another language group who ha[d] killed one of them.” They ate fish and meat in clay
pots and slept in cotton hammocks in large, bell shaped houses made of wood and palm, “housing
up to 600 people at one time.” Having lived in such a close communal arrangement, “[t]hey are
extremely generous with their possessions...and expect the same degree of liberality” from others
(Book I, 63-64).
De las Casas notes, however, that the writings of Vespucci reveal habits of some Paria
tribes that “on the other hand” seemed so foreign to the Europeans that “it reads like pure fiction.”
Perhaps the most shocking of these was that “that they seldom eat meat unless it be the flesh of
their enemies,” and that the tribes “were astonished to see that Christians do not eat their
enemies.” The tribes of Paria had no marriages, but shared their womenfolk and daughters,
choosing to impregnate them “and leave them as they please.” The women “force stillbirths” of
their babies by eating certain herbs “if they tire of their men.” The tribes of Paria “do not seem to
have any religion; at least, they have no temples or prayer houses.” Almost as a comic
afterthought, de las Casas adds that Vespucci noted, “they think nothing of urinating and passing
wind in public” (Book I, 64-65).
De las Casas also quotes the writings of “the Portuguese priests of the Company of
Jesus,” the Jesuits, who wrote of the tribes inhabiting Brazil, to whom they referred – not
necessarily pejoratively – as “castes of heathens.” Some of these tribes seemed relatively benign
and even pleasing to the Jesuits. Of the Goyanazes and Carijos, for example, the Jesuits noted
that they embraced Christianity “so well that they had convent-like houses for women and retreat
houses like monasteries for men.” Of the “giant” people of the Cayamure tribe, they noted that
although they pierced their underlips and nostrils with bone ornaments and practiced sorcery,
they otherwise lived in the mountains in isolation, wore beards (unlike the other tribes who
depilated their faces, heads and bodies), were able to “run [through] the woods at great speed,”
inspired great fear among their enemy tribes by fighting ferociously with “the strongest bows...in
one hand and a club in the other,” and called the Portuguese “brothers” (Book I, 66-69).
However, other tribes, such as the Tupeniques and Tupinambas, practiced traditions that,
at best, unnerved and, at worst, appalled the Europeans. Of the former sort, the Jesuits noted,
these tribes “live in large palm houses [containing] up to fifty families per house” and slept near
fire “to protect them from cold and evil spirits.” They “worship no other gods than thunder, which
15
they call tupana, meaning something like ‘divine object.’” Every few years, shamans arrived
wearing painted pumpkin masks, each “chang[ing] his voice to that of a child” and counselling or
predicting nonsensical things, such as that “food will grow and come to their houses by itself”;
“tools will go out digging and arrows will fly out to the woods and bring back the game”; and “old
women will turn into maidens and daughters will be free for all.” Of the latter, more disturbing,
variety, the Jesuits noted that prisoners of war were fattened and pampered before a grisly
slaughter in front of “everyone...from the neighboring villages” who came “to see the festivities.”
Each war prisoner was “given the girl of his choice or the chief’s daughter” as a concubine, “and
is fattened like a pig until judged ripe for the killing.” The Tupeniques and Tupinambas then
cleaned and killed the prisoner of war; “then they cut him to pieces and eat them roasted or boiled”
(Book I, 67-68).
De las Casas views these shocking traditions not through the lens of xenophobia, but
rather as a function of the absence of what he considered to be the singular civilizing force of his
day: “the Faith” (Prologue, 6; Book I, 38). He writes, “When we examine this world, experience
shows us the truth of what the Scriptures teach us about God’s infallible Providence” (Book I, 65).
De las Casas emphasizes that Christianity converted the Spaniards of ancient times from “liv[ing]
like animals” and “full of wild and irrational defects,” such as “grave and nefarious idolatry,” into a
“smoothly organized” nation (Prologue, 6). Thus, he concludes, “divine Providence ordained” that
to the tribes of the West Indies “the practice of moral virtue...be taught...according to the principles
established by Christ” (Prologue, 8). For Christopher Columbus’s adherence to this same
philosophy in the face of the “schemes” of those who sought to “usurp[ ] the glory and honor due”
him, de las Casas continuously characterizes "the illustrious Genoese" as "good-natured, kind[,]
pious," and a man of "good judgment" chosen by “divine Providence” (Book I, 15, 17). De las
Casas counsels that like Christopher Columbus, all who encounter the tribes of the West Indies
“admit to the world that the Indians descend from Adam our father, and this suffices for us to
respect the divine principle of charity toward them, since we were so privileged as to be brought
to Christianity before them” (Book I, 65-66).
The Final Plot Against Governor Columbus
Book I concludes with de las Casas’s reproduction of a letter from Christopher Columbus
to Doña Juana de Torres, the governess of the deceased Prince Juan de Torres, son of Queen
Isabella and King Ferdinand. Columbus wrote the letter during his abrupt return from this third
voyage in 1500, the result of the treachery of his political enemies. The Crown was torn between
the false accounts of the resentful hidalgos that no gold was to be found in the West Indies, and
16
the accounts of Governor Columbus, who assured the Crown that through mining and barter with
the tribes, enough gold could be procured to constitute a satisfactory return on the sizeable
investment it made on the voyages from the royal treasury. To settle the matter, the Crown tasked
Francisco de Bobadilla, a Spanish politician, with visiting the West Indies to provide an accounting
of the gold to be found there. The Crown authorized Bobadilla, if he found the hidalgos’
accusations to be true that Governor Columbus was purposefully withholding gold or engaging in
any other wrongdoing, to replace him and assume the title of Viceroy of the West Indies. Fueled
by this promise of usurping the office of Governor Columbus and seizing control of the West
Indies, Bobadilla launched a merciless attack on Columbus to remove him from office by any
means necessary (Book I, 69).
Upon Bobadilla’s arrival in Hispaniola, he fabricated false charges against Governor
Columbus and his two brothers; ordered them arrested and shackled in chains; and transported
them back to Cádiz, Spain as prisoners. André Martín, the master of the caravel transporting the
Columbus brothers, tried to remove Christopher Columbus’s chains, but Columbus refused,
insisting that “only the monarchs could do this.” During the journey, Columbus wrote letters
presenting his defense to the Crown, including the letter to Doña Juana that de las Casas
reproduces in Historia de las Indias. Upon arriving in Spain, Master Martín “dispatched a secret
message to the King from Cádiz, hoping to counterinfluence the reports of Bobadilla” and refute
his slander (Book I, 69).
Christopher Columbus’s letter to Doña Juana poignantly reveals his own mindset, morals
and motivations. He wrote that he finds himself fighting “a thousand battles” by which he has
been “cruelly cast down.” He laments that in his current condition, “the basest of men thinks
nothing of abusing me,” and that he “would give up the whole business if it were not for the honor
of the Queen and God.” In other words, for piety and chivalry did he bear the countless injuries
and indignities inflicted upon him. But Christopher Columbus’s piety was also his preserving
hope; citing the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament, in which God closed the maws of lions to
save the eponymous Israelite, who was cast into their den while in service to the King of Babylon
(Daniel 6: 1-28), and repelled the flames of the fire pit from Daniel’s three companions when they
refused to bow to the Babylonian idol (Daniel 3: 1-30), Columbus maintained faith that “Our Lord
exists...and He displays His wisdom and power when he pleases” (Book I, 73). Columbus
entrusted that “the world will in time praise the man who abstained from abuse, thinking it virtuous
to abstain (Book I, 70).
17
Hojeda and Pinzón: Fomenting War and Suspicion
Christopher Columbus recounts in his letter to Doña Juana the events that caused the
settlement effort to go awry. First, upon establishing communities in Paria, Venezuela, he hired
the occupants to fish for pearls, but they violated their contracts and stole the pearls by the bushel.
“Then [Alonzo de] Hojeda arrived and upset everything.” Hojeda warred with the tribes of Paria,
joined by “little else but vagabonds,” each without “a wife or children.” Hojeda’s hostilities caused
the Paria tribes to attack Columbus “most seriously.” Governor Columbus dealt with Hojeda by
peaceably sending him back to Spain in spite of all the bloodshed Hojeda caused. “Then
[conquistador] Vicente Yáñez [Pinzón] arrived with four caravels.” Pinzón had captained the Niña
on Admiral Columbus’s first voyage. Columbus relates that Pinzón’s return was troublesome to
the Hispaniola settlements, “causing excitement and suspicion but no damages” (Book I, 70-71).
Adrián de Moxica and Francisco Roldán: Agents of Betrayal and Rebellion
The exile of Hojeda did little to end hostilities with the tribes. Columbus recounts, “A
certain Adrián [de Moxica],” a Spanish nobleman who, with the assistance of Mayor Francisco
Roldán, initiated atrocities against the tribes against the will of Governor Columbus, “tried to rebel
again.” Columbus attests, “I had determined never to touch a hair on anyone’s head,” but that he
“could not save” Moxica from arrest and hanging. Columbus emphasized his regret that Moxica’s
crimes called for capital punishment, but laments that they were so heinous that Columbus “would
have acted in the same way toward my own brother” if he had done the same (Book I, 71).
Betrayed by his own mayor, and beleaguered by the hostilities of the conquistadors,
Columbus beseeched the Crown for help. He writes, “I wanted to escape from governing these
dissolute people...full of vice and malice” and “begged Their Highnesses...to send someone at
my expense to administer justice.” This request would be Columbus’s undoing as governor of
the West Indies. The Crown complied. They sent Francisco de Bobadilla (Book I, 71).
Weary though Governor Columbus was of these troublesome conquistadors when he
made his request to the Crown for help, he nevertheless had succeeded, after the conclusion of
the Moxica affair, in restoring peace and prosperity to the West Indies. To Doña Juana, he wrote,
“When Comendador Bobadilla arrived in Santo Domingo I was in La Vega” in the Dominican
Republic, “and my brother [Bartolomé] the Adelantado was in Xaraguá” in Hispaniola; “only by
now things were calm, the land was rich and everyone lived in peace” (Book I, 71). This pax
Columbiana was to be short-lived. Bobadilla “took up residence in my home and he took
everything,” including all of Governor Columbus’s documents. In particular, “those which would
18
have cleared me are the ones he kept most hidden” (Book I, 76). Bobadilla then took control of
the settlements. “The day after he arrived he constituted himself governor, appointed officials,
performed executive acts, and announced gold franchises and the remission of titles...for a period
of twenty years, which is a man’s lifetime” (Book I, 72).
Bobadilla did all this in Governor Columbus’s absence (Book I, 73), and without notifying
the Crown (Book I, 76). He announced to the populace that he intended to arrest the governor
and his brothers and put them in chains (Book I, 72, 74). Diego Columbus became Bobadilla’s
first prisoner. Unaware of any of this, Christopher Columbus “wrote to welcome” Bobadilla from
La Vega, thinking him the agent sent by the Crown to “administer justice” that he requested (Book
I, 72). Instead Bobadilla’s “first concern was to take the gold while I was away; he said he wanted
it to pay the people, but I heard that he kept the first part for himself and sent for new traders.”
Columbus added, “When I heard of this, I thought it was only something mild like the Hojeda affair”
(Book I, 72). However, when Columbus arrived from La Vega, Bobadilla carried out his threat to
put him in chains, and then did the same to the adelantado, Bartolomé Columbus, when he finally
arrived (Book I, 74). Having made captives of all three of the Columbus brothers, Bobadilla had
successfully usurped the hereditary title of Viceroy of the West Indies.
Columbus had no idea of the extent of Bobadilla’s depravity. As the self-appointed Viceroy
of the Indies, Bobadilla provoked the settlers, gathered “rebels and other untrustworthy people”
and aroused against Columbus “a quantity of people [who] did not deserve baptism before God
or the world,” including slavers “who go out to look for women [and] nine- or ten-year-old girls
[selling them] at a premium” on the slave market (Book I, 73). As Bobadilla’s prisoner, Columbus
learned that Bobadilla “did everything in his power to harm me” and such damage to Hispaniola
that “Their Highnesses...would be astonished to find that the island is still standing” (Book I, 74).
Once Bobadilla had removed Christopher Columbus as an obstacle, he undid all the
restraints on the Spanish encomienda system that Governor Columbus had effected to discipline
the indolent hidalgos. Thus, Bobadilla’s true reign of terror commenced. He eliminated the
hidalgos’ requirement to pay all but nominal taxes. He imposed forced labor upon the indigenes
as miners and cooks so the hidalgos would not have to labor (Book II, 78). Worse, Bobadilla
assigned Indian tribes to [the colonists], thus making [the Spaniards] very happy.
You should have seen those hoodlums, exiled from Castile for homicide with
crimes yet to be accounted for, served by native kings and their vassals doing the
meanest chores. These chiefs had daughters, wives and other close relations
whom the Spaniards took for concubines either with their own consent or by force
(Book II, 78). With Bobadilla’s usurpation from Christopher Columbus of the governance of the
West Indies, the encomienda, as well as Bobadilla’s own personal brand of tyranny, reigned
19
supreme. De las Casas writes of this dark time, "The Spaniards loved and adored [Bobadilla] in
exchange for such favors, help and advice, because they knew how much freer they were now
than under Columbus” (Book II, 78-79).
Bobadilla not only “took no measures to remedy or avoid the situation,” but told the
hidalgos, “Take as many advantages as you can since you don’t know how long this will last”
(Book II, 79). Indeed Bobadilla knew that his calumnious writings against Columbus were lies;
that his own deeds as the new Viceroy were nothing short of the most profane wickedness; and
that when the Crown heard Christopher Columbus’s true accounts, much, if not all of Bobadilla’s
unjust overreaching would be revoked.
Indeed, Christopher Columbus set forth to set things right, even in chains. In captivity in
Hispaniola, and on the ship to Cádiz where, shackled, he wrote his letter to Doña Juana,
Columbus relied not only on his faith for assurance and internal strength, but on his confidence
in his position and the propriety of his deeds. He wrote that “Comendador Bobadilla is striving to
explain his conduct, but I will easily show him that his scant knowledge, great cowardice and
exorbitant greed are the motives that pushed him into it.” He adds, “Their Highnesses will know
this when they order him to give an account, especially if I am present when he gives it” (Book I,
74-75).
Though confident in his rectitude, Christopher Columbus bore no hubris or illusions that
he was an infallible governor. Indeed, he recognized his own limitations as a politician, including
his naive trust that the hidalgos would respect his authority, though he was, in fact, a low-born
Genoan among entitled Spanish nobles. He admonished that he should not be “judge[d] as if I
were a governor in Sicily or of a well-regulated town or city” – where the social fabric is intact and
the laws “observed in their entirety.” Rather, “I should be judged as a captain who left Spain for
the Indies” and found himself unwittingly in “a warlike nation [with] no towns or governments,” all
the while opposed by villainous conquistadors who imposed upon him “the ingratitude of injuries”
(Book I, 75).
Conclusion
Thus ends Book I, and de las Casas’s account of the first eight years of the history of the
West Indies. The chronicle of Bobadilla’s nightmarish reign of terror, as well as the account of
Christopher Columbus’s vindication at trial and triumphant return on his fourth voyage, which the
Crown agreed to fund, appear in greater detail in Book II of History of the Indies, of which I shall
provide a report subsequently.
20
The account in Book I, as well as the reproduction of Columbus’s journal and epistles,
reflects the belief of de las Casas and Christopher Columbus that the civil rights of the indigenes
proceed logically from the transcendent value of all humans, which is nested in the metaphysical
beliefs of Judeo-Christian mores. Columbus’s and de las Casas’s piety and devotion to these
sacred tenets demonstrate a consensus of morality of the civilized nations of the time that was
predicated on the metaphysical presupposition that an intangible divinity inhabits each individual,
so transcendent and valuable that even the law must acquiesce to it. De las Casas states this
explicitly when he writes “that the Indians descend from Adam our father, and this suffices for us
to respect the divine principle of charity toward them, since we were so privileged as to be brought
to Christianity before [encountering] them” (Book I, 65-66).” De las Casas notes that organized
societies of this time in human history were predicated on this belief of the divine spark of
humanity, and that this belief is imbedded in the law and the idea of natural right that undergirded
Spain’s Siete Partidas and the laws of its sister nations, such as England – and indeed continues
to undergird modern Western law as it has evolved.
De las Casas’s and Christopher Columbus’s belief in the divinity of the human soul, the
transcendence and value of each individual, and the self-evident truth of natural right provided
the cornerstone of the European Enlightenment, the first sparks of which were but a century away,
in no small part due to the contributions of Christopher Columbus himself, the scientist and civil
rights activist. Equally predicated on this profound axiom is the presumption of innocence,
eradicated by Bobadilla during his persecution of Governor Columbus until, as Book II of History
of the Indies relates, as will my next report, "the illustrious Genoese Christopher Columbus"
vindicated himself forever after before the Crown of Spain and the world.
21
EXHIBIT E
A Report
by Robert F. Petrone, Esquire,
to City Council of the City of Philadelphia
on
HISTORY OF THE INDIES

BOOKS II AND III (OF III)
Authored by Bartolomé de las Casas
Translated and edited by Andreé M. Collard
March 18, 2019

The Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas wrote the original primary source of the
history of the West Indies, Historia de las Indias, originally intended to be a six-volume work, but
ending after the third volume. The edition of History of the Indies that has been the subject of this
report and my previous report to this Council, was translated into English, edited and published
in 1971 by Andrée M. Collard (1926 -1986), a professor and writer, who also wrote an Introduction
to the book.
De las Casas’s Historia is the predominant, first-hand account of the governorship of
Christopher Columbus, whose policies protecting the indigenes from enslavement and
exploitation prompted gold-mongering Spanish hidalgos to depose and replace him. De las
Casas, appointed Protector of the Indians by the Church and the Crown of Spain, personally knew
Christopher Columbus, whom he described as “good-natured, kind, daring, courageous and
pious” and “the most outstanding sailor in the world,” and lived through his benevolent
gubernatorial administration, which he characterized in no uncertain terms as driven by the
governor’s “unusual insight into human and divine affairs” (Book I, 15).
De las Casas’s Book I, the subject of my first report to this Council, recounted the early
life, first three trans-Atlantic expeditions and gubernatorial administration of the West Indies of
Christopher Columbus. As recorded therein, Francisco de Bobadilla, in league with the resentful
hidalgos, falsified charges against Columbus and his two brothers as a pretext to send them back
to Spain so that Bobadilla could usurp the hereditary title of Governor of the West Indies. Book I
and my report on it end with Christopher Columbus’s letter to Doña Juana de Torres of the court
of the Crown of Spain – written with his hands in shackles on board the prison ship shuttling him
back to Cádiz – protesting Bobadilla’s accusations as unfounded slander. This report commences
where the preceding ended, with an account of Christopher Columbus’s victory in the Spanish
court over Bobadilla’s calumnious charges, and his fourth and final voyage to the West Indies,
funded by the Spanish Crown.
Christopher Columbus: The Father of American Civil Rights

Spanish hidalgos, the low noblemen of the burgeoning Spanish empire, rushed to the
West Indies to establish settlements in the wake of Admiral Christopher Columbus’s news of
having discovered a populated land of indigenes while en route to Asia. Many of the hidalgos
were criminals in their homeland, and escaped imprisonment by responding as volunteers to the
Crown’s call for settlers. After only seven-years, during which time the Crown of Spain had
appointed Christopher Columbus governor of the Indies, the hidalgos repeatedly rebelled and
eventually deposed Columbus in retaliation for his (1) refusal to allow them to enslave the
1
indigenes; (2) requiring the hidalgos to toil in construction of habitable settlements; and (3)
thwarting the imposition upon the indigenes of the iniquitous encomienda system, the centuries-
old tribute system of the Spanish Crown that rewarded the hidalgos with the labor of subject
people (Book I, 47-50, 53-58; Book II, 78).1
The repeated rebellions of the hidalgos, under the seditious leadership of Alcalde Mayor
(local jurist and administrator) Francisco Roldán and his cohort, the aristocrat Adrián de Moxica,
prompted Governor Columbus to beseech the Crown to send an agent to “administer justice”
(Book I, 72). The Crown sent Francisco de Bobadilla, a knight of the Order of Calatrava – soldiers
of the Reconquista, the successful military campaign reclaiming Spanish land from the Moors.
The Crown instructed Bobadilla to investigate the competing claims of Governor Columbus and
the greedy and resentful hidalgos the governor kept bridled. With the promise of acquiring the
hereditary title of Viceroy of the Indies should he find any expulsionable wrongdoing on the part
of Governor Columbus, Bobadilla fabricated wrongdoing where he could find none. While
Governor Columbus was engaged in an inland expedition to build a fort in La Vega, Hispaniola,
Bobadilla arrived at the seaside settlement of Santo Domingo and, without notifying the Crown,
collected the gold of the settlement for himself, gathered rebels, hired slavers, and shackled each
of the Columbus brothers, one by one, as they returned to the settlement (Book I, 72-76).
As Columbus remained in manacles in the bowels of a caravel serving as his prison ship
back to Cádiz, the ship’s master, André Martín, sympathetic to the governor’s unjust suffering,
attempted to remove the shackles from Columbus’s wrists. So incensed by Bobadilla’s treachery
was Admiral Columbus, that he defiantly and righteously insisted that the shackles remain, and
be unfastened only in the presence of the King and Queen, that “only the monarchs could do this”
(Book I, 69). There, clapped in irons and confined in the brig, Christopher Columbus fervently
and determinedly penned his epistles to the Court of Spain, informing them of Bobadilla’s
treachery and depravity – of only the least of which he was, in fact, aware – and presenting a
detailed defense of his benevolent, seven-year governorship of the Indies (Book I, 69-75).
Columbus recounted in his letter the events that turned the proverbial tide against him
among the settlers, commencing with his hiring of the occupants of Paria, Venezuela, to fish for
pearls. He writes that “they violated their contracts and stole the pearls by the bushel” (Book I,
70). Their treachery was only the beginning. “Then [conquistador Alonso de] Hojeda arrived and
1
The encomienda system was established in Spain during the Roman Empire. Del Mar,
Alexander. A History of the Precious Metals: From the Earliest Times to the Present. New York:
Cambridge Encyclopedia Co., 1902, 89. Print.
2
upset everything.” Hojeda warred with the tribes of Paria, joined by those criminals who had
evaded imprisonment in Spain and acquired hidalgo status by agreeing to settle the New World
– whom Columbus described as “little else but vagabonds” without “wi[ves] or children,” – causing,
in turn, the Paria tribes to attack Columbus’s settlement “most seriously” (Book I, 70-71).
Hojeda was only the first of a series of troublemakers to follow. “Then [conquistador]
Vicente Yáñez [Pinzón] arrived with four caravels” – Pinzón had captained the Niña on
Columbus’s first voyage. Columbus writes that Pinzón “caus[ed] excitement and suspicions”
among the settlers and the indigenes, “but no damages,” perhaps because Pinzón knew
Columbus well from having sailed as one of his ship captains. This, in turn, likely engendered a
respect for the governor that rendered Pinzón immune from the resentful hidalgos’ solicitations
for rebellion and conquest.
But as more and more nobles arrived, the hidalgos persisted. “A certain Adrián [de
Moxica]” – who had initiated atrocities against the tribes in defiance of Columbus’s prohibition –
“tried to rebel again.” Columbus attests, “I had determined never to touch a hair on anyone’s
head,” but laments that he “could not save” Moxica from arrest and hanging for his deeds.
Columbus writes with sorrow, “I would have acted in the same way toward my own brother” had
he committed the same misdeeds (Book I, 71).
Governor Columbus’s constant efforts to restrain the greed of the hidalgos and overcome
their slothful resistance to labor, and the perpetual state of rebellion in which this conflict kept the
settlers, prompted him to seek assistance from the Crown. “I wanted to escape from governing
these dissolute people...full of vice and malice,” he writes, “and begged Their Highnesses...to
send someone at my expense to administer justice” (Book I, 71). In evil hour, the Crown heeded
the governor’s request, and sent for Comendador (Knight Commander) Francisco Fernández de
Bobadilla.
Bobadilla, a highly ranking member of the Order of Calatrava – Reconquista soldiers who
participated in the recapture of Spanish lands from the Moors – accepted the position. The
monarchs instructed Bobadilla to investigate the competing claims of Governor Columbus, who
wrote of the hidalgos’ refusal to toil and their constant attempts to exploit the indigenes, vis-à-vis
those of the hidalgos, who portrayed their low-born Genoese governor “as a cruel man hateful to
all Spaniards” (Book I, 49). Envoys on behalf of the hidalgos, such as Fray Bernardo Buil and
Captain Pedro Margarite of the Fort of Santo Tomás, falsely told King Ferdinand “that he should
not entertain any hopes of acquiring wealth in the Indies, for the whole affair was a joke, there
simply was no gold on the island.” Tellingly, however, Buil and Margarite withheld that, being
busy with constructing the settlement, no one had yet, in fact, mined for any gold, and that
3
Governor Columbus had prohibited the settlers from stealing gold from the tribes. Fearing that
“Columbus’s enterprise [w]as a waste of money,” (Book I, 56-57), the Crown included a provision
in Bobadilla’s mandate that he could assume governorship of the Indies – and take on the
hereditary title of Viceroy, which he could maintain for life and pass down to his heirs and assigns
– should he find enough evidence of wrongdoing by the governor.
Bobadilla conducted no investigation at all. Instead, seduced by the tantalizing promise
of dominion over a newly discovered land of yet-undetermined vastness and populated by
helpless, naked inhabitants he could subjugate with little effort and without restraint, Comendador
Bobadilla executed a perfidious plan the moment he arrived in Hispaniola. Governor Columbus
had embarked on an overland expedition seventy miles north of Santo Domingo, to construct a
fort in La Vega, Hispaniola. Bartolomé Columbus, Christopher’s younger brother whom the
Crown had appointed adelantado of Hispaniola,2 was in Xaraguá, on the western coast (modern-
day Haiti) when the comendador arrived. Only the third Columbus brother, Giacomo (Diego in
Spanish), youngest of the three, was present in Santo Domingo upon the disembarking of the
comendador. Bobadilla immediately arrested, shackled and imprisoned Giacomo in the brig of a
caravel that Bobadilla intended to use as a prison ship to shuttle the three brothers back to Spain.
With this act, and without permission from the Crown – though ostensibly under the
authority of his noble title and the pretense of acting with the Crown’s imprimatur – Comendador
Bobadilla assumed authority over the Santo Domingo settlement. His “first concern was to take
the gold while [Governor Columbus] was away; he said he wanted it to pay the people,” but, in
fact, “he kept the first part for himself and sent for new traders.”
Bobadilla then quickly extended his control over the rulership and pecuniary interests of
all the settlements. “The day after he arrived he constituted himself governor, appointed officials,
performed executive acts, and announced gold franchises and the remission of titles...for a period
of twenty years, which is a man’s lifetime” (Book I, 72).
Rumor of some of Bobadilla’s decrees reached Governor Columbus in La Vega. Unaware
of the extent of it, however, Columbus “thought it was only something mild like the Hojeda affair”
(Book I, 72). Acting the diplomat, and unsuspecting of his brother’s imprisonment, Governor
2
During the Spanish Reconquista, the adelantados were military caudillos -- leaders -- who
commanded the advance of the troops of the Crown of Castile through the Moor-occupied
territories. The Crown granted the adelantados authority to govern any reconquered districts.
During the colonization of the Indies, the Spanish Crown appointed “Adelantados de Indias” to
command the exploration of the New World and to establish settlements. Adelantados held the
post for life and maintained gubernatorial, military and judicial powers. Recompilación de Leyes
de los Reynos de las Indias, Book IV, Titles 3, 4 and 7 (1680).
4
Columbus “wrote to welcome” Bobadilla from La Vega as the agent sent by the Crown to
“administer justice” that he requested (Book I, 72); little did he know of the extensive campaign of
depravity Bobadilla was affecting in his absence.
Bobadilla commandeered Christopher Columbus’s personal effects as well as usurped his
gubernatorial office. He “took up residence in [Governor Columbus’s] home and he took
everything,” including all of Columbus’s documents. In particular, “those which would have
cleared [Columbus from Bobadilla’s calumnious claims] are the ones he kept most hidden” (Book
I, 76). Bobadilla provoked the settlers, gathered “rebels and other untrustworthy people” and
aroused against Columbus “a quantity of people [who] did not deserve baptism before God or the
world,” including slavers “who go out to look for women [and] nine- or ten-year-old girls [selling
them] at a premium” on the slave market (Book I, 73).
Bobadilla had wreaked much havoc in Santo Domingo by the time Governor Columbus
completed the construction of the fort at La Vega. When Columbus returned to to the port town,
Bobadilla clapped him in irons, and then did the same to Bartolomé when he finally arrived (Book
I, 74). Having made captives of all three of the Columbus brothers, Bobadilla had successfully
usurped the hereditary title of Viceroy of the West Indies by force.
Once Bobadilla had removed the Columbus brothers as an obstacle, he undid all the
restraints on the Spanish encomienda system that Governor Columbus had affected to restrain
and discipline the indolent hidalgos. Thus, Bobadilla’s true reign of terror commenced. Bobadilla
eliminated the hidalgos’ requirement to pay all but nominal taxes, and imposed forced labor upon
the indigenes as miners and cooks so the hidalgos would not have to toil (Book II, 78). Worse,
Bobadilla “assigned” entire tribes of indigenes to the settlers as their slaves,
thus making [the Spaniards] very happy. You should have seen those hoodlums,
exiled from Castile for homicide with crimes yet to be accounted for, served by
native kings and their vassals doing the meanest chores. These chiefs had
daughters, wives and other close relations whom the Spaniards took for
concubines either with their own consent or by force
(Book II, 78). With Bobadilla’s usurpation from Christopher Columbus of the governance of the
West Indies, the encomienda, as well as Bobadilla’s own personal brand of tyranny, reigned
supreme. De las Casas writes of this dark time, "The Spaniards loved and adored [Bobadilla] in
exchange for such favors, help and advice, because they knew how much freer they were now
than under Columbus” (Book II, 78-79).
Only after Bobadilla sprung his monstrous machinations did Columbus, his prisoner, finally
learn of the extent of them. Columbus wrote in his letter to Doña Juana de Torres that Bobadilla
5
“did everything in his power to harm me” and such damage to Hispaniola that “Their
Highnesses...would be astonished to find that the island is still standing” (Book I, 74).
Bobadilla knew that his own calumnious writings about Columbus were lies; that his own
deeds as the new Viceroy were nothing short of the most profane wickedness; and that when the
Crown finally heard Governor Columbus’s true accounts, much, if not all of Bobadilla’s unjust
ministrations would be undone. Bobadilla told his conspirators, “Take as many advantages as
you can since you don’t know how long this will last” (Book II, 79).
Indeed, Christopher Columbus’s efforts to thwart Bobadilla’s ghastly scheme began in the
bowels of his prison ship, even as he was shackled in irons. He wrote to the court of the
monarchs, “Comendador Bobadilla is striving to explain his conduct, but I will easily show him
that his scant knowledge, great cowardice and exorbitant greed are the motives that pushed him
into it.” He adds, “Their Highnesses will know this when they order him to give an account,
especially if I am present when he gives it” (Book I, 74-75).
The Nightmarish Reign of Francisco Fernández de Bobadilla (as Recounted in Book II)
Francisco de Bobadilla wasted no time in instituting his reign of terror over the West Indies
the moment Columbus’s prison ship left shore. “Once the two caravels on which Comendador
Bobadilla was sending Columbus and his brothers as prisoners to Castile had sailed,” Bobadilla
took control of the Crown’s military force. The garrison would have been “more than enough...to
keep the Indians pacified, had [Bobadilla and the hidalgos] treated them differently” (Book II, 78).
De las Casas notes, however, that the force was also enough “to subdue and kill them all, which
is what [Bobadilla and his confederates] did.” Having subverted the purpose of the few
servicemen Governor Columbus had requested to assist the settlements – “not because they
were needed” for fighting, “but because [Columbus] had to dispose of the weak [settlers], the sick
and those homesick for Castile” (Book II, 78) – Comendador Francisco de Bobadilla, knighted
conqueror of Moors, now possessed an indomitable, armed and armored war machine against
the naked, spear-and-cudgel-wielding indigenes with which to extend the bloodshed of the
Reconquista to the New World when any, including Columbus, dared to resist him.
Next, Bobadilla exonerated all of the traitorous hidalgos who had engaged in sedition
against Governor Columbus and been convicted of other crimes. Of the traitorous Alcalde
Roldán,3 de las Casas writes, “As far as Francisco Roldán and his followers were concerned, I
3
The appointed office of alcalde mayor has no direct English analogue, but included the role of
the chief administrator of a territorial unit known as an alcaldía mayor, with judicial, administrative,
military, and legislative authority. The term alcalde derived from the Arabic qād, ī, meaning judge.
6
saw them a few days later, as if nothing had happened, safe and sound, happy and living as
honored members of the community.” Enjoying a virtually tax-free existence and with tribes of
indigenes as their servants, “those 300 hidalgos lived for several years in a continuous state of
sin, not counting those other sins they committed daily by oppressing and tyrannizing Indians”
(Book II, 78).
Whereas Christopher Columbus had told the Crown that the tribes were intelligent, willing
and worthy to become Spanish citizens, with all the rights and protections attendant thereto, under
Bobadilla’s rule, the Spaniards called the indigenes “dogs” and plundered their villages, enslaving,
raping and murdering them, sometimes simply on a whim or as a cruel joke. Bobadilla deceived
the Crown into “believing them to be nonrational animals” to justify his deeds and “to keep power
over them” (Book II, 81). Without the presence of Columbus and his pacifying and restraining
governance, the hidalgos under Bobadilla’s governorship became “[s]oulless, blind and godless,”
“killed without restraint and perversely abused the...Indians” (Book II, 80).
Thus, Bobadilla’s treachery was two-fold. Not only against Governor Columbus, but also
against the chiefs of the tribes did Bobadilla enact “the first plan of tyrants: to...continually oppress
and cause anguish to the most powerful and to the wisest, so that, occupied by their calamities,
they lack the time and courage to think of their freedom; thus...degenerat[ing] into cowardice and
timidity.” De las Casas queries that “if the wisest of the wise, whether Greek or Roman (history
books are full of this), often feared and suffered from this adversity, and if many other nations
experienced it and philosophers wrote about it, what could we expect from these gentle and
unprotected Indians?” Without Columbus’s protection, they succumbed to “the evil design of
those deceivers and counterfeiters of truth” (Book II, 81).
Of Bobadilla and the hidalgos, de las Casas writes, “They should have loved and praised
the Indians, and even learned from them” as Christopher Columbus had done. Instead, de las
Casas writes, Bobadilla and the hidalgos engaged in an ongoing course of conduct of “belittling
them by publicizing them as beastly; [and] of stealing, afflicting, oppressing and annihilating them,
making as much of them as they would a heap of dung on a public square. And let this suffice to
account for the state of affairs on this island under Bobadilla’s government, after he had sent
Admiral Columbus as a prisoner to Castile….” (Book II, 82).
Schwaller, John F. "Alcalde vs. Mayor: Translating the Colonial World." The Americas, Volume
69, Number 3 (2013): 391-400. Print.
7
Christopher Columbus: Full Exoneree and Civil Rights Activist for the Indigenes
Once Columbus returned to Castile, he presented his own case before the Crown, refuting
Bobadilla’s slander and revealing Bobadilla’s misdeeds. De las Casas writes, “In that year of
1500, in order to investigate Columbus’s claim for justice against Bobadilla, as well as for other
reasons, the King determined to send a new governor to Hispaniola” to replace Bobadilla, “fray
Nicolás de Ovando, Knight of Alcántara, and...comendador of Lares.” De las Casas, having
himself returned to Castile either with Admiral Columbus or shortly after the admiral’s undignified
exile from the Indies, traveled with the ships carrying Ovando, and came to know Ovando the
man. He notes the virtues that aided Ovando’s rise to power, but criticizes Ovando “because his
government caused [the indigenes] inestimable harm” in the end. At the outset, however, Ovando
“took with him...the right to investigate Francisco Bobadilla and the cause of Francisco Roldán’s
subversion; also, the faults imputed to Columbus and the cause of his imprisonment, all of which
was to be reported to Spain” (Book II, 83).
Even from across the Atlantic, deprived of his gubernatorial power over the Indies, and in
the face of Bobadilla’s sinister machinations and tyranny, Columbus exerted his influence as best
he could to protect the indigenes. Columbus petitioned the Court of Spain, resulting in an
“instructions” to the settlers from the Crown that included “a very specific clause: all the Indians
of Hispaniola were to be left free, not subject to servitude, unmolested and unharmed and allowed
to live like free vassals under law just like any other vassal in the Kingdom of Castile” (Book II,
83). Thus, Bobadilla’s plot to remove Christopher Columbus as an obstacle to the tyranny of the
hidalgos was short-lived, and, despite vast, geographical distance and adverse political
maneuvering, Columbus mounted his considerable defense on behalf of the civil rights of the
indigenes of the West Indies.
Nicolás de Ovando’s Investigation of the Tyranny of Francisco de Bobadilla

Comendador Nicolás de Ovando brought with him to the Indies, to aid in the investigation
and the undoing of Bobadilla’s regime, a cadre of experts in Spanish and Canon law, including
lawyer and justice of the peace Alonso Maldonado of Salamanca; Antonio de Torres, the brother
of Doña Juana de Torres; twelve Franciscan friars; and Franciscan prelate Alonso del Espinal
(Book II, 83-84). Though Ovando took control of the settlement, the Indians were already in a
state of rebellion against Bobadilla’s tyranny. “[M]any Indians had been made captive slaves” by
Bobadilla’s army in complete defiance of the Crown’s instructions for which Christopher Columbus
had so vehemently and successfully petitioned (Book II, 85).
8
Almost immediately, the discovery of gold a short distance from Santo Domingo flatly
contradicted the lies of the hidalgos that no gold was to be found on Hispaniola and their
calumnious claims that Admiral Columbus’s scientific expedition had been a waste of time and
resources. “Governor Bobadilla had given the Spaniards so much license in exploiting the Indians
that they were sent to the mines at the rate of fifteen to forty men and women for each pair of
Spaniards” (Book II, 85).
Ovando began meting out justice immediately. De las Casas writes, “He presented his
credentials to Bobadilla in front of the mayors, aldermen and the town council,” and “with prudence
[he] began his investigation of Bobadilla’s case. You should have seen Bobadilla! He remained
alone and disgraced...unaccompanied by any of the men he had favored” (Book II, 86).
Christopher Columbus wrote of this vindication, “Our Lord God had not performed such a public
miracle in a long time when He struck down the architect of my disgrace together with those who
aided him” (Book II, 141).
Ovando did not limit his investigation to Bobadilla’s treachery. He “also investigated the
case of Francisco Roldán and his supporters.” Ovando “had sent him to Castile, a prisoner but
not in chains, so that the monarchs might determine the punishment he deserved” (Book II, 86-
87).
Ovando also investigated the hidalgos as well, from the noblest-born to the basest felon-
turned-settler/landowner. He put many of them “in prison for their debts.” Many other settlers
escaped imprisonment for a worse fate: “discouraged and frustrated at not finding what they had
come for,” they had “caught fever from the climate...and they died at such a rate the priests barely
managed to bury them.” De las Casas attributes the doom of the slothful and greedy hidalgos to
divine justice, affirming ominously that “this was the lot of whoever came to the New World to find
gold” (Book II, 87).
Ovando’s War
Ovando’s prosecutions of Bobadilla, Roldán and the hidalgos initially brought some relief
to the tribes. “At that time, the Indians were peacefully resting from the tyranny and anguish they
had suffered under Francisco Roldán” (Book II, 88). Ovando’s intervention was not a panacea,
however; three hundred hidalgos still kept indigenes in servitude. In revolt, a tribe near “La Plata
Harbor,” the region corresponding to Puerto Plata in modern-day Dominican Republic, by de las
Casas’s description, “ambushed” the crew of one of Ovando’s ships “and killed them” (Book II,
88, 90-91).
9
Left to govern Hispaniola in the wake of eliminating Bobadilla and Roldán’s regime,
Governor Ovando failed woefully to rule as judiciously or as peaceably as Governor Columbus
had. Unlike Governor Columbus’s restraint upon learning of the indigenes’ plan to attack Captain
Pedro Margarite’s men at the Fort of Santo Tomás (Book I, 50), or their actual attack upon Spanish
settlers shortly thereafter, which Columbus resolved with no bloodshed (Book I, 51), the news of
the attack on Ovando’s crewmen by the indigenes easily instigated Ovando, who became
“determined to fight them [and,] like all Spaniards at that time, he seized the slightest pretext to
provoke war…” (Book II, 92). This time, however, without the pacifying influence of Christopher
Columbus to deescalate Spanish aggression, bloody war ensued without limit.
Ovando commenced Spanish aggressions against the indigenes with an intricate deceit.
He arranged a banquet for many chieftains and their tribes. He welcomed them into a large hut
and “treated them like royal guests” (Book II, 98). Ovando then signaled his conquistadors, who
bound the chieftains and their fellow tribe members. Ovando and his men then set fire to the hut,
immolating many kings in a single deceptive and devastating stroke. The survivors Ovando
hanged or enslaved. De las Casas makes clear that Ovando defied King and Christianity in his
aggressions against and enslavement of the indigenes, writing, “He was not excused before God
or before the King...because he completely went against what had been told him” by the Crown
(Book II, 114).
In Chapters 15 through 18 of Book II, de las Casas relates the atrocities inflicted by the
Spanish against the indigenes during “the war that broke out...in the Higuey province” over the
killing of Ovando’s crewmen (Book II, 115). De las Casas witnessed first-hand the torture and
gratuitous murders of indigene men, women and children of the most gruesome sort. Ovando
and his settlers committed all these atrocities without the Crown’s knowledge or under pretense
(Book II, 115-126). “The King and Queen had a royal decree forbidding all Spaniards to aggrieve
the Indians in any way, to capture them, to remove them to Castile or other regions unfamiliar to
them, or to tamper with their persons and/or possessions” (Book II, 126). Indeed both the Crown
and the Church maintained a vested interest in protecting the indigenes. “Disobeying carried a
heavy penalty commensurate with the monarchs’ desire that Indians receive good examples and
good works from the Spaniards in order to facilitate their Christianization” (Book II, 126). De las
Casas writes that the Crown’s decree, which Ovando ignored, “shows how kings are usually
deceived even in matters of the law” (Book II, 127-128). Of Ovando’s machinations and
misdeeds, de las Casas writes, “No judgment more perverse and unjust ever existed on the whole
face of the universe than the one I am recording here before God” (Book II, 129).
10
As the war raged on, heroes and villains emerged on both sides. The “Indians…[n]aked
and unarmed as they were, sometimes...performed outstanding exploits” that were “much
celebrated” by both sides (Book II, 93-94). Of the indigenes, de las Casas writes, “[T]hey had a
legitimate reason to declare war” on the Spaniards given the “harm through insult, plunder and
murder” Bobadilla, Roldán, and ultimately Ovando inflicted upon them (Book II, 92-93).
Ovando’s Regime
Ovando introduced administrative changes that unwisely abrogated many of the sound
policies and decisions that Governor Columbus had instituted. Ovando “removed the township
of Santo Domingo to [the west] side of the river,” Rio Ozama, as it is currently named, because
“all the Spanish towns in the island were on this side and he thought it more convenient to be
here to avoid the delays caused by projected ferry boats…” (Book II, 95). De las Casas notes,
“However, the admiral’s choice of the eastern shore had been the wiser choice” due to “the rising
sun [having] lifted the fog away from the town while now it blows all on the town. Likewise, the
eastern shore has good spring water, while here, water is found only in wells and is not too pure”
or accessible by the settlers. “For these reasons, the old site of Santo Domingo” chosen by
Admiral Columbus “was more salubrious” (Book II, 96).
Not only was Governor Ovando’s administration harmful to the settlers, but it was
devastating to the indigenes. Like the administration of Governor Bobadilla, Ovando’s
administration was the polar opposite of the “ministry and polity” of amity and harmony with the
indigenes achieved by Governor Columbus (Book I, 15, 71). In the wake of Christopher
Columbus’s “kind” gubernatorial administration and “good judgment” (Book I, 15), the Spaniards
who usurped his governorship, including Ovando, inflicted upon the indigenes “the infinite and
implacable vexations, the furious and rigorous oppression [and] the ferocious and wild condition”
that caused them to “flee from the Spaniards to hide in the entrails and subterranean paths of the
earth” (Book II, 104).
Ovando reinstituted Bobadilla’s enslavement of the indigenes. As Christopher Columbus
languished in Cádiz, earning his full acquittal, restoring his name, and hastening to arrange his
fourth voyage to Hispaniola, “the Indians were totally deprived of their freedom and were put in
the harshest, fiercest, most horrible servitude and captivity” under Ovando’s regime, “which no
one who has not seen it can understand” (Book II, 114).
Like Bobadilla, whom Ovando unseated with the imprimatur of the Crown, Ovando hid his
and the hidalgos’ misdeeds from the monarchs – from Isabella and Ferdinand; from their
successors, Philip and Juana; and from Ferdinand again, who resumed rulership, alone, as regent
11
in the wake of King Philip’s death (Book II, 115). De las Casas writes in excruciating detail about
Ovando’s “repartamentos,” the assigning of indigenes as slaves by the hundreds to the
Spaniards, and the inhumane, at best, and fatal, at worst, treatment the indigenes suffered
regularly at the hands of mineros (miners), estancieros (taskmasters of the mines and
plantations), and other Spaniards (Book II, 104-115). “In this way husbands died in the mines,
wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk, while others had not time or energy for
procreation, and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile, though so
unfortunate, was depopulated.” From Hispaniola, “this sweeping plague” of the repartamentos
“went to San Juan, Jamaica, Cuba, and the continent, spreading destruction over the whole
hemisphere.” Ovando “established...through diabolical delusion and craft, the violent and raging
perdition which was to sterilize and consume the greater part of mankind in these Indies” (Book
II, 115). De las Casas surmises, “If this concentration of events had occurred all over the world,
the human race would have been wiped out in no time” (Book II, 110).
Admiral Christopher Columbus’s Resolute Fourth and Final Voyage to Rescue the Indies
De las Casas commences Chapter 6 of Book II with a brief reference to Admiral
Columbus’s triumphant return from Cádiz. He writes, “Let the admiral sail his four ships from
Puerto Hermoso,” the westernmost port of Hispaniola, “or the port of Açua, also called by some
Puerto Escondido,” near the center of the southern coast of Hispaniola, the Twenty-First-Century
region of Azua, “and fare well on the high seas until we speak of him again (Book II, 86).
De las Casas does so in Chapter 30 of Book II, contrasting the horrors of Ovando’s
bloodshed with Admiral Columbus’s extraordinary benignity, good will and wisdom. Columbus’s
ships were “drawing water” into their holds as they reached the Caribbean, so he ran them
“aground safely” in Jamaica to avoid the surf. Despite the bloodshed Ovando was provoking
throughout the West Indies, the indigenes of Jamaica came to meet Admiral Columbus in canoes
for amicable trade. De las Casas writes, “To avoid inequities, disputes and grudges, Columbus
placed two persons in charge of trading and distributing the goods equally among everyone”
(Book II, 133-135). Through this bloody, war-torn landscape, Christopher Columbus’s arrival
forged a trail of peace, fair trade and amity.
No sooner had Admiral Columbus set his ships aground in Jamaica did he immediately
resume his activism on behalf of the civil rights of the indigenes. He took great precautions to
protect the indigenes with whom they were trading; “to avoid Spanish misbehavior on the island,
the admiral decided to rest and recover at sea because, as [his son] don Hernando says [of the
Spaniards], we are an uncouth lot of people and no manner of order or punishment could prevent
12
our men from stealing and molesting women if they went ashore, and this would greatly endanger
our friendly relations with the Indians.” Admiral Columbus ordered that “all the men remained
assigned to their posts and could not leave ship except by special permission, which pleased the
Indians” (Book II, 133).
On July 7, 1503, while awaiting assistance in Jamaica from his manager on Hispaniola,
Admiral Columbus penned a letter to the Crown reiterating his many services “at the cost of much
hardship,” including, as de las Casas described, the usurpation of his “Honor and titles he well
deserved and well earned” (Book II, 134). The machinations of the usurper, Bobadilla, had
impoverished Admiral Columbus, leaving him homeless. De las Casas writes, “After twenty years
of extraordinary services, he and his brothers have acquired very little benefit” (Book 11, 135).
Indeed, de las Casas notes that “no services so famous were ever rendered to any other earthly
King. The admiral did not write the last sentence; I am adding it because he is owed the praise”
(Book II, 134-135)
While aground in Jamaica, Admiral Columbus sent two messengers in canoes to
Hispaniola to deliver his letter, and accompanied them part of the way in his own canoe. Though
Ovando’s war prompted the local tribes to perpetually threaten the passage with vigilant hostilities,
Admiral Columbus “returned slowly to his ships, visiting villages along his path and conversing
joyfully with their inhabitants and leaving many friends behind” (Book II, 135).
The appearance of the messengers in Hispaniola informed Ovando of Admiral Columbus’s
arrival. He received the news with a great deal of chagrin, fearful as he was that the return of
Christopher Columbus would again thwart Spanish tyranny and threaten his oppressive regime.
Ovando read Admiral Columbus’s letter requesting help, but was slow to act – as the admiral
accused – with “the deliberate intent to let [Columbus] die there, since a whole year passed
without a sign of assistance.” Columbus maintained that “the governor finally relented only
because people were talking in Santo Domingo and missionaries there were beginning to
reprehend him in their sermons” (Book II, 136).
Help finally arrived in the summer of 1504. “Everyone, including Columbus, sailed from
Jamaica on June 27, 1504. Unfavorable winds and currents made the navigation arduous” –
perhaps Ovando had waited for a time of year when he knew sailing conditions would be least
favorable in an attempt to prevent Columbus’s return – “but they arrived safely at the small island
we call Beata, not far from Hispaniola” (Book II, 136). Christopher Columbus’s determination to
set things right in Hispaniola buoyed his efforts, and no mere unfavorable sailing conditions would
neutralize him.
13
Once in Beata, Admiral Columbus could continue no further until the strength of the
currents subsided. “While Columbus was detained there” by the tides, “he decided to tell the
governor that his return meant his intention to free himself from unfounded and frivolous
suspicion” (Book II, 136). He penned another letter to Ovando in which he recounted the
adversities he faced in Beata, including a mutiny by Captain Francisco Porras:4
Porras and his followers returned to Jamaica with an ultimatum: I was to deliver
my command to them or we (myself, my brother, my son and my men) would pay
dearly for it. I refused to comply and they tried to carry out the threat. There were
deaths and many wounded but finally the Lord, who abhors arrogance and
ungratefulness, delivered all of them in all their honors, but I am taking Captain
Porras to Castile so the monarchs may learn the truth
(Book II, 136). Thus, with great courage and determination, Columbus proved himself a worthy
adversary as well as a skilled navigator and a merciful victor.
Upon Admiral Columbus’s eventual triumphant return to Hispaniola, Ovando and the
Spanish settlers received him with the veneer of “great respect and celebration,” but “underneath
the friendliness and benevolence, there was a will at work to humiliate him” (Book II, 137).
Ovando freed Porras from his imprisonment and unfettered him in the presence of Columbus.
Ovando then interrogated those who took up arms to defend Admiral Columbus from Porras,
despite that “[t]his right belonged only to the admiral since he was in general command of the
fleet. Columbus gave advice” and imposed upon Porras and his men “sentences that were not
accepted or carried out” because the Spaniards, “behind the admiral’s back in mockery,” claimed
that “no one could understand him” supposedly due to his native language being Genoan (Book
II, 137).
Christopher Columbus had sailed to the West Indies for the fourth time, at great hardship
and peril, to set things right and undo the tyranny and oppression caused by the hidalgos, but
Ovando and his men gave him no quarter. “These vexations lasted until the ship they brought
from Jamaica was repaired,” leaving Admiral Columbus little choice but to return to Spain. Again,
without his presence to restrain the Spaniards, those who sailed with him on his fourth voyage
“stayed here [in Hispaniola] and some went to San Juan to settle it or, rather, destroy it” (Book II,
138).
4
Because Christopher Columbus lacked the funds to have new vessels built for his fourth voyage,
he bought four caravels in Seville. The royal treasurer, however, Alonso de Morales, insisted that
Columbus include Morales’s brothers-in-law in the expedition, Francisco and Diego Porras. “In
an evil hour, Columbus good-naturedly consented,” and appointed Francisco Porras captain of
one of the caravels, but the Porras brothers ”proved to be mutinous scoundrels.” Markham, Sir
Clements Robert. Life of Christopher Columbus. Scotts Valley, California; CreateSpace
Publishing Co., 2017. 250-251. Print.
14
Once again, Admiral Columbus proved his indomitability as a sailor on the return trip to
Spain. They set sail on September 12, 1504, “losing a mast just as they came out of the river,
which caused the admiral to proceed alone.” Though the weather was fair for the first third of
their voyage over the Caribbean Sea, “a terrible storm broke out that greatly endangered them.”
On October 19th, “when the storm had ceased, the mast fell and broke into four pieces. But the
admiral was a great sailor; despite an attack of gout, he repaired it by using the yard of a lateen
sail, strengthening it in the middle with material from the forecastles undone for that purpose”
(Book II, 138).
The perils of the journey back to Spain continued. “Later another storm broke the
mizzenmast; indeed it seemed the Fates were against the admiral, pursuing him relentlessly
throughout his life with hardship and affliction. He navigated this way another 700 leagues until
God willed he reach the port of San Lúcar de Barrameda,” on the southern coast of Spain,
“whence he went to Seville to rest a few days” (Book II, 138).
Christopher Columbus’s Dying Efforts to Champion the Indigenes of the Indies

Once back in Spain, Columbus learned that Queen Isabella had died while he had been
on his fourth voyage, much to his supreme grief, as she had been his greatest supporter and ally.
Now, bereft of her support and imprimatur, he alone beseeched King Ferdinand to set things right
both in Spain and in the West Indies. Admiral Columbus’s petitions took the form of requests to
vindicate his property interests in court, and indeed, that was of great import to him. De las Casas
emphasizes that Columbus’s “position and dignity [were] taken from him [by Bobadilla] without a
hearing, without defense, without even having been incriminated or sentenced, thus depriving him
of the procedures of law” (Book II, 139-140) or “due process, judged by people seemingly acting
as if they lacked reason, as if they were mad, stupid and absurd and worse than barbaric brutes”
(Book II, 144). Yet, though Christopher Columbus himself had been denied due process, he
constantly adjured the King in his petitions to consider the civil rights of the indigenes.
Columbus practiced humility and temperance in his appeals regarding his own titles and
property, but advocated actively on behalf of the indigenes. Of his property and title, he wrote to
the King “that he did not wish to take his grievances to court but that he left it to the King’s
discretion to allow him whatever he saw fit from among his privileges, because he wanted only to
go and alleviate his weariness in some remote corner” (Book II, 140). But in a letter to the King
designed ostensibly as an accounting his stolen assets, he provided “an account,” moreover, “of
the disorders caused by the allocation of Indians [to Spaniards]” (Book II, 147, brackets in
original). Columbus noted that “he is aware that six out of seven Indians have died since he left
15
the island because of maltreatment [by Bobadilla and his men]: butchered, beaten, starving and
ill-treated, most died in the mountains and streams where they had fled, unable to bear their lot”
(Book II, 141).
In that same letter, Columbus condemned the Spanish slavers who subverted his own
efforts to aid the indigenes. He complained to the King that he gave passage to the indigenes
from Hispaniola ot Castile “for the purpose of instructing them in our Faith, our customs, crafts
and trades, after which [Columbus] intended to reclaim them and return them to their lands so
they could instruct others,” but that the Spaniards, instead, “sold” the people into servitude (Book
II, 141). “[B]ut either [King Ferdinand] did not believe [Columbus] or had other important things
to attend to; the fact is that he paid no attention” (Book II, 147).
Columbus astutely discerned that the plight of the tribes of the West Indies had become a
small priority for King Ferdinand. In light of this, Columbus carefully and judiciously framed his
complaints as if “he was lamenting the loss of the tithe in gold and other temporal interests,” which
he knew to be of greater concern to the King (Book II, 141). “The more petitions were written,”
however, “the more the King answered with words while delaying the action….The idea
displeased Columbus very much; he took it as a sign of ill will meaning that none of the promises
would be kept,” to himself of his titles, properties or privileges, or to the indigenes of the Indies
(Book II, 142).
In spite of the King’s growing indifference, Christopher Columbus remained steadfast in
his faith and piety. He wrote, in a letter to the Archbishop of Seville, “Since it appears that the
King will not keep his and the Queen’s promises, for me, who am essentially a plowman, to fight
against him would be to whip the wind. It is better to leave my case in the hands of God my
benefactor, for I have done all I can.” De las Casas notes, “Those are his words, entrusting
himself to divine justice because he thought he had exhausted all the possibilities and certainly, I
believe that God heard him” (Book II, 142).
Christopher Columbus’s health declined in those years. Ferdinand, too, was aged, and
his son-in-law Philip and his daughter Juana prepared to take the throne. While the youngest
Columbus brother, Bartolomé, greeted the new monarchs at court, Christopher Columbus’s “gout
grew worse from the rigors of winter, aggravated by his mental state of desolation” from his legal
battles over his titles and wealth, “his exploits so unjustly forgotten” without the support of the late
Queen Isabella. His faith again proved to be his salvation. “He devotedly received the holy
sacraments, for he was a good Christian” (Book II, 143). Christopher Columbus “died in
Valladolid, on the day of the Ascension, the twentieth of May, 1506, pronouncing his last words:
‘Into your hands, oh Lord, I deliver my soul,’” the last words uttered by Christ on the cross.
16
Columbus’s remains “were taken to the Carthusian monastery of Seville and later buried in the
cathedral of Santo Domingo,” being granted a resting place and monument befitting the greatest
explorer and civil rights activist of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Book II, 143).
To his death, Columbus advocated not only for justice for himself and his progeny, but for
the indigenes of the West Indies. De las Casas writes, “I believe that had the Admiral and King
Philip lived longer, justice would have been done.”
Even in death, Christopher Columbus dedicated service to the indigent. In his will, he left
his estate to his sons and brothers on the stipulation “that his heir increase the value of his estate
and use the income thereof to serve the King and for the propagation of the Christian religion,
setting aside ten percent of it as charity for the poor” (Book II, 143-144).
Spain and the West Indies in the Aftermath of Columbus’s Death

With the death of Christopher Columbus, so too came the demise of the civil rights of the
indigenes of the West Indies under Spanish imperialism. The weary, widowed King Ferdinand
renounced his title so his daughter Juana and his son-in-law Philip I of Burgundy could assume
the throne. Philip, however, died that same year and Juana suffered from a mental disorder
unnamed and undescribed by de las Casas beyond an “illness and unfitness to govern” (Book II,
147).5 Ferdinand resumed the throne as regent of Castile and of the Indies, and the encomienda
flourished in the New World in the post-Columbian age. De las Casas writes, “These turmoils
and changes of government allowed the free blossoming and firm establishment of the allocation
system and no one” – except Christopher Columbus – “thought about the damage this system
caused the Indians because everyone’s mind was on gold” (Book II, 148).
De las Casas blames Ovando for instituting the allocation system in the West Indies. He
writes, “As the inventor of the allocation system, the comendador mayor should have thought
about Indian mortality as well as about remedying it; but this was part of his general insensitivity
and he did not notice it or he simply did not care.” When Ferdinand returned to Spain from Naples
to assume the regency after Philip’s death, “the only subject of conversation was gold – and it
was plentiful then; no mention was made of the Indian lives involved in the extraction of gold and,
what was even more painful, of the fact that they were dying without sacraments” (Book II, 148).
This was in stark contrast to when Christopher Columbus was alive – in his accountings,
5
Psychohistorians indicate that Juana suffered from depression and schizophrenia, possibly
causing psychosis. María A. Gómez; Santiago Juan-Navarro; Phyllis Zatlin. Juana of Castile:
History and Myth of the Mad Queen (illustrated edition). London: Associated University Presse,
2008. 9, 12-13, 85. Print.
17
Columbus included constant reminders and appeals to the King about the suffering of the
indigenes (Book II, 141, 147-148).
Once the schemes of the hidalgos succeeded in removing Governor Columbus from
office, his successors’ appraisals of the indigenes were the antithesis of his own. While Governor
Columbus told the Crown that the tribes were intelligent and “ready to receive the faith” (Book I,
38), the Spaniards, now free of Columbus’s supervision, “deceived King Hernando (Ferdinand)
with a crafty argument...that the Lucayo or Yucago Islands close to Cuba and Hispaniola were full
of an idle people who had learned nothing and could not be Christianized there” (Book II, 154).
They did this to elicit permission from the King to obtain “ships to bring them to Hispaniola where
they could be converted and would work in the mines, thus being of service to the King” (Id.)
De las Casas’s appraisal of Columbus’s dealings with the indigenes vis-à-vis the
Spaniards’ dealings with them during subsequent administrations is filtered through a nuanced
and discriminating lens, and not through that of a zealot. He writes, “God did not want Christianity
at that cost: God takes no pleasure in a good deed, no matter its magnitude, if sin against one’s
fellow man is the price of it, no matter how miniscule that sin may be…” (Book II, 155).
De las Casas pointedly notes that the conquistadors Alonso de Hojeda and Diego de
Nicuesa, in defiance of the governance of Christopher Columbus, were the first to bring suffering
and ruin to the West Indies. “[B]y virtue of what Hojeda and Nicuesa performed there – they were
the first to assault the continent and kill, plunder and enslave – the natives of that land acquired
the right...to declare legitimate war against the Spaniards.” He reiterates that it was “Alonso de
Hojeda who had caused so much damage to the Indians, as we said in Book I: he was the first
to commit injustice on this island by using authority he did not possess and cutting off the ears of
a cacique (chieftain) who had more right than he to mistrust him” (Book II, 173). De las Casas
expounds on what this “injustice” was that Hojeda was “first to commit”: Hojeda “plagued the
continent and other islands that had never offended him and captured a great number of Indians
whom he sold in Castile as slaves, as we said in Book I” (Book II, 173).
De las Casas distinguishes starkly between the governorship of Christopher Columbus
and that of the heretical and hypocritical conquistadors who deposed him and were “first” to do
harm. Of Columbus, whom he describes as “good natured, kind...and pious” (Book I, 15);
believing earnestly in “the Lord, who abhors arrogance and ungratefulness” (Book II, 136); and
“entrusted” wholeheartedly in “divine justice” (Book II, 142), de las Casas notes that he used “his
unusual insight into human and divine affairs” in the exercise of “good judgment” as governor of
the West Indies (Book I, 15). Of the Spanish usurpers who unseated Columbus, however, de las
Casas criticizes that they “could not even see the incongruity of praying to God and Our Lady...for
18
help and intercession in a matter so odious to God as is the perpetration of crime against a people
who lived in innocence and peace in their own territories without offending anyone” (Book II, 176).
De las Casas makes particular example of the conquistador Martín Fernández de Anciso.
“Anciso, for all his knowledge of the law...what else was he doing but asking God and the Virgin
to be his criminal accomplices, his fellow participants in homicide and all his other crimes? He
was attributing to God and to His Holy Mother the very works of the devil himself” (Book II, 176).
Citing the works of St. John Chrysostom, notable for his “priestly influence and renowned
rhetorical abilities to critique the misuse of power….both ecclesiastical and political,”6 de las
Casas writes of the conquistadors: “Indeed they live with the devil and, however much they may
seek God’s help, they will never find it.” He writes, “God’s justice is incapable of lending a hand
to crime and injustice” (Id.).
De las Casas closes Book II of his History of the Indies against this backdrop of Spanish
oppression, contrasting it with Christopher Columbus’s selfless, pious and noble activism on
behalf of the indigenes of the West Indies. De las Casas writes of Columbus that “divine
Providence chose him to accomplish the most outstanding feat ever accomplished in the world,”
as opposed to his heretical deposers “who fail to serve [God] by flaunting His law and His
commandments so implacably” (Book II, 177).
De las Casas’s Final Installment in the History of the Indies

Though de las Casas intended to write six volumes of his History of the Indies, each
chronicling a single decade of the settlement of the Caribbean, he died after completing the third
volume. In it, he demonstrates that without Columbus’s tireless advocacy against the
establishment of the encomienda system, the West Indies became fully entrenched in that
institution of oppression and slavery which Bobadilla and Ovando succeeded in establishing after
deposing Columbus from the gubernatorial office. These knight commanders thus doomed the
indigenes to the same fate as the conquered Moor invaders of the Reconquista. Citing the first
chapter of Book II, which details the commencement of Bobadilla’s regime with the ignominious
shuttling of the Columbus brothers back to Spain in chains, de las Casas states with pinpoint
6
St. John Chrysostom was a Fifth Century archbishop of Constantinople who used his influence
as a religious authority to condemn misuse of power by Church and state, both in his sermons
and in such writings as On the Priesthood, circa 380 A.D. Curta, Florin, and Holt, Andrew. Great
Events in Religion: An Encyclopedia of Pivotal Events in Religious History. Santa Barbara: ABC-
CLIO, LLC, 2017. 261-261. Print.
19
accuracy that “gold was always the object of Spanish action here – at least from about 1500” –
the precise time Bobadilla removed Christopher Columbus from office (Book III, 190).
De las Casas also demonstrates how history repeated itself. He recounts the arrival of a
cadre of Dominican friars, sent by the Pope to establish churches, who, like Columbus, spoke out
against the encomienda system and the oppression of the indigenes. “[T]he Dominican friars of
Santo Domingo could not own Indians with a clear conscience and would neither confess nor
absolve Indian owners” (Book III, 208). Unlike Governor Columbus, however, who held and used
his gubernatorial authority to protect the indigenes and restrain the conquistadors and settlers,
the Dominican friars held no authority, save spiritual, over the settlers. The friars availed
themselves of what influence they possessed by preaching sermons at Mass condemning them
for oppressing and enslaving the indigenes (Book III, 180-186). As the settlers did to Governor
Columbus, they rallied vehemently against the friars, demanding, in outrage, that the Dominicans
retract their condemnations under threat of sending them back to Spain, “as if a disavowal could
change the law of God which they violated by oppressing the Indians” (Book III, 186).
Instead, the Dominicans defied the settlers’ threats and strengthening their commitment
to the preaching of this subversive message. In response, the settlers corresponded with King
Ferdinand and, as they did to Columbus, falsely accused the Dominican friars of acting “against
the orders of His Highness and [having] aimed at nothing less but to deprive them of both powers
and a source of income” (Book III, 187). As King Ferdinand had done previously in response to
Bobadilla’s false allegations against Christopher Columbus, he lent the claims credence. De las
Casas writes, “You see how easy it is to deceive a King, how ruinous to a kingdom it is to heed
misinformation, and how oppression thrives where truth is not allowed a voice” (Book III, 187).
The settlers enlisted Franciscan friars to write to the King on their behalf (Book III, 187-
193). The Franciscans recommended that the indigenes be regarded as free men and instructed
in the Catholic faith, and that the settlers be permitted to “employ Indian labor” in a manner
“tolerable” to the indigenes and that gives the indigenes “recreation periods” and the opportunity
to “live in their own houses and...cultivate their land as they please” (Book III, 191).
In response, King Ferdinand issued an injunction, largely adopting the Franciscans’
recommendations (Book III, 192-194). It decreed the indigenes “good and loyal vassals” of the
Crown of Spain, and promised, “We will receive you with love and charity, respecting your freedom
and that of your wives and sons and your rights of possession” (Book III, 193). Conversely,
however, it threatened the indigenes with war and enslavement if they failed or were slow to “owe
compliance as a duty to the King” (id.). Though the injunction was in accordance with the feudal
land tenure of Sixteenth Century Spain, de las Casas, acting in the role of Christopher Columbus’s
20
successor as advocate for the indigenes, nevertheless condemned the injunction as “unjust,
impious, scandalous, irrational and absurd,” and as “unlawfully void” (Book III, 291), being “based
on neither law nor justice” (Book III, 193).
The Spanish settlers abused their rights under King Ferdinand’s injunction, oppressing the
indigenes to the extent of devastating the West Indies. The settlements became “bare land, not
because the land was barren – in its day it too had been most fertile – but because the Spaniards
had depopulated it by killing its inhabitants or engaging in slave trade or by causing the remaining
Indians to run far away” (Book III, 199). As the hidalgos had defied Governor Columbus’s
mandate to toil in construction of the settlements, they again shunned contributing to the labor of
sustaining the settlements and instead “depended on the King’s provisions for their sustenance.”
As a result, the settlers began dying in large numbers “when the King’s rations drew to an end
and illness compounded malnutrition” (Book III, 199). De las Casas writes that “had the Spaniards
acted like Christians toward the Indian chiefs, noblemen and common people, they and more than
they would have lived in abundance, but they were not worthy of this because they had not fulfilled
God’s aim since they had left Spain” (Book III, 200).
Indeed Christopher Columbus’s administration over the West Indies brought abundance
and peace. Governor Columbus treated the chiefs and their people with respect and, by the end
of his governorship, had succeeded in establishing a settlement in which “things were calm, the
land was rich and everyone lived in peace” (Book I, 71). But no sooner had the hidalgos, through
Bobadilla, deposed Columbus through their treachery, did they undo all he had done; unleash a
reign of terror, oppression and genocide against the indigenes; and suffer the poetic – or as de
las Casas considered it, divine – justice of seeing to their own demise through illness and
starvation.
In addition to pestilence and famine, the Spaniards met death at the hands of indigene
uprisings in war. As the years passed, conquistador after conquistador committed atrocities in
the lust for gold. In 1516, Joan Bono took slaves and slaughtered those who resisted. For these
atrocities, de las Casas dubs Bono “Joan the Bad,” wordplay upon the name “Bono,” meaning
“good” (Book III, 221-223). Juan de Grijalva tried to subdue the tribes of the valley of Ulanche in
Nicaragua and caused great damage to the indigenes there, as he had in Cuba as well; the
Ulanche tribes killed him and his men (Book III, 224).
Spurred by news and samples of wealth Grijalva had found in Nicaragua, Diego
Velázquez, then the governor of Cuba, authorized Hernán Cortés to conduct an expedition to
Mexico. Velázquez pulled back support due to the advice of his friends not to trust Cortés, but
Cortés disobeyed Velázques’s orders to disband and left for Mexico anyway with his expeditionary
21
force (Book III, 234). De las Casas accuses Cortés of “evil deeds” (Book III, 231) and “tyranny”
(Book III, 227), including the “violent invasion and tyrannical exploit Cortés carried out in
Tabasco,” Mexico (Book III, 235). “Cortés killed and Cortés won, he conquered – as they say –
many nations, he plundered and stacked gold in Spain and became the Marquis del Valle” (Book
III, 237). In defeating Montezuma, the tlatoani, or ruler, of Tenochtitlan, Cortés exploited any
“enmity among the Indians” he encountered (Book III, 241). De las Casas writes:
Tyrants act with a bad conscience; they lack reason, right and justice, as the
Philosopher [Aristotle] says in Book V, Chapter II, of the Politics. They take
advantage of discords when these exist, or otherwise they create them to divide
people and subject them more easily, because they know it is more difficult,
sometimes impossible, to subject a people united in conformity, at least it is
unlikely that, should they succeed, their tyranny should last
(Book III, 241). Cortés claimed to be aiding certain tribes in righteous causes against others in
the wrong, but de las Casas reveals, “Cortés really did not care; his only concern was to find
means to achieve his goals: to tyrannize and plunder all, great or small, right or wrong…” (Book
III, 241-242).
The indigenes had their heroes and victories as well. De las Casas writes of them,
beginning with the cacique (chieftain) Enrique, who had been enslaved by “a young scatterbrain
named Valenzuela, after being raised by Franciscan monks (Book III, 246). Enrique was “very
intelligent” and literate, spoke Spanish well and married the daughter of another chieftain (Id.).
Valenzuela regularly mistreated Enrique, including stealing his horse. When Enrique protested,
Valenzuela raped his wife. In stark contrast to the gubernatorial leadership of Governor Columbus
a decade prior, the lieutenant governor responded harshly to Enrique’s appeals to the law,
imprisoning him in solitary confinement and ultimately sending him back into the servitude of
Valenzuela. Enrique escaped and gained great fame as a leader of renegade indigenes who
repeatedly routed Spanish armies and inspired other indigene leaders, such as Ciguayo and the
vicious Tamayo, to do the same against incredible odds (Book III, 248-253). So indomitable was
Enrique’s rebel band, and so costly was the war against him, that the Spaniards agreed, in
exchange for the return of their gold, to recognize henceforth Enrique and his followers “as free
men” to live on whichever “part of the island Enrique would choose, and the Spaniards would not
disturb them in any way” (Book III, 255). And so, Enrique suspended hostilities in the West Indies.
He wrote, “From that day, they left Enrique alone and no harm came to either side until the final
peace was made, and this interval lasted a matter of four or five years…” (Book III, 256).
In Chapter 129 of Book III, de las Casas explains how, in the decade after Columbus’s
death, the African slave trade commenced in the West Indies. A surgeon named Gonzalo de
22
Vellosa improved upon the primitive sugar-making instruments introduced by Aguilón de la Vega.
As de las Casas himself was gaining much ground in this era in liberating the indigenes from
enslavement, the Flemish Baron Laurent de Govenot (Lorenzo de Gorrevod) of King Ferdinand’s
“most private circles,” then governor of Bresse in Burgundy in the French Alps, granted a license
to an unnamed Spanish settler of the Indies to transport 4,000 Africans to Hispaniola, San Juan,
Jamaica and Cuba circa 1516. The number of sugar mills increased, and so did the number of
grants to traffick enslaved Africans. “As a result, the Portuguese, who had long been capturing
black slaves in Guinea, for whom [the Spanish] paid good prices, increased the trade by whatever
means possible and the Africans themselves, seeing the demand, warred among themselves to
sell slaves illicitly to the Portuguese” (Book III, 258).
Above all, de las Casas condemns his own countrymen for their part in the African slave
trade. He writes of the Spaniards, “Thus, we are guilty of the sins committed by the Africans and
the Portuguese, not to mention our own sin of buying the slaves” (Book III, 258).
The African slaves of the West Indies did not tolerate their enslavement as the indigenes
had before the emergence of such rebel leaders as Enrique. The enslaved Africans soon
“escaped their misery by fleeing to the woods and from there cruelly attacked the Spaniards” such
that “[n]o small Spanish settlement was safe…” (Book III, 258).
Modeling himself after the heroes of his History of the Indies, including, especially,
Christopher Columbus, de las Casas relates in the final chapters of his work his own efforts “to
apologize [to the indigenes] for the harm caused by Spaniards acting against the King’s will, to
spread tokens of good will and to protect them against future injury” (Book III, 259). As
Christopher Columbus had done before him, de las Casas resorted to petitioning King Ferdinand
for means to protect the indigenes. He asked the King to allow him to create a religious
brotherhood funded by the royal treasury for two purposes: to re-establish peaceful trade with
the indigenes, as Columbus had successfully managed, and to preach the Gospel to them. “This
would show the irrationality, iniquity and non-Christianity of the practice now in effect,” de las
Casas writes, “that is, waging war and subduing people before attempting to preach, as if indeed
it was necessary to instill hatred before teaching the Gospel!” (Book III, 259).
De las Casas succeeded in his petition (Book III, 266). Speaking of himself, he writes,
“This was one of the most outstanding events that occurred in Spain: that a poor clergyman with
no estate and no outside help other than God’s, persecuted and hated by everybody (the Spanish
in the Indies spoke of him as one who was bent on destroying them and Castille), should come
to have such influence on a King...and to be the cause of so many measures discussed
throughout this History” (Book III, 264). His description of his own success, surely by no
23
coincidence, parallels his portrayal of the hero of his History: Christopher Columbus, the low-
born and humble Genoan sailor who was hated by the Spanish hidalgos for actively opposing the
encomienda system and for restraining their greed, sloth and mistreatment of the indigenes during
his term as governor, and whose service to the Crown earned him, in death, a hero’s burial in the
Cathedral of Seville. Though Christopher Columbus had been dead more than a decade by the
time of the events closing Book III of History of the Indies, the narrative echoes Christopher
Columbus’s legend and legacy as the Biblical David versus Goliath; the low-born, self-made
defender of the downtrodden; and the first civil rights activist of the Western Hemisphere and the
New World.
Conclusion
Thus ends the three-volume History of the Indies by Bartolomé de las Casas In this work,
de las Casas does not muddle the line between right and wrong, good or evil. He makes no
apologies for evil deeds – not even on behalf of his own countrymen – nor does he recount events
in a relativistic way. In his History, there are heroes and villains on both sides, and their deeds
and motives plant them firmly in one category or another. Bobadilla, Ovando, Hojeda, Bono and
the young Tamayo are clearly villains – de las Casas spares nothing in criticizing their misdeeds.
Conversely, de las Casas, writing as an advocate for the indigenes in his capacity as the official
Protector of the Indians, very clearly identifies his heroes, few as they are in this history,
especially, Christopher Columbus.
Friar Bartolomé de las Casas’s History of the Indies makes abundantly clear that the
slanderous claims so famously and popularly raised in the Twenty-first Century by the
misinformed masses against Christopher Columbus are, in fact, the deeds of the villainous
Francisco de Bobadilla and his successors. Columbus not only took no part in these deeds, but
actively opposed them, rendering him the first civil rights activist in the Western Hemisphere.
Christopher Columbus, the Father of American Civil Rights, dared defy the longstanding
encomienda system; oppose the knight commander Francisco de Bobadilla and the entitled and
greedy hidalgos; and, preferring the pen to the sword, fought until his dying breath to persuade
the Crown of Spain to undo the harm Bobadilla and his successors had inflicted upon the West
Indies.
In recounting the events of the settlement of the West Indies, de las Casas attributes the
Pax Columbiana of Governor Christopher Columbus’s administration and the death and suffering
of the Spanish settlers in the post-Columbian era to divine justice. Of the bloody rebellions of the
indigenes and Africans, de las Casas writes, “Men take these things as bad luck, but we should
24
remember that we found the island full of people whom we erased from the face of the earth,
filling it with dogs and beasts7 whom divine will is perforce turning against us.”
De las Casas’s History is not the only primary source of historical record of the settlement
of the West Indies, but it is most certainly the one most singularly written from the perspective
most sympathetic to the indigenes’ suffering at the hands of the Spanish hidalgos. He notes the
historical accounts of others throughout his Historia, such as Gonzalo Hernández de Ovieda, who
“turned conquistador” and “participated in the cruel tyranny” in Hispaniola. Of Ovieda’s historical
accounts, de las Casas writes quite contemptuously that Ovieda “sells this to the King as as
distinguished service...to God and Their Majesties” (Book III, 271). De las Casas boldly notes,
“Our Spaniards have destroyed the Indians in two ways, as the History shows: disastrous wars
which they call conquests and distribution of land and Indians which they present under the veneer
of the name encomienda. Ovieda took part in both” (Id.).
Thus, de las Casas’s History, written in his capacity as Protector of the Indians, and the
closest primary source available to an account written by the indigenes themselves, persistently
portrays Christopher Columbus as a paragon and a hero of history – not merely European history,
but human history. Where Bobadilla, Cortés, and Ovieda participated in both the “disastrous wars
they call conquests” and the “distribution of land and Indians” pursuant to the encomienda system,
Christopher Columbus not only took part in neither, but did everything in his power – to his ultimate
political ruin – to actively oppose and thwart both.
De las Casas consistently views the history of the West Indies through the lens of divine
justice. He writes, “God always punishes evil with a greater evil” (Book III, 281). For the evil
deeds of Bobadilla, Ovando, Hojeda, Ovieda and the Spanish hidalgos, death and destruction
befell the Spanish settlers of the Caribbean, as they had inflicted on the indigenes. De las Casas
characterizes the conquistadors’ deeds in the most superlative of terms, “No judgment more
perverse and unjust ever existed on the whole face of the universe than the one I am recording
here before God” (Book II, 129).
By contrast, Columbus crowned his prodigious achievement of “discovering” – in the
sense of bringing to light to the European world – the existence of the lands of the New World
with the extraordinary task of brokering a peaceful coexistence between the two hemispheres.
For these worthy deeds, the Western world, on both sides of the Atlantic, enjoyed, during his
administration, a Pax Columbiana, in which “things were calm, the land was rich and everyone
lived in peace” (Book I, 71). Even after his unseating by the treacherous hidalgos, Columbus
7
De las Casas uses the terms “dogs and beasts” literally in this context, though perhaps also as
a double entendre to refer the beastly behavior of the Spaniards.
25
fought for the rights of the indigenes until his dying day. Even posthumously, he actively
championed the downtrodden, providing in his will that a significant portion of what little was left
of his estate be donated to the poor.
Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, first-hand witness, official Protector of the Indians, and
author of the foremost primary history of the West Indies, makes abundantly clear that Christopher
Columbus was no villain by the reckonings of any standard, most particularly divine justice, for
“divine Providence chose him to to accomplish the most outstanding feat ever accomplished in
the world until now” (Book I, 17). Rather, de las Casas’s accounts demonstrate indisputably the
reason why the Crown of Spain gave Christopher Columbus a majestic burial and monument in
the Cathedral of Seville, the Founding Fathers of the United States named the nation’s capital
after him, and American President William Henry Harrison declared Columbus Day a legal holiday
celebrated annually to this day. That reason is this: the primary historical sources show that by
his deeds, his motives and his efforts – realized and unrealized – Christopher Columbus was
unmistakably, far and away, and by any standards, the single greatest hero of human rights of
the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.
26
EXHIBIT F

Columbus Statue Motion For Recusal

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Columbus Statue Motion For Recusal

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______________________________

ITALIAN SONS AND :

AND NOW on this _____________ day of _______________, 2020, upon consideration

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that this matter shall be reassigned to another Judge

within the Court of Common Pleas, Allegheny County.

PLAINTIFF’S MEMORANDUM OF LAW IN SUPPORT OF ITS

Order do not belong in this action.

swiftly disproven by the primary sources of Columbus’s time.

attempting to contextualize this lawsuit in history by drawing parallels between statues of

himself from this action and order reassignment to a different judge.

is simple: “disqualification of a judge is mandated whenever a ‘significant minority of the lay

established, no showing of actual prejudice is required).

In considering a recusal request, the jurist must first make a conscientious

Commonwealth v. Abu-Jamal, 720 A.2d 79, 89 (Pa. 1998) (emphasis added).

B. The Preamble to the Order Demonstrates Bias by the Court

the appearance that he is prejudiced against Plaintiff’s position.

Crow era. Specifically, Judge McVay’s Order states:

See Court Order, attached hereto as Exhibit “A.”

extraneous and erroneous opinions bespeaks bias.

C. Christopher Columbus According to the Facts

Bobadilla published libelous claims against Columbus in an effort to unseat him as

their Highnesses and of the whole Spanish nation.”10

hand account of the governorship of Christopher Columbus[.]”12

still loyal to him managed to quell (Book II, Chapters 30 - 36).”13

world’ (Book I, Chapter 181).”14

tamper with their persons and/or possessions.”18

them as crew members on various expeditions.”21

Overwhelming evidence in the primary sources and the effectively-unanimous consent

BOCHETTO & LENTZ, P.C.

/s/ George Bochetto

Emily C. McNally, Assistant City Solicitor

Honorable John T. McVay, Jr.

BOCHETTO & LENTZ, P.C.

By: /s/ George Bochetto

ITALIAN SONS AND DAUGHTERS CIVIL DIVISION

CITY OF PITTSBURGH and

MAYOR WILLIAM PEDUTO

As an attorney, historian and professional researcher, I have asked myself that

“ Christopher Columbus became the first civil rights

At the request of City Council to investigate the calumnious claims of “Mr.

This is precisely why Columbus’s detractors — a sinister axis of cultural

The Philadelphia Inquirer, in this spirit of cultural majoritarianism, has recently

“ This is precisely why Columbus’s detractors — a

TAGGED IN : CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS PHILADELPHIA CITY COUNCIL PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

— MARCH 5, 2020 — MAY 17, 2020 — MAY 21, 2020

Patricia Badia-Johnson says:

Jim Ryan says:

It is a belivable story. It is just too bad the Philadelphia Inquirer is

Jim Ryan says:

It is a belivable story. It is just too bad the Philadelphia Inquirer is the

Phillip Lloyd Jones says:

Leave a (Respectful) Comment

COPYRIGHT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ! " # $

Some other facts you didn’t know about Columbus:

HISTORY OF THE INDIES

De las Casas's Prologue

Columbus the Man

A Brief Account of Columbus’s Arrival in and Return to Spain

The “Scheme” Against Columbus by the Inimical Hidalgos

Juan Aguado: Royal Spy, Political Saboteur, Instigator of War

De las Casas introduces those confederates of the treacherous “scheme” to destroy

Columbus Returns to Spain to Refute Aguado’s Slander

Alonso de Hojeda: The Pretender

AND NOW on this _ day of ___, 2020, upon consideration